CHAPTER I

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NONE OTHER GODS

BY

ROBERT HUGH BENSON

AUTHOR OF "THE CONVENTIONALISTS," "THE NECROMANCERS," "A WINNOWING,"

ETC.

NONE OTHER GODS

DEDICATORY LETTER

MY DEAR JACK KIRKBY,

To whom can I dedicate this book but to you who were, not only the best

friend of the man I have written about, but one without whom the book

could not have been written? It is to you that I owe practically all the

materials necessary for the work: it was to you that Frank left the

greater part of his diary, such as it was (and I hope I have observed

your instructions properly as regards the use I have made of it); it was

you who took such trouble to identify the places he passed through; and

it was you, above all, who gave me so keen an impression of Frank

himself, that it seems to me I must myself have somehow known him

intimately, in spite of the fact that we never met.

I think I should say that it is this sense of intimacy, this

extraordinary interior accessibility (so to speak) of Frank, that made

him (as you and I both think) about the most lovable person we have ever

known. They were very extraordinary changes that passed over him, of

course--(and I suppose we cannot improve, even with all our modern

psychology, upon the old mystical names for such changes--Purgation,

Illumination and Union)--but, as theologians themselves tell us, that

mysterious thing which Catholics call the Grace of God does not

obliterate, but rather emphasizes and transfigures the natural

characteristics of every man upon whom it comes with power. It was the

same element in Frank, as it seems to me--the same root-principle, at

least--that made him do those preposterous things connected with bread

and butter and a railway train, that drove him from Cambridge in

defiance of all common-sense and sweet reasonableness; that held him

still to that deplorable and lamentable journey with his two traveling

companions, and that ultimately led him to his death. I mean, it was the

same kind of unreasonable daring and purpose throughout, though it

issued in very different kinds of actions, and was inspired by very

different motives.

Well, it is not much good discussing Frank in public like this. The

people who are kind enough to read his life--or, rather, the six months

of it with which this book deals--must form their own opinion of him.

Probably a good many will think him a fool. I daresay he was; but I

think I like that kind of folly. Other people may think him simply

obstinate and tiresome. Well, I like obstinacy of that sort, and I do

not find him tiresome. Everyone must form their own views, and I have a

perfect right to form mine, which I am glad to know coincide with your

own. After all, you knew him better than anyone else.

I went to see Gertie Trustcott, as you suggested, but I didn't get any

help from her. I think she is the most suburban person I have ever met.

She could tell me nothing whatever new about him; she could only

corroborate what you yourself had told me, and what the diaries and

other papers contained. I did not stay long with Miss Trustcott.

And now, my dear friend, I must ask you to accept this book from me, and

to make the best of it. Of course, I have had to conjecture a great

deal, and to embroider even more; but it is no more than embroidery. I

have not touched the fabric itself which you put into my hands; and

anyone who cares to pull out the threads I have inserted can do so if

they will, without any fear of the thing falling to pieces.

I have to thank you for many pleasurable and even emotional hours. The

offering which I present to you now is the only return I can make.

I am,

Ever yours sincerely,

ROBERT HUGH BENSON.

P.S.--We've paneled a new room since you were last at Hare Street. Come

and see it soon and sleep in it. We want you badly. And I want to talk

a great deal more about Frank.

P.P.S.--I hear that her ladyship has gone back to live with her father;

she tried the Dower House in Westmoreland, but seems to have found it

lonely. Is that true? It'll be rather difficult for Dick, won't it?

NONE OTHER GODS

PART I

CHAPTER I

(I)

"I think you're behaving like an absolute idiot," said Jack Kirkby

indignantly.

Frank grinned pleasantly, and added his left foot to his right one in

the broad window-seat.

These two young men were sitting in one of the most pleasant places in

all the world in which to sit on a summer evening--in a ground-floor

room looking out upon the Great Court of Trinity College, Cambridge. It

was in that short space of time, between six and seven, during which the

Great Court is largely deserted. The athletes and the dawdlers have not

yet returned from field and river; and Fellows and other persons, young

enough to know better, who think that a summer evening was created for

the reading of books, have not yet emerged from their retreats. A

white-aproned cook or two moves across the cobbled spaces with trays

upon their heads; a tradesman's boy comes out of the corner entrance

from the hostel; a cat or two stretches himself on the grass; but, for

the rest, the court lies in broad sunshine; the shadows slope eastwards,

and the fitful splash and trickle of the fountain asserts itself clearly

above the gentle rumble of Trinity Street.

Within, the room in which these two sat was much like other rooms of the

same standing; only, in this one case the walls were paneled with

white-painted deal. Three doors led out of it--two into a tiny bedroom

and a tinier dining-room respectively; the third on to the passage

leading to the lecture-rooms. Frank found it very convenient, since he

thus was enabled, at every hour of the morning when the lectures broke

up, to have the best possible excuse for conversing with his friends

through the window.

The room was furnished really well. Above the mantelpiece, where rested

an array of smoking-materials and a large silver cigarette-box, hung an

ancestral-looking portrait, in a dull gilded frame, of an aged man, with

a ruff round his neck, purchased for one guinea; there was a sofa and a

set of chairs upholstered in a good damask: a black piano by Broadwood;

a large oval gate-leg table; a bureau; shelves filled with very

indiscriminate literature--law books, novels, Badminton, magazines and

ancient school editions of the classics; a mahogany glass-fronted

bookcase packed with volumes of esthetic appearance--green-backed poetry

books with white labels; old leather tomes, and all the rest of the

specimens usual to a man who has once thought himself literary. Then

there were engravings, well framed, round the walls; a black iron-work

lamp, fitted for electric light, hung from the ceiling; there were a

couple of oak chests, curiously carved. On the stained floor lay three

or four mellow rugs, and the window-boxes outside blazed with geraniums.

The débris of tea rested on the window-seat nearest the outer door.

Frank Guiseley, too, lolling in the window-seat in a white silk shirt,

unbuttoned at the throat, and gray flannel trousers, and one white shoe,

was very pleasant to look upon. His hair was as black and curly as a

Neapolitan's; he had a smiling, humorous mouth, and black eyes--of an

extraordinary twinkling alertness. His clean-shaven face, brown in its

proper complexion as well as with healthy sunburning (he had played very

vigorous lawn-tennis for the last two months), looked like a boy's,

except for the very determined mouth and the short, straight nose. He

was a little below middle height--well-knit and active; and though,

properly speaking, he was not exactly handsome, he was quite

exceptionally delightful to look at.

