PART III: _Daphne's Romance_

DAPHNE BRUNO

BY

ERNEST RAYMOND

AUTHOR OF "THE SHOUT OF THE KING," "DAMASCUS GATE,"

"TELL ENGLAND," ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1926,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

DAPHNE BRUNO

-- A --

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

THE END OF THE LONG PROLOGUE

PART I: LES TRACAS DES ENFANTS

PART II: DAPHNE'S SCHOOLDAYS

PART III: DAPHNE'S ROMANCE

PART IV: THINGS AS THEY ARE

DAPHNE BRUNO

THE END OF THE LONG PROLOGUE

I

Mr. Thomas Tenter Bruno, sitting beside his writing-table, with the

revolving arm-chair swung round so that his legs could stretch past

the drawers and his arm rest along the blotting-pad, stared musingly

at the wall. The pained set of his mouth and the lift of his

eyebrows showed that his thoughts, though they might often graze

afield, were none the less tethered to a fixed anxiety.

Had he been sitting with the grace he assumed in public rooms,

instead of so relaxed a port, his appearance and his surroundings

would have excellently suited a presentation portrait of T. Tenter

Bruno, Esq. For on the writing-table were sheets of paper, a silver

ink-pot and a pen--the very symbols of his craft; and in the

background rose shelves of books, the finished product of his kind

and the true setting of his life. On one shelf was a row of fifteen

volumes, with fifteen titles, over one author's name--"T. Tenter

Bruno." Above them and below them, and on either side of them, were

the works of Hume, Johnson, Burke, Bentham, Hazlitt, Lamb, Landor, De

Quincey, Mill, and all the other critics, essayists and economists in

whose company Mr. Tenter Bruno considered that his books might

without presumption take their seat.

In these days (two decades before Victoria died), when men wore

side-whiskers or moustaches and double-breasted frock-coats, Mr.

Tenter Bruno wore a trim, pointed beard and a short-coated grey suit,

perfectly tailored. The grey suit was almost as constant as the

beard. In daytime, at any rate, Mr. Bruno was as likely to be seen

with a shaven chin as in anything but a grey suit. It was hardly

that he dressed the part of a literary artist, since he affected to

despise those unpublished brothers who could only be known for great

men by the length of their hair, the languor in their walk, and the

lawlessness of their ties. The perfect precision of his grey suit,

the uprightness of his tall, slender figure, and the neatness of his

beard were a challenge to nincompoopdom. But (he admitted this to no

one, not even his wife) it was best to have some sort of professional

appearance--something that differentiated you from the unfamed

multitude--something that the Press-picture left firmly on the memory

for the paragraph writer to harp upon and foolish women to gossip

about. To his wife the beard had been explained as necessary owing

to the excessive tenderness of his skin (a tenderness which no man

yet regarded as anything but a credit to him) and the grey suit was

attributed to a very nice taste.

In reality Mr. Tenter Bruno's creation of his private and, as it

were, patented exterior was rooted in his contempt for the crowd.

There was no doubt whatever that a platform appearance and other food

for the literary chatterer were commercial assets; and if people were

such fools as to buy a writer's books more readily after tattling

about his clothes, any wise man would keep their tattling green. At

one time he even played with the humour to be a vegetarian and a

teetotaller, but his love of comfort was more than his desire to have

these interesting things written about him. As he put it to himself,

the occasional paragraph was a pleasant thing, but an assured and

adequate dinner every day was a greater.

There was a knock at his study door, but he decided not to hear it,

remembering that he was anxious. Not that his anxiety was humbug,

for it was very real indeed; but, since it was there, it might at

least have the credit of its full dimensions. So he let the servant

knock again.

"Oh, come in," said he patiently; and there entered a big-hipped,

comfortable servant of about forty-five years, in a dress of

powder-blue cotton and a plain apron.

"Now, excuse me, sir," begged the woman pleasantly, "but won't you

have a cuppa-tea? What I mean to say is: a nice little bit of

breaden-butter with a potta-tea. I'll bring it to you here, sir.

It's after four o'clock, and we're having ours in the kitchen; and we

couldn't bear to think of you sitting here, and sort of--what I

call--having nothing. And I'm sure you ate nothing at lunch."

Mr. Bruno had heard the tea-bell and ignored it, and now would have

liked a cup of tea, for his mouth was unpleasant; but this good

woman's doubts whether during an emotional crisis he would take tea

prompted him in a moment of weakness to reject the offer.

"No, thank you, Hollins. I don't think I'm wanting anything just

now."

He saw all that was happening in Hollins' mind. The good woman,

while persuading herself that she was disappointed at this refusal,

was really pleased that her master's suspense should be so

interesting. And along with her conviction that persistence was the

interesting part for her to play went a real desire to minister to

him.

"Well, I should, sir, if I were you. Just a nice little cup, and a

thin slice a-breaden-butter. I mean, you want to sort of--what I

call--keep up, sir."

"Oh, well, oh, well," agreed Mr. Bruno, swinging his chair so that he

faced his papers and his pen, and taking up a sheet and dropping it,

"bring it along." He thought that perhaps he would drink it and

perhaps he would leave it untouched to provide an interesting topic

of conversation in the kitchen.

"That's right. And I'll just make it a little comfortable in here.

Why, you've almost let the fire go out."

He glanced obediently at the fire. It was powdery with decay. This

rather pleased him, as proving that, despite all postures, his

anxiety had really been his master.

"Oh, we'll soon have a cheerful bitta flare here," said Hollins,

kneeling down with difficulty and rather heavily, while Mr. Bruno, in

his mind, was providing her with her next words: "There's nothing

like a bit of a coal fire to cheer you up."

Hollins took the poker and probed the embers with the delicacy of a

surgeon whose scalpel was more in danger of killing than curing.

Over the moribund glow she arranged some small coals, like a child

building bricks, and then swept the hearth. "There's nothing like a

bit of a coal fire to cheer you up," said she; and, being a heavy

woman, got up with as many divided motions as a camel. The window

curtains required straightening, so while this was being done, and

till she was gone out, Mr. Bruno drew parallel lines on a piece of

paper.

The closing of the door suggested that he sought some new occupation

for his mind. He rose and walked towards the book shelves. He was

examining his present condition with the detachment of a literary

artist; indeed, the whole affair was, to him, an exceedingly familiar

literary incident, on which the trite comment was the truest:

"This is one of my great hours."

His eye fell on the fifteen volumes bearing his name. It was always

good to see this long chain of Tenter Brunos among the works of

immortal essayists. He took down a volume issued from the house of

his American publisher, and on a slip inside it read the enthusiastic

praise of its contents.

"No one can afford to neglect the writings of Mr. T. Tenter Bruno.

With great critical acumen he combines pungent wit, gay humour and a

coruscating style. ('Disgusting bit of prose, that,' thought Mr.

Bruno.) His reach is ubiquitous; he seems to write with equal

scholarship on literature, art, music, history, sociology and

political economy."

He replaced the book. Even if one discounted half of the American

publisher's cheers, the residue spoke of a triumph. And though Mr.

Bruno had enjoyed this fine fame for fifteen years, there were still

times when it seemed too good to be true, and he wondered if it were

a dream from which he would wake up to find himself an unrecognised

aspirant of forty, bombarding publishers but abandoning hope.

But no; he had been successful from the beginning. He had been

carried to Harrow on a brilliant scholarship from one of the cheaper

preparatory schools; and there his master had said, as he entered his

name:

"'T. Tenter Bruno!' Good lord, what a name! With a name like that

you ought to go in for being a literary pundit or something. I mean,

it inspires confidence, Bruno; and once heard is not easily

forgotten. I mean, it sticks and festers in the memory like a

poisoned dart. With a name like that, and a few eccentricities like

Byron's curl, and a modicum of natural gifts, which apparently you

possess, why, Bruno, you might go far."

Young Bruno thought the same. Every talent he possessed he built

into the genius of a great critic, essayist and philosopher. A

famous university prize brought his name before the world of letters.

For a few years he was assistant editor of a critical journal. Every

spring he published a volume, and each volume made ripples wider than

the last, till he was in a position so secure that he needed not to

call any editor master, but could retire to his study and write what

books and articles he pleased.

On the whole, then, he was satisfied. Occasionally he would have

liked to live with a larger flourish, instead of in a small country

house with one old servant and an undermaid. And he could have done

so if two tyrant weaknesses had not always quashed the impulse--the

one a timidity that dreaded a failing wit and its consequence, a

falling revenue, and the other a settled indolence which made him

prefer studying in an arm-chair to creating at his desk.

A tray of tea-things clattered outside, and he walked rather quickly

back to his chair. Why he did this he hardly knew; perhaps because

he wanted Hollins to tell the maid that he had never stirred all the

afternoon. And as he sat down, he rebuked himself for the thought;

it was contemptible to expose his anxiety for the study of his

servants, like an interesting specimen on a pin.

He heard the corner of the tray rested against the jamb of the door,

while Hollins freed one hand to turn the knob.

"There you are, sir. I've made it nice and strong."--His brain

instantly provided her with her next words: "It _do_ put new life in

you, a cuppa-tea."--"It _do_ put new life in you, as I always say

myself," continued Hollins. "And I should be inclined to kind of eat

something. I've boiled you an egg in case it should take your fancy."

"Thank you, Hollins, thank you." His manner with his servants and

their devotion were a pride with him.

The thought of the egg was appetizing; and he ate and enjoyed it so

much that he wished it had been two. The tea raised his optimism and

expelled his anxiety.

"Everything'll be all right with little Sheila, of course. It's no

use picturing the worst. I'll read."

He pushed the tray to one side, and from a little book-stand on the

desk took a new volume. It quickly interested him. Only the tiring

of his eyes, as the room darkened with the fall of a February

evening, told him how the hours were passing. Outside in the passage

an opal-glass lamp-shade jingled on its stand, and a moving ribbon of

light appeared beneath the door. It would be Hollins bringing a

light.

As she entered and rested the lamp on his desk, he felt rather guilty

to be reading, but refused, this time, to hide the fact. She drew

the curtains, and went out, taking the tray with her. Mr. Bruno

turned again to his volume. It stimulated him sufficiently to demand

pencilled annotations, and he was lost in this task when a bell

gongled alarm through the house. His heart jumped; and the bell,

repeating itself, jarred his nerves.

Voices in the hall: "Bruno?"

"Yes."

The telegram, beyond a doubt.

Hollins entered, as delighted and funereal as every one is who

carries a telegram. With fingers that fumbled, Mr. Bruno opened the

envelope.

"_Daughter. Wife doing splendidly._"

His eyebrows went up. "A daughter. H'm!" But his momentary

disappointment was lost in an uprushing, swelling tenderness. In a

voice, not under perfect control, he said to Hollins:

"Yes, yes.... Oh, an answer? ... No, no answer. I shall be there as

quickly myself."

"Yes, sir." Hollins went out to the messenger, but her excitement

was like a stretching elastic that drew her immediately back to her

master's study. "Yes, sir, I've told the boy; and is there----"

"Oh, Hollins, Mr. Spencer told me he would lend me his trap, if I

needed it. You might go--or send Agnes round and ask for it. Old

Eadigo's there, and will bring it."

"Yes, sir. And may I--what I mean to say is--is everything all

right?"

"Yes, magnificent, Hollins." Stirred by excitement, Mr. Bruno forgot

that he ever postured, or that he had felt a second's disappointment

at the sex of his child. "I've got a daughter."

"Well, there now!" said Hollins. "A little daughter. I do

congratulate you, sir. The noos has just come, has it? And I shall

always be able to remember that I brought you the noos. I shall be

able to tell her that. And it's a little baby girl, is it? I like a

little girl for the first one."

She moved towards the door, but her master wanted to continue talking.

"Yes, a girl. What shall we call her, Hollins?"

"Well, sir, that'll sort of take some thinking about, won't it? Will

you call her after her mother, sir?"

"No, that's shirking trouble. Something original, I think."

"Yes," agreed Hollins vaguely, for the elastic was pulling towards

the kitchen now. "I'll just go and--and send Agnes for that trap.

I'll be back in a minute."

The kitchen of this country house was only a dozen flagstones away,

and Hollins was soon back.

"What do you think of 'Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno,' Hollins?"

Hollins tried to look intelligent and pleased; and Mr. Bruno

explained more slowly: "Daphne--Deirdre"; and his smile widened.

"Well, yes, sir, those sound very nice. But I expect the mistress'll

have her ideas.... I'll get your hat and coat."

Mr. Bruno walked up and down, repeating:

"Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno.... Daphne Bruno."

He was in the power of that up-swelling tenderness. His mind, ever

penetrating and introspective, could examine that tenderness and see

that, whether or not it were soiled by time, at the moment it was

utterly selfless, and charged with reverence and humility. "She's no

one but me"; the thoughts were running; "Good lord, I wish I were

better.... My influence will be immeasurable.... She must be

good.... It's unthinkable that she should be bad...." With a heart

filling and filling from the reservoir of these thoughts, he pictured

her at every age: one year old and crawling about the floor; three or

five, and scrambling over his knees; seven or eight, and playing with

a spade on holiday sands; in her school when he came to visit her; a

long slim girl of sixteen, slim like the plait down her back; a bride

in white and silver.

II

Wrapped in a thick overcoat, muffler and driving gloves, he walked

impatiently up and down the study, now and then clapping his gloved

hands. Like all men who could drive well, and yet could not afford a

horse, he always felt rather proud when dressed for the box seat and

waiting for the reins.

"Curse that old Eadigo! Why can't he hurry? Phlegmatic old fool!

Hollins has no doubt told him the news with an indecent exuberance,

and if he had the imagination of one of his turnips, he'd guess what

I'm feeling."

At the sound of wheels on the drive and of a voice gibbering to a

pony, he glanced out of the window and in the light thrown by the

open hall door, saw Eadigo standing near the horse's head. Eadigo

was Mr. Spencer's gardener, who came for two days a week to work on

Mr. Bruno's much smaller plot. Mr. Bruno, looking out at him with

the detached amusement of a critic, saw a large, corpulent man in a

blue serge waistcoat and trousers that had once been Mr. Spencer's.

These trousers, enabled by some triangular insertions of Mrs.

Eadigo's to surround her husband's paunch, stayed there, as the open

waistcoat showed, without aid from braces or belt: palpably they

needed none, being less likely to fall than to fissure.

Eadigo, who never dreamed of taking an uncovered head into the

air--not through fear of catching cold, but simply because the two

ideas of open air and a hat were inseparable--was wearing a soiled

felt hat discarded and given to him by Mr. Bruno three years before.

It was too small; and perhaps to give it an appearance of being

larger, the brim was turned down all round. Mr. Bruno could see the

sweat-stains round the faded ribbon, and remembered how God had

promised such things to Adam in a garden. He heard Hollins bustle

out to Eadigo and say:

"Well, you _have_ been a time! The master's in a hurry. Naturally."

And the even voice of the gardener returned:

"It's ready for 'e. 'E can have it anywhen now."

Without waiting for Hollins, Mr. Bruno walked out and mounted to the

seat and took the reins.

"Lamps all right, Eadigo?"

"Yessir."

"Well, get away, Nipper."

The horse, fresh from little use, clattered out of the open gate onto

the country road. It was the last moments before the final darkness,

and the stars were in possession. On one side of the road, the tall

beeches, looking more slender and tapering than in the daylight,

stretched their bared branches like long tenuous arms towards the

sky. On the other side a line of Austrian firs, marking a private

park, stood dense and black against a sea-green glow. The road ran

along high ground; and as it left these skirting trees, Mr. Bruno

overlooked the waving weld of Sussex. The sea-green glow sang in the

west, its answering light in the east; and now the candle-lamps of

the trap shone at their prime. The monotonous clatter of Nipper

charmed Mr. Bruno into a reverie.

It was picturesque, this driving to find his baby girl. But though

the drama of it pleased him, he knew that this was but a small part

of his emotion. That tenderness and excitement was crowding into a

corner all lesser thoughts. He examined it again, happy about it.

"Daphne Bruno." A little girl... then a slip of a school-miss,

satchelled... seventeen years, and a tall, affectionate sapling, with

her own concealed emotions... a lover in the embrace of some long

youth--his heart beat quicker at the thought of this--and then, a

bride--from which point he cared not to carry on the picture. And

she was born from him; she was out of him.

By God! he must do his part by her. Humbly, Mr. Bruno, as he flicked

the pony, felt that he was being lifted to a moment of nobility.

With a grim smile he wondered if it would last.

"_Clop_-clip, _clop_-clip, _clop_-clip." Nipper's hoofs, in the

darkness, knocked a spark from a flint. Mr. Bruno, in his waking

dream, touched the beast again.

All his books were written from one viewpoint: that of a detached

mocking at convention. They proclaimed the right of the artist to

accept nothing on authority, either in religion or in art, but to

build his own authority out of his own experience. With the rest of

the thinking world (as it appeared to him) in that latter half of the

century, he had rejected Christianity; with many artists, though he

was proud to be unplacable in any school, he had questioned the

accepted canons of art. This mocking viewpoint he had kept

consistent. His readers might believe that behind it was a

philosophy of his own. They might believe that he spoke from some

sure though hidden ground; that he at least had found a code by which

to live, and thus achieved his integrity. And indeed, some of his

followers had written articles on "The True Philosophy of Tenter

Bruno."

But Mr. Bruno, driving to his daughter, knew that he had achieved no

such thing. He felt dissatisfied with his management of life. He

was vain, thought he, and indolent and selfish; and when all

brilliant theories were puffed away, he knew that he had an

unconquerable conviction that vanity, indolence and selfishness were

wrong. And there was a corruptive falsity, his keen mind told him,

in his whole position; for, while intellectually a revolutionary, he

had no courage to be a libertine; he wrote it all from his brain,

while his will allowed his life to drift conventionally enough. If

only he had really found a sure code, that he might give it to this

little girl--or, rather, to that long, slim girl, slim as the plait

down her back! ... She would have brains.

"I should like to vow that henceforth there's to be one good thing in

my life: my self-effacing service of her." The shoulders of the

sceptic shrugged in distrust of himself.

With tenderness, too, he thought of his wife; and his head shook,

regretfully. Poor little Sheila, she hadn't had much of a time. He

saw her as she was at their first meeting: a little fair-haired thing

of twenty, beautifully frail, eighteen years younger than he. He

studied how he had come to marry her. All his life he had waited in

the hope that he would fall in love with some one, but the

monopolizing love of his own books had kept other loves out of doors.

Still, the one last sentimentality had persisted in him, this hope

that love would arrive and last for ever. Then came this exquisite

little creature (as his fancy had seen her), bringing a manifest

adoration--and the thought of possessing her had been sweet. How

delighted she had been with the attentions of so famous a man! In

her feebleness she had rather thrown herself at him. He had begun to

wonder if he was in love with her, and had given answer: "Yes, since

I am nearly forty, if this be not love, no other will come." So they

had become engaged. And though before marriage he had discovered the

poverty of her mind, he had lacked the strength to withdraw--and the

cruelty. Chaffingly surrounding her with a haze of adjectives,

"frail," "fay," "gossamer," "little Thistledown," he had kept his

promise and married her.

"She's mindless ... little ... weak ... cowardly," muttered he to the

horse's crupper.

It had hurt his pride that he had given himself to one intellectually

so far beneath him. Self-pityingly he would remember the wives of

other famous men, whose gifts had largely made their husbands what

they were. Poor little Sheila. And now she mooned rather dully

about his cottage. Doubtless her illusions had been as short-lived

as his. Henceforward all must be different. He, as well as

she--hang it all!--had undertaken duties in marriage.... And he was

the stronger and wiser.

Pity for her filled him.

Pity. The word was the bell-note for all the emotion in him

to-night. Perhaps it was the key-word to a philosophy. One could

not know much in this dark and candle-lit world, but one could hang

on to pity. One could wander at will in search of other secrets

about religion and art, but one must keep tight hold of pity.

"What pity ordains is right; what pity condemns is wrong ... when

all's said and written and done, everything in me knows that much to

be true...." He saw the long, slim Daphne again. "I shall teach her

that, if nothing else."

Relief came to Mr. Tenter Bruno, for this idea had a face as of

revelation. And the cynic in him laughed that he should have

suddenly seen a newness in anything so old. Old! Ghosts of old

philosophers began to do battle in the grey lists of his mind for the

principle of man's inherent benevolence--Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham,

Hartley and Paley, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson and Hume.

"_Clop_-clip, _clop_-clip, _clop_-clip." He was hearing Nipper's

hoofs again.

And then a horrid thought leapt up. Supposing this Daphne were

deformed in any way; supposing she were an imbecile; or blind; or

deaf and dumb; or had some freakish limb! Supposing the Christian

God had punished his sedition like that! The telegram had only said:

"Daughter. Wife doing splendidly." Not "Both doing splendidly."

Good God, not "_both!_" He pictured the news being broken to him

before he was taken to see her.

"Nonsense!" He pulled himself together, and urged the horse to a

canter. "She'll be beautiful, because her mother's beautiful; and

she'll have brains."

III

While Hollins was bringing tea to her master, before the bell jangled

through the house, Sheila Bruno was lying back on her bed suffering

her final pains. A nurse watched her as they waited for the doctor.

The nurse, seeing many such month by month, was not easily moved, but

her patient of to-day seemed like a child who was bearing too early;

and, even in her suffering, she held her beauty. Her hair, very

fair, was of the fuzzier sort that looked as pleasant when tumbled as

when tidy, and her lids were down over childish cheeks in an

abandonment to pain that was almost calm.

Sheila Bruno's eyes were closed because she had no interest in the

world beyond her racked body. Pain filled her mind, leaving room for

no altruistic thought. All that she wanted was to die and be done

with pain. She could not care that it left her husband deserted and

her baby motherless; she could not think for them. Somewhere in her

pain-filled thoughts she felt ashamed that it should be so. Labours!

Maternity! Why, she could still only think of herself as a

fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, punishable by mistresses; she felt no

different in mind or body from what she was at fifteen.

Somewhere lurked shame and despair of herself. From the beginning

her thoughts about this baby had caused her secret shame. Instead of

being delighted at the prospect of its coming--as were all the good

wives she had read about, and as she pretended to be--she had only

been frightened, exasperated and rebellious. She had made the futile

effort to think of it prettily as her husband's child, and to love it

and him the more; but in her months of sickness and disfigurement

this thought had actually worked an opposite result. It had

encouraged criticism and dislike of him. There had come to the

surface of her mind thoughts that hitherto she had kept submerged.

He had marred her life by marrying her--that was the unveiled truth

of it. Almost she might say he had tricked her. He had seemed so

wonderful--with his brilliance, his tall and graceful presence and

his courtesy. And she had paid out everything for the prize, her

whole future and the right to love again. Then in a few months he

had cast off all ceremonial vesture, probably because its wearing was

too much of an effort.

Oh, life was a roomful of pain. If only she could die! What matter

if it were cowardice? Let her admit her feebleness and die. Once

she was blotted out in death, her self-contempt would not worry her.

Oh, this miserable, hard, business-like room in the nursing home!

Even her death would be a failure in a white box of a room like this.

Why had she come here? It was wrong of Tom to send her. Of course,

she had wanted to come, so as to go through an experience that she

expected might defeat her courage, away from her husband and

servants. But just now she chose to forget her willingness in order

that she might keep her grievance against Tom. Why had he sent her

here? It was a thing seldom done. Despite all his talk about her

greater comfort, the greater facilities available, and their

isolation in the country, she suspected that the contemplation of his

own ease had not been absent, nor a satisfaction in the

unconventionality of such a step.

"I think I hate him."

And since she hated him, she had better die, for there was nothing

before her except a long life of dull exasperation. She was a

failure. Best admit it, and go upon the scrap-heap.

Oh, this pain! And this underground stream of aching thoughts that

kept appearing above the surface! Sometimes sharper agonies made her

abandon thinking and only suffer. Voices far away and yet near-by

reminded her of nursery days.

A crowning, unbelievable agony.... And then peace--lovely liberation

and forgetful rest. This was the beginning of death, sweet like

drowning. The voices were still about her, and there was a new

voice, a crying voice like a baby's. Sheila's heart stirred, as she

had always read it would: it must be the voice of her child, the

thing dragged from her and now living its own independent life. She

who had been _one_ a few minutes ago was now two. That other one was

she--and alone now, poor lonely little darling. Her consciousness

cleared, and, wondering with a thrilled anticipation if it were a boy

or a girl, she opened her eyes and saw the nurse by her bed.

"Splendid, dear, you were splendid; and you've got a little daughter."

A disappointment at the word "daughter" was rolled aside by an

out-stream of love and excitement. And her relief from agony made

her feel gay. She stared up at the nurse with an unintelligent

smile, wondering what they did next.

The nurse was leaning a bundle forward to show her something in its

cowl-like opening: a tiny model of a human face, complete with smooth

brow, eyelashes, nose, and lips and chin. It was placid now, with

its eyelids down. She looked at it for a long time, riveted; and at

length, without a word, shut her eyes.... Oh, the adorable,

incredible little thing! It brought a recurring glow, the

recollection of that little face. Sheila felt exultant--perhaps

hysterically so, for she was ready to pour out a mixture of crying

and laughter. The pain, now that it had receded into memory, seemed

nothing so very terrible after all, and she wondered why people made

such a fuss about it.

Downstairs the hall door closed. Ah, the matron was sending to Tom.

How delightful to have this news to send him! An hour ago she had

thought she hated him, and here was she imagining delight at his

excitement! She began to enwrap him with her tenderness. After all,

perhaps he had as much to criticise in her as she had in him. In

some ways she had tricked him too. Had she not used every art to

appear before him as beautiful? Had she not tried to appear more

cultured than she was? Had she not often lied--that was what it

amounted to--in representing her education as much finer than it had

been, and her circle of friends as much more impressive? After

marriage, Tom, with his penetration, must quickly have found her out.

She wondered that he had not done so before. Yes, he had claims on

her which she had disappointed: henceforth she must always remember

that.

She imagined all that was happening in the cottage. Hollins, dear,

stout old Hollins, how full she would be of the news! And Tom, of

course, was getting the trap from Mr. Spencer's. In less than half

an hour he would be here. She saw him mounting to the driver's seat,

and clattering out of the gate along the country road. She saw the

trap moving through the daylight, till, noticing that her gas had

been lit and curtains drawn, she changed the picture into a night

scene. There came the yellow candle-lamps, and Nipper tossing up his

head as he trotted over the ringing road. Now Tom had probably

reached Shadwell Green and was driving along the mossy, listing wall

of The Ballards. That would mean that he would be here in less than

ten minutes.

A short, timid ring at the front door set excitement a-tremble. Yes,

that was Tom's voice, rather stuttering and nervous. And here was

the matron bringing him upstairs. The door opened, and Sheila turned

her head towards it.

"Hallo, dear."

"Sheila, darling! Why, you look rosy. One'd think you were resting

after a tennis match."

She parried this with a smile and glanced towards the cot at the fire.

"There it is."

Mr. Bruno carried to the cot his fear that there might be something

amiss. The thought, "One second now, and I shall know," accompanied

his steps. But no hare-lip or fingerless hand met his eyes: instead

he saw the sleeping face, turned on its side, with its perfect little

nose and chin, dropped lids and exquisite ear. One hand showed above

the blanket, palm downward.

It broke one's breath.

Sheila was speaking. "Isn't she like you? And I'm sure she'll grow

up and adore you much more than she will me. Girls always do."

A quick vision of the long, slim Daphne stirred his heart. He bent

down to study the features again, trying to imagine them

fifteen--nineteen years hence.

IV

When Daphne was brought to her father's door, Hollins received her

with the expected magnificat.

"Now let me take her, ma'am. The love! You must be tired, and you

must go sort of--what I call--easy. Let me take her.... Well,

there's a beauty. O ma'am, she's a cherub! And ain't she the living

image of you?"

"Don't be absurd," corrected Mrs. Bruno, as she passed into the

cottage. "Why, I'm seeing more and more likeness to her father every

day."

"Well, yes." Hollins touched the little face with an ingratiating

giggle. "She is like the master, but she favours you too, ma'am.

Oh, yes, you favour your mummy, miss, don't you? Oh, what big

wondering eyes!"

Mrs. Hollins, being a widow and the mother of an only child who died

young, was determined by right of this experience to take a leading

part in the management of her mistress's little girl. She felt as if

at last she had come into her own. Very deliberately had she taken

the purchase of nursery equipment out of the incompetent hands of her

master and mistress.

The best of her purchases was the princely perambulator in which

young Mrs. Bruno took her daughter for a ride the following day. As

she pushed the carriage towards the garden-gate, half nervous of

taking this public confession of her motherhood into the highways,

and half proud, she saw Eadigo stooping over a flower-bed. His

waistcoat, as usual, hung open; and on his crown was the hat, a small

and greasy derelict, that she could remember being often raised from

her husband's head in the days of their courtship. Her heart

absurdly quickened with anticipation of his comment. The sound of

the perambulator on the gravel caused him to look up, and he touched

his cap and turned to his bed.

Sheila paused. Their gardener was a person she liked to chaff, and

it was not to be suffered that he should say no word on such an

occasion. No matter if he did think this appearance of a baby in the

world as of the same order, and no more interesting than the

appearance above ground of one of his onions.

"Well, Eadigo," said she, stopping the perambulator, and holding it

with one hand while she stood sideways and faced the flower-bed. She

was conscious, as she naturally assumed this position, that she was

pleasurably imitating all her sisters of the perambulator. "Don't

you want to see my little girl?"

He glanced up again and straightened himself.

"Yes, mum."

"Well, there she is."

Eadigo looked into the carriage and said:

"Yes, mum, she be there right enough."

"Think she's nice?"

Eadigo turned back to his bed.

"Well, mum, it's early yet."

"I suppose so," agreed Mrs. Bruno, pushing the pram on. "And she'll

improve as she gets bigger."

Daphne's improvements, her father used to declare, were chiefly

physical. She improved herself out of long clothes into short ones,

and out of her wicker cradle into a fine cot, and out of her shoes

and socks twenty times a day. She improved her squinting into a

straight if rather doubtful stare. She improved her early screaming

into gurgling and chuckling, which her father maintained was the

greatest improvement of all.

Generally these remarks were made at meal-times when Daphne, or

"Duffy," as he now called her, was at play upon the floor. He liked

to watch her and to offer a witty and polished commentary; or

sometimes just a crudely humorous one, since it was only for the home

and not for publication. As Daphne was always busy and restless, and

always anxious to do another thing than she happened to be doing at

the moment, Mr. Bruno would enter the dining-room and inquire of

Sheila, "Is it one of your daughter's busy days to-day?" or express

the hope that Mrs. Bruno's daughter had got on well with her work

that morning. And Sheila, stirred by the picture of Daphne these

words created, would reply no more brightly than to ejaculate, "The

darling!"

But this persiflage was a veil for things unspoken. He had not

forgotten his desire to introduce _one_ self-effacing love into his

life. And he gave the love its exercise by forcing himself to be

patient when Daphne's restlessness bruised his nerves or shipwrecked

his work. He kept, too, his heightened love for his wife. She was a

brave little girl. He had kissed her very affectionately when she

declared that she would nurse Daphne herself and that Hollins and she

would do everything: "Yes, I never meant to do it, Daddy, but I've

made up my mind to. Hollins says it's the only way to give them a

proper start. And she's so adorable." He tried to be a better

companion to his wife by coming in to her tea parties and sitting

through the insupportably fatuous conversation of the ladies. Oh,

_mon Dieu!_ it seemed that women spoke never of ideas but only of

things and persons; or if they did enunciate an idea, it was always a

stock one off the shelf, and he could provide them with the very

words they would use.

But in time he decided that too much self-abnegation, if you dealt

with weak women, was itself a weakness. They were allowing Daphne to

make an infernal noise in any and every room of the cottage. As sure

as she cried they stampeded past his study door to save or sympathise

with the child. And the more they sympathised with her, the more she

sympathised with herself and determined that her present trouble was

a case for regular refills of air which must be expelled again in

shrieks of temper. The household, in fact, was circling round Daphne

instead of round his workroom which (they all seemed to have

forgotten) was the mainspring of everything. Yes, when his daughter

should reach intelligence, then would be the time for him to consider

how he could efface himself for her. Meantime he must get on with

his work.

He summoned his wife and explained that he was considering everybody

else as much as himself when he stipulated that Daphne should be kept

to an upstairs back room. For such brain-work as his he needed

silence and freedom from domestic cares. Sheila could see that,

could she not? "Rousseau, with more courage than most of us, sent

his children to a foundling hospital when they interfered with his

work. You remember: '_Comment les soucis domestiques et les fracas

des enfants me laisseront-ils la tranquillité d'esprit nécessaire

pour faire un travail lucratif?_"

And Sheila said, "All right, Daddy."

Sometimes in the next weeks, however, the thought of the old

lumber-room, which Sheila had cleared and furnished for a nursery,

with its two easy chairs, one for herself and one for Hollins,

troubled his compassion; and he would leave his books and climb up to

it, saying he had come to see Daphne in her bath. Once Hollins had

taken over the bathing, and he could see that the good soul was

determined to show them how such a business should be performed.

Listening, as she rhapsodised over the infant in her wide, aproned

lap he thought many thoughts about the native poetry of all peasants,

from the Hebrews of old to the Cockneys or the Hodges of to-day. And

he called her runnel of nonsense "The Song of Hollins."

"They didn't give you much hair, did they, darling?" she was saying,

as the upper flock went over Daphne's head. "No, she said, I'm going

to spend all my money on a big pair of eyes. She said, I don't

reckon hair is very important, or a nose. As regards them things,

I'll just have any fairly decent reach-me-downs out of the cupboard,

but I shall spend all my money on a very extra special pair of eyes.

She said, eyes are the thing. You can do a lot of damage with a good

pair of eyes. You can break the hearts of the handsome young beaus

and--keep still, lovey--and, until they come along, you can see all

that ought to be seen and most that ought not to be seen, and, she

said, you can see every opening for mischief. There now. There's a

boo'ful little body. Into tub it goes. _In_ she goes. Nice waters.

Oh, lovely waters. Oh, such a lovely silky skin. That's right,

splash your walkers about. Kickey walkers. Up she comes, all clean

and smelling of soap. Such a 'licious feeling! Big, big towel.

There's a little, round, hobgoblin face, out of miles and miles of

nice soft warm towel. Look at its chin. No, she said, you've got it

wrong. I kep' a little of my money back for a really dainty chin.

Gr-r-r-r! She said, Oh, I am a cute one, I am. When the time comes,

won't I flutter the hearts of the handsome young mashers? I knew a

thing or two, I did."

By this time Daphne was in her long flannel nightgown, and stretched

out both hands with spread fingers towards her mother, who, captured

by such an appeal, picked her up, tossed her towards the ceiling, and

then hugged her, murmuring:

"Oh, she says, I like Hollins all right, and I find my daddy quite

amusing, but it's mummy I really want. She says, I'd sell 'em all up

for my mummy."

But now Mr. Bruno had wearied of these sentimental rhapsodies, and

withdrew downstairs.

V

When Daphne was something over a year old, Sheila knew that her

second baby was coming. The knowledge was a shock of dismay, and

then a sickly, dull acquiescence. Though at the first sight of

Daphne all hostility had surrendered, still her picture of the future

had shown only this one child playing about her. The picture of

herself with two, or perhaps a flock of children, was horrible.

Before telling her husband, she went away like a hurt animal into her

bedroom and sat by the window, staring out at the garden.

"I don't want it. Oh, all that sickness again and ugliness and

shame. And I shall have to begin nursing all over again. Oh, I know

all this is selfish, and I ought to be delighted, but I'm not. I am

selfish. I like my little Daphne, but I don't want another. Daphne

was different; she was the first, and strange, and adorable."

Into the despair rose the thoughts that she usually shut underground.

It was all wrong, children issuing from a partnership that she knew

to be nine parts bankruptcy and disappointment. There was no true

intimacy between her and Tom, and never could be. And Tom had quite

obviously learnt this, and accepted it as their incommutable

sentence. An incommutable sentence! Life stretched dark in front of

Sheila, and the word "death" had trancing, sweet overtones again.

"I thought marriage was going to be heaven.... And it's--it's

this.... But no. My Daphne was worth it.

"For Daphne's sake I'll try and bear this new cross." She found a

refuge in these suburbs of nobility. "They say it's bad for a child

to be an only child. They're much better off, if they have a brother

or a sister for a companion.... I'll look at it like that. I'm

providing something that's really good for my baby--a playmate. I

made up my mind to be unselfish where she was concerned.... All

right, my darling, you shall have your playmate."

Overcome with her own self-sacrifice, she burst into tears.

As the time of her confinement drew nearer, she concealed under a

mask of quiet liveliness a premonition of death. How this idea arose

she could not remember, nor when; but it was now the unsleeping

master of her mind. Perhaps it was born from her languor--a languor

that grew till she lived with a sense of physical decline. Once she

hinted at her fears to Hollins, who laughed the laugh of common sense.

"Nonsense, ma'am, if you'll excuse me putting it like that. You'll

hardly feel it this time. It'll come as natural as natural. And

each time it will seem more and more natural."

"But people _do_ die in childbirth," submitted Sheila. "One reads of

heaps."

"Not young ones like you, ma'am, if I may say so."

"Isn't it sometimes the young ones who are most likely to die?"

"No, no--you're a bit sort of--what I call--down, ma'am. You put all

those ideas out of your head."

"But I never was strong. When I was ill as a child, I was always

worse than any one else."

"And they're always the wiry ones, that sort of anæmic, skinny type,"

assured Hollins. "Any one'll tell you that."

Nevertheless the idea stayed, strengthening its hold. In the hours

before sleep, when the mind was susceptible to auto-hypnotism, it

sent its roots deeper and deeper. In the daytime it haunted the

background of all her thoughts and conversations. So fixed was it

that she determined to have her confinement in her own house rather

than die in a distant, hard, unloving room, with Daphne far away.

She was walking in the garden when this thought wandered into her

mind; and she stopped dead as she faced another thought that came

behind: Daphne would never remember her.

She shrugged her shoulders and closed the lips that had parted. Her

mouth quivered. Old Hollins would have to tell Daphne when she grew

up what her mother had been like.

These twilight thoughts she never exposed to Tom's kindly ridicule.

She only told Hollins gaily that this time she was going to stay in

her own home. And Hollins heartily approved.

"Of course, ma'am, since you mention it, I may say I never did like

the idea of your going away last time. It seemed out of--I mean,

sort of unnatural like. If I couldn't have looked after you, who

could, I should like to know? You'll enjoy it in your own room."

Merrily Sheila smiled in answer, though to herself the smile felt

wan. The conviction that her life had been given its term was in

complete occupation.

Complete. She would wander along the garden or the country roads,

and any stretching green prospect that troubled her with its beauty

stirred also the sad self-pity. The half-heard chirrup of the birds

in the deathly slumber of a windless day; the red glow after tea-time

behind the fir trees; the sound, one autumn evening, of a crowd of

men singing in harmony as they went down the road; the tales in her

books of the raptures of first love--it was a wistful matter suddenly

to apprehend the beauty of these things and to feel that she had only

a few more weeks with the world.

She felt the same faint ache when she patted the sleek neck of the

pony, Nipper, or saw on a shelf in her bedroom the books that she had

brought from home. They reminded her of a hundred places where as a

child she had been merry. Strange if all those scenes had only

preceded an early death! And if she chaffed old Eadigo as he

laboured in the garden, she felt the ache in her spurious laughter.

Once the sight of her own face in the mirror, looking pretty with its

fair hair, filled her eyes with tears; but she pulled herself briskly

together and forced laughter from herself all that morning. No one

but she detected the settled despair in that noisy laughter.

Perhaps the most poignant thing of all was the sight of Daphne's toys

upon the floor.

VI

Mr. Bruno this time felt none of the fears that had disorganized him

before the birth of Daphne. He remembered with something of contempt

the way he had then worked himself up to the proper anxiety. His

main trouble now was an annoyance that another child should have come

so soon, but this was balanced by a pride in remembering how he had

shrugged his shoulders and decided to greet the inevitable with

goodwill.

When Sheila took to her bed he kissed her very lovingly and told her

everything would be all right. And when the hour came, and the

doctor and the nurse were with her, he walked in to the garden taking

only an anxiety that poor little Sheila should not suffer too much.

Her moans hurt him cruelly.

The year was one month older than when Daphne was born. The

primroses were under the hedges, and young grass appearing in many

places where it ought not to appear, and the old grass turning to a

deep green after humid March days. His tea had just been cleared

away, and there was the usual silence of half-light in the garden: a

thundery stillness, this evening, and the birds, chirruping on the

branches, seemed less to break it than to be part of it. As he

walked along the herbaceous border, now and then removing a gravel

stone from the turf edge, a sudden cry of pain sounded from the

house. He stood up erect and listened. The cry dwindled back into

moans again, and above the moans sounded the plaint of a baby. It

was not Daphne's voice. He hurried excitedly back to the hall to

hear the news. As he expected, Hollins was coming down the stairs as

fast as her figure would allow her.

"It's a little boy this time, sir."

"Oh, good--good! How's the mistress?"

"She's low, sir, distinctly low. But that's nothing, sir. They

sometimes take it badly like that. I'll nip back and see if you can

come in and see her."

Hollins climbed up the stairs, while Mr. Bruno waited in the hall.

He heard a man's step, evidently the doctor's, leave his wife's room

and come along the passage, so that he met Hollins at the top of the

stairs. There was a murmured colloquy, voices pitched very low, as

if in reverence for suffering. Then Hollins came more slowly and

rather timidly down to her master.

"The doctor says the mistress is very sadly, sir. But I shouldn't

worry, or the like of that," faltered Hollins. "They're often sadly."

He did not listen to her, but ran up the stairs. The doctor barred

his way. He was an old man, and seemed as perplexed and dismayed as

Hollins.

"Just a minute, Mr. Bruno. I--er--can't understand it. Your wife

seems--there's no fever--her pains were very bad, of course, but I

thought that was due to muscular strength--but she seems to be

sinking. It looks like collapse."

Mr. Bruno tried to push past him. A sob was in his throat, and his

mind was overborne with self-reproaches--for what he hardly knew.

"The boy's perfect--quite perfect," said the doctor, by way of

comfort.

Mr. Bruno had forgotten the child and rushed into the bedroom and

looked down upon his wife. Hollins followed with tear-stained cheeks.

Sheila lay in the last surrender to death. When he touched her hand

she lifted her eyelids.

"I knew it would be like this, daddy," she said.

He dropped on one knee by her side.

"My darling, it's all right. You're only weak and worn out, and feel

depressed. To-morrow you'll be feeling splendid again. And such a

beautiful boy, they tell me. See, down there by the fire. My

darling, I'm so proud of him."

"That's right," smiled Sheila wanly. "But I knew it would happen

like this. I knew all along, but I wouldn't tell you. Where's

Hollins?"

Hollins, who had been behind, came forward, violently sobbing.

"Bless you, ma'am, don't you worry. You'll be all right. They're

often took like this. I ought to know."

"Where's my baby?"

"In his little crib, ma'am, by the fire. Such a beautiful child.

He's fallen asleep."

The nurse picked up the little bundle to bring it to her.

Sheila lifted again the heavy lids.

"No, I meant Daphne. Bring my baby to me."

"Daphne's in bed. It's after six o'clock," began Hollins; but seeing

the dying look on her mistress's face, she moved towards the nursery.

Sheila opened her eyes again.

"Is it so late? ... Don't disturb her.... She mustn't be

disturbed.... It's bad for her to be disturbed. She's always slept

an unbroken sleep at night right from the start. Hasn't she,

Hollins? ... Let her sleep."

"Sheila! Sheila!" cried Mr. Bruno.

Behind he heard Hollins muttering to the doctor:

"She seemed to have sort of made up her mind--been telling me things

to tell the children when they're grown up." The recollection of

this broke up Hollins, and the hearing of it made Mr. Bruno cry out:

"Sheila! Sheila! Don't go!"

His senses carried inappropriately to his brain the sibilance of the

birds in the branches, and voices over the evening stillness of the

fields, and some laughter of girls.

Sheila's eyes were closed. All the thoughts that had kept her sad

during the past months were in her mind again, and her bewilderment

at the failure of her life. "I don't understand--I don't

understand," she kept thinking. "I can't understand." Then she

remembered Daphne, and this boy--what was his name? She would never

know. And that neither could have lived if it hadn't been for her.

There was some comfort in the thought--if God gave them a good life.

"O God, give them a good life." ... "O God, make them happy...."

