V.

"It's very unfair of me, of course," Miss Flodden remarked next morning,

as she handed down plate after plate, jar after jar, to Greenleaf,

seated, the catalogue before him and the pen in his hand, at a long deal

table--"it's very unfair, and it isn't at all business, but I used to

think I should like to see you again; and now, on account of these pots,

I dislike you."

Greenleaf looked up in astonishment. It was as if the veil of

sullenness, preventing his recognition of Miss Flodden ever since his

arrival, had suddenly been torn asunder by a burst of passion. The girl

was standing by the glass case, dusting a Limoges platter with a feather

brush, her mannish coat and short skirt covered with dust. She spoke in

an undertone, and her eyes were looking down upon the platter; but it

struck him at once that she was a Celt once more, and that the Celtic

waywardness and emotion were bursting out the more irresistibly for

that long repression due to the Spartan undemonstrativeness of smart

society. He noticed also a trait he had forgotten, and which had seemed

to be, long ago at the Museum, a sort of mark of temperament, telling

of inherited ferocity in this well-bred young lady; two of her little

white teeth, instead of being square pearls, like their companions, were

pointed and sharp, like those of a wild animal. And as she raised her

eyes, their light, whitish blue, flashed angrily.

"Excuse my being so rude, Mr. Greenleaf," she added very coldly,

"you have been so good, showing and explaining a lot of things to me,

that it's only fair you should know that, on account of the pots, I

have--well, got to dislike you. You see," she went on, turning her back

to him, "they were my toys. They were the only people, except the trees

and the river, one had to talk to sometimes."

Greenleaf had noticed at dinner last night, and again this morning at

lunch, that Miss Flodden seemed to have very little in common with her

family, and, indeed, scarcely any communication at all.

Sir Percy Flodden, an old gentleman with a beautiful white beard, and

beautiful soft manners, but a deficiency in further characteristics, had

found leisure, in the intervals of organising Primrose meetings, making

speeches at Conservative dinners, writing letters to the _Times_ about

breeds of cattle, and hunting and fishing a great deal, to get married

a second time, and to produce a large number of younger fishermen and

huntresses, future Primrose Leaguers and writers to the _Times_. The

second wife being dead, and sundry aunts installed in her place, the

younger generation of Floddens, after gradually emerging from the

nursery, ran wild in brooks and streams, stables and haylofts, until

the boys were packed off to civilisation and Eton, pending further

civilisation and Sandhurst; and the girls were initiated into their

proper form of civilisation by being taken to a drawing-room and then

hustled into further female evolution by an energetic and tactful

married sister. The elder girls were now at home, preparing clothes for

various balls and packing trunks for various visits; and the elder boys

had come back on holidays, with fishing-rods, coin collections, the

first three books of Euclid, and the last new thing in slang; as to the

younger half-brothers and sisters, they were still in the phase of the

hayloft and stable, emerging only to partake of gigantic breakfasts and

teas.

Among all these good-natured and well-mannered, but somewhat dull

creatures, Val Flodden moved in an atmosphere of her own, somewhat of a

stranger, considerably of a puzzle, and regarded with the mixed awe and

suspicion due to her having been recently an admittedly pretty woman,

and now showing signs of becoming an undoubtedly eccentric one. Besides,

there was the fact that Val Flodden was partially a Celt, and that her

father and brothers were most emphatically Saxons.

All this it has been necessary to explain that the reader might

understand that Greenleaf might have understood Miss Flodden's

passionate clinging to her sole companions at Yetholme, the old crockery

of her grandfather's collection.

But although Greenleaf did actually take in a portion of the situation,

he was mainly impressed by the want of public spirit exhibited by the

young lady; so inevitably do we expect other folk to possess even our

most eccentric standards, and to rule their feelings and actions by

notions of which they have probably never even heard.

Miss Flodden had broken through all rules in manifesting her feelings

about the pots; Greenleaf never dreamed of taking advantage of her false

move, but with his usual simplicity, encouraged by a plain-spokenness,

which never struck him as otherwise than natural, he answered very

gravely: "Of course I understand how fond you must be of these beautiful

things, and how much it must have been to you--it would be to anyone who

cared for art, even if not specially interested like you in pottery--to

have them constantly before you. But you ought to remember that you are

parting with them for the advantage of others."

Miss Flodden flushed a little. It was probably from surprise and shame

at this man's stupidity. She must have felt as if she herself had

alluded to the necessity of selling these heirlooms, as if she herself

had done the incredible thing of pointing out the pecuniary advantage.

Then, apparently, she reflected that if this man was so obtuse, he could

not help himself; but that he was doubtless honest in his intentions.

For she added coldly, and hiding her contemptuous face from him with a

jar held at arms' length:

"Of course I know that it's for the benefit of my brothers and sisters.

I don't grudge them the money, heaven knows, and when one's broke,

one's broke. Only it's sad to think what sort of things--what stupid

amusements and useless necessaries these lovely things will be exchanged

for, merely because the world is so idiotically constituted. You see,

the possession of these pots ought to give everyone more pleasure than

the possession of an additional horse, or an extra frock."

Greenleaf was as much taken aback at her misconception of his meaning as

she had been at her supposed understanding of it.

"Good gracious, Miss Flodden, I didn't mean the advantage of your

brothers and sisters. But surely you ought to reflect that these pots

passing from a private house in Northumberland to the South Kensington

Museum, will mean that hundreds of people will be afforded pleasure,

instead of only one or two--one, namely yourself, by your own account.