Jack Kirkby, sitting in an arm-chair a yard away, and in the same sort

of costume--except that he wore both his shoes and a Third Trinity

blazer--was a complete contrast in appearance. The other had something

of a Southern Europe look; Jack was obviously English--wholesome red

cheeks, fair hair and a small mustache resembling spun silk. He was,

also, closely on six feet in height.

He was anxious just now, and, therefore, looked rather cross, fingering

the very minute hairs of his mustache whenever he could spare the time

from smoking, and looking determinedly away from Frank upon the floor.

For the last week he had talked over this affair, ever since the amazing

announcement; and had come to the conclusion that once more, in this

preposterous scheme, Frank really meant what he said.

Frank had a terrible way of meaning what he said--he reflected with

dismay. There was the affair of the bread and butter three years ago,

before either of them had learned manners. This had consisted in the

fastening up in separate brown-paper parcels innumerable pieces of bread

and butter, addressing each with the name of the Reverend Junior Dean

(who had annoyed Frank in some way), and the leaving of the parcels

about in every corner of Cambridge, in hansom cabs, on seats, on

shop-counters and on the pavements--with the result that for the next

two or three days the dean's staircase was crowded with messenger boys

and unemployables, anxious to return apparently lost property.

Then there had been the matter of the flagging of a fast Northern train

in the middle of the fens with a red pocket-handkerchief, to find out if

it were really true that the train would stop, followed by a rapid

retreat on bicycles so soon as it had been ascertained that it was true;

the Affair of the German Prince traveling incognito, into which the

Mayor himself had been drawn; and the Affair of the Nun who smoked a

short black pipe in the Great Court shortly before midnight, before

gathering up her skirts and vanishing on noiseless india-rubber-shod

feet round the kitchen quarters into the gloom of Neville's Court, as

the horrified porter descended from his signal-box.

Now many minds could have conceived these things; a smaller number of

people would have announced their intention of doing them: but there

were very few persons who would actually carry them all out to the very

end: in fact, Jack reflected, Frank Guiseley was about the only man of

his acquaintance who could possibly have done them. And he had done

them all on his own sole responsibility.

He had remembered, too, during the past week, certain incidents of the

same nature at Eton. There was the master who had rashly inquired, with

deep sarcasm, on the fourth or fifth occasion in one week when Frank had

come in a little late for five-o'clock school, whether "Guiseley would

not like to have tea before pursuing his studies." Frank, with a radiant

smile of gratitude, and extraordinary rapidity, had answered that he

would like it very much indeed, and had vanished through the still

half-open door before another word could be uttered, returning with a

look of childlike innocence at about five-and-twenty minutes to six.

"Please, sir," he had said, "I thought you said I might go?"

"And have you had tea?"

"Why, certainly, sir; at Webber's."

Now all this kind of thing was a little disconcerting to remember now.

Truly, the things in themselves had been admirably conceived and

faithfully executed, but they seemed to show that Frank was the kind of

person who really carried through what other people only talked

about--and especially if he announced beforehand that he intended to do

it.

It was a little dismaying, therefore, for his friend to reflect that

upon the arrival of the famous letter from Lord Talgarth--Frank's

father--six days previously, in which all the well-worn phrases occurred

as to "darkening doors" and "roof" and "disgrace to the family," Frank

had announced that he proposed to take his father at his word, sell up

his property and set out like a prince in a fairy-tale to make his

fortune.

* * * * *

Jack had argued till he was sick of it, and to no avail. Frank had a

parry for every thrust. Why wouldn't he wait a bit until the governor

had had time to cool down? Because the governor must learn, sooner or

later, that words really meant something, and that he--Frank--was not

going to stand it for one instant.

Why wouldn't he come and stay at Barham till further notice? They'd all

be delighted to have him: It was only ten miles off Merefield, and

perhaps--Because Frank was not going to sponge upon his friends. Neither

was he going to skulk about near home. Well, if he was so damned

obstinate, why didn't he go into the City--or even to the Bar? Because

(1) he hadn't any money; and (2) he would infinitely sooner go on the

tramp than sit on a stool. Well, why didn't he enlist, like a

gentleman? Frank dared say he would some time, but he wanted to stand by

himself a bit first and see the world.

"Let's see the letter again," said Jack at last. "Where is it?"

Frank reflected.

"I think it's in that tobacco-jar just behind your head," he said. "No,

it isn't; it's in the pouch on the floor. I know I associated it somehow

with smoking. And, by the way, give me a cigarette."

Jack tossed him his case, opened the pouch, took out the letter, and

read it slowly through again.

"Merefield Court,

"near Harrogate.

"May 28th, _Thursday_.

"I am ashamed of you, sir. When you first told me of your

intention, I warned you what would happen if you persisted, and

I repeat it now. Since you have deliberately chosen, in spite

of all that I have said, to go your own way, and to become a

Papist, I will have no more to do with you. From this moment

you cease to be my son. You shall not, while I live, darken my

doors again, or sleep under my roof. I say nothing of what you

have had from me in the past--your education and all the rest.

And, since I do not wish to be unduly hard upon you, you can

keep the remainder of your allowance up to July and the

furniture of your rooms. But, after that, not one penny shall

you have from me. You can go to your priests and get them to

support you.

"I am only thankful that your poor mother has been spared this

blow.

"T."

Jack made a small murmurous sound as he finished. Frank chuckled aloud.

"Pitches it in all right, doesn't he?" he observed dispassionately.

"If it had been my governor--" began Jack slowly.

"My dear man, it isn't your governor; it's mine. And I'm dashed if

there's another man in the world who'd write such a letter as that

nowadays. It's--it's too early-Victorian. They'd hardly stand it at the

Adelphi! I could have put it so much better myself.... Poor old

governor!"

"Have you answered it?"

"I ... I forget. I know I meant to.... No, I haven't. I remember now.

And I shan't till I'm just off."

"Well, I shall," remarked Jack.

Frank turned a swift face upon him.

"If you do," he said, with sudden fierce gravity, "I'll never speak to

you again. I mean it. It's my affair, and I shall run it my own way."

"But--"

"I mean it. Now! give me your word of honor--"

"I--"

"Your word of honor, this instant, or get out of my room!"

There was a pause. Then:

"All right," said Jack.