VII

Mr. Bruno's first idea after the loss of his wife was to leave the

children and the house to the management of Hollins and to retire

into the solitude of his study. Such an attitude would best suit his

grief, and had its picturesqueness. His grief, when he analysed it

alone in his room, seemed a pain of pity for little Sheila, mixed

with remorse for not having made her happier, rather than a sense of

irreparable loss.

But his sister, who had very kindly swept down upon his cottage the

day after Sheila's death, had other views about the children. Belle

Phillimore, the widow of a cavalry officer, was twelve years older

than her brother, and, in his opinion, an unutterable fool. Her head

could hold no ideas except those provided by her dead colonel and the

superannuated clergy and ignorant ladies of her circle.

"No, Tom, it won't do," she pronounced. "This Hollins is a good

soul, I'm sure, but what little Daphne and her brother will want is a

lady. For instance, look at the way Hollins talks. She misuses

grammar like all those sort of people do."

Mr. Bruno nodded. "Yes, grammar is a ticklish business."

"Yes, children are always vulgarized by the society of servants.

Besides, she's sure to be full of old superstitions and fill Daphne's

head with them. Can Hollins teach the children their Bible and

Catechism? Why, she probably doesn't understand them herself."

"You forget, Belle," interrupted Mr. Bruno, "or perhaps I should say

that, being a sister and an elder sister, you naturally have never

read the few poor books that I have written.... Or if you have read

them in an idle curiosity, you have naturally not taken them

seriously. But, as a matter of fact, I am quite serious in my

inability to accept your Christianity."

"But, Tom! You surely wouldn't have a child brought up without

religion?"

"I didn't say that. But I don't see why I should have a child

brought up in what I believe to be error."

"Oh, but it's different for you. A child always goes to pieces if it

isn't given some religion. _You_'re a full-grown man with some

cleverness."

The description did not please Mr. Bruno, and he told himself,

"That's as much as a relative will ever allow." But this

self-protecting thought was an intruder among others, and quickly

lost. Standing by the window and staring out, he was really thinking

of the afternoon Daphne was born and the night Sheila died.

"I should like them to have _some_ religion," he said suddenly.

"Exactly. We must get some good Christian gentlewoman to manage the

household and the children--that was what I was going to suggest.

We'll advertise in a Church paper."

Mr. Bruno brought his eyes away from the window.

"I've just had an idea. Since these children went through the whole

course of evolution when they were in the womb"--Belle moved

uncomfortably--"it may do them no harm to go through the Christian

period as well. It may keep them fairly straight till they are

developed enough to wander alone."

"Exactly. A sort of housekeeper-guardian. Your servants will obey

her. They would never obey Hollins, one of their own number who'd

been promoted. They never do. My poor Charlie used to say that the

ranker officer had precious little control over his men; they

preferred a gentleman any day."

"Oh, my God!" thought Mr. Bruno; and his reading chair called to him

like a refuge.

"Well, look here, Belle," said he. "Is it too much to ask you to

draw up the advertisement, and perhaps to stay here and keep an eye

on the place till the proper person is engaged?"

His sister give a ready nod. She would be only too pleased to do so,

she said.

VIII

These were years before public libraries and reading-rooms were to be

found in every borough. But in a suburb that was developing beyond

the green fields of Hammersmith, one of the first of them had

appeared, thanks to the munificence of a departed M.P. It was an

oblong room with some tall lecterns for such daily newspapers as the

_Times_ and the _Standard_ on one side of the gangway, and on the

other long elmwood tables for the reading of weekly journals which,

when not in use, roosted in wire mangers on the walls. On the Friday

after Mr. Bruno's conversation with his sister--Friday being the day

the best religious papers appeared--a woman entered this reading-room

and, walking as one who knew her purpose, glanced immediately at the

rack where the _Warden_ usually rested. She was tall and thin, and

might have been thirty-five or forty years old. Thirty-five

probably, the care-lines and the hint of hardness having come

prematurely to a face that had once been soft and handsome. Her walk

had the rectitude of a woman who defends her title to gentility by

her manner, since her dress, though neat, can betray little but

poverty. Her black skirt was frayed where it touched the ground, and

the first finger of one black kid glove was split at the seam. As

proof of her social grade, however, she wore a veil, or "fall,"

terminating just below her mouth. And she carried a neatly folded

umbrella and a reticule in which were visiting cards with the name

(printed, not engraved) "_Miss Durgon_."

She gave a little "St--! st--!" of annoyance when her glance at the

wire shelf showed her that the _Warden_ had been removed. She must

see who was reading it, and make sure that she got it next. Walking

among the tables, she found that it was being read by a middle-aged

woman in a brown skirt and coat and a fur, all slightly decayed; and,

as this woman had a stunted and bitten pencil in her right hand with

which she was tracing down the "Situations Vacant," and in her left a

soiled envelope on which she was noting addresses, it seemed probable

that she would monopolise the journal for most of the morning. Miss

Durgon said "St--! st--!" again. The calm way these people sat, as

by right, over papers for which they had paid nothing! The ferrule

of her umbrella beat impatiently on the ground, but without results.

So, to intimate that she was waiting for the _Warden_, she sat down

rather deliberately in the empty chair next the woman, and tapped out

a resigned tattoo on the table top. The woman with the pencil

glanced round, and, resenting such a hint, slightly turned her back

towards Miss Durgon. Her right to the paper she defended by being a

little slower in her perusal and a little more deliberate in her

noting of addresses. She thought it most annoying the way these

women came and sat rudely beside you, as if they had some claim on a

paper for which they had paid nothing.

Minutes passed, and Miss Durgon could only express her impatience by

repeating her tattoo on the table-top, and occasionally consulting a

large watch at her breast. Once another woman, a fat creature with a

basket, came and stood by the person in possession, as if, in spite

of Miss Durgon's long wait, she expected to have the paper next.

Then Miss Durgon advanced her chair nearer to the _Warden_,

rehearsing the words she would utter if the fat creature stepped in

before her. But the fat woman, seeing she was forestalled, walked

away with just such a "St--! st--!" as Miss Durgon's.

At last Miss Durgon's impatience compelled her to speak.

"You'd oblige me if you'd allow me to see this paper. I've waited

fifteen minutes already."

The woman with the pencil turned towards her; and then without

answering gave Miss Durgon her back again.

Miss Durgon's blood was up, and her hand went out to take the paper.

But its possessor snatched it back and held it tight.

"If I were you, I should learn to speak the truth," said she, and

pretended to be lost in the advertisements, though her stumpy pencil

was trembling.

"Speak the truth!" snapped Miss Durgon. "What do you mean? ...

Insolence.... Perhaps I can find an attendant."

"Saying you've been waiting fifteen minutes when you've not been

waiting five. You'll be saying you've been an hour next."

Miss Durgon tossed her head, and adjusted a brooch.

"I've no desire to speak to you. All I ask is that, when you've

found your situation----"

"Situation yourself!" hissed the woman, deeply offended at this term.

"If you want to do the highty-tighty, I should mend your glove."

And she resumed her perusal of the paper.

Miss Durgon scorned her, and trusted that the creature felt the

scorn. The woman, however, finished her study and, to annoy this

detestable creature beside her, turned to a column of "News from the

Dioceses," and read them. Miss Durgon continued to enfilade her with

contempt, and at length the woman got up and walked away.

Miss Durgon slided along to the vacated seat, and, opening her

reticule with dignified calm, took out a thin silver pencil, somewhat

bitten, and a penny note-book whose leaves were dog-eared. But she

had hardly read two advertisements before the fat woman with the

basket, who had appeared once before, came back to see if the paper

were yet disengaged. Annoyed to find it occupied by a person who, to

judge from her pencil and notebook, intended remaining for some time,

she sat down in the seat Miss Durgon had just left. This was too

exasperating. Here she had only just secured the paper, and this fat

sack of a woman came and seated herself menacingly beside her, as if

to make her hasten. She would do nothing of the sort. If anything,

she would travel over the advertisements with greater precision and

an ostentatious calm. Nor should the fat woman's drummings or "Tut

tuts!" create any panic in her. So she jotted down the possible

situations, none of which animated her much, till suddenly she read:

"WANTED, for a Widower's home. Lady Housekeeper, and Guardian to

two very young children. Two servants (one as nurse). Governess

later. Apply Tenter Bruno, Underwold, Francefield, Sussex."

So exactly did this suit Miss Durgon that she immediately felt

confident that Destiny had led her to it this morning, and the post

would undoubtedly be given her. She must hurry back and write at

once. In her satisfaction she only handed the paper to the fat lady

with a pleasant smile that made her think, as she walked away, how

much more agreeable her manners were than those of the disgusting

creature who had first held the paper. Tenter Bruno? Tenter Bruno?

A familiar name. She had seen it in papers, and heard it in

conversations. Could it be the well-known writer? She must find

out. If it were, it would make the position doubly desirable. She

foresaw herself studying the comfort and securing the quiet of a

literary man, and becoming quite indispensable to him.

IX

When Mr. Bruno's sister heard from Miss Durgon's lips, in the

dining-room of the cottage, that she was the fifth daughter of an

officer, she felt satisfied on all points. And with some pride, as

though her labours had been extensive and exhausting, she came into

her brother's study to announce her complete success.

"I think I've got the very person, Tom, the very person you need. An

excellent person. First and foremost, she's a lady, the daughter of

an officer. A good-looking woman, too. I've represented to her,

Tom, that what she's got to do is to relieve you of all anxiety,

whether it be about the children or the _ménage_ of the house. She

was most interested in your writing."

Mr. Bruno, who like all comfort-loving literary men was sanguine

about everything except the sale of his books, was only too pleased

to believe all his sister said.

"Excellent, Belle, excellent. I'm sure I'm very grateful to you. It

_is_ of paramount importance that I am left to the undisturbed

pursuit of my writing and reading. The kindest thing I can do for

the children is to go into my study and shut the door and work. But

that I could never have done--at least, not with the necessary

detachment"--Mr. Bruno seemed almost to be trying to reassure himself

in a dubious abandonment to comfort --"unless I had your assurance

that everything possible was being done for the children."

"Yes, I think you can be comfortable about that," interposed his

sister. "She struck me as a lady in every respect."

Mr. Bruno, thinking, as usual, what a fool Belle was, merely replied:

"Well, I'm sure I can trust your judgment on _that_ point, Belle. I

feel very satisfied and relieved at this stroke of yours."

He was seeing long, quiet, self-sufficient days with his books,

varied by an occasional kindly patronage of his children. He felt

vaguely that Belle had accepted the responsibility of the choice, and

called down any blood upon her own head. His clearer mind told him,

in quickly closed moments, that he whose best works had tried to

battle through to the secrets of life and art, had, in the matter of

his children, been too indolent for thought.

X

The resentment of Hollins at this promotion of "Miss Skin-and-Grief"

to the place she had hoped to fill was given its airing before the

young maid in the kitchen:

"I knew she was going to be awful. I went to the door myself, and

she says, 'Does Mrs. Phillimore live here?' And I says, 'No, miss,'

I said. 'This is Mr. Bruno's house, but he's got his sister staying

with him.' 'Well, can I see her?' she says tartly. I don't think

she liked the 'miss.' And I says, 'I'll see if she can see you,

miss.' I wasn't, so to speak, going to wave flags in front of her.

I said, 'What name, miss?' And she says, 'Durgon.' So I went up and

came down again, and says, 'Yes, Miss Durgon, Mrs. Phillimore can see

you if you step this way.' She bridled up at the 'Miss Durgon,' but

said nothing, feeling, I suppose, that she hadn't sort of secured her

position. And, well, here she is, for good and all, if you ask me;

and I don't reckon she'll worship the very ground I walk on."

"'Slike as not she'll get you the sack," suggested the maid.

"'Slike as not she'll do nothing of the sort! The master knows as

how the mistress lef' me messages to tell the children when they grow

up, and for their sake he'll see that I'm there when they're old

enough to hear. No, Miss Skin-and-Grief won't be able to come it

over me. I'm not afraid of her, and she needn't think it."

From the first, then, a skirmishing warfare existed between Hollins

and Miss Durgon, with eye-darts for bullets and word-stabs for

bayonet thrusts. Hollins's sharpest pin was to distinguish her from

all other ladies to whom she spoke by changing "Yes, ma'am," and "No,

ma'am," into "Yes, Miss Durgon" and "No, Miss Durgon."

This was exceedingly difficult to parry, and Miss Durgon spoke to her

employer about it.

Mr. Bruno was polite, as always, but inwardly annoyed at this

intrusion of a domestic question into the privacy Belle had promised

him. He h'med over some remark about "a natural licence to an old

servant," and then added, with the smile of delicacy: "But all this

is your sphere, Miss Durgon; you must do what you think best. All I

ask is to be entirely free from these petty worries. Do what you

think best, only don't offend Hollins. My wife thought a lot of

Hollins."

Miss Durgon, whose sword-arm was always weakened by her fear of

losing her position, realised that she had made a false step, and

never again obtruded a domestic question on Mr. Bruno.

PART I: _Les Tracas des Enfants_

CHAPTER I

Daphne's earliest memories were of being awake in her cot while the

daylight was still outside the blinds, though flushed with sunset.

Downstairs were footsteps and closing doors and women's voices; and

sometimes her father's voice, only this was so deep as to be but half

heard. In another and smaller cot slept Owen, her baby brother, who

often woke and cried for a minute and dropped off to sleep again. He

frightened her a little when, after dark, he would suddenly climb

through a crescendo from whimpering to crying, and crying to

screaming; and she would be glad when Hollins came up and quieted him

with a fruity and ingratiating, "Now, go to by-by like a good little

boy," or picked him up and sang to him:

Sonny go round the sun,

Sonny go round the moon,

Sonny go round the mulberry bush,

On a Sunday afternoon----

though Daphne was always faintly worried by this equating of a

mulberry bush with the sun and moon. If Miss Durgon came up instead,

she was much more prosaic. She put Owen firmly on his other side,

and added as she went out, to Daphne, who was sitting up, big-eyed,

to watch the rearrangement of Owen:

"Now you go to sleep. We don't want nonsense from you too."

With the passing of time Daphne learnt that there were three stable

people in her world: Hollins, round, and in a blue cotton uniform,

chiefly associated with comfort and friendliness; Miss Durgon, long,

black, and chiefly associated with correction, church and manners;

and her father, with a pointed beard. She conceived that fathers and

beards went together, and was much surprised the first time she saw

some one else's father who had not even a moustache. How he could be

old enough to be a father was not clear.

Her father was a jolly person in the early morning before breakfast.

At half-past seven she was allowed to go into his bedroom and to

climb on to the eiderdown for the playing of a game called "When I

say 'kipper.'" It consisted in Daphne's inventing a long story to

which her father must listen carefully, because directly she worked

in the dangerous word "kipper" he was to tickle her violently. Her

shrieks of alarm, after uttering the word "kipper," always began

before the tickling got really started, and her yells of laughter and

screams for mercy generally rewarded Mr. Bruno's tickling campaign

within thirty seconds of its inception. When Owen was old enough to

play this game it was doubly exciting; for sometimes he would work in

the dangerous word, and she, unprepared for it so soon, was caught

and tickled till she rolled, screaming with hysterical laughter, off

the bed to the floor.

Some mornings she woke very early, and knew she would not go to sleep

again, because it was daylight; and then her games had to be silent,

for it was an offence to wake Owen; so she would use her knee or her

foot to lift the bedclothes into a tent and sprawl about under them,

divided in her mind whether they formed an Indian's wigwam or a

Commander-in-Chief's headquarters. Wearying of this, she would lie

on her back and with her knees form the white quilt into a range of

mountains. There were Alpine pathways up the folds, and if she

half-closed her eyes she could see the St. Bernard dogs and the pious

monks as they looked for dead men in the snowdrifts.

Hollins was a good person when she told them tales, but her nursery

rhymes struck Daphne from the first as rather silly. Cows couldn't

jump over moons, nor dishes run away with spoons. And "Old Mother

Hubbard," which told of an old woman going to the larder to get a

bone for her dog and finding the place empty: vaguely Daphne felt

that as a story it led to nothing, and certainly wasn't worth making

a song about. Nor could she see that little Jack Horner's remark,

"What a good boy am I!" had any sense or sequence. Though in

courtesy she applauded Hollins for her frequent rendering of these

poems, she felt uncomfortably that the pleasant old servant was

sinking in her estimation by uttering such nonsense. Her father

agreed that Jack Horner's exclamation was a _non-sequitur_, and told

her that she had a quite exceptional clarity of brain, which would be

a curse to her through life. And then he added: "How's this for a

nursery rhyme, Duffy?" and recited gently:

How many miles to Babylon?

Three-score and ten.

Can I get there by candlelight?

Aye. There and back again.

"That's not far from beauty, Duffy, as I hope you'll be able to see

one day."

And somehow it _did_ sound different. Its measured movement pleased

her, and its blue sadness; and these made her feel solemn and dreamy.

Fairy tales weren't nonsense, because they were admittedly stories of

people in an imaginary world, and so could be completely,

engrossingly satisfying. They were her monopolising delight when she

could read--at least, Grimm's were. Grimm's she read again and

again, lolling in a deep arm-chair with her heels beneath her, and

the book on the chair's arm. Grimm's stories were real stories,

clear and exciting. Hans Andersen's were different: she could not

get hold of them, and they were rather terrible. Yet after she had

abandoned the annoying book they haunted her strangely: "The Girl who

Trod on the Loaf"--ugly, dark, wonderful story; "The Red Shoes," "Ib

and little Christina," and "Something." Whole sentences from them

hung in her memory: "She flew away, as if she were flying straight

into the sun." "They said 'Clink' and were broken." "And that was

something."

"You don't understand, Duffy," said Mr. Tenter Bruno, when the

annoyingness of Hans Andersen was pointed out to him. "But while

Grimm only entertains you with what is agreeable, Hans Andersen

_troubles_ you with beauty."

When, in Hollins's phrase, she was "rising nine," her father decided

to move to town. Earning a much larger income now, he could have

lived in considerable style, but for the ever-gnawing fear that

either his brain-power or his vogue would dwindle, and the workhouse

ensue. This made him resolve that his place in town should not be in

one of the expensive districts. But it would have to be fairly big,

if it were to accommodate the two children, Miss Durgon, Hollins, and

another servant.

Such a house was found at last in Deseret Road, West Kensington. The

sanguine Mr. Bruno was quite pleased with it: a tall, red-brick

place, with basement and area and four stories above--the sort of

place which would both make him very comfortable and allow itself to

be called a suburban barbarity. The back of the house looked over

the grounds of Queen's Club, so that one could watch the Varsity

sports and football matches from all the windows that were above the

grounds' encircling trees. Opposite the house front, across a good

road, was a sunken waste ground waiting for the builder to arrive

upon it. In the neighbourhood were many such places, though the long

screens of uniform houses were building apace.

So there joined Daphne's more vivid memories the picture of that

exciting day when they journeyed up to London and their new house.

To her, who had only been told of London, it was a move as exciting

as the departure of town children for the sea; the packing in the

previous week, the trunks standing in the hall the night before, the

arrival of the "fly" from the Ballard Arms, the stacking of the

trunks about the carriage, and the drive, thus laden, to the station.

Hollins and the maid had gone ahead to prepare the house, so Daphne

and Owen secured one pair of corner seats in the railway carriage,

and their father and Miss Durgon the other. More people got in,

which meant extinction for Owen, Miss Durgon telling him he must keep

his seat and not fidget. Daphne, having been wakeful most of the

night, was lulled to sleep by the passing of the hedgerows and

palings, and by the slow rolling and swinging of the train, till the

voices of the strange occupants, and of her father and Miss Durgon,

floated in a luminous mist behind her half sleep.

She was awakened by a jolting and slowing of the train and the

movements of the people in the compartment. The November day had

darkened, and out of her window she saw more interlacing railway

lines than she could have believed possible, all of them wet, as if

rain had fallen here, and shining in gaslight. The backs of the

houses were dark-grey and gloomy, and the few lit windows frightened

her with their suggestiveness. Unconsciously she created stories of

misery for the people behind them. The train rolled into the

colossal station that bruised and battered her with its noises and

smell and hurrying.

"We must get a four-wheeler," said her father importantly.

She wondered what a four-wheeler was, till the porter trundled their

luggage alongside a "fly" much more squat than the carriage sent by

the Ballard Arms. There was a head-achy smell inside it, and she was

glad when her father sat her on his knee, for she received a draught

from the window, as well as being able to see the things coming into

view. First, there were lighted shops and entangling traffic; then a

broad, roomy road of tall houses; then a great highway that seemed

all coloured buses and four-wheelers and jingling hansoms. These

hansoms, she said, were like sedan chairs drawn by horses. All of it

kept her commenting and questioning, till of a sudden she was given a

fear--one of those fears that one did not tell to adults for they

were not liable to them. There was a man running beside their cab.

A man in a cloth cap, with a muffler round his neck. In and out of

the pedestrians he padded, sometimes on the roadway, sometimes on the

pavement, often glancing at the luggage stacked on the cab's roof.

The scenery changed, but the padding man was as unlosable as a

shadow. She drew back her face from the window.

They were bowling now down a wide road, on one side of which were

rows of tall houses, painted white or cream, or left a cindery grey,

and on the other an interminable line of railings with trees and

grass beyond. Daphne could only judge that a garden so endless must

be the Queen's and she inquired of her father:

"Is that where the Queen lives, daddy?"

"Yes; she used to live there, or a little farther on--in fact, she

was born there, but, like us, she's moved."

"And who lives there now, then?"

Mr. Bruno controlled a smile.

"Oh, the Prince Consort has a seat there."

"Who's the Prince Consort?" She thought foggily of Grimm's princes.

"Well, he's a howling swell in his place in there," assured her

father.

Daphne said no more, for, in staring out, she had seen the shadow-man

still keeping level with the cab. They had passed into a

neighbourhood that, though it had some tall, red-brick houses, was

subtly inferior to anything they had come through before. Miss

Durgon made the remark: "Dear me, this is all very familiar ground,"

and Daphne, while envying her this knowledge, thought that somehow

the neighbourhood suited Miss Durgon. What she meant she could not

have said: probably that it was a dark and well-behaved

neighbourhood, a genteel hanger-on of the fine white houses, and a

place that would prohibit the noisier games.

Now the cab left the streets where the buses were, and got into quiet

roads of residential houses. It seemed to turn round every corner

that Daphne gambled it would turn round. And always the running man

turned with it. It stopped at last before a high house, one of a

red-brick row, with many white steps leading up to its front door.

There was a lamp-post opposite the area gate, and she could see by

its light that the dark-green paint on the hall door was raised into

little blisters. Interesting things to prick.

The cab-door opened by itself--or, rather, it was opened by the

shadow, who touched his cloth cap. Daphne, whom her father was about

to hand out, shrunk back as if she were being handed to some dark,

night messenger.

"It's all right," laughed her father. "This gentleman has only come

to help us with our luggage."

That moment the hall door of their new home opened, flooding the

steps with gas-light; and Daphne, seeing Hollins standing there,

rushed hurriedly past the shadow into her arms.

Because of its complete difference from their Sussex home, the house

in Deseret Road appealed to Daphne as a place much more romantic and

thrilling--especially on foggy falls of their first November, when it

could assume an air of the sinister. She and Owen early examined,

not without fears, its every room and cupboard and cellar. Owen at

first had not seen much reason to be afraid of them--nor, in truth,

had Daphne--but, in order to make them more interesting, she had

deliberately worked on his imagination and her own with rather

disturbing ideas about secret panels and subterranean passages, till

Owen was obviously terrified of them, and she herself wondered what

exactly her feelings about them were. To explore at night the

kitchen and pantries, which were actually below ground and down a

stairway like a mine-shaft, was a thrilling adventure when prosecuted

with a companion--unthinkable alone.

The long dining-room was a dangerous place because of the huge syphon

for making soda-water that stood in the centre of the sideboard,

before the mirror. This great bulbous, though neat-waisted glass

thing, encased in a trellis-work of wire, was as large as a child,

and Hollins had told them that the wire casing was to prevent it

exploding.

"Dangerous things," she had said. "They have to be all wrapped up in

wire like that, being apt to go sort of what I call--off."

So Daphne, in the first weeks, always went past the sideboard

quickly; and she marvelled, with hand at her mouth, when her father

lifted the thing carelessly, and even shook it.

The sounds outside the house, too, were so different from those

around their Sussex home. There the birds had sung, hardly heeded,

in the boughs or under the eaves, or fluttered out of the creeper on

the walls; and footsteps were seldom heard unless they were those of

Eadigo on the gravel, or some visitor approaching the door. But here

in Deseret Road sounded the rattle of two-wheeled tradesmen's carts,

almost under the breakfast-room window; the crunching of errand-boys'

hand-barrows; the ringing on the pavement of the feet of passers-by;

or a loud and continued vibrating as some idle, whistling urchin

dragged a stick along the area railings. In the winter came the bell

of the muffin-man; and at other times the musical, sad cry of men and

women selling lavender:

Lavender, sweet lavender,

Sixteen branches a penny

The errand boys were interesting because they could often be

encouraged to put out their tongues or make long noses. And the

muffin-man was never to be missed; if Daphne announced his

appearance, Owen rushed to the breakfast-room window. He balanced a

whole tray of muffins on his head, with nothing of the contortion,

nervousness and reaching of one's tongue up to one's nose that Daphne

had found inevitable when trying to do it with the butler's tray.

Ever afterwords the muffin bell made her think of a winter Sunday

afternoon in Deseret Road. A year had passed. Father was

away--tremendously far away. Having decided to treat himself to a

holiday in India, he had departed in a cloud of romance, after

showing the children his cabin trunks, his tropical hats, and

pictures of the huge ship in which he would actually live for several

weeks. Once he had "dressed up" in his Indian toggery, and

beautifully neat and handsome, distinguished and whimsical he had

looked in his white drill, smiling above his brown beard. Father's

absence brought one advantage: Hollins, instead of Miss Durgon, took

them to church. When father was at home, Miss Durgon had always

conducted them with great parade to St. Antony's near by. It was a

long, unintelligible service, and Daphne's only interest was to hope

that some one would faint again, like a young woman who had caused a

splendid diversion one warm spring morning. But nobody ever obliged

again, and Daphne's detestation of church was suddenly increased to

horror by the fixed idea that one day _she_ was destined to provide

the excitement. This heart-stopping thought would come over her, if

the sermon were at all long, so that she would send up an ejaculatory

prayer as sincere as that house of prayer had ever known: "O God,

make him stop!" Miss Durgon's deportment at church incensed her more

than anywhere else; it was so silly the way she opened her Bible,

directly the preacher announced the text and its reference. What was

the sense in looking them up when she had just been told what they

were? Guessing that her father did not approve of church, she one

day announced to Miss Durgon that she didn't think she would go that

morning; Father didn't go. But Miss Durgon made short work of this:

"Your father's a very clever man. When you're as clever as he is,

you'll be able to question whether or not you'll go to church"; to

which Daphne answered promptly: "Father says I _am_ clever."

But now that Mr. Bruno had gone away, Miss Durgon ceased going to

church, delegating to Hollins the task of taking the children. And

going to Hollins's church was nothing like so detestable as going to

Miss Durgon's. Hollins had a church of her own fancy, quite a

distance away, to which you went in a bus.

"I do seem to fancy it, I must say," she told the children. "I can't

explain it--it sort of _gets_ me. Your St. Antony's doesn't get me

at all."

She had first taken them there in the morning, telling them they

would be pleased with the procession; it was as good as a theatre.

This had excited them, and in their pew they eagerly awaited the

beginning of the entertainment. When the banners and crucifixes and

candles and incense and scarlet-skirted boys and quilted clergymen

poured out from behind the high altar, Owen, who had been watching

them with a falling mouth, suddenly looked up to Hollins and said:

"Is it all right?"

Hollins murmured "Sh--sh," and nodded "Yes," thereby answering the

question that England had essayed to answer for sixty years.

On this particular winter afternoon, the children's service was more

than usually entertaining. Glossy coloured pictures were brought

round by the stout, smiling gentleman in the linen and lace, and

distributed to the children. It was better than the crackers thrown

by the clown in the pantomime, for every child seemed (if craning

heads saw aright) to receive one, and the stout gentleman had almost

as merry a smile as the clown's. When he came alongside Owen, who

was at the end of the pew--in fact, almost in the nave, such was his

open-mouthed interest--and offered him a picture, Owen looked up at

Hollins and asked:

"Is it all right?"

And Hollins said:

"Yes. Sh----! Quite all right. Take it."

So he took it and began to chew one of its corners. Daphne had some

difficulty in taking hers for she was struggling with a fit of

giggling.

Towards the end of the service, when the church was darkening,

another exciting and mirthful thing happened: the verger lit the

gas-brackets one after another. Then came a hymn, "All things bright

and beautiful," and a procession in which the children fell in, pew

by pew, behind the choir, and walked round the church. The little

ones, Daphne noticed with a throb of pity that hurt her, held the

hands of older brothers and sisters, and ran and stumbled along,

dropping their books and weeping bitter tears that were unheeded in

the roar of:

_All_ things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

_All_ things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.

One by one the pews in front of the Brunos emptied, and Daphne got

quite exhilarated, as it drew near their moment to turn into the

nave. Owen, being on the outside of the pew, had to lead off, and he

prefaced so unusual a proceeding by looking up at Hollins with

eyebrows that obviously inquired into its correctness. Reassured, he

stepped out to join the others, first making certain, however, that

Hollins and his sister were coming too.

When, after the blessing and a hymn sung most amusingly on one's

knees, they passed out with the crowd into the road, they found it

quite dark, though they had not yet had tea. They walked quickly

down the road, Daphne talking excitedly and skippingly to Hollins

about the service. And then the muffin bell sounded. And even while

they were drawing attention to it, a muffin-man swung round a distant

corner, and approached them along their very pavement.

"Is there muffins for tea?" asked Owen.

"You shouldn't ought to say, Is there? Where's your grammar? You

should say, Are there?"

So Daphne said it.

"Well, are there?"

"No, Miss Inquisitive, there aren't."

"Well, couldn't we take some back with us?"

"Well now, did you ever? Of course not."

"Oh, do let's."

Owen said nothing, being not quite clear whether so abnormal a

development were all right.

"Oh, Holly, may we?"

Daphne always gained her point by calling Hollins this endearing name.

"You know you didn't ought to buy anything of a Sunday."

"Yes, you ought. Didn't he tell us that the disciples picked the

corn as they walked through the field? Why, I believe Owen's is a

picture of them.... It is!" She gave a little jump. "Oh, Holly, I

believe you're a Pharisee. Look, that's you in the background,

looking snitchy."

"You're a clever one," said Hollins. "You say more than your

prayers, you do." And, as the muffin-man was now close, she stopped

before him.

"Oh, good!" muttered Daphne, as Hollins bought.

They were soon at the wide high street, where the buses were. They

clambered inside one, Hollins refusing them permission to mount to

the top, on the score that the air after dark was treacherous. So,

wrapped up in their reefer coats, they sat in the bus, swinging their

legs, and staring up at the advertisements of Sapolio, or down at a

new one, which was fixed at the bus's end, a picture of a very

discontented baby climbing out of a bath to get a piece of soap.

"What does it say beneath?" asked Owen.

"It says, 'He won't be happy till he gets it.'"

"What's he want it for?"

"How should I know, silly? Eat it, I expect."

Hollins was always shorter with Owen than with Daphne. She believed

she had some special feeling for Daphne, having been beside her

father when the news came of her birth.

"Did he get it?" asked Daphne.

"How should I know, silly one? No, I don't think he did. He fell

down and hurt his nose."

Owen's hand shot to the bridge of his nose in nervous sympathy. He

brought it away quickly with a timid glance, to see if any one had

remarked so absurd a motion. But no one had because the bus had

stopped to allow of a lady's entrance. As all the seats were

occupied, she would have been obliged to stand if Hollins hadn't

nudged Owen and whispered, "Who's a little gentleman now?" Owen was

dreading this; not because he minded giving up his seat, but because

he so disliked the publicity, and the not knowing what to say to the

lady. She, however, saved him from speech by saying, "Well, that is

kind of you," and Hollins by adding, "Not at all. He's pleased."

When they were home again, they found that Miss Durgon was out, and

not likely to be back all the evening. Then it was that Daphne heard

Hollins mutter her mysterious words, "I guessed as much. I thought

so.... Well, come down to my room, and we'll have a jolly tea

together there.... Ha--I knew it...."

Down in her common little sitting-room, she poked up the fire till it

flared with excitement.

"I do like a nice blaze on a winter's afternoon. There's nothing

like a bit of a flare to cheer you up. See that blue flame? That

means frost. Now you watch that, and if you're very good, I'll bring

up something that's even better than muffins."

"Oh, what's that, what's that?" demanded Daphne.

"Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies," teased Hollins as she

disappeared. In a few minutes she returned with a paper bag, and,

kneeling heavily on the rug before the fire, produced chestnuts, to a

shriek of delight from Daphne and a request for further information

and explanation from Owen. The chestnuts were placed on the bars of

the fire.

After tea they told stories in the glow of the fire, and had a

concert, singing with the help of Hollins, "Way down upon the Swanee

River," and the hymn, "I love to hear the story," not out of piety

but because its tune was so curly. And lastly, Hollins gave her

famous solo about the little tailor boy, who went skipping into smoke

with a broadcloth under his arm:

With a broadcloth under his arm,

With a broadcloth under his arm,

And the little tailor boy went skipping into smoke

With a broadcloth under his arm.

Which was always a signal for Hollins to say, "And now you go

skipping off to bed."

CHAPTER II

Daphne was growing tall. If by mistake she ran into a room of

visitors and rushed out again with an "Oh, sorry!" the impression she

left was of thin legs seen above the knee, and untidy brown hair.

Also of a hot blush, less of shyness than of sudden guilt and

consequent laughter. And somebody was sure to say, "She's going to

be a tomboy and no mistake." Her high spirits were so high that

often when she was alone she felt she could scream with them. This

over-plus of vitality, her father used to say hopefully, would run to

creative work or a passionate love one day.

Disliking most things that Miss Durgon recommended, Daphne had not

decided what sort of character she would like to have. She was a

malleable mass. But one ambition was warming. The frequent

repetition of the phrase "tomboyish" had pleased her, and she decided

to live up to it. She decided to hate dolls, doll's houses and

sewing. And she was secretly pleased when people said, "The girl

ought to have been the boy, and the boy ought to have been the girl,"

for she did not doubt that she could dominate Owen any day of the

week. This desire to be masculine, introduced from without, was

perhaps the earliest principle to strike a root in her.

She imagined that her hatred of repression--or, in other words, her

hatred of Miss Durgon--was the natural outcome of her manliness. The

obvious fact that Owen was timid of their guardian while _she_ could

be outspokenly rebellious, and, please God, intended to be more so,

gave her a deal of satisfaction.

Once, sitting in the little room below stairs, and talking to

Hollins, who was working a sewing-machine, she asked her for an

opinion on Miss Durgon.

"Is she a good woman, Hollins?"

Hollins appeared to lift her lips towards her nose.

"Well, that's not for me to say. What some of us think we keep to

ourselves."

"I say, Hollins, shall I tell you what I think, if you tell me what

you think."

"No; I shan't tell you what I think if you tell me what you think."

"Oh, Hollins!"

Hollins turned the wheel monotonously, her head slightly on one side.

"There are some things one thinks that are best thought and left at

that."

"But why?"

"Why? Because they ain't pretty, silly one. Now do you know?"

"You mean, you think Miss Durgon a beast?"

"Miss Daphne, I never said nothing of the sort. And I'll thank you

not to go putting it about that I did."

Daphne started to be ingratiating.

"No, but you meant it, didn't you, Hollins?"

"I never, so there! All I mean is, some people are made in their own

way and can't help it."

"Made what way, Hollins?"

Hollins snapped an entangled thread.

"Made so as they know how to worm themselves into positions, and sort

of make themselves indispensable, and get the power into their hands.

Oh, it's clever; I'd be the last to say it wasn't."

"She doesn't like you, Hollins."

"She doesn't, doesn't she? Milady doesn't. Well, I wonder now if

that'll spoil my appetite. I wonder if I shall lay awake fretting

about that.... And how, Miss Mischief, may you happen to know

whether she likes me or not?"

"Because she often says I oughtn't to hang about you so much."

"She does? Says you shouldn't ought to hang about me so much? Oh!

There's where you are. I hold me tongue from speaking against her,

but she'll say what she likes about me readily enough. There's the

lady. And mind you, I've kep' quiet about more things than one I've

noticed.

"I've noticed, f'r instance--however.... Common people like Hollins,

you see, haven't got eyes, and what they think don't matter, as

they've no brains worth speaking of...."

The forces moving towards a more overt war between Daphne and Miss

Durgon were not only working in Daphne. Miss Durgon, who had now

been many years with Mr. Bruno, was no longer nervous of jeopardising

her position by a false move. She had summed up her employer, and

knew that his love of ease and unworried seclusion would resist any

idea of change. She was still under forty-five, and very different,

of course, from what she appeared to the eyes of her wards. Naught

of her slimness or good carriage had left her, and now that she was

earning a fair stipend and could supplement it from the housekeeping

money, she dressed remarkably well. To people of her own generation

and class she showed a vivacity and cleverness such as never appeared

before those creatures who could not interest her--children and

servants. Of late Miss Durgon had enjoyed the admiration of some

men, though in each case, unfortunately, they were the husbands of

her friends.

This admiration had increased her self-respect, and, as a result, her

indignation at the rebelliousness of Daphne. The indignation

demanded an early overthrow of the child. And by the side of this

sense that Daphne must be taught her place sat an unhealthy but

growing desire. Though she knew nothing about suppressed sex, she

saw that there was perversion somewhere in an idea that could so

stimulate her. She wanted to whip Daphne at least once. There was a

sensuous quality about the child that would make the whipping of her

pleasant.

The collision came when Miss Durgon tried to stop Daphne's game of

"Getting up early."

The children had discovered this game in the months before their

father left for India. Those were summer days, and Daphne would wake

up Owen as soon as she herself was awakened by the sunlight streaming

behind the blinds and the chatter of the birds in Queen's Club

Gardens. They would dress with all the interest of getting up before

any one else was astir, and then creep down the stairs, a little

nervous of the deserted, blind-dimmed house. Unchaining and

unbolting the hall door, they ran out into the sunny publicity of

Deseret Road. In their hands they carried a toy cricket bat (one

solid piece of yellow wood without a splice), four stumps and a

tennis ball. Their destination was a sunken waste ground at the

corner of Goscombe Road, which, though hillocky, weed-grown, and not

empty of refuse, required no great imagination to be converted into

Queen's Club Gardens. There they would set their stumps and imitate

the white-flannelled cricketers whom they had watched from their back

windows. Daphne represented Cambridge and Owen Oxford.

The clearest line of division in the human race was that which

divided the people who were Oxford from those who were Cambridge.

Owen was Oxford, because Oxford always won the Boat-race; Daphne was

Cambridge because Cambridge never did. There were other reasons for

their choice: Owen was Oxford because his father was, and his name

began with an O; Daphne was Cambridge because light blue was a nicer

colour than dark blue, and D, her initial, was nearer C than O, and

because hardly any one else she knew was Cambridge, and because Owen

was Oxford.

Cambridge batted first, and Owen, for Oxford, opened the bowling. If

Owen's ball came near enough, she tried to hit it; and when she

missed it, ran after it, picked it up and returned it to him.

"Bowl us something one can hit," she shouted.

Sometimes, after she had hit it, Owen stopped it and gathered it up;

and then she would instruct him to hold it while she ran to his stump

and back.

"That's what I have to do," she explained.

So Owen examined the stitches of the tennis ball while Daphne ran to

where he was standing and back to her wicket.

"Now you bowl again."

"But when can I bat?"

"When you've knocked over these three stumps, silly. Don't you know

the game?"

Owen looked a little sulky.

"I can't hit them with you in front."

"Well, when I've made thirty I'll retire."

When Daphne bowled she would only consent to bowl over-arm. That was

the way they did it at Queen's Club. Sometimes the milkman would

stay his clattering cart to watch her, and call out: "Good old W. G.!

What price Lord 'Awke?" His "That's right! Sling 'em up, miss!"

always deepened the colour of her cheeks, already warmed with

running; and she would try to impress him by sending down an

especially good ball. If it proved, however, to be rather wide she

would call out to Owen loud explanations of so unusual a failure,

hoping to keep her reputation with the milkman. When the game was

over she hurried back to tell her father the result of the match, the

number of runs she had scored, and how she had been obliged to retire

in order that Owen might have an innings.

But now that Mr. Bruno was abroad Miss Durgon withdrew her consent

from the game. At breakfast one morning, when she heard that they

had been out, she pronounced, as all rose from the table:

"You're not to do that any more. Do you clearly understand?"

"Why?" asked Daphne, with symptoms of sulkiness.

"Why? Because I say so. You must allow me to know better than you.

Ladies' children don't play in the streets."

(In the vocabulary of Miss Durgon there were two kinds of

children--"ladies' children" and "district children," the latter

being sometimes called "poor people's children.")

"Father used to let us," grumbled Daphne.

"Don't answer back. Your father has entrusted your bringing up to

me, and doesn't want to be bothered about it. You're older now, too.

Besides, cricket isn't a nice game for a little girl."

"Why?"

"Never mind why. You'll understand these things later on. It's

indelicate."

Daphne was a little nervous of her next remark, but as she was more

frightened of convicting herself of fear, she hurriedly forced it out.

"I shall ask father when he comes back."

"You excessively rude little girl!" exclaimed Miss Durgon. "You want

a good whipping. I've a good mind to give you one. You've been

getting quite out of hand lately."

That Miss Durgon was empowered to give her a whipping had not entered

Daphne's mind. Hitherto, when it had been a case for such extreme

measures, Miss Durgon had spoken to her father. But that was when

she had been very young. These words of her guardian momentarily

repulsed her. But feeling the ignominy of surrender, and observing

that Owen was staring open-mouthed from one to the other as they

exchanged these interesting remarks, she persisted. One had to play

up before him.

"In the Bible they played in the streets. Father Alderwood said so.

They played at funerals in the market-place, and Jesus Christ played

with them----"

"Daphne! I never heard such talk. Go out of the room at once. How

dare you talk blasphemously like that? Upon my soul--mark my

words--if you try on this arguing with me I shall one day take a

stick to you. I mean it. Mixing up religion and play like that!

Little humbug!"

"I'm not a humbug," said Daphne, walking round the breakfast table to

keep it between Miss Durgon and herself.

"You're a little humbug," repeated Miss Durgon, who had so lost her

temper as hardly to know what she was talking about. "Parading

religion, and at the same time being insolent and disobedient.

You're a regular little Pharisee."

To be called what you have called others is always as wounding as it

is astonishing.

"I'm not a Pharisee." The tears sprang to Daphne's eyes.

"Yes, you are; and will you keep quiet, I tell you?"

"Well, if I'm a Pharisee, you're a Sadducee."

"Upon my soul! Come here! Don't run away! It's no good; I shall

catch you sooner or later." Miss Durgon had paused, feeling the

indignity of running after a child. "Insulting a woman who's giving

up her life to you like that! Sadducee indeed! You don't know what

a Sadducee is."

"Yes, I do. It's some one who doesn't believe in the Resurrection."

"Daphne, come here. I'm going to give you a thorough good whipping.

You've earned it richly."

Daphne ran towards the door. Miss Durgon arrived there at the same

time. Daphne slipped past her, and, crying loudly, ran out of the

room. She heard Miss Durgon call, "Stop that child!" so raced

upstairs, and remembering the bolt on the bathroom door, rushed in,

slammed the door, and shot home the bolt.

Breathless, she threw herself on the linoleum floor, and sobbed with

heaving shoulders. Knocks came to the door, and the voice of Miss

Durgon.

"Open at once, Daphne. Bad, naughty little girl! Open the door at

once."

"I shan't! I shan't!" sobbed Daphne.

The door shook. Daphne had a wild idea, should the door yield, of

leaping out of the window and crashing to her death in the street.

She jumped up at a moment when the door seemed likely to give, and

flung up the sash.

"What are you doing?" cried the alarmed Miss Durgon, and the door

ceased to shake. "Daphne, what are you doing?"

Daphne roared through her tears.

"If you come in, I'm going out of the window. Out of the window."

"You're a bad, evil little girl. I'm sure I don't know what to do

with you."

Miss Durgon retired; and Daphne and she were separated by the

bathroom door, both a little alarmed at the storm, and rather vague

as to how it had arisen.

More than once this bathroom had been the scene of a solitary

performance at which Daphne would have been ashamed to be caught,

though it gave her a sweet, troubled delight such as no other game

could give. It had sprung from the everlasting lilt in her mind of

some lines of poetry, found in her history after the story of King

Charles's beheading:

He nothing common did nor mean

Upon that memorable scene ...

Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite,

To vindicate his helpless right;

But bowed his comely head

Down, as upon a bed.

The nature of her delight in them she did not analyse; but a kindred

delight--an emotion not empty of troubling--had used to come to her,

in the old home, when she saw a shaft of yellow lamplight thrown on

to evening grass; or a wood of dark firs spining a hill in the

landscape's blue distance; or those stretches of rusty bracken, with

here and there a lonely, blown tree, that were Shadwell Common in

autumn; or red firelight on old wood, when sunset had fallen before

tea, and the lamps were not yet lit. It was the same haunting

something that came out of Hans Andersen: "She flew away as if she

were flying straight into the sun." And the old nursery rhyme had it:

How many miles to Babylon?

Three score and ten.

Can I get there by candlelight?

Aye, there and back again.

"He nothing common did nor mean." A scene in which she died like

that, wrongfully condemned but too proud to protest her innocence,

was Daphne's shameful game in the bathroom behind a bolted door. At

first she used to place the chair for a block, and walk towards it

through a street of staring faces. Before its feet she knelt down,

so that her hair fell away from the neck. There, without visible

tremor, she awaited the blow.

But gradually the drama in this form failed to express fully the

movements within her. She wanted the cruelly executed person to be

herself, Daphne Bruno, not a character in history. And in these days

people were never beheaded. If the game was to satisfy her, it must

be brought into the realism of the present. And so it changed into a

trial for murder, where Daphne stood in the dock (her hands on the

woodwork round the bath) and listened in silence to the perjury of

witnesses, or turned grave, brave eyes on the judge as he pronounced

the sentence. After hearing his words, while the tense solemnity

remained in the court, she made a brief speech, proclaiming her faith

that her character would one day be cleared, and thanking those

friends in the gallery who had never doubted her innocence, and the

Q.C. who had defended her as ably as it was in the power of man to do.

Then, having done nothing common, mean or vulgar, she turned and

followed the warder to the condemned cell.

But to-day, in stormy mood, she could play no such game. Picking

herself up from the floor, she sat sideways on the chair with her arm

along its back. Her sobs were now internal and intermittent. The

chair as a permanent seat proved uncomfortably hard, so she sat on

the cork mat on the linoleum and picked off chips from its broken

corner. When this palled, she stood up and traced her finger along

the squares in the tiled wallpaper, reaching at last the hole in the

plaster made by the door-key. Here she played "snowstorms," putting

a finger in the hole and, by scratching it downwards, sending a

tenuous shower of powdered plaster to the floor. But this palled too.

Very quiet was the house, as if her disgrace were like an illness,

compelling all the inmates to go about their business with subdued

steps. She looked out of the window, and watched the passing of

carts and pedestrians. Sometimes she saw children known to her, and

drew away her head lest they guessed anything.

If only she had a book to read! If only she could make a silent dash

up the next flight of stairs to the nursery, and seize a book, and

rush back to her fastness! Guiltily she pulled the bolt, opened the

door, and listened. Not a sound anywhere. She tiptoed through an

ante-room on to the landing, and then leapt like a chamois from stair

to stair. Her heart beat fast as she searched quickly along the

shelf that contained her few books. There was hardly anything she

had not read several times, except, indeed, "Little Women," that Aunt

Belle had given her for her birthday, and she had refused to read on

account of its feminine title. On the ground floor a door shut.

Instantly she seized the book, and hurtled downstairs to her

bathroom. She rested her book on the woodwork round the bath, whose

varnish had been so spoiled by soap; and with her head on her left

palm and her right hand playing with the tap-handles, she began to

read. In a few minutes the tap-handles were neglected; she was in

America with Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy. Her disgrace withdrew from

memory, save in moments when she contrasted Miss Durgon with the

lovable Marmee, or saw a likeness between her and the peppery Aunt

March. The high sentiments emitted by Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy

made her feel rather good herself.

Wearying of the hard seat, she placed the open book upon the floor,

and herself on her stomach before it, with her hands supporting her

chin, her legs opened, and one foot occasionally rising into the air.

By now the Marches were the most fascinating family in the world.

The book must surely be literature of a high order, with all those

noble resolutions and elegant little sermons by Marmee. There

stirred in Daphne, for the first time, the ambition to write. She

stopped reading for a minute, and stared over the book's edge. As

pain in the adult artist liberates itself in created work, so

Daphne's present misery sought liberation in a dream of great books.

Books of this kind, very sad and uplifting and beautiful. The

Marches stood cataleptically fixed in the positions in which she had

left them, while her thoughts swept forward over a life of successes,

and down many side avenues, and beyond death into the long centuries

of fame. Yes, she had made a decision; she would be an authoress.

It was thrilling. She released the Marches from their trance, and

followed their rapid movements again. But the dream had to be

returned to.... Only after many such breaks did the book win her

back to oblivious concentration.

Then, in the enthralling company of Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy, she

guessed nothing of the passage of time, till the house filled with a

smell of greens and roasting fat; and dinner-things began to clatter

in the dining-room. Mingled with her reading was a wonder if

anything would be done about her dinner. She was quite determined

she was not going to unlock the door and go downstairs. The

dinner-bell rang--louder than usual, as though addressed to her--but

she did not move. Only now she could no longer read; she could only

listen. Evidently, by the silence, they had sat down to the meal,

leaving her to come or stay away as she cared. Further clattering of

plates; that was the meat-course being taken downstairs--and she was

too late now for any. Here was the pudding coming up the stairs and

being taken in. And now, to judge by the silence, they were eating

it.... Ah, footsteps were coming up to her landing, rather slowly,

as of a person who found it none too easy to manage all the stairs of

these London houses.

A heavy breath heaved on the landing. Hollins, undoubtedly.

"If I had a sovereign every time I climbed these stairs, I should be

a wealthy woman. Dearie ... dearie, are you there?" Daphne answered

with a shapeless sound. "Why not come down and have something to

eat? I've come myself to ask you. She's given orders that nothing's

to be kep' hot for you. Come down, there's a good girl. You can't

go starving yourself, you know. Even I should call that naughty of

you. Come on, dear, you must eat something. There's no smell in

nothing, as the saying is."

"Am I going to be whipped?"

"Well, she says so. She says you're making your punishment worse by

this persisting. But I dare say she's only trying it on. She's

punishing you in another way, and I do call it nasty." The door was

open twelve inches by this time. "She's purposely taking Master Owen

to the Zoo this afternoon. Heaven knows I'm the last person to

encourage children to be saucy, but if I'd been him, I'd uv refused

to go...."

Daphne shut the door, but gently, in Hollins's face and slid the bolt

home; silently, so that Hollins should not be offended. Hollins's

voice pursued through the wood: "Never mind, darling. Never mind.

When they've gone you and I'll go for a nice walk together. And now

come and eat something. Spite of what she says, I've kep' a plateful

in the oven."

Daphne's reply was moaned:

"I'm not coming down to be whipped."

"No, and I'm not sure that I blame you, neither.... Well, don't cry,

silly one. Let's hope they'll start soon, and then you can come out."

When she was gone, Daphne went to the window, out of which she stared

dreamily at the stretch of Deseret Road. Already she had heard the

rush of Owen's feet up the stairs, and the preparations of Miss

Durgon in her room; and it was not long before the descending steps

were heard, and the movements in the hall, and the shutting of the

front door. In a second they would be in view. There they were,

Miss Durgon walking quickly, and Owen running at her side. Once Owen

turned round and, after looking up at the bathroom window, said

something to Miss Durgon, but she walked on without impairing her

dignity by a look behind. Daphne slipped out of sight--she had not

wanted Owen to see her.

Now she opened the door and carried her swollen eyes and red nose

down into the dining-room. There was no one there. Too ashamed to

show herself to the servants in the basement, she moved heavily

about, hoping her feet would be heard by Hollins. A sham fit of

coughing was also tried. Then she heard the jingling of a tray, and

Hollins coming up the steep stairs.

"There!" said Hollins, as she placed the tray on the table, "I expect

you'll enjoy it all the more for being hungry."

Seeing Daphne's eyes, she gathered her against her breast, muttering

only, "What a shame! What a shame!"

The walk in the afternoon was clouded for Daphne by her memory of the

morning's emotion and by the shadow of the evening when Miss Durgon

would return. She was subdued as they passed along the shop-windows.

One bright interlude came when Hollins stopped in front of a

sweet-shop and told her to choose a penn'orth to her fancy. Every

jar or dish in the window she examined. "Hundreds of Thousands" were

four ounces a penny, but they went so quickly. "Pontefract Cakes"

didn't last, either. "Liquorice, Linseed and Chlorodyne Lozenges"

were always good, because little bits could be broken off and

dissolved slowly in the mouth, flavouring it for hours; but grown-up

people forbade these as drugs. A glass jar of gelatine discs at two

ounces a penny decided her. These discs, sometimes used for mending

broken panes, stayed in the mouth for a wonderful time, and could

even be taken out and kept in a handkerchief. It would be lovely to

lie on the ground sucking them while she pursued the adventures of Jo

and Meg and Beth and Amy. For already the book, whose atmosphere had

never quite dissolved, was calling for her return. She persuaded

Hollins to take her once past the fire-station on the chance that

their arrival might synchronise with a call for the engines. Never

yet had she seen the great doors swung open, the horses harnessed

like lightning, and the smoking, spark-dropping engines galloped past

a gathered crowd. But her despairing conviction that there would be

no movement in the station proved correct. Only a faint thrill could

be got from the rows of shining helmets on both walls, and the

shining brass of the engines.

The walk home was depressing since it led to the moment of Miss

Durgon's return; and when they were in the hall Daphne suggested

that, now she had had her walk, she should go back to the bathroom

and bolt the door.

"No, you're not going to," said Hollins. "She shan't whip you now.

If she says she will, I shall take the liberty of telling her that

she's punished you once by not taking you to the Zoo.... You read

your book and we'll see."

So after tea, Daphne read on, sucking the gelatine discs. But the

reading was all spoiled by her underthinking, which kept reminding

her that Miss Durgon was due. On the sounds of people coming up the

front-door steps, her heart leapt in fright. The latch-key turned,

the door opened, and an umbrella was put into the hat-stand. Here

was Hollins toiling up the basement stairs to her defence. Her voice

mingled in the passage with Miss Durgon's. Then she entered.

"She says you're to go to bed. She says she's no wish to see you at

all." (In truth, Daphne's stormy revolt had quite frightened away

Miss Durgon's desire to whip her.) "She says----"

Just then Owen rushed in to tell his sister all about the Zoo, but he

had scarcely uttered a word before Hollins interrupted:

"Well, I took you for a little gentleman, I did."

Owen looked at Hollins with the timid glance of the corrected.

"A little gentleman wouldn't mention anything about where he'd been,

a little gentleman wouldn't."

Owen lapsed into a dubious silence, while Daphne declared:

"I didn't want to go to his dirty, beastly old Zoo"; and Hollins

hastened to prevent trouble by saying:

"Now, Miss Daphne, that'll do. Suppose you zoo off to bed."

CHAPTER III

In the beginning Miss Durgon had given the children their lessons.

But now her dignity, generated in the warm air of leisure and

comparative luxury, and sunned by certain other things that lay

beyond the walls of Mr. Bruno's home (and beyond the walls of his

knowledge), was, if anything, given a sharper outline by Daphne's

insolent rebellion. Transformed from an impecunious gentlewoman who

sought a housekeeper's situation into a lady of social graciousness,

who consented to take over the reins of a distinguished writer's

home, she began to think it unreasonable that she should be asked to

play nursery governess to a brace of obstreperous children. So, on

Mr. Tenter Bruno's return from the East, she laid before him a

project that had long been maturing in her mind. He looked up from

his easy chair and his book, desirous only of being relieved as

quickly as possible from this visit of a domestic problem.

"Yes, by all means, tell me, Miss Durgon. By all means...."

She explained. She felt that the engagement of a daily governess for

her charges would be well worth the small outlay entailed. The

children were getting older and should have longer time for lessons

than she could give them. She was worried by the feeling that she

was hardly doing justice to the two departments of her work: the

management of his household and the education of his children.

"Forgive me," smiled Mr. Bruno. "The market in governesses is a

thing I've so little studied that I've no conception what they cost.

Are they quoted these days at two figures or three? ... H'm," he

added, seeing his housekeeper uncomfortably bewildered. "Their

salaries, I mean."

"Forty pounds a year, with lunch and tea, should secure us a really

good governess."

Mr. Bruno had a restive feeling that if he could purchase the right

to continue his present chapter for forty pounds a year, it had best

be done.

"Oh, well, we could afford that much," he said.

"Yes," confirmed Miss Durgon, "and then I should be at liberty to

devote myself entirely to the management of the house and the moral

care of Daphne and Owen--with, of course, the oversight of their

studies."

Mr. Bruno's hand turned a page of his book, and Miss Durgon therefore

stepped obligingly towards the door. It was as she had foreseen; he

would edge away from any long thinking on a theme unrelated to his

books.

"Of course, you'll do all the advertising and interviewing

necessary," he tendered over the tops of his reading spectacles, now

happily replaced. "I cannot possibly be besieged by young

governesses."

Miss Durgon assured him that she would certainly undertake all that.

And few undertakings could have given her more pleasure. It was a

serene satisfaction to be on the luxurious employing side of an

advertisement in the _Warden_, after inhabiting the meagre country on

the employee's side. She saw herself sitting with some state in the

dining-room and giving an audience to nervous applicants. She would

be impressively dressed for them.

There were but two replies to her advertisement for a "governess,

young, bright, willing," of which she had only ordered one insertion,

since it was being paid for out of the housekeeping money. To these

two applicants she wrote instructions for them to call at given

hours. The first was a lady unmistakably older than Miss Durgon

herself, and quite unsuitable, because it would be difficult to order

her about; besides, the creature was offensively careful to parade

the plumes of a fallen gentlewoman. The second, who called an hour

later that morning, seemed far more suitable, and her suitability

received adventitious increase from the contrast with her

predecessor. She was a little spare sprig of a girl who could be

easily planted and trained, and would never, one imagined, dare to be

"superior" with such a long-rooted and graceful tree as her lady

employer. Her round cheeks, slightly flushed, her simple frock, her

hair the tint of a harvest field, and her shy, escaping eyes were the

likely efflorescence of a nature ingenuous and pliable.

When Miss Durgon floated into the dining-room, wearing the majesty of

a prospective employer, this little Miss Carrell rose respectfully

and remained standing; and it was not till Miss Durgon had taken her

chair and rested leisured and well-to-do hands on her lap that Miss

Carrell, in response to a hint, sat on the edge of an arm-chair,

holding her little handbag on her knees. And yet she was not

nervous, Miss Durgon saw; it was simply good manners.

"I am Miss Durgon, who wrote to you, you know. I am the--er--the

guardian of Mr. Tenter Bruno's children; in fact, I've managed

everything for him since his dear wife died in giving birth to the

younger child." Miss Durgon paused, thinking that perhaps this slip

of a girl understood none of these things. "Well, Miss--er----"

"Carrell," breathed the girl.

"Of course, of course. Well, Miss Carrell, I want to do my best for

these children--in fact, hitherto I've felt I ought to teach them the

elements myself; no one can do it so well as their parent or

guardian; but now they're getting bigger and demanding too much of my

time, and Mr. Bruno's household is a large and increasing charge, and

my social engagements forbid me doing full justice to the children's

needs."

"I quite see," was wafted from the easy chair.

"Yes. Well, I imagine you would arrive in the morning, soon after

breakfast, and give them lessons till one o'clock, having lunch with

them--and then perhaps a walk in the afternoon, and tea. And after

that Hollins will take care of them till bedtime. Hollins, I should

tell you, is of her kind, an excellent person, whom I retain in the

service of the house, though I must say she's not very loyal to me,

and I've reason to believe is not above speaking against me; but

she's been with the family since before her mistress died, and you

know these old servants--they never do take to, or admit any good in

a new--er----"

"New regime," supplied the easy chair understandingly. "Yes, I know.

They're always like that."

"Yes, admit any good in a new regime. Well, I suppose you've had

some experience."

"Oh, yes." Miss Carrell bowed her pale hair over her hand-bag and

produced an envelope. "I can show you this testimonial. I have been

for three years a mistress at Hemans House."

She said this (unfolding the testimonial) as though she expected any

well-informed woman to know Hemans House by repute; and Miss Durgon,

in knowing nothing about the place, felt in danger of a social fall.

"Oh, were you? That's interesting. But you hardly look old enough

for----"

"I am twenty-two," interrupted Miss Carrell.

"You went as junior mistress, I imagine."

"Yes. But later on Miss Vidella entrusted the elder girls to me

quite a lot. You see, I'd been there over two years, which was

longer than any of the other mistresses----"

"This Miss--Verdella, did you say?--must have been difficult to get

on with."

Miss Carrell shrugged.

"Well, she was rather quaint." A blush rushed over her face, as if

she had unthinkingly let some little monkeyish animal, deliberately

battened underground, peep out its nose. "I don't think the other

mistresses tried to understand her and shape themselves to her ways."

"And why did you leave, if you were so helpful to Miss Verdella?"

asked Miss Durgon, who, not having noticed the peep, was thinking,

"This girl is just what I want," and imagining herself making of Miss

Carrell a pleasant companion, though a properly subservient one.

"Oh, mother was not at all well, and I felt I ought to get daily

employment and live at home. Here is Miss Vidella's testimonial."

The sheet of notepaper accepted by Miss Durgon showed, beneath the

name, "Hemans House" and a crest, a paragraph written in an

inordinately neat and punctilious hand:

Miss Vidella has pleasure in testifying that Miss Mary Carrell was an

assistant mistress at this school for nine terms, during which she

gave every satisfaction, discharging her very responsible duties with

propriety and considerable ability.

AMY VIDELLA.

Miss Durgon handed it back.

There was further question and answer, much of which amounted to

saying again, in a different shade or with new accompaniments, what

had been said before; and then Miss Durgon hinted:

"Well, I shall be interviewing other applicants, so I will let you

know my decision later."

Miss Carrell rose obediently.

"Thank you very much indeed. I feel I could do all you want. Though

I'm afraid I can't let you know finally till the day after to-morrow,

as I am seeing some other parents to-morrow, and one the following

day."

It was said so gently that Miss Durgon could suspect neither

impertinence nor guile. And directly she heard of these other

prospective employers she desired to secure at once this only

suitable girl. And really, too, despite her vesture of an employer's

ease, she had no experience of engaging governesses.

"Hum. That's a nuisance. I'm particularly anxious to know

definitely by this time to-morrow. I think--yes, I think that, for

my part, I could definitely say that I should be prepared to offer

you the--the post. Is it at all likely that you could decide

definitely now? Are the other situations likely to be more

attractive than this one?"

"No, I don't think so," said Miss Carrell, her bag in her hand, and

prepared to leave. "Only--only one of them is worth fifty pounds a

year--and, for mother's sake, I feel I ought to consider it."

"Fifty pounds a year! That seems a large salary for so young a

woman. I don't think Mr. Bruno would be prepared to give that."

"No," agreed Miss Carrell, "and I've no doubt you will get somebody

equally suitable for a less amount. Thank you so much for

considering----"

"Yes, but wait a minute. Mr. Bruno entrusts most of these affairs to

me, and I feel I can commit him to fifty pounds a year. I am so

anxious to have things settled early. Would you say definitely that

you would come if I offered that?"

Miss Carrell smiled brightly and gratefully.

"Yes, I think so. I don't like to force you up in that way--but I

have my mother to consider."

By now Miss Durgon could picture the mother in her shabby room, and

felt a pity, mixed with inevitable contempt, for the indigent lady.

"Precisely. Then you will come?"

Miss Carrell nodded and smiled.

Daphne was excited about the arrival of a new governess, and Owen

pretended to the same enthusiasm, though, to tell the truth, he could

not see that it was matter for congratulation. But Daphne had

ascertained from Hollins that the approaching Miss Carrell was little

and pretty and fair-haired. "Almost a child herself, you might say,

and likely to be as much a playfellow, so to put it, as a governess.

I don't often take to people first go-off, as the saying is, but

there, she fair got me."

"Well, she'll be better than old Durgon," answered Daphne, who liked

abusing the housekeeper to Hollins, perceiving that, though the

"sauce" was properly condemned, it was not unsavoury.

"Now, then, Miss Daphne, you're getting that rude and bold, I don't

know what's coming over you."

"Well, she is a beast, and you know you think it."

Owen, who was listening, looked alarmed at such a plain statement of

fact.

"I know I never said such a thing in my life," affirmed Hollins.

"You know I never."

"Saying's one thing, and thinking's another."

"And saucing's one thing, and getting out of my way when I'm busy's

another. So you be gone, miss, or it'll be idling's one thing and

bed's another."

It was early evening, before bedtime, and Daphne, hardly knowing why

she did it, ran into her father's study. She forgot to knock, and

was only checked half-way across the carpet by a mutter of protest

from the lips of Mr. Bruno, who, sitting in his easy chair, dropped

his book a few inches, but no farther.

"The idea embodied in a closed door, Miss Cataract, is that it should

be nervously knocked at--even apologetically knocked at--by mere idle

children. Also, should it admit them on sufferance, that they must

tread delicately across the privacy beyond."

Since his return from India he had been aware of something in his

daughter's large, sparkling eyes and unrestrained naturalness that

always compelled him to adopt with her a gnomic tone, highly

civilised. He liked to dazzle her with a Roman candle of words, or

reduce her to temporary immobility with some massive period. His

skill at the game pleased him.

"Well, can I come in?"

"On a rapidly expiring lease--yes."

Daphne stood there and wondered what she had come for.

"We've got a new governess, papa."

"I should have thought a lion-tamer was more what was wanted."

"She's coming on Monday."

"Well, it seems hardly an occasion for turbulent rejoicing. A

task-mistress who will (I hope) press your nose firmly on a

grindstone is not a new doll or a new dress."

"I hate dolls."

"I forgot. Let us say, then, she's not a new football. Why this

strange frenzy?"

"Oh, it'll be fun."

"I haven't gathered from Miss Durgon that you saw much humour in your

tasks with her."

"I hate Miss Durgon."

"Hush, mænad! What you hate is restraint and healthy discipline. I

hope this new governess swishes you often and soundly."

The subject of whipping always fascinated Daphne. She was accustomed

to ask her friends in a lowered voice if their fathers and mothers

whipped them, and to read over and over again all stories where such

execution was done on refractory boys and girls. It was a subject

that gave a curious exaltation similar to that provided by pictures

of little black savages disappearing into the maw of a crocodile.

"Were you ever whipped, papa?"

"Most certainly. And by its gracious effect I am what I am."

"Well, why don't you ever whip me and Owen?"

She sat on the table to hear his explanation.

"I am a very busy man, Duffy; and though the task you suggest is

important and honourable, and of real service to society--even one to

which no artist need be ashamed to lend a hand--I yet presume to

think that the work on which I am at present engaged"--he

significantly replaced his glasses--"is even more important.

Besides, I can remember past occasions when----"

Daphne changed her position, lying along the table so that she rested

on her elbow and one foot hooked itself over the table's edge.

"Oh, yes, you've spanked us sometimes, but I don't call that the real

thing."

"Let us hope, then, that this governess will be made of heavier

metal. What did you say her name was?"

"Carrell."

"It doesn't sound promising. I can hardly hear the swish of a rod in

such musical syllables. But we must hope for the best." He lifted

up his book. "Well, are you sure you have not outstayed your

tenancy?"

With a half-sulky "All right!" Daphne departed, but her father did

not immediately continue his book. This slight change in Daphne,

noticeable after a long absence! It was as if she had crossed a

first boundary line. With her long, narrow limbs, her figure like a

boy's, and her unconsciously sinuous movements--yes, already feminine

and alluring--she had a power to ruffle the still pool of his

complacency. It would need, after such a glimpse of her, to be

calmed again. He protruded his under-jaw as he faced a problem, and

his thinking ran along courses such as these: "What more could I have

done for her? While she was a baby, I could only trust her to these

women, and was surely wise in getting on with my work for her sake

and her brother's. But now--now that her mind is like a sponge, and

a good quality sponge, too, I fancy, ready to soak up all

things--what can I do? I have brains and ideas, both of which are

probably absent in all these women. Ought I to leave her entirely to

them, content that my love should be nothing more than an expansive

emotion? But what can I do? I must work and read, and talk with

stimulating minds, and her little mind has nothing to give me in the

way of stimulus."

The question what he could do was so difficult to answer that Mr.

Bruno turned again to his book.

But after a line or two he found himself analysing Daphne's

enthusiasm about her governess and diagnosing it as a child's delight

at playing at schools. Well, no better approach to studies could be

imagined, and at least he could encourage it. A pleasing resolution

occurred to him, and as it eased his conscience, he was able to get

on with his book.

The next afternoon there arrived in a van two huge packages, wrapped

in straw and sacking, and addressed to Miss D. D. T. Bruno and O. T.

Bruno, Esq. To tearing fingers and searching eyes they revealed two

school-desks in highly polished yellow wood, with sloping lids that

covered deep interiors smelling like school-rooms. In the chair-back

was an adjustable boss which could be raised up and down; it fitted

the small of the sitter's back, and was designed to prevent stooping.

Daphne soon raised hers to the right position, and Owen's to his,

hers being several inches higher than her brother's.

Not till the following day could they watch the amusing process of

turning the lower end of the nursery upstairs into a schoolroom. The

two desks were put with their backs to the fire-place, and opposite

them a table for Miss Carrell. An empty book-case was carried to a

side wall, its shelves to be used for school-books and the

earthenware bottle of ink. Daphne devoted the afternoon to stocking

her desk with all the old exercise books, atlases, pencil boxes with

sliding lids, freehand drawing books, rulers, sketch blocks and paint

boxes she had used in the past. Always it was to be as tidy. Owen

joined in the game, echoing her merriment, though he still found the

preparations depressing enough.

On the Monday morning Miss Carrell arrived, and was shown by Miss

Durgon into the schoolroom where the two children stood, somewhat

sheepishly. But, as she removed her hat and patted her hand over her

fair hair and smiled merrily at her pupils, Daphne recovered her ease

and prepared to like her.

"You see," said Miss Durgon, who was particularly stately during this

introduction of an employee to the scene of her labours, "I have

prepared everything for you--desks for each pupil--so that your work

may be as congenial as possible."

With a child's quick condemnation in elders of the fibs and brag that

children sometimes employ, Daphne thought: "It wasn't you, it was

papa." Mentally she said this to Miss Durgon's long back as it

passed through the door, which shut rather quietly. They were in

school.

Miss Carrell was going to be a great success. That was proved in the

next few days. That was seen of all. What was not seen was the

working of the lively, if somewhat unlettered brain beneath that

innocent hair. It was Miss Carrell's policy just at present to win

the enthusiastic appreciation of her pupils; and the same imagination

which out of and during school hours was occupied with schemes for

getting on could convert lessons, were the effort worth while, from

dull tasks into captivating games. In these games Daphne was always

given the lead, for Daphne, being manifestly the more important

factor, was the one to be favoured. Sums, then, were done as races.

Geography was a series of imaginary travels and trading expeditions.

History was stories and make-believe, when Daphne would be

Cœur-de-Lion or Warwick or Henry VIII, and Owen played the second

lead, such as Anne Boleyn. "You ought to have been a boy, and he the

girl," said Miss Carrell. "But then, of course, his mother wasn't

quite so well when he was born."

They had exchanged history for some less interesting arithmetic when

Miss Carrell offered this remark, and Daphne thought that compound

division might well be held up while they pursued its bearings

further.

"Why should that make any difference?" she asked.

The subject was palatable to Miss Carrell, even though it could only

be discussed with children in a pretence of teaching them propriety.

"Because it does, and there's an end of it."

"But why?"

"You why on with your work, as your friend Hollins would say."

This remark, implying a criticism of Hollins, was designed to impress

her pupil with the governess's intellectual superiority to the

servant, and certainly achieved its end. "You'll understand these

things when you are older."

"How much older must I be?"

"Oh, a lot older."

"Must I be sixteen?"

"Much older than that."

"Twenty?"

"Twenty-one at least."

"Do you understand these things?"

"Certainly I do. Now get on."

"But don't you have to be married before you understand?"

Owen was looking from one to the other as if he doubted whether the

conversation were all right.

"Maybe I'm married; maybe I'm not."

"You're _not_!" triumphed Daphne. "You're _Miss_ Carrell."

"Well, I understand what I'm talking about, so there!"

"What--how we were born, and all that?"

"Certainly."

"You have to be married, don't you, before you get children?"

"Yes." Her lips trembled a little.

"Can you get them without being married?"

"It has been done, but don't you get talking."

There was a knock at the door, and Mr. Bruno entered. Miss Carrell

flushed brilliantly from throat to brow, not in fear of her pupils'

father, but in fear lest he had heard their current studies.

Mr. Bruno, misunderstanding the flush, was gratified by it.

"You'll forgive this intrusion," bowed he, "but I thought I should

like to see the children in surroundings to which they have so looked

forward.... Dear, dear, this is real school. It revives memories of

many fears and many disgraces. I hope you find them studious,

Miss--Miss--er----"

It was Daphne who supplied her father with the missing name.

"Carrell."

"Silence, child. Don't you know you must not talk in school without

having first raised your hand? ... Are they all they ought to be,

Miss Carrell?"

"They're progressing very well. Daphne is especially promising."

"Yes, I have always said that it's a relief she has brains, since she

has neither beauty nor goodness."

"She would naturally have brains."

Miss Carrell turned away as she offered the compliment; and Mr. Bruno

covered his embarrassment by asking, "And what were you studying when

I interrupted you?"

Miss Carrell flushed again, and hoping the sharp eyes of Daphne

observed no guilt or prevarication, said:

"Let's see. Yes, we were doing multiplication and division."

"Multiplication and division," smiled Mr. Bruno. "Well, that is the

whole of life. There's scope for you to point a fine moral, Miss

Carrell. There's the multiplication and aggregation of gaseous

matter to form the solar worlds, and its division again. There's the

multiplication in childhood of ideas and impressions for their

division later. And the multiplication of pounds, shillings and

pence all through life, for their division and disintegration as fast

as you can multiply them. It's the whole of life and the whole of

knowledge. H'm----" Seeing that he had fogged everybody in the

room, Mr. Bruno came to earth. "You will be sure to tell us what you

want, will you not? I do not see a birch anywhere."

Daphne tittered delightedly, and Mr. Bruno felt he could depart

without loss of reputation.

In the afternoons, the governess and children went walking to Brook

Green; or to the towing path by the river, in the hope of seeing the

practice of the Oxford and Cambridge crews; or towards the police

station near S. Mary Abbott's, Kensington, in the hope of seeing a

Black Maria. The conversation was mainly in the management of Miss

Carrell and Daphne. Miss Carrell admitted that she was Cambridge,

having learned that Daphne was Cambridge. And finding that the child

loved to listen to stories, she often told stories all the way out

and all the way back; terribly pathetic stories of her own invention,

for she had not only written stories, but even sent them to editors,

and could tell of one that had been detained fully seven months

before the editor had decided that he must regretfully decline it.

In brief, Miss Carrell, by such methods and by subtle endearments and

gentle touchings, was striving to insinuate in Daphne's mind the idea

that she could love her governess, and love her passionately. And it

rooted and blossomed with surprising quickness. Hating Miss Durgon,

Daphne was ready to adore Miss Carrell; and adoring, to love the

feeling of adoration. Motions came beneath her breast which made her

want to hold Miss Carrell's hand, or lean against her on a seat; and

she saw at once how ill they partnered with her fancied boyishness.

But it was so lovely, the fact of loving, that she decided to suspend

her masculinity for a while, trusting that if her demonstrations of

affection were not too public, no one but Miss Carrell would observe

the temporary change.

The greater tracts of lesson-time now were occupied by the subjects

which were popular. Arithmetic and grammar were allotted a grudging

half-hour, and then preceptress and students leapt the fence into the

broad pleasances of history and literature. History had degenerated

into "stories from history," when the picturesque incidents were

collected from Dickens' "Child's History of England," or into

"history from stories," when Miss Carrell retold such romances as

Lytton's "Last of the Barons," or "Harold," or actually read to them

some new sensational novel which she felt would entertain herself as

much as her charges. Literature, which Miss Carrell, being a

craftsman, considered her great subject, consisted in the governess's

reading of the more delightful parts--that is, the more sentimental

parts--of Dickens (High Literature and Dickens being, in the mind of

Miss Carrell, almost synonymous).

The death of Little Nell and Paul Dombey and Poor Joe were held up

before Daphne as the perfection of beauty. She listened with staring

eyes, ambition running fast in her brain: "I should like to write

like that. I should like to tell people beautiful things. I should

like to create characters that are beautiful, and scenes that make

your eyes all hot and your throat lumpy like this...." And even

while Miss Carrell was still reading and she listening, ambition had

shown her a triumphant career, and a death and burial that a nation

mourned, and the people visiting her tomb for generations afterwards.

Her wet eyes were Miss Carrell's delightful reward.

At the sound of any words that were called beautiful Daphne fluttered

her wings to fly.

Poetry was hardly attempted. "You cannot be expected to develop a

taste for poetry yet; it'll come later," explained Miss Carrell,

knowing that she herself was still waiting for it. Just a few of the

easier poems of Tennyson and Longfellow she had taught them (Great

Poetry being almost synonymous with Tennyson and Longfellow): "The

Schooner Hesperus," "Break, Break, Break," and "The Legend

Beautiful," with its lovely line "Do thy duty, that is best. Leave

unto thy Lord the rest." For Miss Carrell, like all completely

self-centred women, loved noble thoughts.

At last, in her devotion, Daphne confided as a great secret to the

understanding governess that she was resolved to write.

"Oh, well, it's easy in your case," said Miss Carrell. "You've got

influence. Your father'll get all your stories published."

Such an idea had never presented itself to Daphne, but now, lingering

and growing in her mind, it one day impelled her into Mr. Bruno's

study for an examination of its worth.

"Papa," began she, a little shy of revealing her secret, "if I was to

write books, would you be able to get publishers to publish them for

me?"

"Me? No!" laughed her father. "I'm a critic. My business isn't to

persuade publishers to produce the work of a young writer, but to

discourage them from ever doing it again."

Daphne, as often when her father bantered her, looked confused and

beaten back; and he felt sorry for her.

"Write, my little one. Write, if you feel the urge. I should be

proud to think of you as a creative artist. But anything that you

write, if it's to be stuff for pride, must have a quality that will

get it through the doors, without a helpful kick from your father."

He stared at her, standing there. "One day we must talk it all over.

I can help you much, I dare say. But you're too young yet."

And he took up his book again.

CHAPTER IV

A general content, sinister, some might think, in its promise of an

early break-up, had settled in the Bruno home.

Mr. Bruno was very contented. His mercury, as he phrased it, was

high. The phrase was a new use of his. No other word could so well

describe, in his detached and humorous analysis of his own emotions,

that abject financial depression which followed a damaging review of

his latest book, or that quick rise in spirits induced by a handsome

tribute or a publisher's statement showing excellent sales. After a

grand morning's work, when his brain had outrun his pen, the mercury,

as it were, rose to his head, filling it with visions of an imperial

home, with horses in the extensive stabling and forty wines in the

cellar, and cattle moving among the trees of the park. After a

morning when nothing but the commonplace or the obvious would take

substance on his paper, he saw a lower-middle-class jerry-built

house, in which, with two children who went out to poorly-paid jobs,

lived a writer whom the world had once acclaimed and quickly

forgotten. To read about such a person, as one did sometimes in the

paper, was to send his mercury to freezing point. He no longer saw

the bankruptcy court, however, or the casual ward, for against these

disasters he had amassed a capital sum, and if his brain collapsed

to-morrow (thought he), his dividends would pay the rent of the

jerry-built house and put some bread and cold meat in the larder.

There were reasons just now why his mercury should be high. A year

before he had written his first play and secured its production. It

had failed most noisily. When a destructive critic produces a play

that has obvious weaknesses, it is to ask for artillery; and Mr.

Bruno and his play went down beneath a reverberating bombardment.

Concluding that his fame was mortally wounded and a year or so later

would see the end, he wondered how he could cut down his style of

living, and began to turn off gases that people had left alight on

the stairs, or to complain courteously when coke was not mingled with

the coal on the fire. "No one ever yet put coke on a fire," thought

he, surprised how the worrying thought could make his head ache, "who

didn't pay the fuel bill." And to his daughter if she prattled

glibly about the pleasure-seeking life she would lead when grown up,

he would say, "Nothing of the sort, my child. You'll go into a

milliner's shop; and, as for Owen, he'll earn his ten shillings a

week sweeping out a solicitor's office." But then, as the mercury

crept up, he wrote another play, freeing it from the weaknesses that

the crowding critics had pointed out in such detail. It was as

lively and noisily successful as its brother had been wilting and

moribund. The critics crowded to its jubilee instead of to its

funeral. Mr. Tenter Bruno was more than ever news; he had long been

known to the literary and the vaguely literary world, but now his

face and his repartee and his movements and his anecdotes were the

property of readers of the halfpenny press. "And you can write him a

liar," said Mr. Bruno, "who denies that that pleases him."

He was content about his children, hearing excellent reports of the

new governess. Daphne spoke enthusiastically of her, because her

motions of love made all talk of Miss Carrell a pleasure; Miss Durgon

reported the girl in the highest terms, because she had to justify

her move in securing her; and Hollins said, "Why, that little Miss

Carrell can do anything with the child, she can. It does me good to

see it." So no household or parental cares needed to cross the

doormat of Mr. Bruno's room. He began to play with the idea of

setting forth on his travels again. And from the moment he welcomed

the idea into his lonely study, he knew that he would finally succumb

to its charm. And at length he introduced it to Miss Durgon.

"My work, I begin to find, demands that I move--and travel, rather

than stagnate. One's imagination is starved by living too long in a

London street. So few people realize it.... I brought a lot of

stimulus out of the East. What I am really longing for is the day

when my daughter shall be old enough to be my constant and

enthusiastic companion. Then my powers of observation will be

doubled, I verily believe, by the delight of revealing to her the

romance of other lands and other manners."

Leaving these sentiments behind him, Mr. Bruno departed for a winter

in Madeira.

Miss Durgon was contented. Released entirely from the charge of the

children, which Miss Carrell and Hollins shared, she needed to do

little but reign elegantly over the household. And the encomiums,

confidences and frequent absences of her employer made her feel

finally secure in the position which she had now held for nearly nine

years. Incredible that it could be nine years! Her mind told her

that she looked younger, more vivacious, and certainly more

fashionable than when first she came knocking at Mr. Bruno's door.

Her security made her, perhaps rashly, indifferent to the comments of

servants. Her excursions when she was absent a whole day were more

frequent than before. And once or twice she entertained Mr. Stokes,

or Mr. Anthony, in the breakfast-room, which she had now made into

her private sitting-room. They came singly, of course, the visits of

each being unknown to the other.

Mr. Stokes and Mr. Anthony were gentlemen friends who liked her

companionship at theatres and suppers, though they conducted these

relaxations beyond the regions swept by their wives' eyes. Tacitly

it was understood that the wives were not informed. Miss Durgon saw

no reason why they should be. There was nothing scandalous in their

husband's change of companionship; and she found herself quite able

to meet Mrs. Stokes and Mrs. Anthony at tea-parties, or in their own

homes. But it was unlikely they would understand her reasoning--a

reasoning learnt from their husbands, which made play with words like

Life, and Naturalness and Affinities. So her concealment was the

concession of a reasonable woman.

Little Miss Carrell was contented because she lived and slept and

woke in the morning with her own schemes. They required that she did

all in her power to develop Daphne's adoration, and to secure its

publication to Daphne's papa and its concealment from the housekeeper.

"You know what Miss Durgon is, Duffy darling. If she thought you

were so fond of me, she would do her best to get rid of me. I'm sure

she would. And I don't want to leave you, now that I've grown so

attached to you. And I really believe you'd miss me."

To confirm this Daphne put her arms about Miss Carrell--since nobody

was by.

"You must pretend sometimes that you don't like the way I make you

stick at your work; and that I'm a bit of a tyrant. That'll be a

sure way to make the old Durgon think I'm a person to be kept."

And Miss Carrell, for her purposes, had made a friend of Hollins.

She set out to be attractive to the good soul, conceiving her to have

a heart that could be easily engaged. With Hollins she was always

polite, smiling, considerate and talkative, though never losing the

slight dignity that lent worth to her condescension. The balance was

skilfully kept.

The wisdom of this _entente cordiale_ had been shown to her one

morning when she was passing the dining-room door, and overheard a

conversation between Hollins and a sweeping maid.

"She's ordered the decanter of whisky and the soda water and the

sandwiches to be put to-night in what she's pleased to call her room,

though when it became her room and stopped being the breakfast-room

_I_ don't know. And I wonder which it is that's coming to-night.

Some people have got a cheek--using that house in that high and

mighty way, as if she was its lady."

"High and mighty!" scoffed the maid. "Low, I call it. Who are these

Mr. Anthonies and Mr. Stokeses? Not that they can be much if they

see anything attractive in _her_."

"Ah, yes, who are they?" said the voice of Hollins. "That's what

many of us'd like to know. I reckon it's laughable being a charmer

at her age. And do Mr. Stokes approve of Mr. Anthony, I want to

know, and do Mr. Anthony approve of Mr. Stokes? Why are they never

here together? That's what wants sort of--what I call--answering."

"There's many things that want answering that don't get it," said the

maid sententiously.

"Yes, there are," agreed Hollins, and the listening Miss Carrell

could picture the mysterious nod of her head.

Miss Carrell left no openings unguarded, however small. If she were

to keep Hollins's good opinion it would be well (she imagined) that

Daphne's adoration were none too visible to her old nurse.

"She mustn't be allowed to think, dear, that you are fonder of me

than her, though I suppose it is natural that there must always be

more between people of the same class and of a nearer age than

between a young mistress and her ancient servant. But you mustn't

hurt the dear, fat old thing. It wouldn't be kind. Also she might

get jealous. So you be especially nice to old Hollins. For she is a

dear, fat old thing. I love her. And let her know (just so that she

mayn't dislike me) that I love her, and realise how much she has done

for my little Duffy, and that I impress it all upon you."

And after saying this, Miss Carrell was more than ever satisfied with

her skilful pilotage; and Daphne was more than ever satisfied with

the essential goodness of her governess; and Hollins, when Daphne had

done all she was bidden, was more than ever satisfied with the high

breeding of Miss Carrell. "A real lady. It's a treat to have

dealings with one at last."

With Miss Durgon, Miss Carrell was obliging and considerate,

relieving her delicately of one duty after another. She made herself

a pleasant companion, always interested, generally agreeing, but

disagreeing sufficiently not to become insipid.

"I hope that child's getting on," the elder lady would say. "She's a

little girl that wants a lot of control if she's not to run to seed."

"She needs to be kept hard at it, certainly," agreed Miss Carrell.

"The boy is much more amenable. He's a really lovable little thing."

"Yes, he is. No trouble at all."

Once when Miss Durgon complained of a headache, Miss Carrell assured

her that she needed a holiday. Impossible, declared the martyred

Miss Durgon; she would never trust the household to Hollins alone.

Then Miss Carrell made her suggestion. Couldn't she (Miss Carrell),

who had long kept house for her mother, and now knew the ins and outs

of Mr. Bruno's home--couldn't she come into residence for a week or

so and manage things? Miss Durgon demurred, but finally saw

something in the plan.

When the plan was tried Miss Carrell had need to hold her wheel with

a very delicate hand indeed. Her elevation to deputy housekeeper,

even though only for twenty-one days, very nearly lost her the

adhesion of Hollins. Hollins could not see why a chit like that

should be required when she was on the spot. Miss Carrell was

fortunate enough to be in the hall when Hollins was discussing the

matter with the other servants in the dining-room. "The Durgon's

done it on purpose to spite me," Hollins was saying. "Of course she

has. It's as plain as the nose on your face. I don't altogether

blame the little governess. I don't think she'd hurt anybody if she

could avoid it. But what I do say, and what I have always said, is

that it was a bad day when that Durgon woman came knocking at our

doors. And who is she going away with, is what I should like to

know? Is it your Stokes or your Antonio?"

Little Miss Carrell saw her course. By gently refusing to notice any

sullenness, and by skilful reductions of work and an increase of

privileges and an improvement in the kitchen meals, she gradually

persuaded all below stairs that it was a pity she hadn't always had

the management of the house.

When Miss Durgon returned the regent stepped down from the throne

with all the grace and some recollection (since she had just been

reading about him to Daphne) of Cincinnatus returning to his plough.