Besides, do you really think that any private individual has a moral

right to keep for himself any object capable of giving a noble kind of

pleasure to his fellows, merely because the present state of society

allows him to possess more money than his neighbours, and to lock up

things as his property? Surely art belongs to all who can enjoy it!"

There was something fault-finding in Greenleaf's tone, owing to the fact

that he could not realise such ideas, so very familiar to himself, not

being equally familiar to everyone else.

Miss Flodden set down the jar she was dusting, keeping her wrist

balanced on its edge, and looked at Greenleaf with surprise in her blue

eyes, which concentrated, and seemed to grow darker and deeper by the

concentration.

"Really," she asked incredulously, "are you speaking seriously? But

then--what would become of luxury and so forth?"

"The active would enjoy it as well as the idle--or rather, there would

be no longer either active or idle; everyone would work and enjoy

equally, and equally fairly and rationally."

"Then," went on Miss Flodden slowly, the sequence of thoughts bursting

with difficulty on to her mind, "no one would have things, except for

real enjoyment and as a result of fairly earning them? People would all

have books and beautiful trees and fields to look at, and pictures and

music; but no diamonds, or stepping horses, or frocks from Worth--the

things one has because other folk have them."

Greenleaf smiled: she seemed to him, talking of these things which "one"

had because "others" had them, things so futile, so foreign to his mind,

extraordinarily like a child talking of the snakes, whales, and ogres,

represented by tables and chairs, and hearthrugs.

"Of course not."

"At that rate," went on the girl, "there would no longer be any need for

marrying and giving in marriage. One would live quite free; free to work

at what one liked, and look about without folks worrying one."

Greenleaf did not follow her thought, for his own thoughts were too

foreign to the habits she was alluding to.

"I don't see," he added simply, "why people shouldn't marry or be given

in marriage because every one worked and had leisure. Some mightn't,

perhaps, because some would always, perhaps, want to work too much, and

because things matter to me--I mean to some--more than other people. But

I can't see why others shouldn't marry and be given in marriage, Miss

Flodden."

A little contraction passed across the girl's face, and she answered in

a hurried, husky voice:

"No, no; that would be all over."

And they fell again to the catalogue. It was a very hard day's work,

that first one, for the catalogue was in horrid confusion; and they

really could not have had time to talk much about other things, for they

went on with merely a brief space for lunch, and Greenleaf was sent for

a walk with one of the boys at tea time, while Miss Flodden unwillingly

entertained some neighbours. Then at dinner the conversation, in which

she took no part, rolled mainly upon local pedigrees, crops, how many

fish the boys had caught, in what houses friends were staying, whom

sundry young ladies of the neighbourhood were likely to marry, and how

many bags had been made at the various shoots. Still, despite these

irrelevant interests, Miss Flodden seemed to have understood why

Greenleaf had expected her to like the sale of the collection, and

Greenleaf to have understood why Miss Flodden should have been vexed

at the collection being sold. At least there was a sense of mutual

comprehension and good-will, such as the morning had scarcely promised.

And when, after fretting a little over more bags of game and more

local pedigrees, with his host and the boys after dinner, Greenleaf

returned to find the ladies in various stages of somnolence, over the

drawing-room fire; he experienced an odd sense of the naturalness of

things when Miss Flodden asked whether he could play the piano, and took

her violin out of its case.

Miss Flodden did not play exactly well, for it appears that very few

people do; and she, of course, had had but little opportunity of

learning. Yet, in a way, she played the fiddle much better, Greenleaf

felt, than he himself, who was decidedly a proficient, could play the

piano. For there was in her playing the expression not merely of talent,

but of extraordinary, passionate, dogged determination to master the

instrument. It was as much this as the actual execution which gave the

charm to her performance. To Greenleaf the charm was immense. He nearly

always played, when he did play, with men; and he hated the way in which

the fiddle crushes the starched hideous shirt, the movement of bowing

rucks the black sleeve and hard white cuff too high above the red,

masculine wrist; and among the dreams of his life there had always been

a very silly one, of a younger sister--he always thought of her as

called Emily--who would have learned the violin, and who would have

stood before him like this, bow in hand, while he looked up from his

piano. It seems odd, perhaps, that the fair violinist should never have

appeared to his mind as a possible wife; but so it was. And so it was

that this image, which had dawned upon his school-boy fancy long before

the delectableness of marriage could ever be understood, and when his

solitary little soul still smarted at his dull, grown-up, companionless

home--so it was that the image of "Emily"--the imaginary sister with the

violin--had gradually taken the place in his heart of that grave Miss

Delia Carpenter, the only woman whom he had ever loved, and who had told

him she was in love with another.

The family was beginning to disperse; the girls to wake up yawning from

their novels or their embroidery; the father to start suddenly from his

slumber over the _Times_; the boys, having satisfied themselves in the

newspapers about the number of brace of grouse, had sneaked off to

prepare flies for the next day's fishing; and still the duet went on,

the image of "Emily" gradually acquiring the blue eyes (its own had

been brownish) and clear-cut, nervous features (she had hitherto had

an irregular style of beauty) of Val Flodden.

"That's enough," said Miss Flodden, putting her violin tenderly--she had

the same rather unwonted tenderness with some of the majolica--into its

case, and looking round at the sleepy faces of the family. "Jack, give

Mr. Greenleaf his candle. And," she added, as they shook hands, "you'll

tell me some more about how it will be when everybody works and has

leisure, won't you, to-morrow?"

That night Greenleaf saw in his dreams his father's rectory among the

south country pines, the garden and paddock, the big library and loft

full of books; and among it all there wandered about, rather dim in

features, but unhesitatingly recognised, that imaginary sister, the

violinist Emily.