Then there fell a silence once more.

(II)

The news began to be rumored about, soon after the auction that Frank

held of his effects a couple of days later. He carried out the scene

admirably, entirely unassisted, even by Jack.

First, there appeared suddenly all over Cambridge, the evening before

the sale, just as the crowds of undergraduates and female relations

began to circulate about after tea and iced strawberries, a quantity of

sandwich-men, bearing the following announcement, back and front:

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

THE HON. FRANK GUISELEY

has pleasure in announcing that on

JUNE 7TH (Saturday)

at half-past ten a.m. precisely

in Rooms 1, Letter J, Great Court, Trinity College,

he will positively offer for

SALE BY AUCTION

_The household effects, furniture, books, etc., of

the Hon. Frank Guiseley, including_--

A piano by Broadwood (slightly out of tune); a magnificent suite of

drawing-room furniture, upholstered in damask, the sofa only slightly

stained with tea; one oak table and another; a bed; a chest of drawers

(imitation walnut, and not a very good imitation); a mahogany

glass-fronted bookcase, containing a set of suggestive-looking volumes

bound in faint colors, with white labels; four oriental mats; a portrait

of a gentleman (warranted a perfectly respectable ancestor); dining-room

suite (odd chairs); numerous engravings of places of interest and

noblemen's seats; a

_Silver Cigarette-box and fifteen Cigarettes in it (Melachrino and Mixed

American_); a cuckoo-clock (without cuckoo); five walking-sticks;

numerous suits of clothes (one lot suitable for Charitable Purposes);

some books--all VERY CURIOUS indeed--comprising the works of an

Eminent Cambridge Professor, and other scholastic luminaries, as well as

many other articles.

AT HALF-PAST TEN A.M. PRECISELY

All friends, and strangers, cordially invited.

NO RESERVE PRICE.

It served its purpose admirably, for by soon after ten o'clock quite a

considerable crowd had begun to assemble; and it was only after a very

serious conversation with the Dean that the sale was allowed to proceed.

But it proceeded, with the distinct understanding that a college porter

be present; that no riotous behavior should be allowed; that the sale

was a genuine one, and that Mr. Guiseley would call upon the Dean with

further explanations before leaving Cambridge.

The scene itself was most impressive.

Frank, in a structure resembling an auctioneer's box, erected on the

hearth-rug, presided, with extraordinary gravity, hammer in hand, robed

in a bachelor's gown and hood. Beneath him the room seethed with the

company, male and female, all in an excellent humor, and quite tolerable

prices were obtained. No public explanations were given of the need for

the sale, and Jack, in the deepest dismay, looked in again that

afternoon, about lunch-time, to find the room completely stripped, and

Frank, very cheerful, still in his hood and gown, smoking a cigarette in

the window-seat.

"Come in," he said. "And kindly ask me to lunch. The last porter's just

gone."

Jack looked at him.

He seemed amazingly genial and natural, though just a little flushed,

and such an air of drama as there was about him was obviously

deliberate.

"Very well; come to lunch," said Jack. "Where are you going to dine and

sleep?"

"I'm dining in hall, and I'm sleeping in a hammock. Go and look at my

bedroom."

Jack went across the bare floor and looked in. A hammock was slung

across from a couple of pegs, and there lay a small carpet-bag beneath

it. A basin on an upturned box and a bath completed the furniture.

"You mad ass!" said Jack. "And is that all you have left?"

"Certainly. I'm going to leave the clothes I've got on to you, and you

can fetch the hammock when I've gone."

"When do you start?"

"Mr. Guiseley will have his last interview and obtain his _exeat_ from

the Dean at half-past six this evening. He proposes to leave Cambridge

in the early hours of to-morrow morning."

"You don't mean that!"

"Certainly I do."

"What are you going to wear?"

Frank extended two flanneled legs, ending in solid boots.

"These--a flannel shirt, no tie, a cap, a gray jacket."

Jack stood again in silence, looking at him.

"How much money did your sale make?"

"That's immaterial. Besides, I forget. The important fact is that when

I've paid all my bills I shall have thirteen pounds eleven shillings and

eightpence."

"What?"

"Thirteen pounds eleven shillings and eightpence."

Jack burst into a mirthless laugh.

"Well, come along to lunch," he said.

* * * * *

It seemed to Jack that he moved in a dreary kind of dream that afternoon

as he went about with Frank from shop to shop, paying bills. Frank's

trouser-pockets bulged and jingled a good deal as they started--he had

drawn all his remaining money in gold from the bank--and they bulged

and jingled considerably less as the two returned to tea in Jesus Lane.

There, on the table, he spread out the coins. He had bought some

tobacco, and two or three other things that afternoon, and the total

amounted now but to twelve pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence.

"Call it thirteen pounds," said Frank. "There's many a poor man--"

"Don't be a damned fool!" said Jack.

"I'm being simply prudent," said Frank. "A contented heart--"

Jack thrust a cup of tea and the buttered buns before him.

* * * * *

These two were as nearly brothers as possible, in everything but blood.

Their homes lay within ten miles of one another. They had gone to a

private school together, to Eton, and to Trinity. They had ridden

together in the holidays, shot, dawdled, bathed, skated, and all the

rest. They were considerably more brothers to one another than were

Frank and Archie, his actual elder brother, known to the world as

Viscount Merefield. Jack did not particularly approve of Archie; he

thought him a pompous ass, and occasionally said so.

For Frank he had quite an extraordinary affection, though he would not

have expressed it so, to himself, for all the world, and a very real

admiration of a quite indefinable kind. It was impossible to say why he

admired him. Frank did nothing very well, but everything rather well; he

played Rugby football just not well enough to represent his college; he

had been in the Lower Boats at Eton, and the Lent Boat of his first year

at Cambridge; then he had given up rowing and played lawn-tennis in the

summer and fives in the Lent Term just well enough to make a brisk and

interesting game. He was not at all learned; he had reached the First

Hundred at Eton, and had read Law at Cambridge--that convenient branch

of study which for the most part fills the vacuum for intelligent

persons who have no particular bent and are heartily sick of classics;

and he had taken a Third Class and his degree a day or two before. He

was remarkably averaged, therefore; and yet, somehow or another, there

was that in him which compelled Jack's admiration. I suppose it was that

which is conveniently labeled "character." Certainly, nearly everybody

who came into contact with him felt the same in some degree.