In time it became quite a custom for Miss Durgon to take a week off

now and then, and hand over the reins to her lieutenant.

But not when Mr. Bruno was back from Madeira or elsewhere.

"I feel I ought to be in my place when Mr. Bruno is here. There's

really more to do then."

"Of course," said Miss Carrell, wondering if Miss Durgon really

supposed she didn't see through her. It was beginning to dawn on her

that the lady housekeeper, inside her fine clothes and her dignity,

was a very considerable fool.

Probably Mr. Bruno would never have known of these arrangements if

Hollins hadn't thought it on her conscience to say, in the course of

a conversation with him:

"Oh, but that happened when Miss Carrell was doing the

housekeeping--when Miss Durgon was away."

Mr. Bruno looked up.

"What did you say, Hollins?"

"I said that happened when Miss Carrell took Miss Durgon's place and

ran the house."

"Did she? When was this?"

"Oh, she often does when you're away, sir. I thought you knew, and

sort of suggested it."

"I did nothing of the sort," said he, feeling rather important. "I

must ask Miss Durgon about it. I can't think Miss Carrell is old

enough to manage a household such as this."

"Oh, she's done none so badly, sir," assured Hollins. "And, of

course, I was there to help her."

"Of course, Hollins. And she's really a wonderfully capable little

person, isn't she?"

Hollins gone, Mr. Bruno sat in his chair for some time thinking. It

was perhaps a small thing, this French leave habit of Miss Durgon's,

but it seemed to show him traces of falsity in her character which he

knew his quick version could have seen long ago had he given it the

order to see. He dreamed out a conversation after dinner that night

when he rebuked Miss Durgon. It was a conversation from which he

issued with increased dignity. "I cannot think, Miss Durgon, that

such a step was within the autonomy with which---- Please don't

think I am anything but highly satisfied, but---- Your need of a

holiday no one would deny, and I confess to having been remiss in not

thinking of it before. Had you so much as mentioned it to me----"

But as the meal drew to its close he felt what an exceedingly

uncomfortable thing it was to administer rebukes to a person in Miss

Durgon's position, and how the contemplation of it was spoiling his

appetite and his conversation. Even she might say: "Very well, Mr.

Bruno, if you think I am incompetent or neglect my duty, I had best

resign my office. With all thanks, I am sure, for your kindness and

unvaried courtesy in the past." And he would be reduced to the

horrid necessity of begging her to reconsider her decision. No,

things were perhaps best left as they were. Doubtless Miss Carrell

was capable, or Miss Durgon would not have done such a thing. And

this evening he especially wanted to work on a play with an

unagitated mind.

"But I can't help admiring the impudence of that little Carrell girl

seating herself astride my home like that. There's a lot in her."

Miss Durgon, ignorant of these movements in her employer's mind, had

been so pleased to find that the governess could fill the position of

deputy housekeeper that she was seeing the convenience of having the

young woman in permanent residence. Then she would at any moment be

free to go away, if only for a night or so. Miss Carrell, after some

doubts, fell in with the scheme more readily than Miss Durgon had

dared hope. It was a grateful matter that the difficulty of her

mother could be so easily overcome.

Now to approach Mr. Bruno. In his room Miss Durgon hastened to pour

out all the points she had previously enumerated on her fingers'

ends: that she was very satisfied with the governess's remarkable

success with the children; that Daphne was getting too big to be

left, in the evenings when she herself happened to be out, to the

charge of servants; that Miss Carrell would be able to help the

children with their homework; that it would relieve them all of the

sewing and care of the clothes, which was getting heavy; and that, in

a household of so many persons, it would hardly cost a penny more a

week, since she already had lunch and tea with him.

"Oh, if we can have all that for nothing a week, let's have it," Mr.

Bruno smiled.

But he thought this would be a good opportunity to mention his

knowledge that his household had already been somewhat frivolously

left, for weeks at a time, to the management of a

twenty-three-year-old girl. And his eye, the eye of a dramatist, saw

at once the hidden embarrassment of Miss Durgon.

"Yes," she admitted, "I was feeling so run down while you were away

that I made that arrangement, but only with a deep sense of

responsibility. I would not have suggested such a thing had I not

decided that Miss Carrell was quite exceptional. Quite exceptional."

"I feel she is," endorsed Mr. Bruno.

"Yes, she is. Quite exceptional," repeated Miss Durgon, since this

was her justification.

So Miss Durgon helped to weave the rope that hanged her.

Miss Carrell hanged her at Christmas time. Quite simply. To be

sure, it had been simpler to suggest that Hollins mentioned Mr.

Stokes and Mr. Anthony to the master; but it would be rather

undignified, this enlisting of servants' aid. And yet simpler had

she herself alluded innocently to Miss Durgon's friends; but this

savoured of ugly informing, and Mr. Bruno, a clever man, would see

through it. And she didn't want Miss Durgon to go to the rope

thinking her companion had "sneaked." In their conversations Mr.

Anthony and Mr. Stokes had necessarily been spoken of, but always

very casually, as if their visits were naturalness itself, and Miss

Carrell the sort who could understand: the foolish woman even (so

thought Miss Carrell) was not without a pride in hinting at her

attractiveness. Besides, the thing, if only told, might not be very

effective with Mr. Bruno: preoccupied, he would but half take it in.

It must be seen in being.

Conceiving of Miss Durgon, Mr. Anthony, Mr. Stokes and Mr. Bruno as

the chess pieces of Miss Carrell--Miss Durgon the queen, Mr. Anthony

and Mr. Stokes her knights, and Mr. Bruno the opposing

king--obviously the plan was to get the king into a position from

which he could capture one or both of the knights. Always a

difficult position to contrive, for the moves of knights are crooked.

Herein came Daphne. When at last the occasion offered, she was used

as pawn to lure out the king.

Christmas time brought the children's parties; exciting

entertainments that illuminated not only the day whose evening they

would adorn, but many of the days that went before. And the most

brilliant of these, throwing a light that reached down weeks, was

Lady Montefiore's fancy-dress affair, from four to nine, in the

Kensington Town Hall. Costumes had to be resolved upon and made, and

sewing became more than tolerable--joyous. Daphne was to go as a

Shepherdess, and Owen as a Musketeer, Miss Carrell having just

finished Dumas' romance and decided that it was the finest book she

had ever read. But she gave far less time to Owen's dress than to

Daphne's.

Their father had been told of this party, by Daphne often, by Owen

three times, by Miss Carrell once, but he had hardly heard. And it

was soon known that he would be at a dinner in town that evening.

Presumably he would be late, since Miss Durgon had ordered a tray of

spirits, siphon, sandwiches and cigarettes for the entertainment of

one of her guests.

Mr. Bruno had lunched out, but he returned to his study before three

o'clock. He had just sat at his desk and taken up his pencil to

write down some memoranda, when a timid knock at the door made him

use the pencil for a patient tapping on his paper.

The governess entered.

"Excuse me, Mr. Bruno, but just for once I felt I simply must

intrude. Would you mind if I showed you Daphne in her fancy dress?

She looks so sweet, and I think it'll please her if you like it."

"Fancy dress?" echoed Mr. Bruno. "Oh, yes, of course, she's going to

a party of some sort, isn't she? Certainly I'll come."

He laid down the pencil and rose quickly, having assumed the gay

cloak of an interested father. He followed the governess upstairs to

the schoolroom. Miss Carrell passed in before him and apparently

whispered to the children to hide. Her face reappeared. "Now, Mr.

Bruno, if you'll come in."

He entered a room that seemed to be empty, and looked around as if

interested in such a strange apartment. Then Miss Carrell said: "You

can come now, Daphne."

Daphne appeared, half shyly and half merrily, from behind the screen;

and Mr. Bruno gasped. He had intended all along to gasp, but when he

saw his daughter the gasp was genuine. She stood before him in a

straw bonnet, her brown hair curled into ringlets. A black velvet

corselet bodice reached to a point below her waist. A fichu was

about her neck, frills at her elbows and black velvet ribbons at her

wrists. Brocade panniers swelled out on either hip above a quilted

satin petticoat. Her stockings were white, and her black shoes had

silver buckles. In her right hand she held a crook, necklaced with

ribbons. Mr. Bruno gasped, and something caught at his heart.

"Good heavens!" he laughed; "is that my Daphne?" But though he

laughed, the word "my" gave him unexpected pleasure. "No, it's a

changeling, stepped out of a Watteau canvas.... What's all this talk

about a party? Why have I not been better informed? And there's

Owen, too, all dressed up. What's he? Mephistopheles?"

"I'm a Musketeer."

"Not one of Dumas', I hope." But seeing by every one's chapfallen

silence that Owen was Dumas' hero and none else, he put them at their

ease by saying: "Well, please announce to everybody that the dress is

founded on your own literary taste and not mine. You must be careful

how you tread on the literary grass, Mr. Owen.... Where's this rout

to be held? Buckingham Palace?"

Miss Carrell explained.

"It's Lady Montefiore's party at Kensington Town Hall. A very big

affair. I did tell you about it, but I don't think you quite heard."

"No. I'm afraid I don't sometimes. It must appear very rude. I'm

sorry."

"Oh, Mr. Bruno." Miss Carrell looked almost beseechingly into his

face. "I hardly like to suggest what's in my mind."

There's no sentence surer to stimulate interest.

"What's that?" asked Mr. Bruno.

"Run away, Duffy darling, and take Owen, and show yourselves to

Hollins."

The children gone, Miss Carrell proceeded:

"Oh, don't you think you could look in for a minute at the party?

Just before it's over--perhaps to bring the children away. There are

to be such a number of famous people there, and reporters, and I do

want Duffy to see her name in the paper to-morrow, and a mention of

her dress. But in such a huge crowd she's hardly likely to be

noticed unless you come too. What a wonderful surprise it'd be for

them, if you came and drove them home! But of course, it's

impossible ... it's impossible. You're out to dinner."

"It's not impossible. It's not at all impossible," interrupted Mr.

Bruno, to whom the word "reporters" was bait difficult to refuse.

Besides, the vision of Daphne had stirred his desire for the envy and

admiration of those who should know her for his daughter. "My dinner

is only an official monthly business, and I can escape. I shall make

a point of getting there. And don't you tell them. What time's it

over?"

"Officially at nine o'clock. But I doubt if we shall get away before

half-past nine. And I don't suppose the--the celebrities will be

there till fairly late. I've promised Miss Durgon to have the

children home by ten o'clock."

"I shall be there soon after nine, Miss Carrell. And keep it as a

surprise from them...."

The governess was such a pleasant little person that he quite enjoyed

having a secret with her.

At ten o'clock there were laughter and children's voices on the front

steps at 18 Deseret Road, as Mr. Bruno, followed by Miss Carrell,

Daphne and Owen (who had been allowed to pay the cabman), ascended to

the hall door, searching for his latch-key.

"Shall I ring?" asked Miss Carrell, who may have been tired, for she

looked pale and her voice trembled. "The maids will be up."

"No. Here we are.... Now then, Owen, open the door and don't keep

us all waiting. The ladies are cold in their cloaks. That's right.

Open Sesame!" The door opened. "Enter Ali Baba and two of his

donkeys."

Miss Carrell passed in first, and Owen was about to go in after her

when his father pulled him back, saying: "The lady your sister first,

if you're the swashbucklering gallant your dress suggests." Daphne

passed in. "That's right. Now the old man, because his great age

gives him right of precedence. Then the young D'Artagnan."

He was hanging his hat on a peg when he observed the coat of Mr.

Anthony.

"Hallo! A visitor? Who's this?" He lifted the lapel of the coat as

if it might answer him.

Just then a maid appeared to see if the master or the children needed

anything before retiring. (Or that was her ostensible reason.

Actually she was the reporter commissioned by the kitchen, which had

heard with surprised delight the master's voice on the steps, to

proceed at once to the seat of war. As Hollins had said: "_Now_

how's she going to explain her masher in the breakfast-room?")

"Who's the visitor, Alice?" asked Mr. Bruno, glancing at the coat.

"Mr. Anthony, sir."

"Mr. Who?"

"Mr. Anthony."

He turned inquiringly to Miss Carrell.

"You know," she explained; "Mr. and Mrs. Anthony, who live in the new

flats near the station."

"Oh, yes. Well, what on earth can he want with me at this time of

night?"

"He's with Miss Durgon, sir," said the maid, taking his coat from him.

"Has he been here long?"

"Since eight o'clock," answered the maid innocently. "He often

comes."

"The first I've heard of it." He turned again to Miss Carrell.

"Does he----" But he stopped, perceiving the indelicacy of

discussing Miss Durgon with the governess or the servants. "Well,

good night, Duffy. Good night, Owen, old man. I'm sure neither of

you'll sleep after all that pastry. Good night, Miss Carrell." And

he walked along the passage into the dining-room to be alone.

He was troubled, annoyed; but not quite clear on what to base his

annoyance. Why was it that Miss Durgon mustn't entertain a married

man from eight to eleven on evenings when he was away? There were

passages in his books suggesting the right of any woman to entertain

any soul-mate she liked. But none of that could apply to Miss

Durgon. She wasn't doing it because she was an intellectual in

conscientious rebellion (so sneakily, too, when his back was turned),

but because she was a damned hypocrite. That utterly conventional

and pietistic fool, Miss Durgon, as a social rebel--pshaw! it was

funny! She'd been secretive, too, now he came to remember, over

those holidays of hers.... No, the whole thing was false and wrong.

The children, he had said, must be taught conventional morals, till

they were old enough and strong enough (if ever) to venture into

deeper waters. Of course. If they were ever to be taught to resist

the tyranny of outworn creeds, they should be taught it as a high

philosophy, not as a sneaking truancy. He would like to hear more

about these visits of Mr. Anthony, whom, by the by, he remembered as

rather an ill-bred cad, material and gross. Should he ask Miss

Carrell about them? No, that would be quite out of place. She was

too young and--pretty. Hollins? She had been with him a dozen

years, a heavy, married creature. He laughed. It would please the

old thing enormously to be taken into confidence. He liked to please

people. But she'd certainly brag about his confidence to the other

servants--he could read her character as well as any one else's. But

there, the servants knew all about it already. A pretty fool that

woman had made of him before his servants. God damn it! He rang the

bell.

"Is Hollins in bed yet?" he asked the maid.

"No, sir."

"Ask her to come and speak to me, please."

"Yes, sir."

Though there was no quaver in the maid's voice, he knew she was

delighted.

Hollins, on being questioned, was completely communicative. It had

not been her place before, but since Mr. Bruno asked her ... there

were times, she would admit, when she thought she ought to speak....

But then she had said to herself, the master knew what he was about

when he appointed Miss Durgon.... And doubtless Miss Durgon, who was

a lady, knew more about these things than she.... She had not been

able to bring herself to speak. Besides, what did she know? She had

only begun to smell a rat, as the saying was, when that Mr. Stokes----

"_Stokes?_" exclaimed Mr. Bruno.

Yes, Mr. Stokes. Mr. Stokes was an occasional visitor when the

master was away.

"But not surely when----" began Mr. Bruno, but he stopped and walked

away and stood looking out of the window on to the veranda.

"Thank you, Hollins. Thank you. I'm obliged to you. Please don't

mention our conversation in the kitchen. Confidences are

confidences."

"No, sir," promised Hollins, and withdrew, quite obviously as happy a

woman as any in London.

Standing there with his hands in his pockets and his eyes staring

vacantly at the window, Mr. Bruno indulged in a bath of warm

self-sympathy. It was a shame of Miss Durgon to have taken this

advantage of him, a widower so dependent on his dependants; an

author, so necessarily kept busy at his work. It was too bad,

considering the children; if she was that sort they had been probably

neglected whenever he wasn't looking. Damn it, it was insufferable

to have treated so facilely the privilege of caring for T. Tenter

Bruno's children. There must be people all over the country who

would regard it as an honour--something to boast about--to be charged

with the children of a man of such fame. To do all this, and at the

same time to accept the generous salary he had given her, the

comfortable home, and the extravagant courtesy with which he had

always treated her! It was enough to make a cynic and misanthrope of

any man. Had all people to be watched by a foreman lest they scamped

their tasks? Was there no one who would care for his children

without his perpetual supervision, so that he could be free to work

for them. He himself needed no such dragooning. He worked hard

enough, undriven, to keep the home over everybody's head.

Mr. Bruno dropped into a chair that he might loiter in this bath of

warm self-sympathy. But, as with all people in their baths, the

pleasure was partly spoiled by the knowledge that at some moment he

must achieve the courage to step out of the grateful warmth; and he

knew he would leave the enervating self-sympathy for the cold air of

self-reproach.... As if suiting the action to the thought, he rose

from the chair and stood on the floor. Confound it! He was to

blame. With his indolent _laissez faire_, his forever choosing of

the line of least resistance, he had undoubtedly suffered the weeds

to spread. For his children's sake he ought to have been perpetually

on the watch, lest they were being moulded by soiled or clumsy hands.

Daphne in her shepherdess costume! She was an exquisite thing; he

could pick her up and crush her to him in his swelling love. Let one

hope that so far no harm had been done. Thank goodness, that little

Miss Carrell was an exceptional person; she seemed sane enough, and

steady, and a perfect lady, as Belle would say. But who ever would

have thought that Miss Durgon would have been anything but a subdued,

middle-aged virgin? "Confound it!" thought he, "what a blasted fool

I must have looked all this time to this woman and her friends! It's

a damned insult to me." Thus Mr. Bruno stepped back into his bath.

He had a mind to go abruptly into the breakfast-room next door, and

to break in upon Anthony and Miss Durgon, to their confusion. But,

as he foresaw the awkwardness of a meeting between Anthony and

himself, and the discomfort Anthony and Miss Durgon would endure, and

his own discomfort in witnessing their discomfort, he decided he

could not face the scene. If you discover your butler in the act of

drinking your whisky out of its decanter, it is an open question

which suffers the more, you or he. Had Mr. Bruno possessed a butler,

and chanced upon him in such a pilfering, he would have retired like

the guilty party in the hope that his butler had neither seen nor

heard him.

He sat again in his chair. In the morning he would take a strong

line. The phrase was pleasing. It savoured of a monarch dismissing

his prime minister: or of a father performing his stern duty by his

children. In the morning he would show Miss Durgon that these quiet

and trusting men had, none the less--what was the trite metaphor?--an

iron hand beneath the velvet glove.

With this resolve he mounted to his bedroom, that mercy might attend

poor Anthony to the door.

At breakfast Miss Durgon appeared with a mien of studied composure,

and he rather admired her for not keeping her bedroom and publishing

a headache. He talked of everyday subjects; they could not handle

over cold bacon and boiled eggs such an explosive grenade as

dismissal. After breakfast it should be. He would send for her to

his study. It would be painful having to treat a woman of forty-five

like a schoolboy: "Miss Durgon, I feel that, as my daughter will soon

be going to school (the first he had thought of it), perhaps...."

No, he would not prepare his speech. He would wait on inspiration.

"Mr. Bruno, I can only thank you for your unfailing courtesy and

consideration. I hope we part with no ill-feeling, for I consider it

has been a privilege to share in...." "Not at all, Miss Durgon, not

at all." If she had any tact, she would drop such a curtain of gauze

over the harder features of the scene.

But when, after breakfast, he was reading his paper, he postponed the

event till his pipe should be exhausted; and, after that, till all

the matter in the _Times_ necessary for a well-informed mind had been

exhausted. Then he dropped the paper on his knees. No, the thing

would best be done through a woman: that would be more consistent

with the courtesy she had invariably received from him. Belle had

engaged her, and Belle should be summoned to conclude the engagement;

he could imagine her enjoying it thoroughly and all the while

deceiving herself, like the brainless creature she was, that the duty

was unpleasant.

Belle arrived the next afternoon; and it was delectable to watch her

surprise and indignation.

"Extraordinary, Tom. Extraordinary in an officer's daughter. So

ridiculous, too. A _passé_ creature like that! I don't know which

is the more ridiculous, she or the idiotic _roués_ who could flit

round such a--such a----"

"Rushlight," suggested he.

"Rushlight! The creature must go at once."

"Yes. But there's nothing gained by doing it otherwise than gently.

Let her have some excuse with which she can withdraw in a haze of

dignity. Let her have everything that's owing to her, and let--let

crowns for convoy be put into her purse."

Belle seemed hardly less childish than Daphne, and to be similarly

bantered and confused.

"But, meantime, we shall have to look out for some one else," pursued

Belle, who was indubitably spending a delightful afternoon. "I'll

busy myself about that at once. But in the interregnum, what's to be

done?"

"Oh, the little Carrell can carry on. She's done it before."

"Carol who?"

"Carol no one. Miss Carrell, the children's governess."

"But she can't manage the household."

"Indeed she can; and the War Office and Admiralty as well, if

necessary. With marvellous competence."

"But, Tom, she doesn't look twenty."

"She's twenty-three, I believe. If Pitt was Prime Minister of

England at twenty-one, Miss Carrell can be mistress of my household,

for a fortnight, at twenty-three."

"Yes, but Pitt was a genius."

"He was not the last of the race." It was always annoying, the way

Belle spoke about geniuses. "Perhaps Miss Carrell is one too. In

fact, I've been wondering whether she couldn't permanently fill the

breach." The idea, to be truthful, had only just struck him.

"What? Become your----"

He enjoyed Belle's dismay.

"Yes. Why not?"

"Oh, no, no. Why, the servants wouldn't obey a child like that. And

what about the children?"

"They love her. She's been more successful with them than any one

else."

"And then again--forgive me mentioning it, but you literary people

are so unworldly-wise--she's too pretty." Belle smiled rather

roguishly. "People would talk. With a man in your position it might

do untold harm to have a Mistress of the Household, as you call her,

of such youth and beauty."

With contempt Mr. Bruno saw, under the veil of righteousness, his

sister's relish for the subject.

"You mean they would say that the Mistress of the Household was also

the Lady of the Bedchamber?"

"Tom! I wonder why you artistic people always love to shock."

The altercation continued, with the result that Mr. Bruno saw more

and more sense in his idea as he saw more and more foolishness in

Belle's arguments against it. She fell back on the personal appeal.

"Oh, Tom, let me beseech you to do nothing of the sort. It would be

unwise in the extreme. I will do all in my power to secure you a

really worthy and capable housekeeper. You can trust me."

It occurred to him to retort: "Your last effort was no proof of your

trustworthiness. And it justifies me in a bold innovation." But he

only replied:

"It might, at any rate, be given a trial. The children love her as

much as they distrusted Miss Durgon, and I begin to believe they are

good judges. The servants unite in praising her. We'd better see

Miss Carrell."

He leaned forward and touched the bell. As it rang down below he

wondered if he was rashly committing himself to something that wanted

longer thought. Was he being driven by the character that was now

his tyrant to take again the line of least resistance? No, surely

this time the easiest line chanced to be the best.

"Tom, you don't mean to say you have determined?"

He had not meant to say so; indeed, was wondering how, if necessary,

he could avoid saying so; but such a question from Belle was answered

as soon as asked.

"Yes, I think I have."

"Well, I wash my hands of the whole business. It's bound to be a

failure."

This made him resolve that, if possible, it should be an echoing

success.

When, happy to be the purveyor of pleasure, he took Miss Carrell into

his confidence, offering her £80 for a start and £100 later "if the

arrangement answered," she looked both pleased and frightened.

(Frightened, because there is always something uncanny in the success

of all one's plans.) And he was charmed with the little creature's

ingenuousness.

"I know one person who'll be delighted," said he, to reassure her.

"That's my little daughter."

CHAPTER V

Very carefully did Miss Carrell justify her election. By courteous

handling of the kitchen population, by preserving unprofaned her

master's private hours, by consolidating the affection of the

daughter of the family and the approval of the quieter Owen, she

showed how straight was her eye, how cunning and steady her hand.

But, like Miss Durgon before her, she had yet to make her

metamorphosis complete; it was her policy to slough off for ever the

nursery governess, and to put on the handsomer scales of the lady

housekeeper. "School." The word popped about in her mind.

"Boarding-school." The children were getting older. How insinuate

into the minds of every one that they must soon go to school? Then

she would enjoy the not unfashionable duties of purchasing their

outfits, interviewing their principals, conveying them on the first

day of term to the thresholds of their schools, and writing to them

afterwards like a conscientious guardian.

She would do it through Daphne. Miss Carrell had read her pupil's

character, in so far as a thing still amorphous had features to be

read; and what she saw was this: the child's surging vitality,

because no one was directing it to a selected field, would run down

any channel that might be laid invitingly before it. There was the

whole-hearted readiness to be masculine, just because half a dozen

people had called her "tomboyish"; there was the whole-hearted

readiness to fall in love with her governess, when the governess

hinted that the gates were open. She was like a mass of rising water

that, insecurely prisoned, had been making its own little channels,

and would certainly, did Miss Carrell trench wisely, run down her

new-chosen course.

So, on evenings after tea, when the dusk was in the school-room, Miss

Carrell would read tales of school to the children, Daphne sitting on

the floor at her knees, and Owen staring from his chair at the fire.

It was difficult to secure enough of these "Stories for Girls." They

read "Winifred of Greystones," "The Most Popular Girl in the Fourth

Form," "Fanny the Prefect," and "The Tomboy of Tatterden House." And

as Daphne's imagination breathed abounding life into Winifred of

Greystones, Fanny the Prefect, and, above all, the fascinating Tomboy

of Tatterden House, it was only through fear of hurting the love of

her governess that she refrained from asking: "Do you think I shall

be able to go to school soon?" Miss Carrell read these stories very

well, for, to tell the truth, she was as interested in them as her

pupils; it was as much as she could do to restrain herself from

pursuing the career of Winifred or the Tomboy after the children had

gone to bed. Owen, also, though he said little, was more interested

in the tales than was proper for one of his sex.

At length, hand-in-hand with assurances of unfailing affection,

Daphne introduced the proposition that she go to school soon. She

would write every week to Miss Carrell full details of her

adventures. And Owen would go to his prep, school, and they would be

able to compare notes.

This enthusiasm for going to school was unintelligible to Owen, who

secretly dreaded his first visit, but he pretended to be as excited

as she.

"You'll have to ask your papa," Miss Carrell replied. "I don't think

he'll like it. You're too young. Besides, schools--boarding-schools

are expensive."

"Oh, but father's got lots of money."

"His expenses are very heavy."

"Yes, but I shall have to go to school one day. And I'm just on

twelve."

"I believe you want to get rid of me. I believe you're tired of me.

You're ashamed of being taught by a governess."

Indignantly Daphne protested, but Miss Carrell continued: "Well,

well, I suppose it is humiliating for a child of eleven to be tied to

the strings of a governess." And she knew she had successfully

bedded out that idea.

The same evening Mr. Bruno's study was entered by his daughter, who,

guessing from his position in the armchair, with book and spectacles,

that no more than three minutes would be allotted her, came straight

to the point.

"Please, daddy, may I go to school?"

"To school? Why, you're not yet out of your cradle."

"Don't be silly. I'm in my twelfth year."

"So? Well, what school are you going to?"

"Oh, I don't know. Some school."

"Well, there's an excellent school, financed by the government, in

Star Lane. You could go there, I suppose. I noticed the other day

that there was an Infants' Entrance."

"Oh, but father," protested Daphne. "That's only for district

children. I mean a proper school--a boarding-school. For _ladies'_

children."

"But, gracious lady, art thou the daughter of an earl's castle? I'll

tell you what you are. You're just the encumbrance of a public

entertainer, who has, so to speak, to drag you round in a box by the

side of his barrel organ. Even so, aren't you being taught by an

excellent governess?"

"Yes, but no one in double figures has a governess."

"No one in double figures has a governess? Translate, for a dull

mind."

"No one eleven years old has a governess. Did you?"

"Ah, did I? 'Twere well, were you brought up as I. The rod, my

child, frequently and soundly applied."

Daphne, for a response, smiled delightedly.

"What does the excellent Carrell say?" asked Mr. Bruno.

"Of course, she doesn't want me to go, as she'd lose me----"

"Upon my soul!" began Mr. Bruno.

"But she said I might ask you and"--here Daphne, who had come and

leaned forward against the arm of his chair, drooped her head in an

acted sulk--"she said you wouldn't agree."

"Did she though?"

"She said you couldn't afford it, but I told her that was all my hat."

"All your what?"

"All piffle."

"If there's a school, Miss Billingsgate, where they teach seemliness

and decorum, and such a modicum of English as will enable you to get

through society without expulsion, I think it had best be looked for

immediately."

"Well, when may I go?"

"I don't know. Not to-night, certainly. It's already approaching

six o'clock. Which reminds me that 'the clock upbraids me with a

waste of time.' You'd better let me get on with my work, especially

if I'm to pay all this new money for your education.... Good night,

Duffy dear. Go and get into your cradle."

The next morning, as he was crossing the first-floor landing to the

door of his study, he saw Miss Carrell coming downstairs, and

remembered his conversation with Daphne. Keeping hold of his

door-handle, as a sort of insurance policy against protracted talk,

he asked:

"I suppose you've heard of my daughter's latest freak? School?"

"Yes, she's always harping on it."

"Is she? Good gracious! Why, it was but yesterday that we had to be

thinking about getting her a governess." He had almost forgotten

that the important little person before him was the governess in

question. "Her wedding will be upon us before we've folded up her

swaddling clothes.... However.... School. Do you think she ought

to go? At what age do girls go? Of girls I profess to know nothing,

except that, speaking generally, they are a great ornament to the

world. Do you think she ought to go?"

Miss Carrell shook her head and lifted her shoulders.

"_I_ don't want to lose her, but sometimes I think that with her

vital nature she ought to have more of the society of girls like

herself. My Latin, for instance, is poor."

"Mensa-mensa-mensam," began Mr. Bruno helpfully. "But how does one

find a really good girls' school, and go and examine it?"

Miss Carrell's head went slightly on one side.

"Of course, I know a good deal about the scholastic world, having

been a mistress myself."

"No; is that so? I didn't know that, or I had forgotten it. This is

exceedingly useful. Tell me some more about suitable schools."

"Of course, I know best the school where I taught for three years.

Hemans House."

"If it's named after Mrs. Hemans, I've no opinion of the poetess--

The boy, oh! where was he?

Ask of the winds that far around

With fragments strewed the sea!

No, we can't send her to a place named after Mrs. Hemans."

"I rather fancy it was. But Miss Vidella is old-fashioned. I expect

to your thinking she'd be a very antiquated type. There's nothing

the least bit modern about Hemans House. It's a very strict, and I

suppose you'd say a very prudish place."

"Not at all, not at all." It is a quality of incisive minds that

they must ever brief themselves for the opposite of what has just

been said. "I'm more than ever convinced that all children, girls

especially, should have a course of old fashions before they begin to

be modern. Christian ethics, after all, are an extraordinarily good

system on which to run your life, and the modesty of our grandmothers

is a necessary base for later liberties. Yes, I've given the subject

considerable thought. Childhood should be a time of very vigilant

restraint. They must be pruned, so as to make less gay blossoms and

more wood. Then, well rooted, they can blossom as they fancy."

Mr. Bruno had paid the exceptional Miss Carrell's intellect the

compliment of thinking she understood him; but he was quite

wrong--Miss Carrell, by his second sentence, had retired from further

understanding, and was allowing her mind to fill with a new scheme.

When he had finished, she said, "Yes, of course."

"And where is this Miss Vidella's school?"

"Windsor."

"Then at any rate she has some unimpeachable neighbours.... And,

from your three years' experience, do you really think it is a good

school? A good place for Daphne?"

Miss Carrell appeared to deliberate before she replied.

"Of an old-fashioned kind, yes.... Yes, I think _certainly_. It is

purposely limited to a few girls, because Miss Vidella, though

strict, likes to mother each individual girl."

"I see. Vidella is an extraordinary name. Was she born with it, or

is it a _nom de guerre_?"

Miss Carrell said she didn't know.

"I should think it's a trade-mark," suggested Mr. Bruno. "Prima

donnas and ballerinas and hat-makers adopt names like that, don't

they?"

Miss Carrell said it was just the sort of quaint thing Miss Vidella

would do. "She's a personality, if ever there was one."

"Is she? Well, you want a personality at the head of a school. We

must think this over...." He turned the handle of his door.

"Meantime, work calls. You must think it over, too."

Miss Carrell did think it over. She had started to think it over

before his door opened. And now she continued her journey downstairs

but slowly, stopping at times to examine the idea again. She

unconsciously nodded to herself. Yes, she knew that little stout

Miss Vidella through and through. It would be a pretty piece of

work, and rather satisfying to one's vanity.

When next Miss Carrell had a day to herself, she dressed in her

latest-bought costume for the confounding of her old employer, and

took the train to Windsor.

Leaving the station, she passed the castle on her left hand, and,

descending the hill, walked to the outskirts of the town. It was

wonderfully pleasant to follow these familiar streets, thinking how

her position had improved since the days when she used to tread-mill

them regularly behind a crocodile of garrulous young girls. A

narrow, stringy life, a young mistress's in a school like Hemans

House! How she had envied, though vanity had hardly admitted it, the

visiting parents to whom Miss Vidella would show such consideration!

And now she was approaching the place almost like a parent herself.

No suitor for employment, but a prospective employer of the odious

little Miss Vidella. There was something very near glee in the

thought.

It was a long walk, but at least she saw the high, grey wall, of

about eighty foot frontage, that screened from sight the lower floors

of Hemans House, seeming always to intervene between the charges of

Miss Vidella and the immodesties of the world. At either end were

tall carriage doors painted green, but dust-coloured and spattered in

their lower halves, where the assoilings of the world's highway beat

against the sequestered school. These carriage doors were

termini--as Miss Carrell so well knew and soon saw again--of a

bow-shaped drive that encompassed a darkened haunt of trees and

shrubs. The gravel, moss-green at the gutters but clean at the

crown, suggested that nowadays it knew feet more than wheels--like a

lady who has once belonged to the carriage folk but has had losses

and must now be content with an occasional cab. The house, before

which its arc swept, was wide, flat-fronted, flat-roofed, and, as one

suspected after seeing the garden wall, faced with a greying stucco.

Its windows were curtained with the simplicity of dormitories and

class-rooms. The drive broke from its bow-sweep for a space to touch

the bottom of the dead-white hearth-stoned steps. These brought one

to a hall door painted the same green as the doors in the garden

wall, but scrupulously washed; indeed, at this door, with its

brilliant brass knocker, letter-box and bell, one seemed to be in

real touch, for the first time, with the niceties of Miss Vidella.

Conscious of her new quality, Miss Carrell ascended the steps. In

the past and pitiable years she had always been obliged to enter the

house through the pupils' entrance at the side, for only parents or

visitors might defile the hearth-stoned steps. She rang the bell and

knocked a confident ratter-tat-_tat_; and, while waiting, peeped

through the two lights of leaded and coloured glass to see the old

familiar hall, now in a dull green, now in a sickening blue. Here

came a maid. Miss Carrell turned her head and looked towards the

shrubbery. The door opening showed the maid in a black dress, neat

apron, and cap with streamers--in fact, just as presentable as the

brass knocker. Yes, Miss Vidella was at home, and what was the name,

please?

"Miss Carrell. She will know me."

Miss Carrell did not say, "I was once a mistress here," because she

remembered how the servants had always despised the mistresses. "And

how could they do anything else," thought she, as she stepped in,

"knowing that the governesses were paid but ten pounds a year more

than themselves, and fed no better?"

The old familiar hall! The same well-polished linoleum, narrow

mahogany table pushed against the heavy red-and-gold wall-paper; the

same two mahogany chairs; the same hat and coat stand, jealously

guarded from hats and coats; the same comparative darkness and

inalienable odour; the same hum of voices from the class-rooms; and

the same sound--which, to be sure, she had forgotten for years, but

was a necessary ingredient--of a pupil playing scales in one of the

music-rooms on the first floor.

She was imagining the mistresses in class-room or music-room, and

feeling sorry for them, as she followed the maid into Miss Vidella's

reception room. So familiar! this congregation of mahogany pieces

and knick-knacks with a display of antimacassars over the backs of

armchairs. There was the upright piano which would be used for

practice when no guests were in the room. On all the tables, on the

top of the piano, and along the mantel-shelf were cabinet portraits,

in assorted frames, of girls who had left; and all these photographs

stood parallel, but obliquely, as if they had once stood shoulder to

shoulder, but had heard the command, "Half left turn!" Miss Carrell

studied the pictures of girls she had known, many of which bore

signatures such as "Grace," or "Your affectionate pupil, Dorothy

Brewer," or "To dear Miss Vidella, from her affectionate Violet."

"Miss Vidella says she's engaged for a few minutes, but will not keep

you waiting long."

Yes. That would be the message she would send to an ex-mistress.

Miss Carrell walked to the window and looked out. She could

re-create what had happened when the maid announced "Miss Carrell."

"Who? Miss Carrell? Miss Carrell? Dear me. Well, ask her--tell

her I will not keep her waiting long." She could hardly be expected

to come expeditiously to a person whom once she had employed at a

salary of thirty pounds a year. And actually it was a full five

minutes before Miss Vidella was heard approaching. Even then she

delayed in the hall, while her high-pitched and affected voice whined

some instructions to a passing pupil.

The door opened, and unsmiling and deliberate, Miss Vidella sailed

towards her late governess. Miss Vidella was short and very stout,

and her dress was black, from the collar at her ears to the end of

the skirt, which seemed lifted by the dome of her hips some irregular

inches off the ground. Her hair was as black as her dress, and

mercilessly parted in its middle, probably to complete the

resemblance to an ancestral portrait; but the fat face, with its

steel spectacles on a nose that did not appear to have developed much

since infancy, hardly matched the dignity of her walk or the queenly

attitude she assumed in her chair.

"Ah, Miss Carrell." Not for twenty years, one imagined, had the

inflexions of Miss Vidella's voice been true and natural; they were

always taken from a cupboard to suit her pose of the moment; she had

a favourite one of injured surprise, which she supposed was very

effective with her pupils and staff; another of quiet indomitability;

and another of mirthless sarcasm. Her present voice was the voice of

a patron conceding an audience. "I'm sure it's very kind of you to

come. And where do you teach now?"

"I am no longer teaching. I--I manage a gentleman's household for

him."

That a governess could rise out of her caste to something higher was

not easily conceived by Miss Vidella.

"What? A housekeeper? Isn't that a pity? Surely the training of

youth was a higher calling."

"I did not say 'housekeeper,' Miss Vidella. What I mean is, I manage

a widower's household for him, and act as guardian of his children."

"But surely that means he's making you combine governess and

housekeeper in one? I hope he is not taking advantage of you, and

that you are not being overworked."

("Fat little beast," thought Miss Carrell. "You naturally don't want

to think that I bettered myself by leaving you.") But while thinking

this she said pleasantly:

"You don't quite understand the post, Miss Vidella. I must confess I

consider myself very lucky, and I thought it would please you too.

Mr. Tenter Bruno is a widower, and he has appointed me to the sole

charge of his servants and his children. He gives me, in addition to

a luxurious home, a hundred pounds a year."

As a tadpole might legitimately be called a frog, so her present

eighty pounds, by virtue of its promise, might be called a hundred.

"A hundred pounds a year resident!" Miss Vidella's little black eyes

at last showed amazement. "But surely that's an enormous salary for

so young a woman, is it not?"

"It is very good, certainly."

"He must be a very wealthy man, this Mr.--Mr.----"

"Mr. Tenter Bruno."

"There is a writer of that name, is there not? Though I confess I

have little acquaintance with any of these modern writers. They are

so revolutionary, and their writings have a distinctly immoral tone.

Shelley and Keats, of course, I am passionately fond of. Is your Mr.

Tenter Bruno of the same family as the writer?"

"He is _the_ Mr. Tenter Bruno."

"_Indeed?_"

It was clear that Miss Vidella was giving some thought to this

information, for she had looked again, and with a new expression, at

the fine plumage of her late governess. If you brought together such

notions as a loose modern writer, a pretty dependent, and the

ridiculous remuneration of a hundred pounds a year----

"Indeed!" she said. "It's a curious appointment."

Miss Carrell smiled. She did not trouble to repudiate the suspicion,

even feeling a humour to encourage it. Raising her shoulders, she

replied:

"Perhaps all artists are unconventional."

There was a rustle in her hostess's chair.

"Unconventional theories, in my experience of the world, Miss

Carrell, often end in--er--in all sorts of things." She began to

enjoy playing the mentor on such a subject to the young woman. "Are

you sure that you are quite wise in accepting such an equivocal

position? Artists are so often loose-lived. You must forgive me,

but this is the warning of an old woman."

A merry laugh was Miss Carrell's reply.

"Oh, I can look after myself all right. Why, I've been there over

two years."

(Not, of course, on her present throne, but it was unnecessary to

explain that.)

Miss Vidella bridled and shrugged. Obviously she was thinking that,

if such were the position, the worst had probably happened. And in

the face of this probability, Miss Carrell was no person to encourage

in Hemans House.

"Well, I happened to be in the neighbourhood," said Miss Carrell,

"and I couldn't resist inquiring after the old school. I hope it's

prospering."

"Certainly," said Miss Vidella, slightly ruffled. "My school has

never been more prosperous."

"The numbers keep up?"

"I do not desire too great numbers, for then each individual child

receives greater attention from myself and my staff."

("Fiddlesticks!" thought her listener. "That stuff may go down with

the parents, but what's the good of palming it off on me?")

"I would have asked you to stay to tea," said Miss Vidella, after a

pause, "only I have hardly a minute to spare. I am really very busy

indeed. I am afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse me."

Miss Carrell rose and picked up her umbrella from a chair. It was

rather fun angling for this plump trout.

"All right--yes--I mustn't keep you. I don't think I'd better stay

to tea, as I want to get to town early. There's just one thing I

wanted to ask you, and it was this. The elder of my two charges is a

girl, Daphne Bruno. She is about to go to school, and Mr. Bruno has

commissioned me to find a suitable place for her. I thought you knew

so much more about the scholastic world than I did, so as I was in

the town it occurred to me to look in and ask you to advise us. Mr.

Bruno would want a really first-class school, of course, and I don't

suppose money would be a very great object."

"This is very interesting. Please sit down again, Miss Carrell."

Miss Vidella sat down herself. "This is very interesting. Tell me

about the little girl. The mention of her alone interests me, my

life having been spent in the service of such as she. How old is

she, and what is her name?"

"She's eleven, and her name is Daphne Deirdre."

"Such strange names!"

Miss Vidella said it in a voice she kept for parents, or for the

girls when they used slang: it had a faint savour of mittens and

quiet-handed surprise at anything less strictly regulated than

herself.

"Yes," Miss Carrell agreed. "As you said, these people are

unconventional. What school do you really think would suit the

daughter of such a man? Of course, to modern parents the very

possession of his daughter would be an advertisement for the school."

"Miss Carrell, why should she not come here? I am fairly full, as I

intimated, but I could make an exception for such a child, in the

hope, of course, that she would inherit her father's talents and

bring great credit to the school. And for your sake, too, as an old

member of the staff."

It was a demurring answer that Miss Carrell gave to this.

"I had hardly thought of that. Of course, she'd do credit to any

school. She has a clear, inquisitive brain and a tremendous vitality

that she gets from her father, and at the same time a soft and

adoring side that I suppose comes from the mother, who seems to have

been a frail, affectionate creature. Altogether a charming child.

But I don't think it would do. I expect that Mr. Bruno contemplates

paying much higher fees than you ask."

"We can always arrange our fees," began Miss Vidella, luckily seeing

nothing of the laugh that trembled through her visitor. "I mean mine

has always been a sliding scale, suited to the pockets of the

parents. By which I have been able to help a lot of children of less

well-to-do people."

"As far as I can remember, quite a lot of them came at reduced fees,"

said Miss Carrell in obliging agreement.

"Yes, I have made many sacrifices. It has been my work in life."

"Mr. Bruno is particularly anxious about the social status of the

girls his daughter will meet."

"Of course. Naturally. Well, we shall satisfy him there. You know

I make a point of receiving only the daughters of officers, clergy

and professional men."

"Yes, I remember it says so in the prospectus." This reply

particularly pleased Miss Carrell, for it would leave Miss Vidella

wondering what exactly she meant. "I must admit the idea had not

occurred to me, and frankly I don't think it would quite answer.

Still, I'm grateful for your suggestion." She rose. "I must be

hurrying, or I shall miss my train, and we have some guests

to-night," which last statement was a fiction provided for

atmospheric effect.

"Of course, you understand," said Miss Vidella hurriedly, and smiling

to repudiate any false construction that might be put on her words,

"that in the event of your sending me a good pupil I should save an

agent's fee. I don't know if it----"

A laugh rippled from Miss Carrell.

"What an idea! Were you going to suggest that I receive it instead?

Oh, yes, I remember you used to offer it to us. I shouldn't mind

taking it at all, if by chance Daphne came to you. I have no false

pride and make no bones of the fact that I earn my living. What fee

do you usually give the agents?"

"Oh, they vary. But I really shouldn't mind offering you, in this

case, if Mr. Bruno paid, say--say, a hundred a year, a commission of

ten pounds. I should regard it as only fair."

"Well, that would be a pleasant little windfall, supposing Daphne did

come here. Though you understand, of course, I must put the little

girl's interest before all things."

"Naturally. Naturally. I would be the last person to suggest

anything else. But, of course, I have such faith in my own methods

that I don't think she would do better elsewhere. I feel I should

like to have your little ward here. And it's only because you're an

old friend of mine, and I knew your position, that I offered what I

did."

"Oh, I think it was exceedingly sweet of you, Miss Vidella. And if

Mr. Bruno decides to send his daughter here I shan't at all mind

taking it. Well, we must see. It's quite a new idea to me.

Good-bye."

If Miss Carrell, as she passed into the street, was faintly reminded

of the sons of Jacob selling young Joseph to the Midianites for a few

pieces of silver, she quickly forgot so silly a thought.

PART II: _Daphne's Schooldays_

CHAPTER VI

Daphne, her governess, and a new trunk marked D.D.T.B., were all in

the Windsor train as it moved out of Paddington. A sense of

well-being accompanied Miss Carrell too. So often had she seen

parents bringing their children to Hemans House, and envied them the

position in which they stood to the school and to the mistresses. It

was the difference between the paying and the paid, between the

clients of a firm and its servants. Not so much those whose children

came for notoriously reduced fees; them she had rather pitied. And

now here was she, wearing gracefully the clothes of the leisured

classes, and bringing to Miss Vidella a best-paying child. Under a

manner of graciousness and charm she would talk to the junior

mistresses.

She could congratulate herself on the skill with which she had played

for Mr. Bruno's decision. She had used Daphne first, hanging before

her gaze pictures of life at Hemans House as it lived in her

memory--its fun and mischief, its quaint customs, and its tales of

friendship between girl and girl or between governess and pupil, till

the child's imagination was possessed by Miss Vidella and her

establishment, and she would pester her father to be sent to that

school and no other. With the father Miss Carrell had kept her

recommendation free from over-emphasis, though unmistakably strong.

She made capital with the idea that Daphne would probably do best at

a school on which she was keen. And Mr. Bruno had agreed.

Daphne was less happy than Miss Carrell. After all her noisy

enthusiasm for school, she did not like to admit a present anxiety

that was almost a dread. Even from herself she pushed away a wish

that she and Owen and Miss Carrell could have gone on for ever in the

schoolroom upstairs with the two desks. As the train hurried towards

Windsor she gazed out of the window and affected, for her previous

attitude demanded nothing less, a great excitement about the journey

and its destination.

"You'll soon seen Windsor Castle," said Miss Carrell.

"Shall we? How ripping!" But she felt that the moment of seeing

Windsor Castle, where it towered above the distant trees, would be a

moment of something like fright; and one could wish that the train

would roll on and on, so that the moment never came. The hunched

carters whose wagons rumbled on the country roads were people to be

envied for their age and freedom; so were the porters on the

platforms, who would be doing to-morrow what they were doing this

afternoon; and the engine driver, alone in his engine day after day,

with no head mistress or big girls to overawe him. Something was

wrong with her breathing; she kept wanting to rearrange it with a

short, quick inhalation or a downward sigh or yawn. But when Miss

Carrell, looking out of the window, began to search the skyline for

the Round Tower of Windsor Castle, that she might point it out with

an exhibitor's pride, and at last exclaimed: "There it is--there

between the trees!" Daphne jumped up and stared out of the

door-window in an imitation of effervescing delight. A sickish

business, because her heart was not in the effervescence; it was

lying somewhere lower than usual and beating too fast.

"Is Hemans House far from the station?" she asked, and though her

voice was meant to suggest impatience, the words were really an

appeal for delay.

"Yes, it's a mile or more, but we'll take a fly."

Usually taking a fly was a treat, but now, as the train slowed into

Windsor station, the cab seemed little better than a Black Maria or a

tumbrel. But life bustles you on regardless of your desire to go

slow, or even to stop still, and Miss Carrell bustled her on to the

platform. There as she waited, trembling in the cold wind, she sank

herself deeper in that despairing envy of all the other persons who

were getting out of the carriages: the young people whose schooldays

were behind them, the middle-aged who must have forgotten all about

school, and the old men who were near death.

Miss Carrell pushed her into the fly, and said "Hemans House" to the

cabman, who nodded "Yes'm," and flicked at his horse, starting it up

the hill.

Daphne watched out of the window. "Now we're almost there!" she

exclaimed, to keep up the fiction of excited happiness.

The high garden wall of Hemans House was not likely to diminish her

anxiety; nor the depressing tangle of trees on the other side of the

wall, the moss-green gravel, and the stucco house. There was more

cheer about the white hearthstoned steps and the green hall door.

But the clang of the bell in the basement had a ring of

irreparability, as if it had snapped off the past; and the waiting

for the door to open was unlike any other waiting she had ever known.

Fears seemed to have vivified her thinking and heightened her

imagination above the normal. White hearthstoned steps, hollowed

where the feet trod, were no longer steps and nothing more. Steps?

Steps were romantic things. What one-time tenants of this old house

had come up these steps and gone down them, and with what emotions!

And now they were in their graves. Perhaps some daughter of the

house had eloped down these steps with her lover, like Dorothy Vernon

of Haddon Hall. A fraction of those hollows was made by their flying

feet. School girls, converging from all parts, had come up these

steps, and wondered what years lay before them. And after a time

they had taken their farewell journey down them. Stirring, sweet

thought, that last walk down them! Long after Miss Vidella had

died--one could be selfishly happy if she died this afternoon--other

tenants, not yet born perhaps, would come up these steps. A crowd

would stand here to watch a wedding pair descend to their carriage on

the drive. And the bodies of people would one day be carried in

coffins, feet foremost, down the steps. That time they would make no

impression on the hollows....

The door was opening, and a maid, who recognised Miss Carrell, was

inviting them to come in. They were walking through a rather dark

hall to the reception-room. Now they were waiting in the

reception-room. This was like an interval between two parts of one's

life, an empty, silent pause, like the place where the coupling was,

between two coaches of a railway train.

Daphne here began to fill the interval, and thus to contract to

commonplace thinking again, by a study of the framed portraits of

former pupils. All of them seemed to have written, something like,

"To dear Miss Vidella, from her affectionate Violet," and she was

cheered by these proofs of lovableness in her head-mistress. How

pleasant, when she should have left school for ever, to send a

photograph, signed, "To my dear mistress, from her loving Daphne

Deirdre Tenter Bruno!" She was startled away from the frames by the

sound of a high-pitched voice outside; and the door opened, and Miss

Vidella made a dignified entry. Daphne had heard from Miss Carrell

that her future principal was "short, stout and very quaint," but the

words had suggested no such caricature as this. With a moment's

homesickness she knew that, had Owen and she in their former freedom

seen such a figure in the street, they would have giggled and hurried

out of sight.

"So this is little Daphne Bruno!" said Miss Vidella, stretching out a

cold hand which Daphne took. The hand seemed to share none of the

affection of the high-pitched voice, but to be a sort of perfunctory

companion who did what was expected of it without enthusiasm.

"We generally call her Duffy at home," said Miss Carrell.

"Duffy! What a strange name! I don't think we can call her that

here. Sounds too much like Duffer--and we have none of them here."

Daphne wondered if this were supposed to be funny. "Besides, being

her father's daughter, she'll be anything but a dunce. No, we shall

only call her Daphne."

Daphne had a sense of seeing Duffy dismissed from the room.

"And how is your dear father?"

"Very-well-thank-you."

"And is he writing another of his splendid books?"

"Yes-I-think-so."

"That's right."

"He's always at work," interjected Miss Carrell.

"Dear me. You must be a proud little girl to be the daughter of so

celebrated a parent. Are you?"

Daphne had never thought of it like that--one hardly did about one's

father--but she dutifully mumbled "Yes."

"Well, Daphne dear, you must be happy with us. Your father was most

careful to choose a school where you would be happy, and you mustn't

disappoint him, but tell him how happy you are here." She turned to

Miss Carrell. "I am hoping he will consent to act as a reference for

us.... And I tell you what would be nice for you, Daphne, and make

you feel more at home, if you could persuade some other dear little

girl friends to come to school with you here. Will you?"

"Yes."

"And to think that Miss Carrell, whom I know so well, should have

been helping you with your studies for the last few years! Have you

learnt a lot from her?"

"Yes."

"That's right. Well, you're a little shy now, aren't you? Very

natural, I am sure. Perhaps you'd like to go downstairs to the

dining-room, and see some of your school-fellows. Would you like to

do that?"

"Yes--thank--you."

"That's right." Miss Vidella struck a bell on the table beside her.

"You'll stay here, won't you, Miss Carrell? I am expecting some more

of the dear children's parents, and we shall have a cup of tea up

here." The maid entered in response to the bell, and her mistress

said: "Knight" (she achieved added dignity by calling all her maids

by their surnames), "please take Miss Daphne Tenter Bruno and show

her her dormitory--she's sleeping in the Eliza Cook room--and then

show her to where the other young ladies are assembled in the

dining-room. Miss Sims is looking after them."

"Yes, madam."

"Thank you.... Now do you go with Knight, dear, who will show you

the way.... Ah, yes, yes, Miss Carrell will come and see you before

she goes."

Daphne passed out of the door behind the maid, Knight. As the door

closed, the thought of Miss Carrell partaking of an exalted tea with

the parents made it seem as if she had been assumed into a heaven,

leaving Daphne to work out her salvation in loneliness below.

"Come on, your Shyness," the maid surprised her by saying as, not

without kindness, she took her by the hand. "You'll soon get used to

us. There's worse places than school when all's said and done, and

worse schools than this, I daresay. Come and see your bedroom. Up

this way.... Just the next floor.... Now in here.... There ...

That's where you'll sleep, and I wish I had half as good a room."

Daphne was in a large, bright room, with six beds whose top blankets

were scarlet and their linen well laundered. On the floor at the

foot of the nearest she recognised her trunk. The five other beds

started more nervousness.

Knight helped her to remove her coat and hat, brush her hair and

prepare for the dining-room. Then she led her downstairs to a big,

bare room in the basement. Here were three long tables laid for tea,

a vase of flowers at every four feet giving an air of gaiety suitable

to the day when the girls returned. Round the walls were hung Maud

Goodman's pictures: "Taller Than You, Mother," "When the Heart is

Young," and "They Lived Happily ever Afterwards." In the bay window,

whose panes looked out upon a shallow area, sat a young mistress,

evidently Miss Sims. She was a short woman with a colourless face,

not ill-featured, and dull, fair hair. Her popularity was shown by

the girls who were dancing around her, or sitting with dangling legs

on a table at her side.

All heads turned as the maid entered with Daphne.

"Here's one of the new girls, Miss Sims. She's Miss Daphne Brunner,

or some name like that."

"Oh, yes. We've heard all about her--Daphne Bruno."

Miss Sims, in her relations with her pupils, was the complete

sentimentalist. She lived with emotions she would have been ashamed

to reveal. And yet, to herself, she liked to call these emotions the

noblest thing in her. It was just this, she had to have somebody to

love passionately. The six years of her teaching had been a chain of

such hungry, largely concealed loves for some fair-featured pupil.

And at the moment when Daphne first saw her, though she was laughing

gaily with the girls, for all of whom she felt affection, her mind

was really full of treasured regrets and self-pity, because an older

pupil, Audrey Stanton, who had held her heart and filled her dreams,

had left the school the previous term. "Doubtless," Miss Sims had

thought during the holidays, "she will write me a few affectionate

letters, and then forget all about me." The pathos of this had

evoked a few verses, one of which ran:

Upon the threshold of a broader view,

Where lay revealed what girlhood sees,

I left my little pupil standing, and withdrew

To fondle memories.

And another, supposed to be written in ten years' time when all the

girl-children on whom she had expended her love should be dispersed:

O Time, reverse the glass, and let flow back the sands!

Within a stucco house once more a figure stands,

And smiles on upturned faces, grasping outstretched hands.

Revive the past? Ah no! Nor yet retie the knot,

For time must move, and early-formed attachments rot,

And so the tale is told, a girlhood friend forgot.

The melancholy of her return this term to familiar walls empty of

Audrey Stanton had been relieved (though in loyalty she hardly

admitted it) by the hope that some new pupil would win her heart.

When she had been told about the great Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter,

she had wondered whether this interesting child would be able to

succeed to Audrey, and to give her all the exquisite delights and

sufferings that that gracious girl had had the power to bestow.

And now she saw Daphne. She saw an eleven-year-old child whose brown

hair had not yet been tied back with a ribbon. The eyes were brown,

large and inquiring; the nose straight and small; the mouth at the

moment, unmoving and sad--though the sadness, perhaps, was reflected

from a timidity in the eyes. The narrow figure, with its early

promise of long, thin limbs, was indistinguishable from a boy's....

The child looked lost.

Miss Sims's heart moved out to her aid, swelling with hope.

Daphne, quite unaware that there was a person in the room who was

wondering whether she would be able to love her better than any one

else in the world, was introduced to all the girls, none of whom made

any impression on her except a certain Gertrude Wayne. This girl,

who was perhaps a year older than Daphne, but no taller, had

deliberately come and sat beside her, and studied to be pleasant.

(The hidden fact was that Gertrude Wayne had just finished reading a

boys' school story, "The Best House at Whitefriars," whose hero, a

Godfrey Baldwin, had always been very kind and protecting to new

boys, and thereby earned their worship; and her behaviour just now

was modelled on Godfrey's. She had even a hope that the bigger girls

would be unkind to this new kid, so that she could stand up for her.

It must be splendid to have the admiration that Godfrey inspired.)

"What did they say your name was?"

"Daphne Bruno."

"Any other names?"

'Yes; Daphne Deirdre Tenter Bruno."

"Oh, I think Deirdre is a ripping name. Which are you called by at

home?"

"I'm generally called Duffy at home, but Miss Vidella says I'm not to

be called by that here."

"She would. Nicknames are the same as slang to her, the old----

But's really she's not so bad." (Gertrude had suddenly remembered

that Godfrey never spoke unkindly of any one.) "She did the same with

me. I'm always called Trudy at home, but she said, 'My dear, what a

strange name! It's too much like Judy,' and she made me be called

Gertrude. I shall call you Duffy, if you'll call me Trudy. Will

you?"

"Yes."

"Where are you sleeping?"

"In the Eliza Cook room I think it was called."

"Oh, blow! I'm in the Frances Burney room. Never mind. If there's

anything I can do for you, let me know. I remember how rotten it was

when I was new. I've been here two years now----"

The conversation was stopped by the sound of Miss Vidella's voice

outside, and when she entered with some parents, all the girls stood

up and kept silence. Some older ones giggled, though their lips were

compressed.

"This is the dining-room," sang Miss Vidella, and the parents, male

and female, gazed helpfully round. "Such a nice, cheerful room.

South aspect, and gets the whole day's sun.... Sit down, dears....

You won't mind them sitting down, will you? Yes, they have all their

meals here--not luxuries, I'm afraid, but good, plain, wholesome

food." (She pronounced this word to rhyme with "good.") "Where's

little Daphne Bruno? Ah, there she is. Getting quite at home

already.... Come to me, dear, and let me introduce you. This is the

great Mr. Tenter Bruno's only daughter."

"Tenter Bruno was an old Harrovian," said one corpulent father,

interested for the first time. "He was at Harrow with me."

"There. Now isn't that interesting? Here's some one who was at

school with your father. How small the world is! ... Now do you run

away, dear."

She soon took out the parents again, who bowed graciously to Miss

Sims before withdrawing. Then tea was brought in, the first day of

term being celebrated by such extras as blanc-mange and jelly and

bananas. The girls, now increased in numbers, were chatteringly

occupied with the meal, under the supervision of Miss Sims and

another mistress who had appeared, when all were compelled to stand

again with full and giggling mouths by the entrance of Miss Vidella,

and a second little shift of parents.

"Ah, they've started, I see.... Miss Sims and Miss Stevens." The

parents bowed. "Yes, I don't pretend we give them luxuries, but we

study always to have good, plain, nourishing food.... Well, sit

down, dears, and get on with your meal. I am sure you will be

excused. This is one of my new girls this term." Daphne stood up,

blushing because her mouth was full, and she was overborne by this

semicircle of parents about her. "She's Mr. Tenter Bruno's daughter."

"Really?" exclaimed one lady.

"Yes, he's just sent her..... Sit down, dear.... It's a fine,

cheery room, isn't it? Perhaps you'd like to see the dormitories."

They filed out, and the frost-bound chattering violently thawed.

After tea, Daphne was left quite alone and unspoken to, Trudy Wayne

having gone away, and Miss Sims been relieved by Miss Stevens. She

sat on the edge of a table, and passed the time looking up and round

at the Maud Goodman pictures, or watching some big girl whose voice

was commanding a moment's attention. Quite half an hour must have

gone before Miss Carrell came into the room to kiss her good-bye.

"Good-bye, Duffy, dear. I've got to be off to my train. Try to be

very happy."

"I think it's lovely," said Daphne.

CHAPTER VII

On awaking next morning in the Eliza Cook room and looking round upon

its iron bedsteads, beneath whose tumbled red blankets the hips and

shoulders of five strange girls made miniature mountain ranges,

Daphne yielded to a dull resignation. Owen, whose attractions she

had too much overlooked, was now seen to be a friend whose absence

left a damping blank. How good the holidays would be when once again

Hollins would come in, pull up the blinds, and wake them! All these

five schoolfellows were still asleep, and she coveted the ease and

familiarity which enabled them to hunch up and sleep like that.

Herself felt perfectly awake. She would have rather liked to get up,

but dared not move till some of the others, by rising and dressing,

showed her what to do. There were six basins on a long trestle

table, with a clean, white cloth and four new pieces of brown

carbolic soap. To look at these squares of soap was to catch their

smell. Which of those basins ought she to use, and which piece of

soap? And how much of herself ought she to wash? Always at home

Hollins had taught her that when she didn't have a bath she must

wash, like all ladies and gentlemen, right down to her waist, and

never be guilty of the "cat-lick." But she knew, as she lay there,

that if the majority of these girls made use of the "cat-lick," she

would follow their example. Moral courage, of course, demanded the

opposite (like Tom Brown saying his prayers), but she had no desire

to show moral courage. All she wanted was to do nothing remarkable.

When at last, one by one, and with unembarrassed talking, the girls

got up, after a loud bell had rung downstairs, they soon solved for

her the problem of washing. All of them seemed to dress as far as

their princess petticoats before approaching the basin, and then gave

a hasty polish to their faces and necks with the damp end of a towel.

One girl, even, who had lain in bed long after the bell had gone, did

not wash at all, but dashed downstairs with her dress undone,

plaiting her hair as she went.

Into the stream of girls which, fed by tributary rivulets from other

rooms, was cascading downstairs, Daphne slipped, so as to flow along

with it and see in what pool it finally settled. It settled in the

dining-room, where all the girls were taking up places behind the

chairs they had occupied at yesterday's tea. Only whispered talk was

passing across the breakfast things, as if even that were contraband.

Daphne slipped to the chair that had known her yesterday, and in the

absence of Owen, Hollins, and Miss Carrell, the chair seemed a

friend. She saw Trudy Wayne, and Trudy saw her, and smiled and

looked dreamily ahead. Daphne wondered at the wistful

self-sufficiency in her eyes--not knowing that Trudy was posturing

for her admiration as Godfrey Baldwin of Whitefriars. The whispers

evaporated into empty silence as Miss Vidella walked into the room.

When Miss Vidella walked, everything from her head to her waist was

as stationary as the bust of a stout lady carried on a tray, but

everything from her waist to her skirt-hem moved, and this motion

gave her passage across the room the character of a slow, dignified

flounce. It also shook and jingled the silver chatelaine, which, now

that her school was really in session, she had hung at her belt, much

as a mayor hangs his chain about his neck.

She went and stood in the window-bay, and immediately Miss Mitchell,

the music mistress, walked to the piano and sat down. Daphne

guessed. It was to be Prayers.

They sang, apparently by heart, the hymn:

"New every morning is the love

Our wakening and uprising prove."

and Miss Vidella in her high voice read a chapter of the Bible. Then

all knelt down behind their chairs for the collects and prayers.

Some who could not be seen of mistresses sat on their heels. Daphne

held on to the upright bars of the back of her chair like a caged

monkey, and stared through its tracery at the bare seat and the

drooping table-cloth. She tried to say _Amen_ when the others did,

but the word would not come quick enough, and was even once in danger

of saying itself after the next prayer had started; and this dreadful

moment decided her to leave the word alone. The public and common

worship over, all knelt in silence, till the head mistress, who had

been standing, began to move away, and then all finished their

private prayers at the same moment, jumped up, pulled out their

chairs, sat on them, and released the first trickles of chatter. The

door closed on Miss Vidella, who had retired to a more dignified

breakfast in her private room, and the trickles of chatter swelled

into a spate.

But throughout the meal Daphne employed only one word, "Thank-you."

She used it several times, to maids who brought her food, and to the

neighbours who passed the plate of bread and butter. She ate her

porridge without sugar, being afraid to ask any one to pass it, and

her bread and butter without any marmalade, because the dish was so

far away. There was much talk of some one called "Petsy," whom she

gradually identified as Miss Vidella, and of some one called

"Chutney," who was apparently a man. Once or twice she thought she

would start a conversation and feign the ease she did not feel,

beginning "Who is Chutney?" but the words never got past her throat.

She hardly knew herself. At home she had always been a dominant

note, and now she was completely overawed, and in the tightening grip

of a horrid desire to cry. The moisture, indeed, was near her eyes,

and the nearer it came the nearer her vexation drew it, till at last

she was in an agony for the meal to be over, so that she could escape

from the crowd. Trudy Wayne had been at too great a distance to

speak to her. Only one other person had come out clearly from the

noisy background. Shortly after her arrival in the room she had

noticed Miss Sims seeking along the faces of the girls for a

particular one, and had felt a telepathic certainty it was hers she

sought. So she was not surprised when the mistress's eyes

encountered hers, and smiled a sympathy. Daphne smiled confusedly

back. After that she caught Miss Sims looking at her frequently.

In the half-hour between breakfast and classes the girls went to

their various Form Rooms, which they were allowed to use as Common

Rooms. Daphne, being as yet placed in no form, wondered where to go,

and found herself left in the long hall or corridor that ran behind

the form-room doors. Here she delayed, and when people passed,

pretended to be doing something definite lest she appeared lost and

ridiculous.

Suddenly from a small door at the corridor's end Miss Sims appeared,

bearing a load of stiff-covered and glossy exercise books ready for

dealing out to the members of the form, and directly she saw Daphne

she stopped, and then advanced towards her.

"Are you looking for some one, dear?"

Daphne looked up at her, and seeing the kindness in her eyes,

determined to be frank.

"Please where do I go to now?"

"My poor child, have you been out here all alone, wondering where to

go? I'll show you. Come with me."

She had intended to lead her to the girls in her own classroom, but

changed her direction. Here was the soft-featured child whom last

night she had chosen as first favourite for the throne of Audrey

Stanton, and it would be rather sweet to have her alone for a few

minutes in an empty room, and to talk kindly to her there. Perhaps

the child would cry, and she would comfort her, stroking her head,

and from that moment the desired adoration would kindle in Daphne.

So Miss Sims walked towards the corner, where the corridor made a

right-angled turn and led to a back wing of the house. The first

door on her right was a music-room, a cell-like place, containing a

piano, two chairs, a table, and a music-rack. With Daphne behind her

she entered, and pushed the door so that it closed but did not latch.

"Just come in here a minute where I have one or two things to do."

She pretended to be engaged in sorting some music, but soon stopped.

Seating herself on one of the chairs, she said:

"Now come, Daphne dear, I want you to tell me all about yourself."

Daphne came two or three steps nearer.

"Come dear, don't be afraid of me. Don't think of me as a mistress,

but just as a friend."

Daphne came up close against her knee, and Miss Sims put her arm

about her waist.

"There. You look sad and homesick. I want you to tell me all your

troubles. Always, will you? Anything that's on your mind, no matter

what it is. If any girl's unkind, or any mistress doesn't understand

you. Always tell me, for already I feel so fond of you."

Perceiving that her pupil's head had dropped a little, as though to

hide a moisture, she pulled her closer by the waist, and let her

pressure speak silently of sympathy and understanding. For quite a

while she held her like that, till Daphne, though grateful and

beginning to reciprocate the affection, was not without an

embarrassment at its rapid progress.

"Promise me you'll let me do all I can for you. I want to do a great

deal. Will you promise me?"

"Yes," muttered Daphne.

Miss Sims pulled her close again; and it would have been difficult to

see how the conversation was to be continued or closured, had not a

high-pitched voice in the passage outside caused Miss Sims to release

the child abruptly.

"There," said she. "We must be getting to the class-rooms." A

disturbance was in her voice. "You help me to carry these exercise

books."

"Miss Sims! Miss Sims!" cried the voice without.

Miss Sims immediately issued from the music room with Daphne

following.

"Here I am, Miss Vidella. Little Daphne Bruno is helping me with

these exercise books. I thought perhaps I had better give her

something to do, lest she should be inclined to mope at all this

first morning."

Miss Vidella was apparently angry about something, and eager to vent

it.

"What a strange idea, Miss Sims! I think there can be no reason why

a child should mope in a school such as mine, where everything is

done to contribute to their happiness. I think it's a strange idea

to put in a child's head. Very unwise. But that's neither here nor

there at the moment. I must ask you to communicate to Miss Mitchell

my exceeding displeasure at what I saw just now." She made suitable

play with her fat hands. "There was Mr. Pulteney calling to hear if

the same pupils were taking the violoncello, as indeed was very

proper of him, and there was Miss Mitchell talking to him in the

hall. I dislike intensely to come down the stairs, and see in the

entrance hall of my school a young man and a young woman talking

together like that. I wish you would convey that impression to Miss

Mitchell. Supposing some one had called at that moment. If she as

music mistress has any communication to make to the visiting music

master, she must make it at the proper time and place. I think I

left that impression on them, however. I gave them one look, and

they went their several ways.... Well, Daphne dear, I hope you are

happy.... Do you like very much your new school?"

"Awfully."

"Awfully! What strange terms these dear children do use! Well,

dear, I think you had better start in Miss Sim's form, the Fourth.

We can examine you, and if you know much more than the others of your

age, we can move you up.... Dear, dear, it is already half-past nine

o'clock. Why doesn't some one ring the bell for First Hour?"

In spite of Daphne's distinguished father, the verdict, after an

examination of her attainments in Miss Sims's class-room, pronounced

that she had but little scholarship, and her intelligence was

apparently unremarkable. In truth, she had but few goods to display

in her window. Her governess, Miss Carrell, had directed her

instruction to achieving popularity with her pupil, and not to her

future academic success. Daphne's knowledge, therefore, was below

the standard of her age, and, more serious consequence, her capacity

for concentration on subjects she disliked was enervated and flabby.

Her failure this morning, while drawing from Miss Sims the becoming

sounds of disappointment, really relieved and delighted the mistress.

Now there was no chance of her favourite being promoted to the form

above. And with Miss Sims, though the thought of cruelty could only

sit under aliases and disguises in her mind, it was always sweeter to

see her favourite in disgrace and hurt than successful and rejoicing.

So she did not minimise Daphne's ignorance when Miss Vidella came in

to hear the report, and to examine such papers as the new girl had

written.

"Strange!" whined the head mistress, as she took off the steel

spectacles with which she had scanned the work. "Strange indeed that

a father of such eminence should have so backward a child. But it is

often the way. Ordinary parents have extraordinary children, and

_vice versa_. Were your grandparents utterly simple, child? Well,

perhaps you don't know. Perhaps one day you will have a little

daughter who will redress the balance. Meantime we must see what we

can make of you, and you must apply yourself studiously. Now do you

return to your seat, dear. You will remain in Miss Sims's form."

With that decision Miss Vidella carried out her stationary bust and

back on her swinging hips; and Miss Sims tapped Daphne on the

shoulder--it was a pleasure to touch the child even thus far--and

murmured, "Never mind. Never mind."

Which rather surprised Daphne, since she had not greatly minded,

being dimly aware that Miss Vidella was acting up to a part, and that

it was a rather pompous and foolish one.

At dinner only French might be spoken. Of French (Daphne was to

learn) Miss Vidella made an enormous feature. She took all French

classes herself, and gave long lectures on French literature, with

special attention to Victor Hugo. They were like perpetual masses,

with Miss Vidella as priestess, in honour of Victor Hugo. On the

strength of having once when eight years of age (so Daphne was told)

sat on Victor Hugo's knee, she considered that her French accent was

perfect and every one else's egregious, and her knowledge of French

literature vast, and every one else's insular and limited. "I wish

to goodness," the elder girls would say before, during, or after a

memorial mass, "that she'd never met the man."

In the afternoon there was talk of a walk. It was the Lent term, and

a walk was the normal recreation. Hockey was in the very first

stages of its adoption by girls' schools, and to hockey Miss Vidella

could never be resigned. Tennis she allowed in the summer term, on

the stipulation that the girls kept their legs well-disciplined. But

in the Christmas and Lent terms, apart from a walk in crocodile

formation, the only athletic pastimes were gymnasium and riding; and

riding was limited to those whose parents paid for it. Riding she

probably allowed because it gave a school such a _tone_; but she

fluttered around it with much care for its propriety. It was not

easy to see the riding master, on his chestnut horse, riding away

with a score of her girls. Had she been able to sit a horse herself,

she would have cantered among them as a chaperon; but she could not,

and none of her governesses were ever likely to be familiar with a

saddle, even if they could be trusted with a riding master, so she

was reduced to being sternly present at the mounting and departure,

to instructing the elder girls to look after one another and their

younger schoolfellows, and to watching the cavalcade as far as the

bend in the road.

With gymnasium it was different; one of her mistresses, or herself on

days of condescension, could accompany the girls and sit in the

spectators' gallery, and ensure that only the seemlier exercises were

performed. Definitely she forbade the "spread-eagle" on the rings,

and the "circle" or the "hock-swing-off" on the horizontal bar, and

the "short-arm-balance" or "long-arm-balance" on the parallel bars.

These circles and balances were only so many gilded somersaults.

When Hemans House had first gone to the Royal Gymnasium in the

Cambridge Road, and Miss Vidella, at first sight of these exercises,

had interdicted them for ever, the instructor had declared:

"The other schools allow them, madam."

And Miss Vidella, from her seat in the gallery, had replied:

"I dare say they do, instructor. In fact, I feel very confident they

do. But the aims of my school are probably different from theirs.

My aim is to turn out little well-bred ladies rather than acrobats

and harlequins."

"Quite so, madam."

And Miss Vidella, conceiving that she had made a good point, dulled

it by making it again.

"None of my children, instructor, are likely to earn their living in

the circus ring."

"No, madam," admitted the instructor, muttering for the amusement of

the nearest girls, "not a dog's chance o' that."

So gymnastics were confined to swinging on the travelling rings or

the bridge-ladder, gentle vaulting over the parallel bars and the

horse (though in this matter there would be a cry of disapproval if

the upward swing of any girl's leg was more unladylike than was

inevitable), and to Indian clubs and dumbbells, which Miss Vidella

considered most rhythmic and refined.

This first afternoon, since neither gymnasium nor riding had begun,

the girls could only go for a crocodile walk, and at the pointed

invitation of Trudy Wayne Daphne paired with her.

On this walk Daphne awoke to the idea that men could be important

before you were grown up. The conversation of the girls in front

danced around the prospects of meeting such and such a man. They

spoke of "The Dandy Fifth," who, Trudy explained, was a young coach

at an army crammer's, and earned his nickname from the waist-line in

his coat, his fawn vest, and his patent-leather boots. And there was

Arthur Belsize, the famous young novelist, whose three books, "The

Homes of Mogador," "The Purple Orchis," and "Dust on the Scaffold,"

had made him a local celebrity second only to the lady in the Castle.

And there was the Holy Innocent, a curate at Holy Innocents Church,

where Hemans House went on Sundays. These gentlemen, Trudy

garrulously explained, were often to be passed in the park, the

novelist, Arthur Belsize, especially, who had a habit of strolling

every afternoon down the Long Walk. "I expect he hopes it'll one day

be called the Belsize Walk," suggested Trudy, "like Addison's Walk at

Oxford." Here, then, was the explanation why the senior girls

whenever possible, led the Hemans House column through the gates into

the Great Park.

Daphne was excited about the chance of seeing Arthur Belsize, not

because he was a young man, but because he was a famous story-writer.

His tale, "The Purple Orchis," since it was based on history, had

been read to Owen and herself by Miss Carrell. It did not occur to

Daphne that, being the daughter of a writer, she had no reason to be

excited about them as a class, because she hardly thought of her

father as an author in this true story-telling sense.

Neither the dandy nor the curate appeared, and the twitter and

chattering of the girls was passing to other subjects, when one of

them discerned the novelist, Arthur Belsize, walking slowly towards

them. A tremor ran down the crocodile from its head girls to the

smaller ones in the neighbourhood of Trudy and Daphne. Daphne put

her head outside the column to see the approaching celebrity, and was

very disappointed. He looked exactly the same as any other young man

who might be seen in a third-class railway carriage.

A silence dropped on the girls. It appeared they had a custom of

readjusting their conversation to the novelist's ear. As soon as he

came within hearing distance they would discuss only (and this rather

loudly) his novels. He was now alongside the column, and the

discussion began.

"I liked 'The Homes of Mogador' best, didn't you?"

"I sent 'The Purple Orchis' to my cousin for her birthday."

"'The Homes of Mogador' wasn't a patch on 'The Purple Orchis.'"

"'The Homes of Mogador' was rot."

"I didn't like 'The Purple Orchis' much, but 'Dust on the Scaffold'

was ripping."

"That's Arthur Belsize."

He passed by, affecting to have heard nothing, though Daphne

suspected that his lips trembled.

To her, who had played with hardly any girl friends in Deseret Road,

this interest in men while your hair was still down your back was an

idea entirely new. That a lover might come to her after she was

eighteen or twenty had, of course, often been in her mind, especially

when she read or listened to the love scenes of a romance. But that

men as a genus, apart from the individual lover, were interesting she

had not grasped, nor that her earlier love stories might be looked

for at once.

When the crocodile had returned from its walk it disintegrated into

its classes for afternoon school. In Miss Sims's room, darkening

behind its Japanese bead curtains, the subject was Latin, a language

of which Daphne knew very little and pronounced that little wrong.

Her quantities were false, Miss Carrell having learned the grammar

after she left Hemans House, and learned it from a book without help

from the spoken word. When Miss Sims arranged her girls in a row

that they might "go up" and "take each other down," she told Daphne

that as a new girl she should be given a start and might go to the

top. Doing even this little for her favourite gave her a mild

pleasure.

"Now, we'll see what you know of Latin grammar. 'I shall love.' Let

us have the future of _Amo_, I love."

The question pleased Daphne because she knew the answer.

"_Ammer-bo_, I shall love, _Ammer-bis, Ammer-bit, Ammer-byemus,

Ammer-bightus_----"

The remaining word was lost in a roar of laughter.

"No, no, no, no," smiled Miss Sims, which amazed Daphne, since she

knew she was right; she could see in her mind's eye the whole page of

Latin Grammar, and there was the future, "_Amabo, amabis, amabit_."

"No, no, no. It's _Amābo_, not _Ammer-bo; Ambimus_, not

_Ammer-byemus_."

At this word the class laughed again and a sudden unreasonable burst

of temper inflamed Daphne. It was the break-through of all her

resentment at the failure of school to satisfy her picture of it; she

felt ready and anxious for some violent rebellion, as once before she

had felt with Miss Durgon. The tears started to her eyes, and this

exposure made her angrier and more defiant.

"Say it again now--properly," ordered Miss Sims.

"_Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis_----"

"Next!" The mistress turned her head to the next girl.

"_Amābo_."

"Go above her." And Daphne went down one place.

Miss Sims had seen the symptoms in her favourite's eyes, and they

produced a curious mixture of pleasure and love. After caressing and

fondling, she enjoyed most (though it disturbed her to think so)

punishing the thing she loved.

"Say it again, and properly, and don't be sulky."

To be told she was sulky was enough to fix Daphne in her obstinacy.

"_Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis_----"

"Next!"

Down went Daphne another place, and the class began to enjoy the game.

"Now say it properly at once."

"_Ammer-bo, Ammer-bis_----"

"Next!"

And a little girl who had been breathlessly rising on her toes said

"Amābo" and went up.

There were eleven girls in the class, and Daphne said "_Ammer-bo_"

ten times till she reached the buffers of the bottom place.

"You're a very naughty little girl," denounced Miss Sims. "You're

the oldest girl in the class, and you're content to be taken down by

those much younger than you. And just to gratify sullenness and

rebellion. You will write out fifty times, 'The second _a_ in Amabo

is long.' And don't let me see anything of you till that is done."

She had visions of herself being cold and haughty with the child, and

of Daphne, whose advances would thus be repelled and bruised,

suffering the tortures of a loved mistress's scorn and finally

breaking in humility at her feet.

After the classes and tea there was an hour before Preparation.

Silent at her desk in Miss Sims's room, now a chattery Common Room,

Daphne wrote twenty times, 'The second _a_ in _amabo_ is long,' and

decided that she had done enough for to-night. Feeling so lonely she

wanted to write to Miss Carrell--even to Owen. She got some of the

note-paper that had been given her to take to school, and began her

letter.

"DEAR MISS CARRELL,

"I hope you got back safely....

(The picture of Miss Carrell getting back to her home and entering

the old rooms made her lip shake.)

"We have been for a lovely walk this afternoon in the park. It was

lovely. We passed Arthur Belsize. I sleep in a room called Eliza

Cook. There is another room called the Frances Burney room. This

afternoon we did Latin. I am going to have my first riding lesson

to-morrow, and I am looking forward to gymnasium. I like school

awfully. What fun it will be when the holidays begin in three

months' time. I must not write much more as I am going to write to

Owen.

"Much love

"From

"Ever your loving

"DUFFY"

"P.S.--Love to Hollins."

CHAPTER VIII

Daphne soon became used to Hemans House, its population and its

practices, and could look back with wonder at the first days of fear.

More than that, the life, for a particular reason, had become flushed

with colour and richness. The one thing needed to lift her hatred

from the school-rooms and the Windsor streets and to throw a glamour

over them had happened: she was possessed by a romantic attachment

for some one whose background they were. Before half-term had

signalised to the girls that the top of the slope had been reached,

and they could now go quickly down hill to the holidays, she knew

that she adored Miss Sims. It had taken some five weeks of the

alternate caresses and punishments, warm intimacy and stern

aloofness, to betray their meaning to Daphne; but once it had broken

on her that she was the object of a popular mistress's favouritism,

she was flattered into reciprocation. The slide from fondness to

love was easy and quick. As with her affection for Miss Carrell, so

now with her adoration of Miss Sims: she loved to think that she

loved. But the later attachment was as much stronger than the

earlier, as Daphne was older, warmer, and more conscious of her sex.

It was an emotion too strong for reticence--except in words; on walks

she fought to be at Miss Sims's side; sometimes she threaded her arm

into the mistress's; and once, when they were right behind all the

others, she rested her head against her shoulder. At gymnasium every

exercise she performed on parallel bars, horizontal bar, or bridge

ladder was done with an eye on the gallery in the hope of impressing

Miss Sims. She suffered the pains of jealousy when Miss Sims

(deliberately) made much of another girl. And her letters home to

Miss Carrell were enthusiastically full of her form mistress. There

was pleasure in writing about her.

But her pains and pleasures were weak compared with those hidden

behind Miss Sims's indulgent smile. As Miss Sims assured herself:

"The child is fond of me--very fond--really devoted, I think. But it

must inevitably be a small return for what I am giving to her. It is

always so with children.... Still, it is happiness to give." She

made a resolution that her influence must be a power for good. She

must be associated in the memory of Daphne Bruno, when that beloved

girl should have grown tall and given herself to a man, with all that

was best in her childhood. She must be the person of whom Daphne

would say: "I really owe everything to her."

And a salient truth of Daphne's schooldays was this, that Miss

Sims--Miss Sims, with her thirty pounds a year and her cubicle with

an iron bed and tin wash-stand; Miss Sims with her high-coloured

make-believes, of which she was half ashamed; Miss Sims with her

thirst for emotion and her squeezing of pupils like sponges for its

sating--_was_ the most of what she resolved to be. Every one is an

expert in the hobby that fills his dreams, and Miss Sims had seen

exactly how her influence could be this "power for good." Her little

worshipper would most surely model herself on her idol, and so Miss

Sims must appear to embody in her own nature all the noble qualities

she would give to Daphne. She created a character in her

imagination, and always acted it before the eyes of her pupil. And

this was the Character: great gentleness masking concealed strength;

a perfect feminine sympathy mingled with a capacity to be stern;

remarkable sensibility to beauty wherever it was to be found, and

thus a passionate love for all the arts, with a predilection for

literature; a taste in dress, and a beautiful serenity in manner.

As a background to the Character, she hinted in her talks with Daphne

at a collateral relationship to a very old family; at reasonable

private means, her present work being done for the love of it, there

being no nobler task; at holidays in romantic places abroad; and, of

course, at a love story of which one did not speak.

In her first holidays Daphne returned home, full of the importance of

a school girl, and talked incessantly of the customs at Hemans House

to Owen, who was not interested, and to her father, who was quite

amused--at least, till he took up his book again. It was his

daughter's tales and imitations of the head mistress that pleased

him--"By Jove! she can see, that child!" Miss Vidella appealed to

the dramatist in him, both as a picturesque character and as a type.

"She belongs to a type that is doomed to pass, Duffy mia. There is

pathos as well as humour in her posing and her prudery. I always

think it's rather sad the way such people imagine they are being

applauded, while all the time they are being laughed at by modern

minds.... However, you'll understand these things later."

One result of this ridicule was that his daughter saw how much better

it was to be on the laughing, rather than the laughable, side of a

dividing line, and that she must therefore join the moderns who

always did the laughing. She was modern. She saw Miss Vidella from

a new angle, and much more clearly, and she determined to carry this

interesting viewpoint back to Hemans House. As a viewpoint it had

much to recommend it: it meant that when Miss Vidella prohibited this

and that--circling over the horizontal bar, or any display of the

feminine leg above the lower calf--she was probably out of date, and

the best way to express one's advance from such rulings was to glory

in their breach.

The only conflict in her mind was how far this healthy insurgence,

imitated from her father, clashed with the obedience and serenity

imitated from Miss Sims. And when she was again under the roof of

Hemans House and the influence of Miss Sims, a settlement of the

conflict was found to be very necessary. So on a walk to the tennis

fields, when the mistress and her favourite had dropped behind the

girls, she sidled up to the subject.

"Father says Miss Vidella is out of date, and so are all her ideas."

"H'm. Your father is doubtless a representative of extremely modern

minds."

"So'm I."

Miss Sims laughed, provoking Daphne to defend herself.

"Well, she is rather absurd."

"Hush, dear," said Miss Sims, for the Character was nothing if not

loyal. "Miss Vidella's aims are of the highest, and there's a lot to

be said for the kind of woman she tries to produce--modest,

controlled, and quiet.... But I do think that perhaps she doesn't

make sufficient allowance for the heyday in the blood of youth.

Probably the animal spirits ought to express themselves sometimes in

a little wildness and tomboyishness--so long as these things go with

affectionateness--and with high ideals. Later, when one has

experienced the disillusions of life, it will be time to acquire a

tranquil resignation."

This was an excellent verdict. For sympathy and sense there had been

no one before quite like Miss Sims. Everything had now fallen into

place. Daphne saw that she could postpone the final serenity till

she had grown up and passed through the fire. She was thus at

liberty to express the modernity of her intellect, as compared with

Miss Vidella's, by flagrant breaches of Miss Vidella's rules.

The first time she displayed it was at the gymnasium. She hung it

out, so to speak, on the horizontal bar.

It was a morning when the head mistress herself was in the gallery

watching carefully through her spectacles. The girls had been

vaulting backwards over the parallel bars, and Daphne, when her turn

came, had swung herself with such ardour that the oblique line of her

body was rather from her legs down to her head than from her head

down to her legs--a position which Miss Vidella stipulated must be

guarded against in this dangerous exercise. Her legs had just swung

down again on to the mat when she heard the high-pitched voice coming

from the gallery top like the voice of a bird from a tree. All eyes

had turned towards it.