His becoming a Catholic had been an amazing shock to Jack, who had

always supposed that Frank, like himself, took the ordinary sensible

English view of religion. To be a professed unbeliever was bad form--it

was like being a Little Englander or a Radical; to be pious was equally

bad form--it resembled a violent devotion to the Union Jack. No;

religion to Jack (and he had always hitherto supposed, to Frank) was a

department of life in which one did not express any particular views:

one did not say one's prayers; one attended chapel at the proper times;

if one was musical, one occasionally went to King's on Sunday afternoon;

in the country one went to church on Sunday morning as one went to the

stables in the afternoon, and that was about all.

Frank had been, too, so extremely secretive about the whole thing. He

had marched into Jack's rooms in Jesus Lane one morning nearly a

fortnight ago.

"Come to mass at the Catholic Church," he said.

"Why, the--" began Jack.

"I've got to go. I'm a Catholic."

"_What!_"

"I became one last week."

Jack had stared at him, suddenly convinced that someone was mad. When he

had verified that it was really a fact; that Frank had placed himself

under instruction three months before, and had made his confession--(his

confession!)--on Friday, and had been conditionally baptized; when he

had certified himself of all these things, and had begun to find

coherent language once more, he had demanded why Frank had done this.

"Because it's the true religion," said Frank. "Are you coming to mass or

are you not?"

Jack had gone then, and had come away more bewildered than ever as to

what it was all about. He had attempted to make a few inquiries, but

Frank had waved his hands at him, and repeated that obviously the

Catholic religion was the true one, and that he couldn't be bothered.

And now here they were at tea in Jesus Lane for the last time.

* * * * *

Of course, there was a little suppressed excitement about Frank. He

drank three cups of tea and took the last (and the under) piece of

buttered bun without apologies, and he talked a good deal, rather fast.

It seemed that he had really no particular plans as to what he was going

to do after he had walked out of Cambridge with his carpet-bag early

next morning. He just meant, he said, to go along and see what happened.

He had had a belt made, which pleased him exceedingly, into which his

money could be put (it lay on the table between them during tea), and he

proposed, naturally, to spend as little of that money as possible....

No; he would not take one penny piece from Jack; it would be simply

scandalous if he--a public-school boy and an University man--couldn't

keep body and soul together by his own labor. There would be hay-making

presently, he supposed, and fruit-picking, and small jobs on farms. He

would just go along and see what happened. Besides there were always

casual wards, weren't there? if the worst came to the worst; and he'd

meet other men, he supposed, who'd put him in the way of things. Oh!

he'd get on all right.

Would he ever come to Barham? Well, if it came in the day's work he

would. Yes: certainly he'd be most obliged if his letters might be sent

there, and he could write for them when he wanted, or even call for

them, if, as he said, it came in the day's work.

What was he going to do in the winter? He hadn't the slightest idea. He

supposed, what other people did in the winter. Perhaps he'd have got a

place by then--gamekeeper, perhaps--he'd like to be a gamekeeper.

At this Jack, mentally, threw up the sponge.

"You really mean to go on at this rotten idea of yours?"

Frank opened his eyes wide.

"Why, of course. Good Lord! did you think I was bluffing?"

"But ... but it's perfectly mad. Why on earth don't you get a proper

situation somewhere--land-agent or something?"

"My dear man," said Frank, "if you will have it, it's because I want to

do exactly what I'm going to do. No--I'm being perfectly serious. I've

thought for ages that we're all wrong somehow. We're all so beastly

artificial. I don't want to preach, but I want to test things for

myself. My religion tells me--" He broke off. "No; this is fooling. I'm

going to do it because I'm going to do it. And I'm really going to do

it. I'm not going to be an amateur--like slumming. I'm going to find out

things for myself."

"But on the roads--" expostulated Jack.

"Exactly. That's the very point. Back to the land."

Jack sat up.

"Good Lord!" he said. "Why, I never thought of it."

"What?"

"It's your old grandmother coming out."

Frank stared.

"Grandmother?"

"Yes--old Mrs. Kelly."

Frank laughed suddenly and loudly.

"By George!" he said, "I daresay it is. Old Grandmamma Kelly! She was a

gipsy--so she was. I believe you've hit it, Jack. Let's see: she was my

grandfather's second wife, wasn't she?"

Jack nodded.

"And he picked her up off the roads on his own estate. Wasn't she

trespassing, or something?"

Jack nodded again.

"Yes," he said, "and he was a magistrate and ought to have committed

her: And he married her instead. She was a girl, traveling with her

parents."

Frank sat smiling genially.

"That's it," he said. "Then I'm bound to make a success of it."

And he took another cigarette.

Then one more thought came to Jack: he had determined already to make

use of it if necessary, and somehow this seemed to be the moment.

"And Jenny Launton," he said "I suppose you've thought of her?"

A curious look came into Frank's eyes--a look of great gravity and

tenderness--and the humor died out. He said nothing for an instant. Then

he drew out of his breast-pocket a letter in an envelope, and tossed it

gently over to Jack.

"I'm telling her in that," he said. "I'm going to post it to-night,

after I've seen the Dean."

Jack glanced down at it.

"MISS LAUNTON,

"The Rectory,

"Merefield, Yorks."

ran the inscription. He turned it over; it was fastened and sealed.

"I've told her we must wait a bit," said Frank, "and that I'll write

again in a few weeks."

Jack was silent.

"And you think it's fair on her?" he asked deliberately.

Frank's face broke up into humor.

"That's for her to say," he observed. "And, to tell the truth, I'm not

at all afraid."

"But a gamekeeper's wife! And you a Catholic!"

"Ah! you don't know Jenny," smiled Frank. "Jenny and I quite understand

one another, thank you very much."

"But is it quite fair?"

"Good Lord!" shouted Frank, suddenly roused. "Fair! What the devil does

it matter? Don't you know that all's fair--under certain circumstances?

I do bar that rotten conventionalism. We're all rotten--rotten, I tell

you; and I'm going to start fresh. So's Jenny. Kindly don't talk of what

you don't understand."

He stood up, stretching. Then he threw the end of his cigarette away.

"I must go to the Dean," he said. "It's close on the half-hour."