"Instructor! Instructor!"

The instructor made a grimace, seen only of the girls, and called

back: "Yes, madam."

Miss Vidella made her favourite point.

"Instructor, I take it this is a place for teaching young ladies a

becoming deportment, and not for training circus clowns."

"Yes, madam," agreed the instructor.

"Well, will you kindly correct them when they forget it? ... Daphne

dear, come here." Daphne approached a little way, and Miss Vidella,

leaning forward with her hands on the balustrade, like some preacher

who must deliver his sermon sitting, explained to her: "You must

remember, dear, that it is the glory of human beings that their head

is usually above their feet. With cows, and ruminant animals

generally, the head is often on the same level as the hoofs. But it

is only serpents and apes in the trees, I take it, which have a

tendency to progress with their heads in a lower sphere than their

other members. Now go back and remember that. All right, dears, you

can resume your exercises."

The public rebuke rankled in Daphne; so the minute the lesson was

over, and the girls were trooping to the dressing-room to change

their rubber shoes, and Miss Vidella was managing with some

difficulty the little hidden staircase from the gallery to the

ground, she ran to the horizontal bar and circled it four or five

times. Having thus liberated her resentment and proclaimed her faith

before the other girls, she ran, very red and breathless, to the

dressing-room.

It was uncommonly pleasant, this feeling of emancipation and this

expressing of it before her schoolfellows. Her riding lesson gave

her another opportunity. One day when their horses were gathered

outside the gates of Hemans House, and the girls were mounting, she

tried for a second to sit astride her horse, that she might see what

it felt like and appear daring. But it was surprisingly difficult,

with her skirt, to change from the side-saddle position to the

astride. As she got her leg over the horse's withers the skirt went

right above her knees, and she was in these difficulties when Miss

Vidella came out on to the pavement to review the parade.

"Daphne! What _are_ you doing?"

"Mounting, Miss Vidella," stuttered Daphne, who had struggled back to

the correct position.

"Do you generally climb over the horse to mount it? Or are you up to

some of your monkey tricks again? Riding master, have you observed

that Miss Bruno is mountaineering on her horse in the public street?

But, of course, I know you cannot have done so, for you are always so

careful with your pupils. Please keep Miss Bruno in front of you all

the way, or there's no knowing what strange contortions she may not

attempt."

The riding master, annoyed, said nothing, but examined the riders,

touched his horse and led the cavalcade away. Daphne was just in

front of him, and immediately they were out of the head mistress's

view she pretended to scream with laughter, thinking this would

divert the riding master, who, like all the outside instructors, was

inclined to make fun of Miss Vidella. But, to her surprise, he

called out:

"Come on, Miss Bruno! Sit properly at once. You've been foolish

enough already to-day. I'm not taking out a chain of Margate

donkeys; and I shall report you to Miss Vidella. Come here and ride

beside me."

Daphne felt foolish at the failure of her jest, and, very flushed,

came and rode by the master's side with a beating heart. With all

her fancied insurgence she was still a little afraid of Miss Vidella

and her black-rimmed spectacles and whining sarcasm. When the horses

arrived back at Hemans House gates she watched the movements of the

riding master, whether he would go in and see Miss Vidella or wait

for her to emerge from the garden wall. But he only turned towards

herself, and, as though softened by her long silence, smiled.

"All right, kiddy, I shan't report you. And one of these days you'll

be able to ride astride. In my opinion they'll all be doing it one

day. But at present we must do what we're told."

"Yes," murmured Daphne. "Thank you very much."

It became quite a custom for her to entertain the gymnasium girls

with three or four guilty circles on the horizontal bar while Miss

Vidella was descending the gallery stairs. Sometimes she managed six

or seven of the forbidden things before rushing, red as a beet-root,

to the dressing-room. Here she looked serene and innocent when the

head mistress appeared and sounded some variant of "Come along,

dears. I feel sure your healthy exercises have engendered an

appetite for your dinners."

But one morning, by some failure in her swing, she did not complete

her fifth backward circle, and was left hanging over the bar like a

bolster thrown over a rail. Time was short; Miss Vidella's feet must

be on the last few stairs; so she straightened her body on the bar,

and was just about to drop behind it to her feet, when she saw Miss

Vidella standing at the dressing-room door and watching her through

her spectacles, chin slightly uptilted. The sight so unnerved her

that instead of swinging backwards she swung forwards, her head

falling like the clapper of a bell, and the weight of her body

flinging her legs in an arc through the air. Her hands retained a

panicky hold of the bar, but her feet struck the mattress and its

coco-fibre mat with a jarring impact. A little giddily she stood on

the mat and wondered what to do. If only Miss Vidella had not stood

across the dressing-room door she would have flown through it and

drowned her confusion in the business of unlacing her shoes. But now

she could only stand on the mat beneath the bar and stare at the head

mistress, while the head mistress stood in front of the dressing-room

and stared at her. Girls peeped behind.

"What are you doing, Daphne?"

"Nothing."

"What were you doing on that bar?"

"I only just did a circle or two."

"And do you call that nothing?"

Clearly "Yes" was not the right answer, and "No" was incriminating,

so Daphne stood on the mat and gave no answer at all.

"Come here."

She approached.

"Did you"--seemingly Miss Vidella could not bring herself to name the

offence--"do that thing because it was against my express orders?"

The true answer, "Yes," was somewhat too dangerous to be employed, so

Daphne said "No." Politeness required no less.

"Then why did you do that thing?"

In Daphne's head was a foggy conception of modern minds enfranchising

themselves, and a phantasmagoria of related ideas, out of which came

nothing more remarkable than:

"I thought I should like to."

(It was, perhaps, modernism in its simplest expression.)

"And why should you like to do it?"

"I don't know."

"I will tell you. It can only have been out of a spirit of

deliberate evil-minded rebellion, or it was because you have a

natural liking for the buffoonery of the uncivilised which you are

too weak to suppress." It was humiliating to hear one's strength

called weakness, and Daphne wished she had the courage to plead

loudly that hers had been the evil-minded rebellion through and

through. "You are one who must be trained, not by liberty and

encouragement, but by restraint and correction. Get on your shoes.

You shall not visit the gymnasium or the tennis field for a

fortnight. Both places are too beset with opportunities for the

outlandish contortions that so appeal to you. A walk each afternoon

instead will perhaps teach you that it is perfectly possible to

exercise every muscle of the body in the upright position, and all

other contortions can be left to the jungle and----" Here Miss

Vidella's sarcasm ran out. "Get changed. I fail to see why these

dear girls here should be kept waiting for their lunches by you."

Daphne passed sullenly to her shoes and pulled them on viciously.

She was being persecuted and enjoying it. And as she walked home

with Trudy Wayne she was so ostentatiously noisy (this being her

indirect claim to the "deliberate rebellion") that Miss Vidella

called:

"Daphne, come back and walk alone behind me. You hardly seem to

understand that you are in disgrace. Gertrude dear, I wonder at your

encouraging her."

By this time, in Miss Vidella's mind, there was both a flabby dislike

and a faint fear of the Bruno child. Recently she had acquainted

herself with some of the father's books, and while wondering what

much of them meant, grasped enough to feel uncomfortably that the

great man probably ridiculed her ideas and her methods. And now,

gnawed by the fear that Daphne Bruno might have heard and believed

this ridicule, she determined to humiliate the child into a sense of

her own simplicity and foolishness. The backwardness shown in

Daphne's work on paper provided plenty of opportunities, though the

child's quickness in _viva voce_ work, and her skill and rushing

imagination when anything had to be made--a poem, or a map, or a clay

model--sometimes reminded Miss Vidella that her genuine opinion was

very different. But for the good of all, and lest she spread her

doctrines, Daphne Bruno must be discredited and kept down. She often

came, therefore, into Miss Sims's class-room, and on examining the

pupils' exercises, deplored the poverty of Daphne Bruno's.

"And this is the girl who thinks she knows better than any of us, and

is so sure of her right judgment that she allows herself to do things

just because she likes to. Go to your seat, child. When you can

construe a simple piece of Latin we shall perhaps consider whether or

not we will revise the rules of this school to suit your little

fancies."

Daphne rather liked this bullying. It gave her the pleasure of

mildly hating Miss Vidella as once she had hated Miss Durgon; and it

enabled her to act in front of Miss Sims the tranquil resignation of

a martyr, or in front of her class-fellows the fine, furious flash of

a tragedienne. Also it justified and increased her love of the

sympathetic governess; and she was keen on making a good thing of

this.

Mr. Tenter Bruno, in these days, was prospering; and his mercury,

though never free from fluctuations, was generally high. He was very

satisfied, and something of radiance could be seen in his face and

manner. In this, his fifty-third year, his brown beard was turning

grey, and his hair receding from his fine forehead, but his figure in

its grey suit was as neat as it had been at twenty. For some time he

had considered that the house in Deseret Road lacked the necessary

picturesqueness. It was a moot point whether one's books and fame

were not injured by an address in the suburbs. His readers ought to

be able to imagine him in some quaint old habitation, set down in

green and lonely places. Besides, such a move from London into the

quiet was always good copy for the paragraphists. And, to the

delight of Daphne and Owen, when they returned from their schools, he

suddenly announced, as a complete surprise, his purchase of Old Hall

House, between Wivelsfield and Ditchling Common in Sussex. It was

not far from their former cottage, and their old gardener Eadigo,

still hearty, was coming into permanent residence.

"When shall we go? When shall we go?" demanded his daughter.

"These very holidays, of course," smiled Mr. Bruno, delighted at the

success of his surprise.

And in August when they moved there, he was happy in watching Daphne

as, excited to see what the house was like (though she had declared

she could remember it), she hung out of the carriage that was

rattling them to its gates. When the carriage stopped, he saw the

house anew through her eyes: a rectangular place of two stories,

roofed in Horsham stone, with a new wing jutting out at right angles

towards the road. The whole place was perhaps disappointingly near

the road, and the low railing that separated the lawns and drive from

the travellers to Ditchling was a little--finicking. But this

weakness could be forgiven, when you looked at Old Hall House itself,

with its mossed roof, its disorderly outbuildings, and its setting of

silent country, closed in the diminishing distance by blue and

shadowed downs.

Within doors, round about a square hall, rather dark, were three

large, low-ceiled sitting-rooms, and a red kitchen with an undulating

floor. Above these, up an oak staircase, were seven or eight

bedrooms; and in the new wing, a room for Daphne, and a room for

Owen, with a great chamber underneath that should be their privy

playground. The servants had a staircase of their own leading to

bedrooms in the back parts.

This segregation of children in the north and servants in the east

Mr. Bruno had imagined would secure for him that ideal silence which

he had yet to find in this plane of existence. In the sitting-room

to the left of the entrance-hall he arranged his study furniture and

his unnumbered books. But it was a grievous blow, and one that shook

his household for weeks, when he learned that there was not one of

the sitting-rooms but heard every sound in the house. The movements

in the hall came through the walls, the staircase squeaking like an

animal when anybody walked on it; the noises in the kitchen came

through the shrunk oak doors; and if the maids were cleaning the

bedroom above, their sweepings and voices, even their actual words,

came through the low-pitched ceiling to Mr. Bruno, and his groans and

exclamations (he imagined and hoped) went up to them. It was

damnable.

He didn't know what to do. The paying of the mountainous bills

created by the purchase, the alterations and the move had resolved

him to live quietly for some time, and save money on postage stamps

and tobacco. He would not--though his own mind saw clearly and

humorously the weak logic--he simply would not--spend another

half-penny in making his study sound-proof. Instead, if there was a

clatter in the kitchen, or a step, unmuted, on the vile staircase, he

got up, opened his door, and put out his head with a diffident and

over-courteous request that whatever was being done might be

postponed till the afternoon; if the noise was in the bedroom above,

he pushed back his chair that he might knock on the ceiling with a

stick; till, at last (much to his amusement in the midst of his

irritation), he would hear the scurry of the maids, or the guilty

silence in the kitchen, directly his chair was pushed back. That

push-back of his chair, if done viciously enough, could turn the

house into a sepulchre.

After several weeks of encouraging economies, however, he decided

that the young maids (who rather appealed to him) had a right to

laugh and be noisy and even sing at their sweeping; and he spent

fifty pounds on sound-proofing his room.

For Daphne the memorable thrill of this first summer holiday in Old

Hall House was something quite independent of its fascinating rooms

and the undiscovered country around. Or perhaps not so independent

of their romance as she thought. In Owen's bedroom she learned that

he had developed a taste for "penny dreadfuls." She saw a pile of

the things, with their vivid picture-covers, on the top of his

chest-of-drawers. The first of them, whose cover showed a gay

highwayman in scarlet cape, three-cornered hat, and lace neckwear,

firing a bell-mouthed pistol into the face of a black and bulbous Bow

Street Runner, she read in her own room. From that day her

imagination, like a city that had thrown open its gates, was yielded

to Dick Turpin. Eagerly she selected all the rest that dealt with

the handsome blade, and found twenty-three. She spent the best week

of her life, up to that point, reading these twenty-three stories one

after another.

She took all twenty-three and her inflated enthusiasm back to Hemans

House, and introduced the enthusiasm and one of the books to Trudy

Wayne. Trudy, having read one tale, borrowed the whole twenty-three,

and succumbed to the highwayman.

This common interest strengthened the friendship of the two girls,

and marked the moment when Daphne, though a year younger, began to

dominate the partnership. From her imagination came the idea that,

on their walks, they should be Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard. Miss

Vidella, with her black clothes and her corpulence and her piggish

ways, was obviously the head of the Bow Street Runners--or a Bloody

Assize judge. It was incumbent on Trudy and herself to organize into

an Outlaw Society. This was to have been called a "Hate Society,"

but memories of Miss Sims's gentleness limited the name to "The

Dislike Society." During riding lessons, Daphne on her mild bay pony

trotting or cantering beside the troop of girls, was really galloping

Black Bess, with the Runners hard behind. In gymnasium, when she ran

and vaulted over the horse, she was really Dick Turpin leaping a

hedge or a toll-gate to escape his pursuers. If she was kept in, the

class-room became a Newgate cell anterior to Tyburn, and her

dismissal after half an hour's detention was a dashing escape amid

the cheers of her followers who were waiting at the prison gates.

Beneath her sheet and blankets in the Eliza Cook room, she had really

taken to the heather and was sleeping in a cloak under the stars.

"Wouldn't it be ripping," she exclaimed to Trudy one day, "if we

could spend a holiday together, and play Dick Turpin on some real

lonely road?"

And as she said that, there flashed into her mind the very scene

where such a drama could be staged. Good heavens! It was perfect!

Ditchling Common. Strangely, it spread itself before her, not as she

had just left it, under summer, but as she had seen it in May one

morning of her earliest childhood, when it must have hit her

imagination far more vividly than she had known; Ditchling Common

with a mauve haze of bluebells over its coarse grass, shot here and

there with the yellow of buttercups; the ribbon of road switchbacking

over the successive brows to the humpy bridge above the railway line;

the wavy horizon of downs, bare save for two windmills on the west; a

hawk--how well she remembered watching it--hovering above the common.

There were dwarfed gorse bushes, like black patches on the stretching

grass, and taller shrubs of entangled blackberry. And, most

wonderful of all, at the entrance to the common was a white gate like

a toll-gate, and just beyond it Jacob's Post. Jacob's Post was a

real gibbet, with a cock at its top bearing the date 1734 to tell

when last a man had hanged there.

"Coo, what a fool I am! Trudy, you should see Ditchling Common near

me. It's absolutely the spot. Oh, you must come and stay with us

next summer. I'm sure father'll agree, and we'll make Owen play too."

This plan, thenceforward, was a never-failing spring of conversation.

For Trudy there was no taste of doubt in the merry cup. Daphne was

just aware of a lurking anxiety lest, ten months hence, they would

have forgotten all about Dick Turpin, or, alternatively, their

undying friendship would have died.

CHAPTER IX

Daphne was right in fearing that the influence of the highwayman

would abate with the months, but wrong in doubting the endurance of

her friendship with Trudy Wayne. This didn't expire, for the simple

reason that she set herself to keep it at a sufficient heat. And

when the next summer term drew towards the golden August that was to

bring Trudy to Old Hall House, she as deliberately exhumed Dick

Turpin, guessing that, did they but read the old romances once more,

their imaginations would be snatched up again by the inspiring

highwayman.

A mellow evening, the fourth of August, she climbed into a trap,

driven by Eadigo, and was taken to meet Trudy at Hayward's Heath

station. Why her eager anticipations should make her a little afraid

of meeting Trudy she didn't know, but it was a disturbing fact, as

the train rolled in, that her heart was faintly answering its noise

and speed. Only a few passengers alighted here, the most being

travellers to Brighton; so Trudy was quickly seen. Daphne ran

towards her, followed without enthusiasm by Eadigo. Trudy, too, one

could see, was rather shy of the strange station and all her

circumstances, but she cloaked it with an ostentatious

self-possession, talking much as she mounted the trap. Eadigo drove

off silently, and Daphne felt a pity for the old man because the six

weeks in front of him were the same as the six weeks before. His

silence and phlegm made her look at Trudy, after which they both had

fits of giggling.

Miss Carrell welcomed the visitor in the dining-room.

"Well, I hope, Trudy--may I call you that?--you'll have a very happy

holiday with us. I'm sorry Mr. Bruno is away.... It's very nice for

Duffy to have you with her, I'm sure. Owen, come here and say

how-do-you-do to Duffy's friend."

Owen these holidays had brought back from his preparatory school a

new and (one would have thought) quite uncharacteristic tendency to

laborious humour. It involved his addressing of Hollins as

"Herbert," and his sister as "Casabianca." And now he bowed till his

head was aligned with his waist, and extended a hand. Trudy took it,

and inquired:

"How do you do?"

"I don't," answered Owen.

This strange new growth in her brother was in the process of being

discouraged by Daphne.

"It's not funny," she said.

"Sorry. Heaps of ajoppolies," answered Owen.

"Daphne wanted you to share her bedroom," interrupted Miss Carrell,

"so I've arranged it for you both."

"Oh, how ripping!" exclaimed Trudy.

"That'll be monstrous fine," said Owen.

In their beds that night the two girls arranged plans for the next

day till the clock on the stairs sounded midnight.

"Coo, you wait till I show you Ditchling Common," Daphne rattled on.

"The road lies like a white ribbon, all up and down, from the

Toll-gate to Ditchling. There's one big clump of blackberry that I

call the Observation Post, because it's at the top of a brow, and you

can see all the way to the next brow and beyond that to the railway

bridge. So you could see any one approaching half a mile away, and

give warning to your confederates hidden lower down the road."

The clock struck midnight, and the conversation swung suitably to the

age of the house in which they slept, and whether it was haunted. It

had not occurred to Daphne that it was till this moment, but now she

romanced about eerie noises and panels that rang hollow.

Immediately after breakfast the next day all three hurried to the

common. Daphne as guide, walked importantly ahead, leading the

others through the white gate, and longing for the moment when Trudy

should see the gibbet. The common lay before them in summer dress:

the thistles high by the flying road, the grass tall and bearded

where it mingled with bracken and rushes, and over the dusty highway

and the disorderly herbage the sunlight quivering in a diaphanous

haze. A few slow cows pastured in a hollow, and cocks and hens

picked the green about Jacob's Post.

Trudy's interest in this gibbet was even more than one desired; in

fact, there was some difficulty in getting her away till she had

properly fixed upon her imagination the picture of a felon suspended

there. It was already nine o'clock.

"Come on," said Owen. "We dine at half-past one."

The games were conducted just as Daphne had planned them. Owen was

sent away to reappear as a traveller a quarter of a mile up the road;

the girls put on black masks and held six-penny pistols; and Daphne

went and lay behind the tall clump of blackberry called the

Observation Post, while Trudy threw herself under some gorse lower

down the highway. It was for Daphne to signal Owen's appearance in

the distance. While she waited for him she selected any blackberries

that showed a trace of ripeness, and ate the trace. Also she sucked

and chewed grass, for Owen did not appear for a long time; there was

nothing but a cart coming from Ditchling. She did not guess that

Owen had been seized by the ingenious idea of approaching under the

lee of the cart--such a thing was against the whole spirit of the

game. Nevertheless, when the cart had passed in front of her he

emerged from his cover with a shriek of triumph and raced down the

hill towards Trudy. Leaping up angrily, she gave the pre-arranged

signal, which meant that Owen had been spotted in the distance--and

followed him as he ran past Trudy.

"Oh, the fool!" she grumbled, and called after him: "It's not funny,

if you think it is." And to Trudy, before whom she stopped with this

news of Owen's appearance: "He always must show off."

Owen turned round and came back with a victor's smile.

"You'll spoil it all if you want to be cocky," she grumbled. "Why

can't you ever play sensibly?"

Having treated himself to one whimsical effort, Owen promised to play

sensibly, and for the rest of the morning the games unrolled as they

should. The walk home was a-clatter with tongues.

By early afternoon they were standing again on the road by the

Observation Post, and deliberating how to vary the play, when Owen

said: "Hist! Wait!" He had seen two specks coming with a curious

velocity over the crown of the railway bridge. Two men--or two boys,

since they were probably racing, and men didn't do such things.

"Hist! Hist! Sister Anne, sister Anne, I see some one coming."

"It's not funny.... Who are they?"

"I see two men running, and a cloud of dust."

With imaginations pleasantly troubled the girls looked towards the

far-off but quickly approaching figures.

"Let's stop 'em, whoever they are," suggested Owen.

"Don't be an ass. We can't if we don't know them."

"Why not? If they're boys they won't mind. And we're three to their

two."

"It would be rather ripping," reflected Daphne, while the others

watched for her to give the last word. "I tell you what. You wait

here behind the Observation Post, Owen, and as soon as they come near

enough for you to see if they're boys and attackable, you signal

'Yes'--make a Y with your arms--and then come and join us lower down

behind the gorse. Then we really will hold them up."

Daphne and Trudy ran to the gorse and fell prone behind it. This

real holding up of unknown wayfarers on the high road was a completer

thrill than any of the mock adventures. It affected Daphne with an

emptying sensation below the waist, and shook the hand with which she

was hurrying on her mask and cocking her pistol. And when Owen made

a Y of his body and arms, and she knew that they were committed to

the deed, and that the moments before its accomplishment were fast

escaping, her heart began to pound with a delicious fear.

Breathlessly Owen joined them, falling to his stomach with the

announcement: "Two boys. One rather big." All watched the brow for

the first of the boys to appear.

"I'll leap out," whispered Owen, who seemed to have none of that

faint anxiety to be quit of the business that was troubling Daphne,

"and you'd better follow me.... Look alive! Here's Number One."

Daphne looked up from her ground level and saw a figure on the brow

outlined against the glazed sky. As he came down the slope she saw

with surprise that he was in just such running attire as the

competitors wore in the University Sports at Queen's Club: white vest

with coloured ribbon edging the sleevelets and the button-opening;

very short white shorts edged with the same ribbon; white socks and

black rubber shoes. His fists were at his breast, and his dark hair

blowing untidily. The figure, while clearly a young boy's, was tall

and beautifully shaped--from the shoulder-line to the rounded thighs

with their muscles astir. In the few seconds of his coming Daphne

felt that vague agitation which beauty gave; it was but the germ of

the pleasure felt by adults in the presence of a Praxitelean statue,

and as unmindful of sex, and it was not only the lines of his body

that had disturbed her, but the way he had come over the brow in the

sun's light.

"Now!" cried Owen.

All three leapt out and stood across the road. The tall boy was so

startled at this apparition of three masked bravoes in his path that

he stopped suddenly, and, slipping on one foot, nearly fell.

"Damn and blast!" he muttered. "What the deuce are you playing at?"

"Your money or your life," said Daphne.

He was looking at her; first at her mouth and chin, then at the eyes

that were staring at him through the mask; then at her disarrayed

hair; then up and down her body. He smiled grimly, and as if it were

impossible to insult a girl, turned towards Owen and said:

"Look here, I'm going to give you a lamming."

A younger boy, also in running clothes, had now come up and stopped.

Owen retreated a step or two, but the bigger boy seized his wrist and

twisted it right round.

"Don't!" commanded Daphne, pleased with this opportunity of being

heroic.

Taking no notice of her orders, the boy twisted her brother's arm

again, and Daphne promptly hit him a heavy blow with the butt of her

pistol on the bone of his wrist.

"God----!" he began, but controlled the curse, and out of respect for

the girl dropped Owen.

"It's a game," explained Daphne. "We thought you'd see the joke."

"That bally thing of yours hurts. I don't see why you should hit me

with it just because, being a girl, you know I shan't give you a

lamming. Others would."

This angered Daphne. It was the unfairest accusation that she had

taken cover behind her sex. The thought had not been in her mind at

all, and the suggestion of it made her pluck look like cowardice.

"Oh, I never thought of that at all," she protested. "You can have a

shot at giving me a lamming if you like."

With his grim smile the boy seized her wrist and turned it

strongly--but not too strongly. Daphne set her teeth and

deliberately looked defiance into his eyes. He stared commandingly

into hers. And holding her thus captive, though still with a hint of

gentleness, he suddenly whipped off her mask and put it behind his

back.

"Don't!" she shouted. "Give that back to me. It's mine."

"No, I shan't!"

With her spare arm she reached round him to recover her property.

Her arm was now about his waist, but the feel of his body, thinly

covered by the vest, neither raised a blush nor intruded diffidence.

She only fumbled for her mask while the boy looked down upon her,

grinning confidently and enigmatically.

"Rescue!" shouted Owen, and he and Trudy rushed for his sister.

"Get away, you little worm!" said the tall boy, letting go of his

captive--while Owen got away. The boy seemed to give himself to

thought, looking now at Daphne and now at the mask, which he drew

away as she tried to snatch it. Then he turned to his companion. "I

say, Cyril, we might get these kids to join us.... We were training

when you barged in. But we've an idea to start paper-chasing or

something." He looked at Owen. "I say, Face-ache, what are you

called, and what are your sisters' names? You do look a guy in that

mask."

"They're not my sisters," answered Owen, a thought over-awed, and

removing his mask. "At least, only one of them."

"Well, which one, fool? Introduce us properly."

"This one."

The tall boy looked a little shyly at the girl whose wrist he had

twisted and whose arm had held him tight about the waist.

"And what's her name?"

"Duffy--or Daphne--Daphne Bruno."

"Comic names. Still"--he bowed gallantly though yet shyly--"very

happy to make your acquaintance.... Now the other one, Fifth of

November."

"Trudy Wayne, who's staying with Duffy for the hols."

"That's like Cyril.... Where's Cyril? Come here, man. This is

Cyril Evans. He's my cousin, and he's coming up to Sillborough next

term.... Now we all know where we are."

"But you haven't told us your name yet," pointed out Daphne, not the

least shyly, and sucking the wrist he had twisted.

"Nor I have. It's Muirhead--Roger Muirhead.... However, that'll do

for that. Let's get on with this game you're playing.... Cyril,

look here man, we'll pick sides, and as I'm the biggest, I'll only

have one of these people, and you can have the other two. And, as

I'm only to have one, I'll pick first."

He went through an elaborate pantomime of indecision, looking each of

them up and down, as if appraising their adroitness or speed. And,

rather casually, he smiled his decision at Daphne.

"I'll have this one. I forget your name--Duffy Something, wasn't it?"

"Bruno."

"Of course.... Righto! The Bruno-Muirhead Combine against the

world. Cyril, you take your crowd a half a mile or so back along the

road, and I bet none of you get through us two. If a single one of

you gets as far as Jacob's Post, your side's won. D'you see?"

"Yes, man."

"Well, nip off your way, and we'll go ours. Come on--Duffy." He

coloured as he used the name.

Roger and she stepped off the roadway on to the grass, and they were

about to cross a stretch made dirty with the large droppings of kine,

when Cyril called out: "Mind the cowslips!"

Trudy giggled; Owen too, for it was humour after his heart, if a

trifle daring; but Roger, to every one's surprise, swung round and,

running after Cyril, who immediately began to escape, tried to give

him a punitive kick.

"You know you don't talk like that in front of girls," he muttered

breathlessly.

"It was nothing much," Cyril grumbled.

"Well, much or not, don't say that sort of thing in front of girls

unless you want your behind kicked. Now clear out.... Come on,

Duffy." And he led her away with the silence of a man who has just

shown his chivalry and his power. No heed gave he, though

undoubtedly hearing Cyril's "Sidey swine!" and Daphne felt she must

suggest, "But supposing your cousin won't play now?"

"He'll play if he's told to," said Roger.

Roger, now that he was alone in a wilderness with his partner,

appeared a little awkward. He had difficulty in finding anything to

say; and Daphne, to ease him, ran merrily to the gorse screen and

flung herself prone upon the ground behind it. Roger stood for a

minute and looked down upon her.

"You're longer than I thought when you lie like that.... How old are

you?"

He sat down.

"Thirteen!"

"Is that all? I should have, thought you were fourteen at least.

I'm--I'm fifteen. We're both on the long side, aren't we?"

"You look quite sixteen."

"Do I? Yes, people generally think I'm older than I am." He lay

down on his arm beside her. "Do you live near here?"

Daphne answered this and several other questions, while Roger

listened, masticating one blade of grass after another and throwing

them away as they were drained of their pleasure. He seemed given to

thinking long on all he heard. In his turn he explained that he was

the only son of Sir Roger Muirhead, "of the Muirhead Traders, you

know," and that they had just bought the Downway House on the

Plumpton side of the common, "partly for holidays, and partly as a

spec." When Daphne asked if he would one day be "Sir Roger," he

replied vaguely, "I daresay."

"And did you say Sillborough was your school? I think Owen's

supposed to be going there."

"Yes, I've been there over a year." And rather pretentiously he

added, "I must show your brother round when he comes, and look after

him a bit."

The talk failing here, Daphne pretended to look for signs of Cyril

and his party, but Roger, apparently anxious that she should not

elude his conversation, said: "Oh, they won't be in sight for some

time yet.... Look here, here's your mask. I'm sorry I took it."

"No, you can have it," demurred Daphne, touched by his apology. "I

can easily make another."

"Oh, well. Perhaps I'll keep it, then.... I hope I didn't hurt you

when I twisted your arm like that, but you dared me to, didn't you?"

"Oh, not a bit."

When the words had left her she knew, somehow, that she had said them

wrong; with too much contempt, or with insufficient appreciation of

his courtesy. She had very slightly bruised his self-esteem. There

was no doubt that, if he was very chivalrous, he was also rather

conceited and pompous.

"I could have done so, of course," he explained, "but I didn't want

to. I was only shamming."

By now his manner had stirred the suspicion, and it was accompanied

by just such a pleasant emptying sensation as she had experienced

when awaiting the adventure, that he was attracted by her. She

looked for a swift second at his face, hoping he would not trap the

glance, but his eyes were towards her, and she swept hers past his.

His were brown eyes, rather small, perhaps, but when the enigmatic

grin was at his lips, they twinkled mischievously. This moment, as

she took them in her sweep, they were thoughtful. She continued the

motion of her head, pretending that it had all been done to ease her

neck. Her eyes fell upon his extended legs, of which the left was

crossed over the right. They were bare--bare and very shapely. With

a laugh she turned her face back to his and asked: "Aren't you

awfully cold?"

"No, I never feel the cold much. I've purposely inured myself to it,

like the Spartans, you know.... I'm awfully keen on the Greeks, and

their ideas about athletics, and so on.... Look here, we'd better

arrange our plan of campaign. You'll catch your school-friend and

I'll have young Cyril in two twos, and then I'll chase after your

kiddy brother."

"Oh, you'll catch Owen all right----"

"By Jove, here they are!"

He slipped into a position ready to run.

"Now!" commanded he.

Out he shot, and with his fine strides soon ran Cyril down. Daphne

took longer to secure Trudy. Owen rushed past and ran delightedly

towards the gibbet. Roger set off in pursuit with a long,

unworrying, relentless pace that was probably intended for the gaze

of Daphne. Daphne watched him with that partiality which comes from

the prospect of seeing the humiliation of a relative, especially one

who tries to be clever. It was quickly over. Roger brought back his

prey after the fashion of a policeman, one hand holding his collar,

the other his wrist.

In all the games that filled that afternoon save one, Roger contrived

to secure Daphne for his partner. The exception was when Daphne

said, "_No_, I'm going with Cyril now," and Roger looking

nonplussed--even hurt, as at the shattering of a dream--refused, of

his courtesy, to force Daphne against her will. Of his courtesy,

too, he was gracious and gay with his new partner, Trudy. At the

afternoon's close, they agreed to meet early the following morning.

The last game was spread all over the western side of the common, for

Daphne, with Roger to chivy every one off, had to reach Jacob's Post

without being so much as touched by Cyril, Trudy or Owen. She ran

diagonally and zigzag, and Roger with his long legs ran all round

her, intercepting any who threatened her. They could not pass him

and abandoned hope.

Throughout the evening, when they were playing table-games in the

great play-room at Old Hall House, she was as noisy and skilful as

Owen or Trudy, but she had moments of wool-gathering when she

wondered about many things. She would have liked to escape to an

empty room, there to walk up and down with her friendly questions.

The once or twice that they played a guessing game and she was

outside the closed door, she let her thoughts run to the subject that

called them. Yes, for a little while he _had_ been--he _was_----

But why? She felt like a child--of a different order, almost, from

him. He was so mature and majestic (these were not Daphne's words,

who had less words than blindfolded thoughts), and strong and

proficient. But he was, for a little. She could not doubt it.

Incredible. Nothing would come of it, nothing _could_ come of it.

It had only been a momentary attraction. Still, she _could_--oh,

yes, it gave her that curious, delightful emptying when she imagined

it--she _could_ love him very much. He was, of course, the very

perfection of her idea of a lover; not faultless, but exactly what

_she_ would like. Every one else she could think of seemed less than

he. But it wouldn't be ... it wouldn't be.... She would hold

herself in and wait on the future.

Soon after nine the next morning they were waiting by the Observation

Post and looking down the Plumpton Road for Roger and Cyril. A

hooded cart rumbled towards them, and when it passed their gathering,

dropped from its tailboard, as it might have been two bundles, Roger

and Cyril. They were very differently dressed from yesterday. Roger

wore a suit of grey flannel, apparently new-bought for the holidays,

royal blue socks and brown shoes, a plum-coloured tie, and his dark

hair plastered down. Though still a comely boy, he looked rather

more ordinary than he had done in his running kit.

"We'll toss for partners to-day," said he hurriedly, lest any one

suggested something else. "Cyril and I being the two eldest males

had better pick." Tossing up a coin he turned to Cyril. "You call,

man."

Cyril won, and chose Trudy. And throughout the day it so fell that,

whenever they tossed, Daphne always fell to Roger's share. The first

time he won he paraded doubt before choosing her, and the second time

said casually: "Ah, well, best stick to the old firm." They played

all the morning and all the afternoon, having tea as guests of a

rather lordly Roger at the Royal Oak, and when the glamour of evening

was over the common, and their ravenous appetites cried to them that

it must be supper-time, Roger said mysteriously:

"Look here. Gather round, all. An idea's been festering in my mind

all the afternoon. Sit down. In a ring. This is a bally

conspiracy.... The first fine night we'll all meet on the common at

midnight. Don't be alarmed. It'll be topping."

"Oh, _let's_," agreed Cyril.

"We'll meet at Jacob's Post at half-past midnight, and bring food."

"Oh, rather," suddenly said Daphne.

"Well, when shall it be?"

"To-night," said all.

"No, father isn't back yet. And it'll be no fun escaping if there's

no one dangerous to escape from."

"Is your father dangerous?" inquired Daphne.

"Oh, he's all right, only he thinks he's a deuce of a disciplinarian."

"Would he whack you if he caught you?"

"Well, hardly," Roger grinned. "However, to-morrow night's the

night, if fine. Especially as we shan't have many more nights----"

"_What?_" exclaimed Trudy.

Daphne, who had been fiddling with something on the ground, looked up

quickly and caught Roger's eye watching for her.

"Oh, are you going away, then?" she grumbled.

"Yes. Father joins us to-morrow, and in a few days we all go off to

Cornwall. Cyril and I were keen on it, but I'm not so keen now.

However, there it is." There was a fine Roman note in his acceptance

of adversity. "We won't meet at all to-morrow afternoon, so as to be

fresh for the night. If it's fine, which it will be, and Cyril and I

decide we can do it, we'll come outside your house some time between

six and eight o'clock, and fire two shots in rapid succession."

"I say!" ejaculated Trudy, and an alarmed thumb-nail shot to her

teeth.

"No, it'll be all right, I promise you. Everything the whole night.

I'll guarantee no harm of any kind comes to you. I shall regard it

as my personal responsibility."

In imitation of this grandiloquence Owen drawled: "Wow-wow-wow."

Roger turned sharply on him. If he were elaborately courteous to

girls that was no reason why he should stand any lip from prep.

schoolboys.

"What did you say, Stinkpot?"

"Nothing," answered Owen, subdued by so sudden an approach.

"Well, don't say it again. If you can't keep your mouth shut, put a

sock in it. Well, now we all know the programme...."

When Daphne, Trudy and Owen were littering the walk home with their

chatter, it gradually emerged that every one of Trudy's remarks held

a sly under-meaning. Daphne refused to perceive it, though a rising

colour betrayed her pleasure; Trudy shaded off her remarks into the

less and less equivocal, but still Daphne saw them only as innocent,

and at last Trudy was forced to say outright:

"Of course, it's perfectly obvious that Roger's gone cracked on you."

"_What?_"

"Of course, it is perfectly obvious that Roger has gone cracked on

you."

"'Course it's perfectly obvious he hasn't!" protested Daphne, the

blood now flooding her face.

Hearing the word spoken aloud and deliberately like that had set her

heart beating quickly and irregularly.

"Well, at any rate, you're blushing."

"At any rate, I'm _not_!"

"All right. If you say you can't see that Roger's silly about you,

you must be either a fool or a liar."

"I don't think it's obvious at all."

Here Owen unadvisedly stepped into the discussion.

"It's obvious to the meanest intelligence."

"Lot you know about it, copy-cat."

"Thank you. I do know a lot. My experience is extensive."

"It's not at all funny.... Besides, I was talking to Trudy. What

makes you think so?"

"I can always tell," Trudy explained.

When they entered the house, Daphne, whose cheeks were still flushed

and her heart still delightfully irregular, wanted to get away alone,

far more urgently than last night, so as to think about it all. But

supper detained her, and then Trudy would keep her talking; and what

was annoying about Trudy's talk was that she had apparently forgotten

the one interesting topic, as if, after all, it were nothing very

impressive. Daphne answered her frequently enough to maintain a show

of interest, though really she missed large chunks of what Trudy was

saying. And as soon as possible she invented an excuse and ran away

to some place where she might be private. An old habit sent her to

the bathroom, where there was a bolt on the door. There she leapt on

to the mahogany framework of the bath, and, sitting sideways, stared

out at the dark orchard and the brick walk that ran by the kitchen

door.

Then he _did_. He, so much older (somehow), so much more important,

did love her. She saw him again--tall, dark, wide-breasted, his eyes

sparkling when excited with plans; twinkling mischievously--almost

possessively--when she struggled with him; frowning angrily when he

insulted Cyril or Owen. He had twisted her wrist sharply, and to

remember it was delicious, and she, struggling for her mask, had had

her arm tight about his waist. The thought disturbed her internally,

and she moved a little as she sat on the side of the bath. She liked

the disturbance, and sought it by returning to the memory again and

again.

In her bed that night, when Trudy had talked herself to sleep, she

turned on her side and directed her will to thinking only of Roger,

in the hope that this would bring him into her dreams and carry her

into his. She struggled to keep her erratic mind's-eye playing on

the figure of Roger; Roger coming over the brow in white running kit,

wrestling with her for her mask (her body straightened in bed as she

remembered it), choosing her for his partner, running about her and

fighting her battle. Surely this hard thinking would propel her soul

over the dark common to the Downway House where Roger slept.

But this sunlight in the room, and the white and twisty singing of

birds! It was morning, and she hadn't dreamt at all. She stared at

the clock on the mantelpiece. Only twenty past five. A dead silence

in the house, and a perfect stillness in the garden, except for the

birds. Twenty past five.... Let her spend the next hour thinking of

Roger. To enjoy the thinking, she pulled the clothes warmly about

her.

When, after breakfast, the two parties met again on the common, Roger

was still shy and awkwardly imperious, and Daphne studied to be

natural and lively as if unaware that love was in any one's mind.

Now and then, when Roger and she, in hiding from the others, lolled

under the gorse, she languished a little before him, but it was more

unconscious than deliberate. Her face she kept averted, giving him

only an occasional glance, which she hoped he would not see. If they

had long to wait, she lay backward so that her head rested on her

interlaced fingers and her eyes dreamed at the sky. The glare tiring

them, she let her lids fall, after which a hundred noises of the

common seemed to become audible: birds, a cow's bell, a dog barking

far away, the breeze in the tree-branches, and the distant suggestion

of a cart with a trotting horse. Roger would be extraordinarily

silent at her side.

During the morning his nearness, though so desired, became almost

oppressive. She could scarcely answer him now, if he spoke to her,

and her part in the games was formal and remote--she carried too

pleasing a burden of thoughts. When they returned to lunch, she

carried them with her in silence. As companions they were easier

than Roger; and she was not unhappy that the afternoon and evening

were to be spent at home, before the adventure of midnight. Trudy

spent the afternoon reading; Owen drawing. In Daphne the emotion

that was causing her heart to flutter or her voice to shake funnily,

began to press on her old vent--the desire to write. This brought

direction to her thoughts, and a rest in moving with them. She

dreamed out a story, in which two people met while children, as Roger

and she had done, and after being parted for many years, both

remaining faithful and both imagining themselves forgotten, met again

in middle age, to pass the evening of their lives in a sheltered and

fragrant calm. "Coo, it'd make a beautiful story," thought Daphne, a

contemplative thumb arrested at her lips. Her imagination, playing

on it, teemed with ideas; and as, one after another, they came to

her, the story that should contain them all seemed so good that its

early publication was placed beyond doubt. Already she saw it in

book form. By tea-time she had completed a scenario on a sheet of

foolscap, and was writing the first paragraphs. But the actual

writing was a laborious exercise, and a drag on her impatient

thoughts; only dreaming could keep pace with thoughts. No, by her

fine afternoon's work on the scenario she had earned the right to sit

and think about it. And she spent an enchanted evening in this

service of her compulsion to write--wonderfully oblivious of the

outside world, and at rest. Always its service was perfect freedom.

They were sitting at supper, with Miss Carrell at the table's head,

when suddenly a loud report was heard in the road.

"Good heavens! What's that?" exclaimed Miss Carrell.

There was another shot, but farther away.

Daphne felt that everybody in the cottages round must be rushing into

the road to see if murder had been done.

"Oh, it's some one killing rabbits, I expect," said Owen.

She found herself admiring her brother's composure. Owen was not an

easy mixture to analyse. Though often timid, he showed flashes of

daring, and would be quite undisturbed by circumstances that started

uncomfortable fears in her. To-night, for instance, in this period

between the half-light and bedtime, when both girls had begun to be

afraid of the secret conspiracy, Owen had assumed an ascendancy.

"I'll come and collect you two as soon as the clock strikes

midnight," said he.

Trudy yawned. Her enthusiasm was at its lowest.

"But suppose we all drop off to sleep, and wake to find it's morning."

"We must divide the night into three watches," Owen decided. "We can

go to bed at nine. There'll be three watches of one hour. Trudy can

take the first as she's tired, then Duffy, then me.... I think I

shall turn in soon, as we have a long and dirty night's work in front

of us."

In their bedroom Trudy lightened her watch by talking with Daphne,

and at ten o'clock said: "Now it's you on duty," and, turning over,

was soon asleep. Daphne lay awake, staring into the darkness and

listening to the last sounds in the household below. In an hour she

would see Roger again. But what then? They would only be awkward

with each other. They found it so difficult to talk. The only

perfect satisfaction--and this was an impossible dream--would be to

hold each other close and long and in silence....

Thinking thus was such a restful happiness that she could only keep

awake by forcing open her eyes and staring at the light on the blind

or trying to distinguish the outlines of the fire-place. A few times

she did doze and was obliged to pull herself back to watchfulness.

Suddenly she heard a step outside her door, and a creaking board.

Her heart stopped. There was a tickling knock, which nearly drove

her under the sheets.

"Duffy! Duffy!"

"Yes?"

"It's eleven o'clock. You should have called me."

"Oh, you might have given me time."

"I'll take on now."

"All right...."

She turned over and remembered nothing more till she awoke with

another heart-leap at the sound of some one moving outside her door.