(III)

The Reverend James Mackintosh was an excellent official of his college,

and performed his duties with care and punctilium. He rose about

half-past seven o'clock every morning, drank a cup of tea and went to

chapel. After chapel he breakfasted, on Tuesdays and Thursdays with two

undergraduates in their first year, selected in alphabetical order,

seated at his table; on the other days of the week in solitude. At ten

o'clock he lectured, usually on one of St. Paul's Epistles, on which

subjects he possessed note-books filled with every conceivable piece of

information that could be gathered together--grammatical, philological,

topographical, industrial, social, biographical--with a few remarks on

the fauna, flora, imports, characteristics and geological features of

those countries to which those epistles were written, and in which they

were composed. These notes, guaranteed to guide any student who really

mastered them to success, and even distinction, in his examinations,

were the result of a lifetime of loving labor, and some day, no doubt,

will be issued in the neat blue covers of the "Cambridge Bible for

Schools." From eleven to twelve he lectured on Church history of the

first five centuries--after which period, it will be remembered by all

historical students, Church history practically ceased. At one he

lunched; from two to four he walked rapidly (sometimes again in company

with a serious theological student), along the course known as the

Grantchester Grind, or to Coton and back. At four he had tea; at five he

settled down to administer discipline to the college, by summoning and

remonstrating with such undergraduates as had failed to comply with the

various regulations; at half-past seven he dined in hall--a meek figure,

clean shaven and spectacled, seated between an infidel philosopher and a

socialist: he drank a single glass of wine afterwards in the Combination

Room, smoked one cigarette, and retired again to his rooms to write

letters to parents (if necessary), and to run over his notes for next

day.

And he did this, with the usual mild variations of a University life,

every weekday, for two-thirds of the year. Of the other third, he spent

part in Switzerland, dressed in a neat gray Norfolk suit with

knickerbockers, and the rest with clerical friends of the scholastic

type. It was a very solemn thought to him how great were his

responsibilities, and what a privilege it was to live in the whirl and

stir of one of the intellectual centers of England!

* * * * *

Frank Guiseley was to Mr. Mackintosh a very great puzzle. He had

certainly been insubordinate in his first year (Mr. Mackintosh gravely

suspected him of the Bread-and-Butter affair, which had so annoyed his

colleague), but he certainly had been very steady and even deferential

ever since. (He always took off his hat, for example, to Mr. Mackintosh,

with great politeness.) Certainly he was not very regular at chapel, and

he did not dine in hall nearly so often as Mr. Mackintosh would have

wished (for was it not part of the University idea that men of all

grades of society should meet as equals under the college roof?). But,

then, he had never been summoned for any very grave or disgraceful

breach of the rules, and was never insolent or offensive to any of the

Fellows. Finally, he came of a very distinguished family; and Mr.

Mackintosh had the keenest remembrance still of his own single

interview, three years ago, with the Earl of Talgarth.

Mr. Mackintosh wondered, then, exactly what he would have to say to Mr.

Guiseley, and what Mr. Guiseley would have to say to him. He thought,

if the young man were really going down for good, as he had understood

this morning, it was only his plain duty to say a few tactful words

about responsibility and steadiness. That ridiculous auction would serve

as his text.

* * * * *

Mr. Mackintosh paused an instant, as he always did, before saying "Come

in!" to the knock on the door (I think he thought it helped to create a

little impression of importance). Then he said it; and Frank walked in.

"Good evening, Mr. Guiseley.... Yes; please sit down. I understood from

you this morning that you wished for your _exeat_."

"Please," said Frank.

"Just so," said Mr. Mackintosh, drawing the _exeat_ book--resembling the

butt of a check-book--towards him. "And you are going down to-morrow?"

"Yes," said Frank.

"Going home?" murmured the Dean, inscribing Frank's name in his neat

little handwriting.

"No," said Frank.

"Not?... To London, perhaps?"

"Well, not exactly," said Frank; "at least, not just yet."

Mr. Mackintosh blotted the book carefully, and extracted the _exeat_.

He pushed it gently towards Frank.

"About that auction!" he said, smiling indulgently; "I did want to have

a word with you about that. It was very unusual; and I wondered.... But

I am happy to think that there was no disturbance.... But can you tell

me exactly why you chose that form of ... of ..."

"I wanted to make as much money as ever I could," said Frank.

"Indeed!... Yes.... And ... and you were successful?"

"I cleared all my debts, anyhow," said Frank serenely. "I thought that

very important."

Mr. Mackintosh smiled again. Certainly this young man was very well

behaved and deferential.

"Well, that's satisfactory. And you are going to read at the Bar now? If

you will let me say so, Mr. Guiseley, even at this late hour, I must say

that I think that a Third Class might have been bettered. But no doubt

your tutor has said all that?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, then, a little more application and energy now may perhaps make

up for lost time. I suppose you will go to the Temple in October?"

Frank looked at him pensively a moment.

"No, Mr. Mackintosh," he said suddenly; "I'm going on the roads. I mean

it, quite seriously. My father's disowned me. I'm starting out to-morrow

to make my own living."

There was dead silence for an instant. The Dean's face was stricken, as

though by horror. Yet Frank saw he had not in the least taken it in.

"Yes; that's really so," he said. "Please don't argue with me about it.

I'm perfectly determined."

"Your father ... Lord Talgarth ... the roads ... your own living ... the

college authorities ... responsibility!"

Words of this sort burst from Mr. Mackintosh's mouth.

"Yes ... it's because I've become a Catholic! I expect you've heard

that, sir."

Mr. Mackintosh threw himself back (if so fierce a word may be used of so

mild a manner)--threw himself back in his chair.

"Mr. Guiseley, kindly tell me all about it. I had not heard one

word--not one word."

* * * * *

Frank made a great effort, and told the story, quite fairly and quite

politely. He described his convictions as well as he could, the various

steps he had taken, and the climax of the letter from his father. Then

he braced himself, to hear what would be said; or, rather, he retired

within himself, and, so to speak, shut the door and pulled down the

blinds.

It was all said exactly as he knew it would be. Mr. Mackintosh touched

upon a loving father's impatience, the son's youth and impetuosity, the

shock to an ancient family, the responsibilities of membership in that

family, the dangers of rash decisions, and, finally, the obvious errors

of the Church of Rome. He began several sentences with the phrase: "No

thinking man at the present day ..."

In fact, Mr. Mackintosh was, so soon as he had recovered from the first

shock, extraordinarily sensible and reasonable. He said all the proper

things, all the sensible and reasonable and common-sense things, and he

said them, not offensively or contemptuously, but tactfully and

persuasively. And he put into it the whole of his personality, such as

it was. He even quoted St. Paul.

He perspired a little, gently, towards the end: so he took off his

glasses and wiped them, looking, still with a smile, through kind,

short-sighted eyes, at this young man who sat so still. For Frank was so

quiet that the Dean thought him already half persuaded. Then once more

he summed up, when his glasses were fixed again; he ran through his

arguments lightly and efficiently, and ended by a quiet little

assumption that Frank was going to be reasonable, to write to his father

once more, and to wait at least a week. He even called him "my dear

boy!"

"Thanks very much," said Frank.

"Then you'll think it over quietly, my dear boy. Come and talk to me

again. I've given you your _exeat_, but you needn't use it. Come in

to-morrow evening after hall."

Frank stood up.

"Thanks, very much, Mr. Mackintosh. I'll ... I'll certainly remember

what you've said." He took up his _exeat_ as if mechanically.

"Then you can leave that for the present," smiled the Dean, pointing at

it. "I can write you another, you know."

Frank put it down quickly.

"Oh, certainly!" he said.

"Well, good-night, Mr. Guiseley.... I ... I can't tell you how glad I am

that you confided in me. Young men are a little unwise and impetuous

sometimes, you know. Good-night ... good-night. I shall expect you

to-morrow."

When Frank reached the court below he stood waiting a moment. Then a

large smile broke out on his face, and he hurried across to a passage

opposite, found a friend's door open, and rushed in. The room was empty.

He flew across to the window and crouched down, peeping over the sill at

the opening on the other side of the court leading to Mr. Mackintosh's

staircase.

He was rewarded almost instantly. Even as he settled himself on the

window seat a black figure, with gown ballooning behind, hurried out and

whisked through the archway leading towards the street. He gave him

twenty seconds, and then ran out himself, and went in pursuit. Half-way

up the lane he sighted him once more, and, following cautiously on

tiptoe, with a handkerchief up to his face, was in time to behold Mr.

Mackintosh disappear into the little telegraph office on the left of

Trinity Street.

"That settles it, then," observed Frank, almost aloud. "Poor Jack--I'm

afraid I shan't be able to breakfast with him after all!"

(IV)

It was a little after four o'clock on the following morning that a

policeman, pacing with slow, flat feet along the little lane that leads

from Trinity Hall to Trinity College, yawning as he went, and entirely

unconscious of the divine morning air, bright as wine and clear as

water, beheld a remarkable spectacle.

There first appeared, suddenly tossed on to the spikes that top the gate

that guards the hostel, a species of pad that hung over on both sides of

the formidable array of points. Upon this, more cautiously, was placed

by invisible hands a very old saddle without any stirrups.

The policeman stepped back a little, and flattened

himself--comparatively speaking--against the outer wall of the hostel

itself. There followed a silence.

Suddenly, without any warning, a heavy body, discernible a moment later

as a small carpet-bag, filled to bursting, fell abruptly on to the

pavement; and, again, a moment later, two capable-looking hands made

their appearance, grasping with extreme care the central rod on which

the spikes were supposed to revolve, on either side of the saddle.

Still the policeman did not make any sign; he only sidled a step or two

nearer and stood waiting.

When he looked up again, a young gentleman, in flannel trousers, gray

jacket, boots, and an old deerstalker, was seated astride of the saddle,

with his back to the observer. There was a pause while the rider looked

to this side and that; and then, with a sudden movement, he had dropped

clear of the wall, and come down on feet and hands to the pavement.

"Good morning, officer!" said the young gentleman, rising and dusting

his hands, "it's all right. Like to see my _exeat_? Or perhaps half a

crown--"

(V)

About six o'clock in the morning, Jack Kirkby awoke suddenly in his

bedroom in Jesus Lane.

This was very unusual, and he wondered what it was all about. He thought

of Frank almost instantly, with a jerk, and after looking at his watch,

very properly turned over and tried to go to sleep again. But the

attempt was useless; there were far too many things to think about; and

he framed so many speeches to be delivered with convincing force at

breakfast to his misguided friend, that by seven o'clock he made up his

mind that he would get up, go and take Frank to bathe, and have

breakfast with him at half-past eight instead of nine. He would have

longer time, too, for his speeches. He got out of bed and pulled up his

blind, and the sight of the towers of Sidney Sussex College, gilded with

sunshine, determined him finally.

When you go to bathe before breakfast at Cambridge you naturally put on

as few clothes as possible and do not--even if you do so at other

times--say your prayers. So Jack put on a sweater, trousers, socks,

canvas shoes, and a blazer, and went immediately down the

oilcloth-covered stairs. As he undid the door he noticed a white thing

lying beneath it, and took it up. It was a note addressed to himself in

Frank's handwriting; and there, standing on the steps, he read it

through; and his heart turned suddenly sick.

* * * * *

There is all the difference in the world between knowing that a

catastrophe is going to happen, and knowing that it has happened. Jack

knew--at least, with all his reasonable part--that Frank was going to

leave Cambridge in the preposterous manner described, after breakfast

with himself; and it was partly because of this very knowledge that he

had got up earlier in order to have an extra hour with Frank before the

final severance came. Yet there was something in him--the same thing

that had urged him to rehearse little speeches in bed just now--that

told him that until it had actually happened, it had not happened, and,

just conceivably, might not happen after all. And he had had no idea how

strong this hopeful strain had been in him--nor, for that matter, how

very deeply and almost romantically he was attached to Frank--until he

felt his throat hammering and his head becoming stupid, as he read the

terse little note in the fresh morning air of Jesus Lane.

It ran as follows:

"DEAR JACK,

"It's no good, and I'm off early! That ass Mackintosh went and

wired to my people directly I left him. I tracked him down. And

there'll be the devil to pay unless I clear out. So I can't

come to breakfast. Sorry.

"Yours,

"F.G.

"P.S.--By the way, you might as well go round to the little man

and try to keep him quiet. Tell him it'll make a scandal for

Trinity College, Cambridge, if he makes a fuss. That'll stop

him, perhaps. And you might try to rescue my saddle from the

porter. He's probably got it by now."

Three minutes later a figure in a sweater, gray trousers, canvas shoes,

Third Trinity blazer and no cap, stood, very inarticulate with

breathlessness, at the door of the Senior Dean's rooms, demanding of a

scandalized bed-maker to see the official in question.