"I say.... I say.... It's just on twelve."

Daphne sat up in bed. The memory that in half an hour she would be

with Roger had strengthened her to overcome sleepiness.

"Trudy! Trudy!"

Something about the darkness forbade more than a strong whisper.

But Trudy was heartily asleep.

"Trudy!"

She said it aloud, and coughed when she heard how loud it sounded.

Getting up quickly, for she was half-afraid of the whole room, she

crossed to Trudy's bed and shook her shoulder.

"Trudy, it's midnight."

Trudy turned over resentfully.

"No, get up. Don't spoil it all. Owen and I are up." Trudy threw

off the clothes.

"Ooo! it's cold! I didn't think it'd be as cold as this."

A whisper came through the door.

"Aren't you two nearly ready. I've been ready for a long time."

"Well, don't show off about it," enjoined Daphne.

In five minutes the two girls and Owen were creeping down the stairs,

stopping whenever they heard a distant door shaking or a stair

squeaking under their feet. On the road, the air freshened them and

the quick walking awakened them, and they began really to enjoy

themselves. The blind houses that looked at them through the

darkness, the sleeping Royal Oak Hotel, the closed cattle gate at the

entrance to the common, by increasing their sense of guilt, gave a

pungency to the adventure. The empty common was, perhaps, almost too

like a desert; and all were feeling the eerieness of Jacob's Post,

seen through the night, when two figures leapt into their path, their

arms shooting to the sky in a demoniac gesture.

"Sorry," apologized Roger. "Cyril insisted on us doing that."

But this lively item barely concealed that they were all rather shy

of one another; and Roger, determining, as the originator of the

conspiracy, to save it from awkwardness, said cheerily:

"We'll grub first. I want you all to come right to the centre of the

common.... So come along. Squad, march."

They followed him to the heart of the common, where he led them to a

stretch of low gorse, and unshouldered his haversack, bidding Cyril

do the same. From these they produced five bottles of ginger beer,

some buns and bananas, and a lantern.

"Strike a light, my son," said Roger, addressing himself. "See, it's

a dark lantern.... Now we sit down and gorge."

None of them was hungry, and the buns were hardly a success, but

bananas were things you could eat at any time of the day, or with a

stomach in any state. And when the last of them had been finished,

Roger issued orders:

"This is the game. As there are five of us we divide into two sides

of two each. The fifth person must hide on the common. Whichever of

the two sides finds him first wins. It'll have to be Cyril or me who

hides, as Owen is too young and foolish."

"I _beg_ your pardon," said Owen.

"What?" asked Roger.

"I beg your pardon, I said."

"Oh, well, that's granted.... So Cyril----"

"But I mean I didn't gather the full purport of your last remark."

"Well, wash your ears out next time.... Here, Cyril, we'll toss who

hides."

They tossed, and Cyril won.

"Oh, I'll take the lantern and do the hiding, you bet," said he.

"All right," permitted Roger; "and as I lost the toss, I'll have

first pick.... Well, may as well stick to the old firm. Duffy and I

will be on one side, and Trudy and Owen the other."

"But we'll never find Cyril in the darkness," said Trudy.

"You haven't heard all yet. Cyril takes the lantern, and if we're

nowhere near him, he shows its light on the common. He may then

darken it and move away. If he's slick, he'll move in the opposite

direction to the one you're expecting. (I half wish I had the

lantern.) But as sure as he finds you're going all wrong, he's got

to show a light again."

"Oh, how topping!" agreed Trudy.

"Right! Streak away, Cyril. Take to the heather, my bonnie lad.

Any direction you like. We'll count a hundred before we raise the

highlands and pour down after you."

Aloud, monotonously, automatically, Roger counted one hundred.

"----ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred! Now, you and your party,

Owen, had better trickle southward towards Brighton, and I and

Duffy'll prospect the common northward towards York."

A few uncomfortable seconds, and Daphne and Roger were walking alone

through the night. Her heart began to race. She walked unspeaking

beside him, aware of his equal discomfort. They struck across the

grass, sometimes tripped by the branching bracken or a rush-crowned

tussock, when Roger would extend to her help a gentle hand. His talk

about the search for Cyril was so empty of conviction that she

guessed he was summing up courage to say something else. They

reached a clump of bramble, and Daphne, after stupidly looking behind

it, moved on.

"No, don't go on," stuttered Roger. "I've something to say to you.

Let's sit down." She obeyed him without speaking. "When do you and

Trudy go back to school?"

"September 14th."

"There! I knew it. I guessed it. Fate's against us. We shan't

return from Cornwall till two days after that. Heaven knows if I

shall ever meet you again. We were destined to see each other in a

flash and no more."

These words, so picturesque and sad, amounted to an avowal of

tenderness; wherefore Daphne could only keep silence, pulling up

blades of grass.

"Duffy, let me kiss you, may I?"

The words had, beyond doubt, come out of the darkness.

"Of course not."

"Duffy, don't be a rotter. Can't you see that any other fellow'd

have taken you, now he'd got you here, and kissed you whether you let

him or not. But I've never been rude to you, have I? I have my own

ideas about how you ought to treat women. I reverence them. Duffy,

I'm madly in love with you--I am, really. You're--you're like a

magnet to me." He took her hand gently. "All this business

to-night, and all its beastly expense, I've engineered simply because

I was determined to have you for half an hour to myself, and in

complete privacy--out of the beastly daylight. Those kids are just

being used to serve our ends." He was obviously proud of his

manœuvring. "Duffy, I'm not a flirt. I've never flirted with a

girl in my life, not because I thought it wrong--that wouldn't have

worried me, for I'm afraid I generally do what I like--but just

because they've never interested me. I didn't want to fall in love

with you. But from the moment you jumped out of that hedge at me you

diverted the course of my life." She guessed this had been

rehearsed, for a similar sentence had presented itself to her. "You

may not remember, but you flung yourself down on your face at my

feet."

"Oh, I didn't."

"Well, behind a hedge, I mean. Let me finish. And the minute you

did that I was metaphorically at your feet.... Duffy, do you love

me, too?"

To this she preferred to give no direct answer, and he repeated:

"Do you love me, too?"

"I like you."

"Well, let me kiss you. I shan't if you won't let me. But if you

don't I vow I'll never see you again. And I don't go back on a

vow.... And hang it, Duffy, I'm going in less than a week."

"Oh, can't you get out of going?"

"No. Father's one of those who never changes his mind. We're

exactly like each other in that way, so I can't complain. Duffy, are

you sorry I'm going?"

"Yes, of course I am."

"Well, does that mean you do more than like me?"

The "Yes" would not leave her lips.

"Duffy, I believe you love me, do you?"

No answer.

"Do you?"

After a long silence she answered by resting her body against his.

"Duffy!" He had immediately drawn her closer. "You--you lovely wild

flower on the heath."

And he kissed her--awkwardly rather than rapturously, as if uncertain

how such things were done, and the kiss was only in the full of her

cheek. The taking of her lips was an impertinence that chivalry did

not sanction.

But he kept her long in his pressure, and under the silence she was

trying to realize that these were Roger's arms. It was so wonderful

a thought that she feared lest her imagination missed its fullness.

And in the effort to keep her imagination up to pitch, she probably

did fall short of any complete rapture. Roger seemed lost in his

happiness, and it was she who first drew away.

"I say, we're forgetting the others. They may be near."

Roger laughed significantly, and jumped up.

"I don't think so. Come this way, and I'll show you something."

He led her to the nearest rise, where, after sweeping the whole

common to the south, he suddenly pointed and said: "Look!"

A tiny light twinkled--it seemed miles away--and went out, leaving

nothing but darkness on the common. Then again it pricked the night,

and one could imagine voices.

"Coo!" exclaimed Daphne in admiration.

Roger gave a grim, self-satisfied laugh.

"Cyril has his orders. Jove! he's a faithful henchman. Rather a

nice piece of generalship, that! I don't fancy he'll let himself be

caught by that wretched little brother of yours or that girl. He has

his orders where to hold them, and for how long."

"Does he know then what--what you were going to do to me?"

"I told him I jolly well wanted you to myself, and intended having

you. It's nothing new to have a squire in these matters."

"But he may tell some one."

"Not he. He knows what he'd get if he did."

They were walking unthinkingly back to the clump.

"I'm awfully tired," she said.

He sat down and patted the grass.

"Lie there, then, and rest against me."

She obeyed, putting an arm about his waist and laying her head on his

coat. He patted it lovingly, and occasionally kissed her hair, to

which she would respond with a little hug. Once he said: "Are you

sure you're not cold?" and later, after a long kiss on her forehead

upturned: "My God, I'm glad I was born."

CHAPTER X

In the morning she told Trudy. This had been Roger's advice, and she

was not at all averse to acting on it. "Cyril knows, and Trudy and

the young brother must know," he had said. "Otherwise we shan't be

able to escape away alone." And Trudy, after an annoying "What did I

say?" was magnificent, showing a deep interest in the romance, and

out-talking Daphne with plans for the next few days. Owen said, "I

protest it shocks me," and did what he could to help.

There were three days before Roger left. The first two, as was right

for lovers, they wandered together along country roads or up on to

the downs. Often they were at a loss for conversation, but always

Roger embraced happiness, and Daphne lost herself in it, when the

time came for her to sink into his arms. She discovered, too, that

he could always be given conversational facility, and the desirable

mental ease, if he were encouraged to talk about himself. She

learned then that unless he did something big he would not really be

_Sir_ Roger Muirhead, because his father was only a knight, but that

he intended to do some very big things, and preferably in the field

of politics. Herself talked little; she did not want to talk; the

love affair was a dream--a dream like that one in which she was tried

for murder before a watching world and unjustly condemned--but a

dream that had solidified. Here in undeniable fact at her side was

Roger, splendid to look at, clever, dominant, strangely older than

she, and yet so deferential to her, so chivalrous. She was immensely

proud of him; no grown-up girl with a lover had more than she, and of

girls her own age who had such a one as this?

The third day, being the last before Roger's departure, a great

scheme of his was carried through. Under cover of a few fabrications

he and she escaped to Brighton, as other illicit lovers have done

before and since. They lay on the shingle, each very proud of the

other. They bathed, and afterwards stretched white, firm limbs to

dry in the sun. They were photographed by a beach photographer that

Roger might have her image in his breast pocket; but so revolting was

the likeness that she begged him to smash it, and had a presentiment

of disaster when it went with a strong man's finality into his

breast. There were also in his pocket a big supply of envelopes

addressed to her in Owen's handwriting, by means of which he intended

to get his letters through the protective barriers at Hemans House.

A brilliant stratagem! They had lunch on a restaurant balcony

overlooking the sea, and tea at the end of the pier. With the

falling of the sun the melancholy that had been with them all day

took on a likeness of pain. He told her the train that they were

taking to-morrow, and reminded her that it would run along the side

of Ditchling Common.

"You must be on the common and wave to me, and I will see you the

whole length of that bit. You must stand on one of the higher parts

and I'll see you as long as I can. After that--well, I simply don't

care to think what'll happen after that."

She said nothing in reply, so he repeated:

"Will you be there, Duffy?"

Her face turned towards him, and her eyes sought his. As if he

didn't know she'd be there!

"Roger, I believe you think you love me more than I love you."

"Well, you never say much."

"I don't want you to go."

"Say, 'I love you better than all the world, darling."

"I love you better than all the world, _darling_."

That little sceptic who always crouched in a corner of Daphne's

mind--that little sceptic who had enabled her to question Hollins's

nursery rhymes, to see that Miss Vidella acted up to a part, or to

suspect the ephemeral quality of the friendship with Trudy--had not

been unheard during these rose-flushed days. It had whispered to her

what grown-ups would say of the whole affair: that it was the veriest

calf-love and the breath of a moment, and if there were pain in

parting, three weeks would heal the wound. It had whispered that, of

course the grown-ups were right. And yet the fact remained that she

had so worked on her imagination, so lost herself in her dream, that

now she suffered, and in her suffering, these thoughts could only

peep and run.

She cried when she left Roger that night, and the cries became sobs,

and her dreams when at last she slept were troubled with his

presence. "I shan't see him any more," was her first thought on

waking. "I know I shan't." As soon as possible she fled. Half an

hour too early she was standing on the highest ridge of the

undulating common, waiting for the distant smoke of Roger's train.

Except for a cart trundling to Ditchling the ribbon of highway on

which he had first appeared was deserted. A few cows cropped the

grass near the western hedges. The cocks and hens, like the

care-free creatures they were, pecked at the ground by Jacob's Post.

As she waited she fiddled with her fingers, or nibbled at unripe

blackberries, or looked around in search of the gorse bushes under

which they had lain together. The action of her heart had sickly

moments. She dreaded the coming of the train, and yet longed for it.

Would it never come? Surely she had been waiting a long time. It

would be better if it came soon and got its sharp moment over.

It was a relief when she caught her first glimpse of it--but a shock

as well, for she had been in a brown study. It rushed on and past.

She thought she distinguished Roger at a window, but could not be

sure. But he at least must have seen her, for she had stood on her

hill and waved her handkerchief in the same arc again and again, till

the train was out of sight and there was nothing left but a broken

puff of smoke in the sky.

Not three weeks, but three months were required for her cure. And

even after that--for long after that--the memory of Roger, so

handsome and so courteous, could give her a pleasant melancholy.

At first, however, she had been surprised to find that the rest of

the holiday was anything but empty and dull. She was able to enjoy

herself with Trudy and Owen, melancholy only adding a charm.

Laughter came as easily as before, though sometimes she arrested it.

She and Trudy would stare out of the window at old Eadigo in the

garden, watching him as he bent low in his too-tight trousers, and

hoping for the best. "Now--this time!" she would say, as he stooped

to remove a weed--"it must happen soon," and she would wonder if such

humour were consonant with Roger's absence. But he had written to

her, and though his letters were infrequent, they were couched in the

correctest language of a lover.

This was more than she had hoped, and she was very proud. When she

went back to school, and Miss Vidella came fussing into the

dining-room to welcome back her dear girls, Daphne felt sorry for her

as an old maid who had never known the sensation of being loved. In

her pride she felt the other girls ought to know about her romance,

and in order that they might at least suspect, she encouraged their

chaff when they found her in a deserted class-room writing to a

secret correspondent. She liked to have this privacy disturbed by

some inquisitive girl and to snatch her letter guiltily away. She

was even tempted by the shameful idea of losing a letter of Roger's

that it might be found and read.

But she was saved from this by the failing character of Roger's

letters. Only the first two or three had been really passionate.

And only two had come to Hemans House in the carefully prepared

envelopes, and they had been little more than a résumé of his doings.

"He won't write again now. He'll never write again."

And he didn't. All the rest of those envelopes must have been

destroyed.

After two months without a letter, she grew used to the pain, and

gradually lost it. She no longer, when lying in bed, projected

herself to Roger, but imagined instead their meeting one day when he

would plead for forgiveness, and she would be too indifferent to cut

or punish him; or, as a variant of this, the announcement in a paper

which he would see: "A marriage has been arranged between Miss Daphne

Deirdre Tenter Bruno, the celebrated daughter of an equally

celebrated parent, and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu"--for this title had

always fascinated her.

The next summer, when the meeting might just possibly happen, she

learned towards the term's end that they were to be whipped away to

Devonshire for a long holiday by the sea. This was excellent.

Roger, if he came to the common, would learn that the Brunos were

away, on dignified travels in the west. The day before they left

Sussex she dared to walk past the Muirheads' house. As she hurried

along its frontage expedited by the sight of people in the garden,

the side of her eye perceived that they were strange children with a

nurse in uniform. This made her halt round a bend. After a moment

of deliberation, she walked back towards the house, and asked of a

gardener who was trimming a hedge of thuja: "Can you tell me, does a

Lady Muirhead live here?"

"No, miss," said the gardener. "Least, it's their house, I believe,

but it's let now to my boss, Mr. Bradlaugh."

"Oh!" exclaimed Daphne, conscious of a sharp disappointment. "Have

you been here long?"

"We come here last spring, miss?"

"And how--how long will you be staying?"

"I don't know, miss. Two or three years, I reckon."

"Oh--well, thank you. Thanks awfully."

She walked back. The blow had been to learn that Roger wouldn't

after all be humiliated and saddened by the sight of Old Hall House

empty and frowning, nor by the gorse and brambles on Ditchling Common.

CHAPTER XI

Daphne's sixteenth and seventeenth years might have been called the

years of the giggle. In the main they poured over shallows. No

successor to Roger Muirhead came troubling her with a like emotion;

and except for one short period she had no religion to make depths in

the stream-bed. There was but one clear motive in her life that

waxed stronger with the months, and brought a pattern to the welter;

and this was her ambition to write. Of the rest of her nature the

lawless high spirits took possession.

She grew like a blade of newly-sown grass. As her father said, you

could almost see her growing; nay more, on a still night, if you

listened very carefully, you could hear her growing. Her features

lost some of their roundness and softness, and her body became a

thought too narrow for its height. It worried her rather, so that

she began to take very seriously her physical culture--her gymnasium,

riding and tennis.

She laboured at this time on the manufacture of a distinguished

signature, "Daphne D. T. Bruno," giving it a tail like an unwinding

lasso, till her father, seeing the flourish, expressed acute distress

and shame: "Duffy, this is awful--awful. You must have the soul of a

tea-shop girl."

The ambition to write increased with every novel she read, and every

discussion she heard on other people's novels. In a small part its

driving force was the true compulsion of the artist; but the most of

it was a mixture of crude ambition and sheer imitation. She wanted

no less than a thundering fame, and she wanted to imitate the style

and methods of the authors she read. After reading Dickens, she

wanted to be a great humanitarian and a master of comic caricature;

after Thackeray, an urbane and tolerant satirist; after George Eliot,

William Black, or Bulwer Lytton--well, she remodelled her style on

whichever of them was the last read. She had no idea of working hard

to equip herself for greatness; her reading was lazy, and limited to

such fiction as pleased her; it could only be compassed lolling in a

comfortable chair, and any hard parts she read through without

troubling to know if she understood them.

Since she had no sincere religion or stable code of morals, nothing

but an antiseptic, compounded of humour, innocence and the herding

instinct, saved her from the grosser evils. This, and the two

steadying influences of Hollins and Miss Sims. There had to be a

show of religion at Hemans House, of course, but except in panicky

moments when she sent up ejaculatory S.O.S.'s to God, it made no

settlement in her secret life. Already the sceptic in the corner of

her mind issued hints that she was probably the only girl in the

school who knew that she didn't believe anything. This struck her as

rather original, and she would sometimes give it an airing before

Hollins. She did it with intent to shock, till one day the old

servant, now very grey, discomfited her by interrupting:

"I'm very sorry, Miss Duffy, but I must ask you once and f'r'all, not

to do your laughing at these things with me. I don't like it, I tell

you I don't. It makes me think you'll be struck leprous, or the like

of that. And though you're only a child, it--it sort of upsets my

faith. And then I don't know where I am.... It's for your pa to

say, of course, but to my idea it's a dreadful thing for children to

be brought up without any religion. No good'll come of it, I dare

swear."

She had a similar experience with Miss Sims.

Miss Sims had kept her favourite's affection, if not the earlier

adoration. And on Sundays, when the crocodile went tail-first to

church, Daphne would inflate the governess's heart by coming to

chatter at her side, and in church by pushing to sit next to her.

It was when walking to church one Sunday that Daphne deliberately

shocked Miss Sims by a frank statement of her atheism, with this

corollary; that she didn't think she would marry because it would

interfere with her writing, but she saw no reason, believing in love

as she did, why she shouldn't have intermittent love affairs like

other famous women. Here was opportunity for Miss Sims to play the

saviour, and she filled the part at once. She hurt her favourite

with a swift lash, refusing to be amused and suggesting that Daphne

walked elsewhere; and when the girl, who had been silent for the rest

of the walk, was sitting beside her in church, Miss Sims acted her

own devotion and faith. It distinctly impressed Daphne, who glimpsed

a beauty and peace in holiness.

But it was Winnie Chatterton who really led her on a short excursion

into holiness. Winnie Chatterton was the only notable successor to

Trudy Wayne. The friendship with Trudy had wilted. They had not

quarrelled, but just drifted apart. They were friendly, but not

friends. After a chain of minor intimacies Daphne discovered Winnie

Chatterton, and Winnie Chatterton discovered Daphne Bruno. Both

wondered how they could have been three and four years at the school

without an earlier gravitation each to the other. In figure and

colouring they were much the same, which was delightful, and there

was the most wonderful community of taste. And now on walks through

Windsor Park these two tall girls went hand in hand. Their place was

near the head of the crocodile, and of the many treble voices that

made up that peripatetic parliament, one, as likely as not, was

Daphne's as she told to Winnie the whole story of the last novel that

had affected her. "Vanity Fair" she serialized, telling it in three

instalments on three successive walks. And Winnie, whose art was

music, talked enthusiastically about that, or about the High

Churchmanship that had lately won her. In the end Daphne tried both

the music and the religion.

Old though she was, she insisted on taking up the 'cello with Mr.

Pulteney, the music master (the "Chutney" of the girls). And after

her first lesson, which was disastrous, she rushed to Winnie to give

humorous report of it.

She had walked towards the music-room, explained Daphne hurriedly,

and seen Petsy (Miss Vidella) waiting for her outside. Together they

had entered the room where Chutney was tuning her shining new

instrument. Petsy had seated herself on a chair to act as chaperon,

for music lessons and the music master, as all literature showed,

were the points at which foolishness and sin were most likely to

break through. So Petsy had sat in a chair to strengthen the

defences. Daphne, on taking the huge instrument, had most

unfortunately felt a sudden desire to giggle. It was awful, and when

Chutney placed the music-stand before her and asked: "Where's your

music, Miss Bruno?" she had only been able to reply, with the giggle

trembling through her words: "I've forgotten it. It's up in my

bedroom." At that Petsy had rustled in her chair, probably rendered

ill at ease by this mention of bedroom to a music master. "Really,

my dear child," she had whined, "you are slatternly in many things.

Can she not, Mr. Pulteney, use some of the music of the other dear

children?" Chutney had said he was afraid not, because she needed

the most elementary book, and he had no other girl beginning at the

beginning. So Petsy had creaked out of her chair into a standing

position, and said: "Well, we must go and get it, dear. It's really

very thoughtless of you. Come. Trip ahead of me."

"Why we were both obliged to go out Heaven only knows," commented

Daphne. "I suppose because if Petsy had gone for the music, I should

have been left alone with a music master, and if _I_ had gone, she'd

have been left alone with a music master. And Chutney couldn't go,

of course, because of the intimate nature of the room where the music

was. So we tripped out together."

When they were in the hall Daphne had run upstairs, two and three

steps at a time, while Petsy waited at the bottom in all the safety

of that public place. She must needs call after Daphne: "Don't go up

the stairs like that, dear child. Supposing anyone had been passing

and seen you. So impetuous you dear children are!" Daphne had got

her music and come down again decorously. She had then re-entered

the music-room behind her principal, and sat in the pupil's chair

while Chutney placed the 'cello in the correct position, and Petsy

watched carefully through her spectacles to make sure that in

touching the 'cello he didn't also touch the 'cellist.

Then the 'cellist had commenced. Her first notes had been as

horrible as an amateur's first notes on a bugle, and the desire to

giggle had got much worse, with the result that her hands trembled,

and the next notes were too awful for words. Unfortunately, Chutney,

who was a perfect dear, had caught the infection of her giggle.

Presumably he had never before had so old a pupil at the clumsy stage

of 'celling. At last, after a dreadful prolonged note on the lowest

string, her giggle had burst out, and Chutney had only saved himself

from disgrace by swinging round, so that his back was turned to Miss

Vidella. Miss Vidella had asked: "Has something humorous happened?"

and Daphne had apologized, saying: "I'm sorry, Miss Vidella. I can't

help it." Then Petsy had begun to rustle a lot, thinking no doubt

that this conjunction of a music master, music, and a giggle promised

the worst results. She had shut her eyes behind her spectacles for a

second, and asked: "Can you approach anything, Daphne dear, without

unsuitable levity? If you are not disposed to bring seriousness to

these music lessons, which your dear father has secured for you at

considerable cost"--Chutney had grimaced at that--"and from the best

instructors"--that had set him grinning sheepishly out of the

window--"I shall have to recommend him to discontinue them. Now

please proceed."

Then there had been a lot of trouble with her fingering. Time and

again Chutney had moved to adjust her fingers with his own, only

stopping when he saw that Petsy's spectacles ruled out so indecorous

a thing. Absurd, because Chutney was really such a pure little man.

He had been obliged to demonstrate the correct method by holding

another instrument before her, and asking her to copy exactly the

movement of his fingers; which she had done, but her sounds had been

quite different from his, and induced Petsy to poke in with some

advice: "Try to do what Mr. Pulteney says, dear." Not a helpful

remark; and Daphne, getting annoyed, had pulled her bow rather

savagely along the string, producing the most painful sound of the

morning. This had changed her temper into humour, and for some

torturing seconds she had been much more occupied in controlling her

laughter than in catching what Chutney was saying. Her wrist work

and her holding of the bow had been just as troublesome, and Chutney

had kept coming towards her with the obvious desire of putting her

hand and wrist into the correct position, but had tripped, as you

might say, over the protective ray from Petsy's eyes. And Petsy had

most stupidly tried to bridge the difficulty by some more advice: "Do

try and remember, dear, that it is a bow that you are holding and not

a clothes brush"; which had made Daphne want to mutter: "Oh, you shut

up, for the Lord's sake!"

"From somewhere about this time," explained she to Winnie, "the row

began to begin. I can hardly remember how it started--I never

can--and I had a beastly feeling when it was all over that I had made

a fool of myself, but you know what Petsy is--she's such an old fool,

posing so pompously and thinking it's funny."

"Oh, what happened, what happened?" asked Winnie.

"Well, I think Chutney said, as a sort of excuse for me, that the

exact position was a little difficult to get right at first. And

Petsy was sarcastic and said: 'Not, I take it, to intelligence.' And

I lost my temper and said: 'But I'm not intelligent.' Chutney

stared, and Petsy was rather taken aback, but when she had recovered

herself, she opened fire, I can tell you. She said: 'Precisely, my

dear. And the less intelligent girls have to make up for their

deficiencies by a becoming willingness and humility. They do not

boast of their stupidity.' And I snapped back: 'I wasn't boasting.

I was deploring the fact.' Then Petsy stood up. I think she was

simply beaten by such cold-blooded impudence, and could not for the

life of her decide how to deal with it. But she had to do something

in front of Chutney, so she began: 'My dear Daphne, I do not like

that tone at all. I do not like it at all. I really have not been

insulted in a music lesson before. I think you will go to your

classroom, where you will wait to hear from me.' Then she apologised

at great length to Chutney for taking up his valuable time with a

perverse and ill-mannered child, and Chutney was perfectly sweet,

saying I was only confused and awkward at first, and would be all

right next time. And Petsy interrupted: 'I really do not know

whether there will be a next time. I am not at all sure that I shall

allow her to continue her lessons.' And of course I said: 'I've no

particular desire to,' and went haughtily out of the room. She's

said nothing so far, but I suppose I'm in for an interview, and a

heart-to-heart talk."

Her conversion to High Churchmanship was a mixture of sincerity and

posturing, as the sceptic in the corner would hint through his gags.

It was sincere in this: that she secretly disliked much of her

character and wanted to improve it; she had depressed moments when

she thought herself vain, lazy, much too selfish, and without a

decent control of her temper; and while she couldn't believe that her

own strength would ever pull out these tough-rooting faults, she was

quite sure that a stern religion would do it. And her lack of any

stable morality could trouble her sometimes; she remembered how it

had enabled her to suggest in flippancy things that earned disgust

from people like Miss Sims. At such times, aided by the placid

demeanour of Miss Sims and her occasional homilies, and by the

graver, brow-furrowing chats of Winnie, and the tales of the saints

that she had read, her imagination would show her the religious life

as one of self-respect, happiness in worship, and peace in believing.

The element of posture lay in her eagerness to perform the

picturesque rites of High Churchmanship; in her instant response to

its spirit of gay rebellion; and in her desire to do something that

would startle her family.

In the beginning sincerity occupied most of the ground. Her first

weeks, after her acceptance of the faith and her prayer in which she

surrendered to God and asked forgiveness for her long neglect, were

very happy; and she was perfectly conscious of a softening and

ennobling of her character. She went ahead of Winnie, and silently

wondered how her friend could keep certain things in her life as

fellow-tenants with her religion. These were perhaps the sweetest

days of Daphne's childhood. But it could not last. The soil was too

unbroken, and there were too many older roots in the tilth; the

little sceptic spread his gangrene: "Do you _really_ believe all

this? You know you don't _really_? Not if you once thought it out";

and a series of little shocks, as she realised some of the things

that the religion implied, helped to wither the sincerity and bring

in the element of posture. That every good Catholic was morally

obliged to go to Confession she had not foreseen, and she knew she

could never go; other duties such as fasting, hearing Mass, being

confirmed, and preparing long and earnestly for her communions she

was prepared to accept, but not this--not confession to any living

creature of some of the things that hurt her conscience: And that

every really Catholic priest ought to be a celibate--good heavens,

did Anglo-Catholics say that?

Winnie, who considered that she had to be as extreme as possible now

she was instructing a neophyte, declared that such of course was the

truth. In fact, she made much of this question of celibacy,

deploring its widespread disregard. Her first vicar had been

married, she said, but had had the decency not to have children. His

successor, however, was not only married, but had a boy at Cambridge.

"I don't think he ought to have married at all," expounded Winnie,

"but if he did, he shouldn't have borne a son."

When Daphne went home for the holidays, the posturing was so far in

possession that she was chiefly eager to offend everybody by

insisting that she must go into Brighton on Sundays to hear Mass at a

respectable church. And her first Sunday she found herself in St.

Paul's, West Street, which had the reputation of being as high as was

possible. It certainly seemed very high indeed; and disappointment

took her when she knew herself shocked, bewildered, and traitorously

sure that she could have worshipped more easily in the service to

which she was accustomed. But it was only a matter of getting used

to it, she supposed, and therewith struggled up to certain points of

spiritual exaltation. All the holidays she talked Catholicity to the

household, and when her father ridiculed her, saying: "Yes, run and

worship in your strange groves, Daphne," she was not displeased at

this prick of persecution. Hollin's acceptance of the news was

rather disturbing, for, after Daphne had been chattering some time

about the joys of religion, the old servant suddenly dropped her

sewing, blew her nose, and carried the handkerchief to her eyes

before returning it to her lap. "Well, there, miss," she said,

pretending to believe that Daphne had not observed anything, "I am

glad. It's kind of done me a lot of good, and strengthened my faith

that prayers, if you stick to 'em, are often answered."

By the time she went back to school, the sceptic had nearly worked

himself free of his gags, and she knew that she was only longing to

shock the other girls with her advanced Catholicity, and to see what

would happen when she exhibited it on the first Sunday of the term to

Miss Vidella.

The movements of Daphne and Winnie that first Sunday were the

creations of Daphne's brain. She justified them on the ground that

it was a duty to reveal to old-fashioned and prejudiced minds the

strength of Catholic thought. Winnie and she, as elder girls, walked

to the church, one on each side of Miss Vidella; and when they

reached the Lady Chapel, in which were the seats allotted to Hemans

House, they still managed to keep her between them. This was

designed to surround Miss Vidella with Catholicity. Kneeling down,

they made augmented signs of the cross, prayed for a suitable time,

and made second signs of the cross; and then resumed their chairs and

read advanced manuals. The vestry opened on to the side chapel, and

when the vicar and the curate passed them at the tail of the choir,

the two girls bowed in reverence for the priestly office. The vicar

noticed it and looked surprised.

They made the sign of the cross at the Absolution and at the close of

the creed. They bowed at every _Gloria_. And in the Ante-Communion

Service, at the _Incarnatus_ clause, they genuflected. The

genuflexion left Miss Vidella standing as a sort of indignant

Protestant lighthouse in these undulating waters of Catholicity.

Some girls in front turned round to see what had happened.

All the way home Miss Vidella was menacingly reserved; and they were

soon summoned to her room. This prospect of imperial persecution was

excellent. They had done nothing, absolutely nothing (Daphne assured

her partner as they walked to judgment) but what they were perfectly

entitled to do--what indeed it was their duty to do. Petsy wouldn't

have a leg to stand on.

Miss Vidella began mildly.

"I could not but notice, Daphne dear and dear Winifred, that in

church this morning you indulged in practices which are usually

associated with Roman Catholicism. You are not, I believe,

Catholics."

"Yes, we are," said Winnie.

"Yes, Catholics," Daphne explained, "but not _Roman_ Catholics."

"Oh, you are, are you?" The imperial power was clearly annoyed by

their bearing. "But not _Roman_ Catholics. And may I inquire how

you can be Catholics without being Roman Catholics?"

To explain to the uninstructed the answer to this question has always

been a long and laborious business; so Winnie turned to Daphne as

spokesman.

"All Church of England people are Catholics if they only knew it,"

said Daphne.

"Oh, I see. Then am I a Catholic?"

This made Daphne want to giggle; and at first she thought she had

better leave the query without a reply; but, deciding not to go back

upon her church, she said awkwardly:

"Yes, I--I'm afraid so."

It seemed rather a press-gang method of getting Miss Vidella on board

the Ark, and it was not surprising that her annoyance was increased.

"I see. But I fear I am not so good a Catholic as to tolerate in my

school such ridiculous practices as those with which you embarrassed

the greater part of the congregation this morning. You will kindly

behave as others do and keep your gymnastic exercises for Tuesdays

and Fridays, when I think you go to the Royal Gymnasium for

Instruction. Have you anything more to say?"

Daphne knew that what she ought to say now was a modern paraphrase of

"Oh King, live for ever. Be it known unto thee that we will not

worship as you wish, nor do anything that you suggest"; but on being

asked so abruptly she couldn't shape a single sentence.

"Then that will do, my dears, you may go."

They decided in a mysterious council of war that, having done this

much they could henceforth, with the early Christians for a

precedent, veil their gestures and reverences.

At the end of that term Winnie left to be "finished" in a French

convent, and Daphne, who had been ashamed to backslide before her

friend, tried her religion on a charge of personation, and convicted

it.

Now she received occasional news of Roger Muirhead. Owen was at

Sillborough and would mention him in his letters or on his holidays.

Not often though, for Daphne never asked for information, and Owen

apparently detested his senior. It looked as if Owen also had a

secret desire to be an author, for he affected a very personal and

precious style. "At this Academy," wrote he in his first letter from

Sillborough, "we have one R. Muirhead, with whose name you will not

be wholly unfamiliar. He is, I think, the most conceited ass I have

ever known. He's a prefect, and fancies himself hugely as a

disciplinarian. 'My word is law and changeth not' sort of

business--as our inimitable Herbert Hollins would say. 'Woe to

anyone who crosses my path or thwarts me! I am severe but just. Oh,

yes, I am not easily angered, but if some groundling does raise my

ire, he must expect no quarter. Oh, no.' Funny that these pompous

blokes never credit any one with the brains to see through them. Of

course the boys suck up to him, because he's hot stuff at games,

which he certainly is, though not as good as he thinks. No one ever

was as good as that. And this sucking up makes him ten times worse.

I can tell you R. Muirhead is no small panjandrum. Dammy, no."

CHAPTER XII

In the summer of her seventeenth year she read for the first time one

of her father's books, and was surprised to find it exceedingly

interesting. Here was a book that wasn't even fiction, and yet, with

its wit and gaiety and its big, far-sweeping ideas, gave her thrills

as pleasant as any story she could remember. She sat on and read

devouringly. The grander words danced quadrilles in her head:

"Intelligentsia," for example, and "Reactionary." The book was a

survey of modern history written from the viewpoint of a doctrinaire

rebel, and Daphne's sympathy was always, as the writer intended, for

the Revolutionaries and the Intelligentsia, who appeared to be the

same. She longed to be accounted one of the Intelligentsia. It was

a new ambition, and her heart went wholly to it. She crept into her

father's empty study and abstracted another of his books. And then

another. Many of their illusions and quoted names she did not

understand, but their wit and some of their matter she did--far more

than she had dared to hope. But the final result of her reading,

thanks to her habit of bolting what she could not masticate, was to

increase the confusion of her mind; she retained only phrases and

names and a muddled idea that revolutionaries were always right and

reactionaries always wrong.

Why it was necessary to abstract the books surreptitiously she could

hardly say; probably because she would be utterly ashamed to be

caught by Miss Carrell or Owen reading a book by her father. It was

Mr. Bruno, however, who surprised her at it. One wet afternoon she

was alone in the great play-room at Old Hall House, gathered sideways

in a tattered lounge-chair with her legs under her and the book on

the chair's arm. Its sparkling survey of a century's literature had

her in such thrill that she did not hear his entry. At the moment

she was annoyed to have allowed years to pass in idleness instead of

in reading all these authors here written of; brain-hot with resolves

to read them all immediately, and flattered by her own delight, since

it proved that by nature she was one of the Intelligentsia.

Mr. Bruno stood and looked at her. An unconscious grace in her

attitude pleased him and stirred as usual the desire to banter her.

"Relaxed and idle creature," he began. "Yes, you may well jump

guiltily. Have you no holiday task, or are there no household duties

waiting to be done, that you loll there--for all the world like a

statue of Indolence--reading some cheap and nasty trash?"

She rolled on to her back, putting the book between her body and the

arm of the chair.

"On the contrary, it's quite a decent book, darling."

(She had taken to calling him "darling" ever since on a holiday visit

she had heard Winnie Chatterton doing as much by her parent.)

"Decent? My dear, if it were a serious book on logic you would learn

that the epithet 'decent' (which is a disgusting misuse of words, by

the way) is what is known as a Petitio Principii, or Begging of the

Question. It probably _does_ appear decent to one without any

literary palate, but that doesn't make it so."

"I don't say it's anything much, but the man who wrote it, I should

think, is not without intelligence."

"What's the idle tale called?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"I should not only like to know, but in thirty seconds I shall know."

And he thrust out his hand towards the book, while she rolled over to

cover the secret with her body.

"No, you shan't! You shan't. Go away."

"Ah, would she?" smiled he. "Would she? Since she forgets she's a

full-sized woman and adopts the tactics of a little child, she shall

be treated as such." And, putting one arm behind her back and the

other under her knees, he lifted her off the chair and laid her on

the carpet.

"How dare you, darling? ... Good night! I didn't know you were so

strong..."

Leaping up, she threw her arms about his elbows, trying to pin them

to his sides and hold him back from the book. "No, daddy, don't be a

cad," she begged; but he took a pace forward, wrenched an arm free,

stooped down and picked up the book. She released him, saying:

"Well, I think it's a dirty shame."

He turned the book so as to see its title on the back, and read "The

Decay of Romanticism, by T. Tenter Bruno."

It moved him, and almost unwittingly he placed an arm about her

shoulders and pressed her to his side. Then he tossed the book back

on to the chair.

"No, Duffy dear. Read your tales, not stuff like that. It's a dull

and heavy work, as are all its fellows--stale, flat and unprofitable."

"It isn't," denied Daphne. "It's fine. I'd no idea your books were

as decent as that. They're so slick and witty. I've been screaming

with laughter. Daddy, how do you write so wittily as that?"

"Rudeness, my dear--that's all--just rudeness. The rudeness is all.

All wit, from the highest to the lowest, can be shown to have its

bottom in abuse, whether it's the neatest definition of Voltaire or

Johnson or just the low comedian saying: 'Your mother must have been

fond of children to bring _you_ up.'"

"But it isn't only their humour--they're so--they've got such

ideas----"

He brought her in front of him, holding her there with a hand at each

shoulder, that he might look at her. Flitting in his mind was the

memory of that February evening when she was born and he had wondered

into what long girl she would grow. And here she was--in his hands

and before his eyes. "_Elle est mon rève._" Strange that one could

tell oneself in French, and be pleased with the phrase, what one

would condemn in English as sentimental! "_Elle est mon rève._"

"You speak, Duffy, as if you'd been wasting your time skimming some

of the others."

"I've read two, and this is my third, and I'm going to read all of

them."

"No, no, dear. Let them alone." He moved his hands and picked up

the book. "I have read them all, and I am a great critic, and think

them small beer. I'll get you something that'll really interest you,

and be improving at the same time. 'Sandford and Merton,' have you

read that? And 'The Swiss Family Robinson.' ... Or since you were

doubtless made for pleasure rather than profit, I'll get you 'The

Worst Girl in the Fourth Form.' Only name your choice, so that you

don't read unedifying stuff like this."

She snatched back the book.

"My choice is all the other books of T. Tenter Bruno. They're

ripping."

"Oh, they seem more to enthusiasm and--yes, to your youthful mixture

of generosity and ignorance--than they really are. They will serve

their purpose--amuse a few people and be deservedly forgotten."

"You know they won't. You know you think they're splendid. You'd be

a fool if you didn't. I don't want to flatter you, but whatever else

you are, you're not a fool. I've never read anything like them. I

never thought books on subjects like that could be interesting like

that. Daddy, I'm awfully proud of you."

Mr. Bruno smiled, and once more pressed her to his side.

"_Pride_? You don't know one-tenth of what the word means. Pride,

Duffy. When you have a daughter who not only speaks well of your

books but even reads them, you'll begin to probe the depths of the

word." He kissed her forehead. "And when you look her up and down

and realise that there's a chance of her--well a chance of her--let

us say, a chance of her being not without beauty----"

"Oh, no, I'm not," interrupted Daphne. "I can't see it at all."

"You have tried hard?"

"Of course I have. And I think I'm like a filleted hat-pin."

"Oh, no. No, you're not at all like a filleted hatpin. But you

stoop a little, dear. However, that'll be overcome as the sap comes

up the stalk; the droop will disappear then, and the whole

contraption become less--less green. It's funny, but Nature

sometimes completes her sculpturing of a woman in seventeen years,

and sometimes she dawdles much longer over the work. If she's

anything like me, she dawdles over those she wants to make best.

We'll wait till you're twenty, Duffy, and see what you're like then."

The mind that she took back to Hemans House was like a shop whose

stock has been largely altered. New goods were stored where the

religion had been. They were goods of which she knew the labels and

the pictured covers better than the contents. The labels were ever

pleasant to handle: "More advanced schools of thought," "In advance

of the age in which he lived," "A Leader of the Left," "The School of

William Morris"; and the pictures and designs showed Cobden and

Bright on their platforms hypnotizing great audiences; Ruskin

worrying Utilitarianism with the rumble of his thunderous periods;

Swinburne singing melodious blasphemies to the dishonour of God and

the glory of Man; and Friedrich Nietzsche (succulent mouthful) coming

up like a wind from Germany.

She wanted to be a Leader of the Left. And why not? Quite obviously

Miss Vidella was the very type of a reactionary, and equally

obviously Daphne had always led a more advanced school. The--the

school of Daphne Bruno. She was in advance of the system in which

she moved.

Take the question of hockey, which she had been playing in holidays

with most flattering success. Miss Vidella's absurd prohibition of

the game was a piece of tyranny that ought to be resisted. Hemans

House awaited a Liberator. A Risorgimento.

Remembering Cobden and Bright on their rostrums, she decided, after a

discussion with the elder girls, that they must have a political

meeting. Who would speak? Well, anyone who had anything to say;

she, if they liked, would mount the platform first. Only the elder

girls would be regarded as possessing the full rights of citizens and

allowed to attend. It sounded a jolly game, and these elder girls

assembled eagerly in an empty class-room at the advertised hour and

pushed themselves into desks or along the form that stretched in

front of the desks under the mistress's low platform. In the middle

of this form sat Daphne with her legs crossed.

"We ought to have a chairman," said she, when nobody seemed to know

what was going to happen next.

"Oh, yes, let's have a chairman," said a very lanky girl, Viola

Rance, and she instanced her neighbour: "Queenie Dutroit'll be

chairman."

"No, I shan't," snapped Queenie, horrified at the suggestion that she

should do anything more public than sitting where she was.

"I vote old Viola's chairman herself," called a girl who, being at

the back and rather small, was in no danger of being thrust into the

position.

"Yes, yes," endorsed several; and Queenie added, "Yes, she's so ready

to suggest others, let her do the chairmaning herself."

Daphne, to push matters on, started a clapping of her hands, with the

result, as she expected, that every girl did the same; and Viola, not

displeased, though very red and inclined to giggle, slid flexuously

on to the platform and into the mistress's chair behind the

writing-table. The applause stopped, and the chairman looked down at

Daphne in the front row and asked:

"But what do I do?"

"You introduce me."

Viola got up, giggled, and sat down in red confusion.