"'E's in his barth, sir!" expostulated the old woman.

"Then he must come out of it!" panted Jack.

"--That is, if 'e's out o' bed."

"Then he can stop in it, if he isn't.... I tell you--"

Jack gave up arguing. He took the old lady firmly by the shoulders, and

placed her in the doorway of the audience-room; then he was up the inner

stairs in three strides, through the sitting-room, and was tapping at

the door of the bedroom. A faint sound of splashing ceased.

"Who's there? Don't--"

"It's me, sir--Kirkby! I'm sorry to disturb you, but--"

"Don't come in!" cried an agitated voice, with a renewed sound of water,

as if someone had hastily scrambled out of the bath.

Jack cautiously turned the handle and opened the door a crack. A cry of

dismay answered his move, followed by a tremendous commotion and

swishing of linen.

"I'm coming in, sir," said Jack, struggling between agitation and

laughter. It was obvious from the sounds that the clergyman had got into

bed again, wet, and as God made him. There was no answer, and Jack

pushed the door wider and went in.

It was as he had thought. His unwilling host had climbed back into bed

as hastily as possible, and the bed-clothes, wildly disordered, were

gathered round his person. A face, with wet hair, looking very odd and

childlike without his glasses, regarded him with the look of one who

sees sacrilege done. A long flannel nightgown lay on the ground between

the steaming bath and the bed, and a quantity of water lay about on the

floor, in footprints and otherwise.

"May I ask what is the meaning of this disgraceful--"

"I'm sorry, sir," said Jack briefly, "but Frank Guiseley's bolted. I've

just found this note." It did not occur to him, as he handed the note to

a bare arm, coyly protruded from the tangled bed-clothes, that this very

officer of the college was referred to in it as "that ass" and "the

little man." ... All his attention, not occupied with Frank, was fixed

on the surprising new discovery that deans had bodies and used real

baths like other people. Somehow that had never occurred to him he had

never imagined them except in smooth, black clothes and white linen. His

discovery seemed to make Mr. Mackintosh more human, somehow.

The Dean read the note through as modestly as possible, holding it very

close to his nose, as his glasses were unattainable, with an arm of

which not more than the wrist appeared. He swallowed in his throat once

or twice, and seemed to taste something with his lips, as his manner

was.

"This is terrible!" said the Dean. "Had you any idea--"

"I knew he was going some time to-day," said Jack, "and understood that

you knew too."

"But I had no idea--"

"You did telegraph, didn't you, sir?"

"I certainly telegraphed. Yes; to Lord Talgarth. It was my duty. But--"

"Well; he spotted it. That's all. And now he's gone. What's to be done?"

Mr. Mackintosh considered a moment or two. Jack made an impatient

movement.

"I must telegraph again," said the Dean, with the air of one who has

exhausted the resources of civilization.

"But, good Lord! sir--"

"Yes. I must telegraph again. As soon as I'm dressed. Or perhaps you

would--"

"Office doesn't open till eight. That's no good. He'll be miles away by

then."

"It's the only thing to be done," said the Dean with sudden energy. "I

forbid you to take any other steps, Mr. Kirkby. I am responsible--"

"But--"

"We must not make a scandal.... What else did you propose?"

"Why--fifty things. Motor-cars; police--"

"Certainly not. We must make no scandal as he ... as he very properly

says." (The Dean swallowed in his throat again. Jack thought afterwards

that it must have been the memory of certain other phrases in the

letter.) "So if you will be good enough to leave me instantly, Mr.

Kirkby, I will finish my dressing and deal with the matter."

* * * * *

Jack wheeled and went out of the room.

* * * * *

It was a miserable breakfast to which he sat down half an hour

later--still in flannels, and without his bath. Frank's place was laid,

in accordance with the instructions he had given his landlady last

night, and he had not the heart to push the things aside. There were

soles for two, and four boiled eggs; there was coffee and marmalade and

toast and rolls and fruit; and the comfortable appearance of the table

simply mocked him.

He had had very confused ideas just now as to what was possible with

regard to the pursuit of Frank; a general vision of twenty motor-cars,

each with a keen-eyed chauffeur and an observant policeman, was all

that had presented itself to his imagination; but he had begun to

realize by now that you cannot, after all, abduct a young man who has

committed no crime, and carry him back unwillingly, even to Cambridge!

Neither the Dean of Trinity nor a father possesses quite unlimited power

over the freedom of a pupil and a son. And, after all, Frank had only

taken his father at his word!

These reflections, however, did not improve the situation. He felt quite

certain, in theory, that something more could be done than feebly to

send another telegram or two; the only difficulty was to identify that

something. He had vague ideas, himself, of hiring a motor-car by the

day, and proceeding to scour the country round Cambridge. But even this

did not stand scrutiny. If he had failed to persuade Frank to remain in

Cambridge, it was improbable that he could succeed in persuading him to

return--even if he found him. About eight important roads run out of

Cambridge, and he had not a glimmer of an idea as to which of these he

had taken. It was possible, even, that he had not taken any of them, and

was walking across country. That would be quite characteristic of Frank.

* * * * *

He finished breakfast dismally, and blew through an empty pipe, staring

lackadaisically out of the window at the wall of Sidney Sussex for two

or three minutes before lighting up. Cambridge seemed an extraordinary

flat and stupid place now that Frank was no longer within it. Really

there was nothing particular to do. It had become almost a regular

engagement for him to step round to the Great Court about eleven, and

see what was to be done. Sometimes Frank wanted lawn-tennis--sometimes a

canoe on the Backs--at any rate, they would either lunch or dine

together. And if they didn't--well, at any rate, Frank was there!

He tried to picture to himself what Frank was doing; he had visions of a

sunlit road running across a fen, with a figure tramping up it; of a

little wayside inn, and Frank drinking beer in the shade. But it seemed

an amazing waste of company that the figure should always be alone. Why

hadn't he proposed to go with him himself? He didn't know; except, that

it certainly would not have been accepted. And yet they could have had

quite a pleasant time for a couple of months; and, after a couple of

months, surely Frank would have had enough of it!

But, again--would he?... Frank seemed really in earnest about making his

living permanently; and when Frank said that he was going do a thing, he

usually did it! And Jack Kirkby did not see himself leaving his own

mother and sisters indefinitely until Frank had learned not to be a

fool.