"Don't be an ass, Vi," grumbled Daphne. "If you'd any gumption you'd

have entered into the spirit of the thing and said, 'Ladies and

gentlemen, I have much pleasure in introducing our first speaker for

this evening, Miss Daphne Bruno.'"

Viola immediately got up and raced through this sentence, though the

last words were drowned in the rising tide of the giggle.

Then Daphne stepped on to the platform. No one had the wit or the

courage to start the conventional applause; and when she turned and

faced the audience she saw only a roomful of girls, some of whom were

gaping at her and some sniggering as if they thought she looked

rather a fool. She felt disappointed and sad. Why was it that,

whether you were creating books or organizing picturesque

demonstrations, it was so much easier to see them in dreams than to

give them form. The ideas for a speech that had foggily filled her

head thinned into nothing. She picked up something off the

writing-table, put it back again, and began without heart:

"Well, it's like this. It's--I mean, I think we ought to have

hockey. All the other decent schools are."

Not another word could she think of. She saw nothing but a horrid

hiatus before her. If only some of those staring girls would say

"Hear, hear!" But though it had probably occurred to many of them,

all were too nervous of making fools of themselves. And indeed there

was nothing more to say. Not being practised in political oratory,

Daphne had expressed the origin and the business of the meeting, the

reason of her speaking and the views which the audience had brought

with them and which they would take away, in twenty words and ten

seconds. But it seemed to her a sickly failure, and with a big

effort she threw some more words into the awful lacuna.

"It's a topping game. Other schools are playing hockey, and I think

we ought to have hockey too."

Some one giggled at the back, and fortunately this stirred temper,

and temper stirred speech.

"I don't see anything funny in it. Giggling never did anything yet.

It's perfectly piffling to go for a walk when we might be playing

hockey. What I vote is that we all go in a sort of deputation and

ask Miss Vidella to let us play hockey this term. If she gives

in--which isn't likely--she'll probably only treat us to some of her

celebrated queenly sarcasm; and if she refuses we shall have to

organise a sort of secret intrigue to force her hand--a Liberationist

Society, if you like. Like the National Assembly in France. Or the

Risorgimento. I've got a plan of action in the event of it coming to

that. I think we could all write to our parents asking them to

support the general desire for hockey, and simply get her flooded

with letters. I've got her absolutely weighed up, and I'm dead

certain that she'd never say 'No' to the majority of the parents.

It's always the same; these things only want the courage and--and

some one to make a start. Just you see. If we have the grit to hold

out we shall win."

It was not at all a bad speech, thought Daphne, and for its crown

needed only a burst of applause. But nothing followed it except an

embarrassed silence, and when that was getting too uncomfortable, an

upward glance from the chairman, with the question:

"What do I do now, Dafs?"

"Oh, you can ask if anybody has any comment to make on what they have

heard."

Viola stood slightly.

"Has anybody any comment to make on----" But it sounded to her so

silly that the rest of the sentence was lost in the giggle with

which, blushingly, she resumed her chair.

Nobody had anything to say; most were laughing at Viola.

Daphne stepped off the platform and sat again on the form in front,

crossing her legs and grasping her knee.

"Is that all?" inquired the chairman, when she saw the principal

speaker disappearing like that.

"Oh, I suppose so."

"Well, what happens now?"

"Oh, you can ask them if they agree to what I have said, to show it

by holding up their hands."

Daphne knew that when the question was put all would want to hold up

their hands and all would wait for some one else to do it first, so

she flung up her own, and looking round, saw a forest of arms, many

of which were waving about and trying to be funny.

"Ask if any one disagrees."

"Any one dis-agree?"

Not a soul. No one was likely to make herself so conspicuous.

"Well, what happens now?"

Daphne shrugged. Her imagination was vividly showing her what a good

chairman might have made of this triumph. "Oh, tell them the

meeting's adjourned."

"The meeting's adjourned," said Viola, and, giggling, she jumped off

the platform.

The minute the meeting was adjourned everybody had an undelivered

speech to deliver. They stood in a group round Daphne and argued the

question. It ended in her plan being adopted and a deputation formed

to wait on the head mistress.

Daphne was at once proud and nervous as she led her deputation the

next day, just before lunch, into Miss Vidella's room.

Miss Vidella was sitting at a little writing-table. She watched this

entry of half a dozen girls with lifted eyebrows.

"What is it you want, dears? I am very busy."

"We want to know--we wanted to ask you," began Daphne, "on behalf of

all the girls, if you would let us play hockey this term?"

Miss Vidella stared at the speaker. She removed her spectacles and

held them in her fat hand on the table. That she was angry there

could be no doubt, and that she was thinking out some sarcasms like a

dentist selecting his sharp little tools.

"Have you ever played hockey in the Christmas term?"

Daphne was obliged to answer "No."

"Have you ever played hockey any term?"

"No."

"Then why should you play hockey this term? I am not clear on the

point, Daphne dear."

"We thought perhaps if we petitioned you, you would let us."

Miss Vidella replaced her spectacles on her nose as if the point

could now be studied more closely. The point, it appeared, was in

the middle of Daphne's face.

"Have I ever, on being petitioned, allowed you to do anything

unladylike?"

Daphne couldn't very well point out to her that the epithet

"unladylike" was a _Petitio Principii_, or Begging of the Question,

so she murmured, "No."

"If you were to come to me, one by one, and say: 'Dear Miss Vidella,

may I do something which you consider unlady-like?' would not my

answer be: 'No, my dear, not at Hemans House'?"

She had acted the "No, my dear," with its inclination of the head, to

an imaginary girl at her side, and now turned to Daphne for her reply.

"Yes--I suppose so."

"Well, would not the answer that I give to you severally be the

answer that I give to you all together?"

Daphne was confused, and said again: "I suppose so."

"Then I am not at all clear as to what is the idea of your coming in

such a funny little group as this. Run away, my dears, and get ready

for your dinners. I am very busy, and have no time just now to play

with you in your strange little games."

As the deputation moved out, Daphne felt furious. It was the only

thing to feel if you were not to feel foolish.

"I told you nothing would come of that," she said hastily, to

forestall any criticism of her leadership, "nothing except a

performance by Petsy. But I never expected anything to. That was

only a flourish. It's the next step that matters. I'm perfectly

determined to beat her on this matter. And I should think that you

would be after she's tried to make fools of you like that."

The letter to the parents, outlined by Daphne, she thought

exceedingly well done. As a politician she saw the skilfulness of

the phrase, "give your _support_ to the request of _many other_

parents"; and as an authoress with some idea of emotional effect, she

was particularly satisfied with the postscript, "_Please_ do." No

kindly parent would resist that.

When Miss Vidella watched the flooding in of requests from fathers

and mothers that, if possible, hockey might be taught to their girls,

she was more than flustered--she was frightened. To be queenly with

a deputation of tongue-tied pupils was one thing, but to resist a

concerted movement by parents was quite another. It could not be

done. The difficulty was how to yield to the parents without seeming

to eat the sarcasms she had offered to the deputation. She squeezed

through this awkward pass by saying to the assembled school, one day

before lunch:

"I understand now that when some of the elder girls waited on me last

week with a request for the institution of hockey, they did so at the

suggestion of their parents. If the girls had been wiser they would

have made this clear. I think it very right and proper of your

parents to trust you to come and tell me all that they consider

desirable for your welfare, and to know that I shall always give

every attention to their wishes. I may in this case doubt the wisdom

of their opinion, but I understand that it must take precedence over

mine. The request will therefore be conceded. I understand that

Miss Bellamy has a knowledge of the game, and that, according to her,

our present field will be large enough. I will therefore order an

adequate supply of the necessary implements, and hope you will be

able to try your hands at this new recreation in a day or two. I

shall, of course, be there to supervise your play at so dangerous a

game."

She moved away to a chorus of "Thank you, Miss Vidella."

Daphne knew that every girl had thrown at her a swift glance, and she

tried to cover her feelings with a mask of unconcern. The smile that

broke through her control, and fought with her lips, was rather one

of nervousness at being looked at than of exultation in a triumph.

Her glow was mixed with a knowledge not wholly pleasant that she had

never so completely despised her head mistress. In such contempt, as

in the deeps of a pool, lay possibilities of which she could feel

herself afraid.

Miss Bellamy was now dressed in an unexpected importance, and very

conscious of it. A stout, bustling woman of thirty-five, she fussed

about, equipping the two teams which were to make the first venture

into the new game, marking the field with their aid, and explaining

on a blackboard the principles of hockey to those who had everything

to learn. And the day of the first trial, a golden afternoon in St.

Luke's Summer, she led the girls to their field as excitedly as any

of them. Miss Vidella followed less easily and happily. And Daphne,

who throughout the preparations had been as officious and explanatory

as Miss Bellamy, declared that Petsy had come simply and solely to

make herself a nuisance. She would probably stand on the touch line

and worry the game like a fat puppy who was feeling rather sick.

It was an accurate prophecy. When all the girls were in their

places, and Miss Bellamy had done pushing them there, or pointing all

over the field with her whistle, Daphne shouted: "Shall I bully off

with Viola?"

And Miss Vidella at once raised her voice.

"'Bully off.' I do wish you wouldn't talk slang, Daphne dear. You

know I have never tolerated it. 'Bully off' is a phrase that I have

never heard, and do not wish to hear again."

"But it's the correct term, Miss Vidella."

"It really is," endorsed Miss Bellamy, who had rushed up to bring an

expert's advice to the solution of a difficulty.

"Dear me"--Miss Vidella lifted her shoulders resignedly--"what

unpleasant terms these rough games do employ!"

They bullied off, and the game swung into noisy life. Its two most

conspicuous performers were Daphne and Miss Bellamy. Daphne was

early captured by it, mind and body. She was nearly always in

possession of the ball, and the repeated running had damped her

forehead and shortened her breathing; she felt the rises of her

breast, and a delightful dryness and thirst stabbing her low down in

the throat. There was a breeze that would not have been perceptible

but for the dampness on her brow, and when it touched that, it

strangely heightened her pleasure. It carried fugitive thoughts of

long drinks, the spray of the sea, or immersion in bath or lake.

Once she had fallen heavily, and the smell of dried earth on her palm

toned exactly with the thirst, the quick breathing, the sting of

gathering blisters, and the coldness on her temples. Health and

optimism had become sensuous things. And how was it that these

sensations, though within her, were at one with remembered things

without--with firelight on old wood, mellow evenings, birds and

squirrels, and sentences in Hans Andersen: "She flew away as if she

were flying straight into the sun"--with all those things that she

must capture and put into books?

Miss Bellamy rushed about, with her whistle at her teeth or in her

hand. When she wasn't blowing the whistle, she was shouting: "Keep

your places! Pass the ball--oh, for goodness' sake pass it

sometimes. Now then, Evelyn! Played! Oh, played indeed!" Probably

she wanted to impress the pupils and the principal. And certainly

she impressed Miss Vidella--but very unfavourably. There was an

abnormal second when she was standing at rest to watch a scramble

near Miss Vidella, and Miss Vidella took the opportunity to begin, "I

can't think, Miss Bellamy, that it's necessary to shout at the

children so"; but just then Miss Bellamy saw a crass error in the

play, shot out a pointing forefinger, and blew her whistle

imperiously.

"Sticks! Sticks! Sticks!" she cried. "Madeline you mustn't lift

your stick above your shoulder."

"Come on--that's a free hit," shouted Daphne. "Chuck us the pill."

It was useless wishing she hadn't said it, for Miss Vidella was

already calling.

"Daphne dear. Come here. What was that you said?"

"I said, 'Chuck us the pill'."

Miss Vidella nodded.

"I thought those were the words. Well, I am so ignorant of this game

that I do not know if that is the prescribed expression. Is it?"

"Well--no."

"You mean, it was slang?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Precisely. And I cannot allow the elder girls to set such an

example to the younger ones. Besides, it is great disrespect to Miss

Bellamy to use language like that in a game of which she is in

charge. Let me hear you apologise to her."

Daphne's first impulse was to throw down her stick and walk off, but

she remembered the delight of the game, and determined not to be

robbed of it by any pomposity of Miss Vidella. And she so far obeyed

her head mistress as to turn to Miss Bellamy and mutter: "Miss

Vidella says I'm to apologise to you." Miss Bellamy smiled an

acknowledgment, and a bow from the head mistress indicated that she

was satisfied, and the game might proceed.

Daphne had no wish to offend a second time, and for the rest of the

game, except for the very last minute, managed to play and shout

without being called to order. She had, in fact, forgotten her anger

with the head mistress, so exciting was the struggle. The two goals

won by her side, in defiant answer to two won by their opponents, had

been scored by herself, and the girls were saying: "No wonder you

wanted to play hockey so as to show off." Her face and neck were

streaming, and her body seemed to have been fitted with a new and

different breathing system. Frequently she wiped her forehead with

her sleeve, or tossed the wet hair-wisps out of her eyes. If she was

not driving the ball herself she was shouting encouragement and

praise to the others. "Oh, played! ... I say, well played! ... Look

out! ... _Billow_!" Her will and every faculty were set upon

securing the third goal before the shrieking and perspiring Miss

Bellamy should sound her whistle for the last time. The low slant of

the sunlight and the stretching of the shadows told her that time was

very short. Any second now might end the game. The matter was

desperate; there was a look of evening over the field. Her stick

perpetually reached the ball and forced it through a jumble of

confused amateurs, while Miss Bellamy shouted: "Keep your places!

Keep your places, all of you!" and Miss Vidella could be heard

muttering a dislike of the worse scrimmages. At last Daphne won

through with the ball, and came down the side-line with irresistible

impetus, confident that now on the very sound of the whistle she was

going to score her third goal. She had a faint impression of Miss

Vidella stepping back from the touch-line so as to be out of danger.

So fierce was her rush that the opposing full-back, frenzied with

ignorance and dismay, hit her with great force on the shin. In the

moment of sharp pain, Daphne flung her stick anywhere, and muttered:

"Oh, damn! damn!"

All around her heard, and cast quick glances at the head mistress.

All were probably feeling the satisfaction of being present when

something really serious had happened. The head mistress, no doubt,

was the most satisfied of all, because there are few happinesses so

great as the first enjoyment of indignation.

"Miss Bellamy. Miss Bellamy," she shrieked to the referee, who, from

her distance, was shouting encouragement to this waning corner of the

game. "Miss Bellamy, stop the game."

"Play on, you girls," shouted Miss Bellamy. "Don't stand there as if

you were afraid of the ball. Keep the ball moving, for goodness'

sake."

"Do nothing of the sort," commanded Miss Vidella. "Don't touch the

ball. Miss Bellamy"--Miss Bellamy was running, whistle in mouth, to

solve the problem that was hindering the game--"I have instructed the

girls to stop. They are very rightly too shocked to continue. I

wish them to stop. Please blow that whistle, if that is the way such

a game is brought to an end."

Miss Bellamy, bewildered, sounded her whistle and stood near to

witness a public censuring.

Daphne, after rubbing her shin, walked to her hockey stick, slightly

exaggerating her limp, picked it up and examined its binding.

"Daphne.... I hardly know how to speak to you. For fifteen years I

have given my life to the education and guidance of my schoolgirls,

but never till this day have I heard one of them--I cannot bring

myself to say it--heard one of them use such a word as passed your

lips just now. I pray I shall never be asked to live through that

moment again. I--and all these dear girls, I believe--are humiliated

and ashamed. You, too, I dare believe, are also deeply ashamed."

"Well, I don't see why I should have been hit on the shins for

nothing. It'd have been a goal if----"

"Go back to the school. I confess I know not how to deal with you.

I confess to being beaten by you. Fortunately there is no precedent

in my experience which enables me to deal adequately on the spur of

the moment with your offence. You are a girl whom it seems

impossible to influence or guide. If all the affection and sympathy

and gentle correction of the last few years"--Daphne made an obvious

"Pooh!" with her lips--"has been unavailing to soften your nature, I

know no other methods. They have always been those of Hemans House.

Go back to the school and wait in your bedroom. I shall have to

consider how to deal with you. I feel I shall have to write to your

dear father----" Daphne was disposed to reply: "I should. It'll

amuse him frightfully." "And do not attempt to see any other girls.

I cannot have them taught your dockyard oaths.... This evening I

will..."

But Daphne had not waited for the rest.

CHAPTER XIII

Miss Vidella frightened herself more than her pupil when she

announced that she would write to Mr. Tenter Bruno. The whole school

had heard her say she would do a thing which she particularly did not

want to do. The Bruno girl had still, presumably, another year to

spend at her school and to bring in good fees, and it would be unwise

to give her father the impression that she was getting too big and

obstreperous for the place. There must be no quarrel with Mr. Bruno,

for she wanted his name as a reference. Besides, she was thoroughly

afraid of his brilliant modern mind. And somewhere behind her

indignation peeped the thought that the offence was not really as bad

as her posing required her to treat it. After a tea-time spent in

deliberation she decided that discretion must masquerade as mercy.

She climbed the stair to the little single bedroom which Daphne, as

one of the elder girls, now enjoyed. She was primed with words of

austere forgiveness, but when she saw that the criminal was lolling

on the bed and reading a book, anger made her command:

"Get off that bed at once."

Daphne got off slowly.

"Now put it straight."

Daphne did so.

"You are, indeed, Daphne, a difficult child. I came upstairs

disposed to limit my chastisement of you to words of kindness and

advice, and I find you apparently insensible to the gravity of your

offence. I intended to say that I would not hurt your dear father by

a report of your behaviour, but----"

"I don't mind if you write to him or not."

This was dreadful. The girl was pushing her into the stream of

events she desired to escape.

"You don't care? Have you no affection for him?"

"Yes, heaps; but I don't think he'll die of anything you can tell

him."

"Are you being impudent, Daphne?"

"I don't know."

"I do."

"Then why do you ask?"

Miss Vidella stared at her, flounced to the door, and said: "I shall

most certainly write to your father. I shall do it this moment," and

thus made her exit. Yes, she would write that letter at once. Its

phrasing shaped in her mind. Like all weak people she was easily

made apprehensive lest some one was questioning her strength. A

strong gesture was pleasing. Now that her hand had been forced she

was proud that she was going to write to Mr. Bruno. The school

should know that she had written to Mr. Bruno, and realise that when

she said she'd do a thing she did it.

One person was thrilled by the news of Daphne Bruno's disgrace and

confinement. Miss Sims, always curiously exultant when her favourite

was punished, saw herself coming to her in prison with sympathy and

undiminished faith. Her heart beat quickly as she approached the

bedroom where Daphne was isolated. Opening the door with a "May I

come in?" she saw the girl sitting on the bed with one heel beneath

her, writing something. This was disappointing. Miss Sims had

encouraged the idea that she would be crying. "She's been made hard

and callous," thought Miss Sims. "She will be better softened.

Gentleness will soften her."

"Hallo," said Daphne, looking up. She folded over the letter she had

been writing.

"Duffy dear. What has been happening? I could not bear to think of

you up here."

"Oh, Miss Vidella has been doing a little acting. She thinks she's

being very fine and strong. I'm enjoying myself immensely."

A pity she adopted this defiant attitude. Miss Sims liked to

minister to soft and broken things. And the Character never listened

to disloyalty.

"Hush, dear. You know I never listen to rebellious muttering." ...

She sat down beside the girl. "Why did you utter such a word? After

all, you are a girl who will always exercise a great influence over

those younger than yourself, and you have them to consider."

Daphne looked away, and Miss Sims knew that this veiled flattery was

the way to conquer her. She spent a very happy few minutes, giving

counsel to the girl, with her heart going out to her as she did so;

she pointed out how much it behoved one who was plainly a nature of

strong passions to learn control in small things, and she saw that

Daphne liked being called a nature of strong passions, and was

thinking of Miss Sims as the one person who understood her.

"I know, Miss Sims. But why couldn't Miss Vidella talk to me

properly--like you do--instead of making an Aunt Sally of me before

half the school. She said I was difficult to influence. I am not,

am I? You know."

It was a sweet moment for Miss Sims.

"I have never found you so, dear."

"Of course not, because you're always so understanding. But she

always tries to humiliate me before the whole school, and now she

declares she's going to write a lot of lies to father."

"Hush, dear. I think she may be unduly severe, but I can see her

point of view."

"She hasn't got a point of view, except the one that goes with her

part. I'm writing to father too.... Oh, Miss Sims, would you--would

you post it for me?"

Miss Sims smiled tolerantly, but really the request gave her much

pleasure. It was picturesque, this taking of a missive from an

offender in prison.

"I will certainly, dear. There can be no harm in your father hearing

what you have to say."

"Oh, that's topping of you."

Daphne added something to her letter, and folded it up and give it to

Miss Sims.

"Thank you, dear," said the governess. "And if there is anything

else you need, or I can do for you--bring you books or anything----"

Her guilty ear detected a step on the landing outside, and she rose.

It was not done hastily, for her desire to impress Daphne with her

serenity and fearlessness was stronger than her fear of being caught

by Miss Vidella. But her heart, which fortunately could not be seen,

was beating faster.

"I will take it for you now. Good-bye for the time being, dear."

She stooped and kissed her favourite.

The next morning over his breakfast Mr. Bruno read of Miss Vidella's

pain at being obliged to report that she had had occasion to deal

severely with his daughter, and of her desire that he also would

write a word of reproof. Daphne had employed on the hockey field

language which could not be set on paper, and Miss Vidella wrote in

the sure knowledge that her father's rebuke would carry very great

weight with dear Daphne, and that, since this outbreak suggested that

she had met with unsuitable companions in her vacations, he would

doubtless wish to be informed of the matter.

"Gracious goodness!" smiled Mr. Bruno, at the ponderous and lumbering

phrases. "What on earth can the depraved child have said?"

And all the contraband language that he could think of seemed

beautifully funny as passing from one of her pupils to Miss Vidella.

Then he picked up an envelope written in the schoolgirl hand of his

daughter.

"Ah, now perhaps we shall know. Duffy will doubtless strengthen

herself to write the obscene word."

His butter-knife sliced the flap, and he read:

"DARLING FATHER,--Miss Vidella says she is going to write to you

about the crimes of your daughter. I don't know if the old pig

really meant it, but in case she does I thought I'd get in first.

Her only accusation is that I have used slang and one swear word. I

don't think the slang business will upset you much because you say in

'The Decay of Romanticism' that slang is often the natural, urgent

poetry of a vital people." ("Good heavens!" thought Mr. Bruno, "she

must have copied the sentence straight out of the book.") "And you

give examples that you say are Shakespearean in their aptness, energy

and high compression, and you say further on that those who use slang

brilliantly are often more vivacious and dynamic minds than those who

stagnate in a mould of stilted phraseology like Miss Vidella. I

quite agree with you, as I do with most of what you have written.

And I am not saying this just because I want you to side with me, but

because I really do. Old Petsy could no more think of that about

slang than she could fly. That is really rather witty about her

flying, as you would understand if you could see her. But the swear

word will probably not please you so well. What happened was this.

I felt that Miss Vidella was reactionary in her ban on hockey, and

that it was time Hemans House advanced a little, so as to be abreast

of modern ideas, and I accordingly led a successful agitation for

reform in the matter. That, of course, stuck in her gizzard, and I'm

sure she came on to the hockey field determined to spoil the game.

What I blame myself for is not swearing so much"--(Mr. Bruno read

this sentence again before murmuring: "Duffy, Duffy, you're getting

dangerously ambiguous")--"as giving the old cat an opening. Annie

Hurst, silly little ass, caught me an awful whack on the shin, and

before I knew what had happened, I said 'O damn!' which you often say

when the soup-plate is hot. That was all, and it's really painful, a

whack on the shin-bone with a hockey stick, and I've got a huge

bruise and what looks like a little dent in the bone. That side of

it doesn't seem to have struck Miss Vidella.

"Daddy, I have got a suggestion. If you think it wise to come down

and rebuke me, couldn't we do it at a tea-shop and have a jolly

afternoon together?

"Daddy, I'm reading 'Park and Pavement,' and I like it awfully. It's

your best book, I think, in my humble opinion. But then I think that

of each one as I read it. I'm in disgrace in my bedroom, and

enjoying myself awfully. It's been fun writing to you.--Yours

awfully,

"DUFFY."

"P.S.--I have been wondering how I was going to post this, but an

awfully decent mistress is going to post it for me.--D. D. T. B."

The effect of Daphne's letter on her father was similar to that which

she unconsciously used to work when she burst uninvited into his

gaze. There was an immediate quickening of his love, a flavour of

self-reproach that he passed so much time away from her, and, as he

pictured her sitting on her bed and writing to him, a stirring of the

heart that was almost painful.

"Oh, damn! That prehistoric old fool shan't persecute her. She

shall swear if she likes. That is to say, she shall do nothing of

the sort, for it would spoil her charm. But she's my daughter, and

beginning to stand, I fancy, in much the same relation to that

slow-going vehicle, her school, as I do to society to-day. I like to

think it. With all her ignorance and immaturity she's too dynamic

for her surroundings. I must write, I suppose. No, damn it, I'll go

and see her, and the absurd place as well. If it's as I imagine, we

must do something better for her."

It was impossible for him to be other than courteous, and he wrote to

Miss Vidella thanking her for her thoughtfulness, telling her that he

would like to come and see her the next afternoon and requesting her

to be so good as to inform Daphne of his intentions. His kindest

regards concluded the letter.

Miss Vidella was delighted. Her strong action was justified.

Evidently Mr. Tenter Bruno, since he was coming in person, shared her

distress and approved her discretion. She began to phrase the high

commendation he would give when sought as a reference for Hemans

House. "I shall ever be grateful for Miss Vidella's watchful care of

my own daughter." And after prayers that mornings she announced to

the assembled school:

"I have just received a letter from Mr. Tenter Bruno, who will visit

the school this afternoon." She left that to sink in. The children

would instantly guess why he was coming, and be impressed with the

seriousness of a recent incident and the strong hand of their

principal. "And, girls, I hope he will come and see you at your

work. Mr. Tenter Bruno, as you all know, is a writer with an

international reputation, and you will like to remember that he

visited you at your school. It will also interest your parents."

Mr. Bruno arrived about three o'clock; and after an interview in the

reception room which was chiefly used by Miss Vidella to explain how

fond she was of dear Daphne and hoped to make a great success of her,

and by Mr. Bruno in mental generalizations suggested by such a type

as this head mistress, he was left alone in a saddle-bag chair to

await his daughter. She burst in, most obviously dressed to receive

him. And because she was tall, and he unused to such an interview,

he rose like an embarrassed guest to greet her. After the fat,

black, pompous figure of the head mistress, she came with something

like a shock of contrast; he saw the roundness of her head under its

brown hair newly brushed, the freshness of her eyes and cheeks, the

smallness of her neck, and the fast-refining outline of her body and

her limbs. The critic in him, as well as the father, approved it

all. Wonderful how she could move him sometimes! In the chamber of

his anti-sentimental brain, moving without guilt among the censors

there, was the thought: "You are mine ... you came from me ...

Daphne."

"Hallo, Daddy!"

She rose on her toes to kiss him, and he gave her waist a hug.

"So you've been using the language of the tap-room to that strange

old woman."

"I haven't," denied Daphne, "I told you exactly what I said."

"Good heavens, miss! And wasn't that outrageous in a slender girl?"

"No, not considering the hefty blow I got on my leg. I often say

'Oh, damn!' to myself, as I'm sure everybody does, and that time it

came out aloud. And with good reason, too. Just look here." And

she made as if to remove her stocking.

"No, no, no. Don't show me anything unpleasant. Besides, you've got

it all wrong, Duffy. The idea of the strange old lady isn't so much

that you should show me some trifling bruise on your shin, as that I

should talk to you about the really serious bruise on my heart. That

a daughter of mine should say--such words! You mustn't, Duffy; for

you're in danger of becoming a--a beautiful creature, and it's out of

harmony for one of that pattern to use squalid words. The whole

product is not homogeneous. It's bad art."

"Well," said his daughter. "That's the most sensible way I've ever

heard it put."

"Yes, and----However.... How old are you, Duffy?"

"Seventeen for all practical purposes."

"Well, I have a practical purpose. Let us sit down and talk it over.

Are you allowed to sit in this room?"

They seated themselves, and he told her of a scheme that he had been

pondering in the train. And because it was one that he knew she

would love, he could only approach it through a cloud of raillery.

Publicity, he said, was a very subtle question, and if in the past he

had been seen in public with so ordinary a daughter as she, the sale

of his books would doubtless have suffered. But now she had changed,

and every year she would become of greater and greater publicity

value. He felt he would like to have her with him as much as

possible. He didn't believe this droll school had anything more to

give her, and she could probably do much better, since the taste for

less frivolous reading seemed to have come, enjoying the free run of

his library and having some music lessons at home. Not that there

would be much time for that, because he had long wanted to spend a

year in Paris, and proposed taking her there next year. In Paris he

would put her on her honour to study the French language and squeeze

all the knowledge that was to be squeezed out of picture galleries,

historic buildings, the _Opéra_ and the _Comédie Française_. In the

summer they would wander in Switzerland and down into Italy, and as

the weather cooled make tracks for Rome.

"Daddy!" interrupted Daphne. "Oh, do you mean it? Lord, I'm glad I

swore. What an awful suck for Petsy!"

He smiled as he watched her enthusiasm.

"But mark you, the first time you swear, you'll be sent back to

Windsor, and doubtless to your bedroom there."

"And may I go home with you to-day?"

"Don't be so heady, my dear. Or I shall decide that you are still

very immature, and leave you to your pothooks for another year. You

can finish at the end of this term."

"Oh, well, I can stick that out.... Daddy, how glorious!"

She jumped up and kissed him in gratitude.

"But you must promise to stay with me a little while," stipulated he,

"and not marry the first lout that comes lopping up the drive. Say a

couple of years at least.... Yes, and now come and be reprimanded at

this pastry shop."

"Oh, but first you've got to go round and see the girls at their

lessons. I think Miss Vidella wants to show you off, but whether she

wants to or not, I do."

"Oh d----. Yes, I was about to use your favourite oath. Yes, the

singular old woman did mention something of the sort. But is it

really necessary?"

"Absolutely. Several of the elder girls are reading your books, and,

though they don't understand them as well as I do, they are anxious

to see what you look like. Besides, I want them to see that you are

not angry or anything, and that Miss Vidella's sneaking has

hopelessly failed."

They passed into the passage. And the opening of their door was the

signal for another to open and emit the head mistress. Mr. Bruno

felt his daughter immediately take hold of his arm.

"Oh, before you go," said the head mistress, "you promised to visit

my dear girls. They will appreciate a visit from you so much."

"Well, so long as I'm not expected to address them," he began.

"Oh, no, certainly not," assured Miss Vidella.... "Daphne dear, you

had better go to your class-room."

Mr. Bruno felt the hold on his arm tightened.

"But father's taking me out to tea."

It was a moment of strain. Clearly the head mistress was at a loss

what to say, though the words behind her eyes said: "I think such a

reward to the child most unsuitable." Mr. Bruno hastened to ease the

atmosphere by turning to his daughter with a reproof: "If Miss

Vidella is kind enough to consent, you mean." ... And then to Miss

Vidella, with the request: "Having come so far, I trust you will

allow me to keep her for the afternoon."

The head mistress bowed austerely, and led the way to the

schoolrooms, while Daphne whispered:

"Tell her I'm leaving at the end of the term, do."

"My dear, I couldn't possibly tell her to her face. I never could

say anything that was the least unpleasant. I'll write it to her."

"Oh, stuff! She's much more afraid of you than you are of her."

"It's impossible."

All the voyage through the class-rooms she was hanging ostentatiously

on his arm.

The first hour of their companionship in the town was very happy, but

then supervened a thing that worried and saddened him; his daughter's

prattle over the tea-cups palled, and he became a-fidget to get home

to his books. Hardly hearing what she said, he began to deplore his

intolerance of immature minds that had no ideas or stimulations to

give him--whether they were adult minds or children's. Love ought to

enable him to come out of himself and listen. But he had lost the

power. Only with intellects of his own order, or with books, could

he establish correspondence.... Still, she would improve, and be his

most valuable companion one day.

He looked at his watch and began to discuss his train.

All that evening and the next day Daphne was covertly bragging:

"Father's taking me away.... I'm to travel with him instead of

coming back to school. We're going to Paris for a year, and then to

Switzerland and Italy and Rome.... I shall probably keep house for

him." To her more intimate friends she added: "You must come and

stay with us sometimes." The news, told in confidence to the girls,

created interest, but no dismay--she was not popular enough for that.

Each day she scanned Miss Vidella's face for some evidence that her

father's letter had come. And when a whole week had passed with no

trace of a nasty shock behind the steel spectacles, a dread seized

her lest his glorious plan, now that she was remote, had been

shelved. In suspense she wrote to inquire if he had sent his letter,

and, if not, to urge him to do so. "Daddy darling, Have you written

about that business? If you haven't, I don't think you should delay.

Oh, I do want to do all you said, and travel with you...."

His reply was a confession that, owing to pressure of work, he had

neglected to write. "But I've just written the letter, and it will

be posted with this one. Sorry you've been worrying, but it was my

fault. _Peccavi, peccavi, peccavissimi_, as the monk said whose

penitence was in excess of his Latin."

Then Miss Vidella had taken the knock this very morning. Daphne

studied her to see how she looked after it. There was no visible

difference in her. And the morning and the evening passed. None of

her words or looks could be twisted into evidence that she knew

Daphne Bruno was leaving. This was Wednesday. Thursday provided no

sign. Friday was equally barren, and by the evening of that day

Daphne was in despair, tears very close to her eyes. "Oh, he said he

had written and posted it. He said he posted it on Tuesday night.

He can't have done it. I _won't_ come back next term. I couldn't,

now I've once heard I wasn't going to. If I have to come back next

term I shall do something desperate."

But on Saturday morning her impatient eyes did detect a new

haughtiness in the carriage of the head mistress when the black

figure swept past her. And after breakfast her waking hopes were

confirmed by Miss Vidella's request: "Daphne, I wish you would

accompany me to the reception-room. I desire to speak to you."

Oh, this meant everything. She felt exhilarated, triumphant, free,

as she walked behind Miss Vidella. The moment compensated her for

the many times she had walked there in disgrace. The little, stout,

waddling black figure led the way into the room, and, sitting down,

put on spectacles, and took a letter from the writing-table.

"I am surprised, very much surprised, to receive this morning a

letter from your father saying that he proposes taking you away at

the end of the term."

She looked up from the letter at her pupil who answered with a

sentence she had been longing to use.

"Yes, he told me he was going to the other day when he was down here."

"Oh, indeed?" Miss Vidella's eyebrows went up and hovered a second

over the top of her spectacles. "A most unusual proceeding

altogether, I think.... Er, did you ask him to do this thing?"

"No, he suggested it first."

"And why? Is he dissatisfied with the school in any way? It would

be strange if he were, after being content with it for nearly five

years."

"I don't think he ever thought much about it," suggested Daphne as a

solution.

"And what precisely do you desire to convey by that?"

Daphne shrugged her shoulders.

"Is he dissatisfied--now that he has troubled to think about it?"

She shrugged again. It was so difficult to be outspokenly rude and

say: "Of course he is," and she couldn't think of any innuendo that

would express the same idea.

"Answer me, please. I am anxious to know if you have--if this school

has suffered from any misrepresentation."

"I think he wants me to travel with him. To Paris and Switzerland

and Rome."

"Dear, dear," protested Miss Vidella. "I always find you dear girls

think I am a fool. Such is surely an obvious excuse. One doesn't

decide to go travelling to Paris and Switzerland and Rome during an

afternoon's visit, thus foregoing a term's fees. Why do you

prevaricate, Daphne? Speak the truth."

"Well, I think he does think the school is old-fashioned and that I'm

not doing much good."

"Excellent! Excellent!" nodded Miss Vidella, getting off her seat.

"Well, now we know. Yes, from my humble and obsolete standpoint, he

is right on both scores. It is an old fashion to object with all the

strength one can command to the use of foul oaths by one's girls--and

as you have never shown any affection or loyalty to your school it

cannot be said that you are doing much good."

"I suppose not."

The rebellious note caused the mistress to stare at her. In the

pause Daphne knew what Miss Vidella was thinking: that, since there

was now no possibility of keeping the Bruno girl, she could afford to

be very strong.

"H'm, I think I see." She nodded meaningly. "I begin to see. Yes,

of course. Your dear father thought that your position here, after

having so disgraced yourself, would be uncomfortable in the extreme.

Your surroundings would always fill you with shame, and your

school-fellows would to a certain extent reprobate you."

"I don't think they're very concerned about it," fired Daphne, "and

if they were, it wouldn't worry me."

Miss Vidella paid no heed.

"And yes, I see. Your dear father conceived that, after much

thought, I should feel I could not in the interest of my dear girls

keep you here, so he has written _first_ to suggest your removal, and

thus saved me the painful duty of asking him to take you away."

The blood poured over Daphne's face. She loathed her head mistress,

and seeing through her weakness to its dregs, cared not what she said.

"You know he doesn't think anything like that. You know you've only

just this moment thought of that. You know you really want me to

stay so that you won't lose a year of my father's fees. And--and you

don't really think it's frightfully serious if some one says 'damn';

but that it's enormously fetching to pretend that you do. I dare say

you say it to yourself sometimes. You know you're awfully sick at

the idea of my going, and it's only when you've realised that there's

no ghostly chance of my stopping that you think you had best appear

frightfully strong and get the credit of having expelled me. And if

that--and if you give out that that was the reason of my going, I

shall get my father to write to the papers about this school and ruin

you. They'll any of them publish anything he writes, and only too

glad...."

Miss Vidella had walked to the bell-push, very likely with some idea

that a maid could remove Daphne like a tea-tray. But Daphne didn't

stay. Trembling with fear at what she had said and with pleasure in

it--a heat tingling her cheek-bones, and her heart thumping--she

hurried out, ready to justify herself to the world.

Miss Vidella was trembling too, and her heart going irregularly.

Never before--not like that--good heavens, no!--the girl was mad,

dangerous--such a thing was unbelievable--not in all the years--she

should go--go at once--people should see--it made one feel quite sick

and faint. What the girl wanted was to be locked up and thrashed.

Thrashed!

The maid knocked, entered, and was pettishly dismissed.

Miss Vidella, recovering, tried to think collectedly. Mr. Tenter

Bruno's reference being irrevocably lost, there was but one enjoyment

left--that of being strong. She would write at once and demand that

he remove his daughter. No relief could come to her till the words

were in ink--till the letter was posted. With a shaking hand she

took note-paper and pen. "I regret--I regret to have to inform you

that your daughter has again been intolerably insolent, and, as I am

quite unaccustomed to this sort of treatment, I should--I should

esteem It a favour if you would allow her to return to her home at

once. Yours truly...."

That any one should write in that tone to _him_ incensed Mr. Bruno.

"Hell take the woman," he began, and reached for the bell with a view

to dispatching a servant and a wire. But he stopped as he saw a

letter in his daughter's hand. "Poor kid," thought he. Impatiently

opening it, he read her story of the head mistress's "nasty

suggestion," and her urgent request that he would write to her some

words which she could show to her friends as proof that she had not

been expelled.

"Poor darling! I won't have her worried like a rabbit by that fat

little poodle-bitch. Thank goodness, I can easily supply her need."

And the following morning Daphne fled with his letter, still sealed,

to a deserted room, and there opened it in suspense.

"MY DEAREST DAPHNE." (She guessed that he had avoided her nickname

lest she were ashamed to show it to her school-fellows.)

"I think that on the whole the sooner I have you back with me the

better, so that we may prepare for our travels. I wrote a few days

ago to Miss Vidella, telling her that you would not return after next

term--it was last Tuesday I wrote, as I think I told you in a

contemporary letter--and she wrote in reply begging me to reconsider

my decision and not to deprive you of your last year at Hemans House,

which she said was the most important of all. But I could not agree,

and wrote to that effect. I fear from a letter I received to-day

that she is unreasonably annoyed at my refusal to let you stay,

though it was quite within my rights; so lest she should vent her

displeasure on you, I have written asking that you may return

to-morrow.

"No more at present, for I am very busy.

"Your loving

"FATHER."

"Oh, he's a dear!" exclaimed she. "How wonderfully he's phrased it!

He _is_ clever!"

She could hardly believe she was to go at once. Excitement jumped

her up and led her to the window. As was fitting, the room to which

she had fled looked out upon the drive and the exit gates in the

garden wall. The wall appeared grey and green, and the sunlight

glorious beyond. It was too wonderful to be true. Suddenly had come

to her very feet that free country, wide and pleasurable, which ten

days ago she had hazily thought of as many troublesome miles ahead.

The goal of the long march of childhood had not waited for her to

reach it, but had come to meet her. And it shone everywhere with

promises: long, indolent reading; hours when one dreamed out books

(the hours best worth living); travels with her father in places

whose names were romances--Paris, Switzerland, Italy, Rome--Rome!

Sooner or later there would be love. Some one in Paris, perhaps, or

in Rome. Among the imperial ruins, as her imagination created them,

she saw his figure moving--featureless (for one could not decide on

his features) and of vague form (for was he tall or broad or

slender?)--just the grey figure of a youth. Now she was in his arms,

and the thought of it gave her that emptying delight that had

accompanied thoughts of Roger's love. And fame. Fame was in the

distance. It was all incredible. This morning, before breakfast, a

schoolgirl. To-morrow, about ten o'clock, after running down those

hearthstone steps and bowling in a carriage through those gates, a

free, independent, pleasure-seeking, fame-seeking woman of the world!

To only one person was the news of Daphne's departure a stunning

blow--Miss Sims. To her it came like an unexpected death sentence.

She had not cared to think what would happen when Daphne passed out

of her life; sufficient that the dread hour was a year or more away.

But ten days ago, without warning, she had been told that it was only

eight weeks away. And Daphne's excitement and enthusiasm had pained

her cruelly. As she listened to the girl's gaiety she had resolved

to suffer without complaint. That self-pity at least she could

enjoy. She took her pain away to her bedroom, with its tin

wash-hand-stand and its hospital bed. There she dwelt upon it.

"Never to see you again. Never to feel that I am moulding you to a

noble shape." Well, perhaps it was better thus. It was better that

the beloved girl should pass out of her life before she discovered

her governess to be something much smaller and less wonderful than

she had thought. And there was still eight weeks more to enjoy her.

And now they told her that Daphne Bruno was going to-morrow morning.

Daphne going to-morrow? And as there had been trouble between her

people and the head mistress, impossible that she should ever come

near the school again! The blow left an ache and confusion that Miss

Sims hid all day behind her teaching and her smiles and her

small-talk with the girls. Something of the serenity that she had

acted before Daphne struggled now to be real, and it did give itself

birth.

The next morning, when the carriage came up the drive, she purposely

waited in a little narrow music-room that she might torture herself,

did Daphne go off without seeking her; or might have her alone, did

the girl come.

Daphne burst in, saying she had been looking for her everywhere.

"Good-bye, dear," said Miss Sims.

"Good-bye, Miss Sims. I don't know how to thank you for all your

kindness."

_Kindness!_ The commonplace word wounded the governess.

"Good-bye, dear. And God bless you--always."

Daphne hesitated, and then stuttered:

"I wanted to say I owe everything to you. That's the absolute truth.

You've been the best thing about my school life. I mean--oh, but I

think I'll try and write it to you."

"Good-bye, Duffy. The memory of you will always be sweet to me."

She had resolved to say that much to her and no more. A little more

was conveyed in the pressure of her hand and the kiss she placed on

the girl's forehead. Then Daphne had gone, and Miss Sims's hand had

fallen to her side. She stayed in the music-room till she heard the

carriage wheels crunch over the gravel on to the road. She was

racked by the half-knowledge that, despite Daphne's words, no

passionate love or throbbing pain could be read in her leave-taking.

"Thank you for all your kindness." Cruel mediocrity! "But she will

write the broken-hearted words she could not say." No. It was all

over. A few dwindling letters would come, and they would be no more

than echoes.

She walked out of the narrow music-room into the dark main passage of

the ground floor. Five doors opened on to it, and a staircase came

down from the bedrooms above. It was, so to think, the centre of

Hemans House. One could hear the murmurous class-rooms, and the

halting scales from another music-room, and the buried clatter in the

kitchen. The head mistress passed from the reception-room, where she

had been taking some sort of farewell of Daphne, to her teaching in

the Fifth Form room. Her voice started, high-pitched and whining.

It was Hemans House, monotonously there, with Miss Sims in its

centre. She had a curious, rather unpleasant thought: for ever and

ever in Daphne's mind Hemans House would have nothing but a

subjective, dreamlike existence, and then only when she willed to

create it in memory. And yet here it was. Almost one could think of

it, and herself moving in it, as something in an occasional dream of

Daphne's.

PART III: _Daphne's Romance_