He lit his pipe at last; and then remembered the commission with regard

to the saddle--whatever that might mean. He would stroll round presently

and talk to the porter about it ... Yes, he would go at once; and he

would just look in at Frank's rooms again. There was the hammock to

fetch, too.

But it was a dreary little visit. He went round as he was, his hands

deep in his pockets, trying to whistle between his teeth and smoke

simultaneously; and he had to hold his pipe in his hand out of respect

for rules, as he conversed with the stately Mr. Hoppett in Trinity

gateway. Mr. Hoppett knew nothing about any saddle--at least, not for

public communication--but his air of deep and diplomatic suspiciousness

belied his words.

"It's all right," said Jack pleasantly, "I had nothing to do with the

elopement. The Dean knows all about it."

"I know nothing about that, sir," said Mr. Hoppett judicially.

"Then you've not got the saddle?"

"I have not, sir."

Frank's outer door was open as Jack came to the familiar staircase, and

his heart leaped in spite of himself, as he peered in and heard

footsteps in the bedroom beyond. But it was the bed-maker with a mop,

and a disapproving countenance, who looked out presently.

"He's gone, Mrs. Jillings," said Jack.

Mrs. Jillings sniffed. She had heard tales of the auction and thought it

a very improper thing for so pleasant a young gentleman to do.

"Yes, sir."

"There isn't a saddle here, is there?"

"Saddle, sir? No, sir. What should there be a saddle here for?"

"Oh, well," said Jack vaguely. "I've come to fetch away the hammock,

anyhow."

Certainly the rooms looked desolate. Even the carpets were gone, and the

unstained boards in the middle seemed suggestive of peculiar dreariness.

It was really very difficult to believe that these were the rooms where

he and Frank had had such pleasant times--little friendly

bridge-parties, and dinners, and absurd theatricals, in which Frank had

sustained, with extreme rapidity, with the aid of hardly any properties

except a rouge-pot, a burnt cork and three or four wisps of hair of

various shades, the part of almost any eminent authority in the

University of Cambridge that you cared to name. There were long

histories, invented by Frank himself, of the darker sides of the lives

of the more respectable members of the Senate--histories that grew, like

legends, term by term--in which the most desperate deeds were done. The

Master of Trinity, for example, in these Sagas, would pass through

extraordinary love adventures, or discover the North Pole, or give a

lecture, with practical examples, of the art of flying; the Provost of

King's would conspire with the President of Queen's College, to murder

the Vice-Chancellor and usurp his dignities. And these histories would

be enacted with astonishing realism, chiefly by Frank himself, with the

help of a zealous friend or two who were content to obey.

And these were all over now; and that was the very door through which

the Vice-Chancellor was accustomed to escape from his assassins!

* * * * *

Jack sighed again; passed through, picked up the parcel of clothes that

lay in the window-seat, unhitched the hammock in which Frank had slept

last night (he noticed the ends of three cigarettes placed on the cover

of a convenient biscuit-tin), and went off resembling a _retiarius_.

Mrs. Jillings sniffed again as she looked after him up the court. She

didn't understand those young gentlemen at all; and frequently said so.

(VI)

At half-past six o'clock that morning--about the time that Jack awoke in

Cambridge--John Harris, laborer, emerged, very sleepy and frowsy--for he

had sat up late last night at the "Spotted Dog"--from the door of a

small cottage on the Ely road, in the middle of Grunty Fen. He looked

this way and that, wondering whether it were as late as his

kitchen-clock informed him, and observing the sun, that hung now

lamentably high up in that enormous dome of summer sky that sat on the

fenland like a dish-cover on a dish. And as he turned southwards he

became aware of a young gentleman carrying a carpet-bag in one hand, and

a gray jacket over his other arm, coming up to him, not twenty yards

away. As he came nearer, Mr. Harris noticed that his face was badly

bruised as by a blow.

"Good morning," said the young gentleman. "Hot work."

John Harris made some observation.

"I want some work to do," said the young gentleman, disregarding the

observation. "I'm willing and capable. Do you know of any? I mean, work

that I shall be paid for. Or perhaps some breakfast would do as a

beginning."

John Harris regarded the young gentleman in silence.

CHAPTER II

(I)

Merefield Court, as every tourist knows may be viewed from ten to five

on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the family are not in residence, and on

Tuesdays only, from two to four, when they are. It is unnecessary,

therefore, to describe it very closely.

It stands very nearly on the top of a hill, protected by woods from the

north winds of Yorkshire; and its towers and pinnacles can be seen from

ten miles away down the valley. It is built, architecturally considered,

in the form of an irregular triangular court--quite unique--with the old

barbican at the lower end; the chapel wing directly opposite; the ruins

of the old castle on the left, keep and all, and the new house that is

actually lived in on the right. It is of every conceivable date (the

housekeeper will supply details) from the British mound on which the

keep stands, to the Georgian smoking-room built by the grandfather of

the present earl; but the main body of the house, with which we are

principally concerned--the long gray pile facing south down to the

lake, and northwards into the court--is Jacobean down to the smallest

detail, and extremely good at that. It was on the end of this that the

thirteenth earl the fifteenth baron and the fourteenth viscount (one

man, not three) thought it proper to build on a Palladian kind of

smoking-room of red sandstone, brought at enormous cost from half across

England. Fortunately, however, ivy has since covered the greater part of

its exterior.

It was in this room--also used as a billiard-room--that Archie Guiseley

(Viscount Merefield), and Dick Guiseley, his first cousin, first heard

the news of Frank's intentions.

They were both dressed for dinner, and were knocking the balls about for

ten minutes, waiting for the gong, and they were talking in that

incoherent way characteristic of billiard-players.

"The governor's not very well again," observed Archie, "and the doctor

won't let him go up to town. That's why we're here."

Dick missed a difficult cannon (he had only arrived from town himself by

the 6.17), and began to chalk his cue very carefully.

"There's nothing whatever to do," continued Archie, "so I warn you."

Dick opened his mouth to speak and closed it again, pursing it up

precisely as once more he addressed himself to the balls, and this time

brought off a really brilliant stroke.

"And he's in a terrible way about Frank," continued the other. "You've

heard all about that?"

Dick nodded.

"And he swears he won't have him home again, and that he can go to the

devil."

Dick arched his eyebrows interrogatively.

"Of course, he doesn't mean it.... But the gout, you know, and all

that.... I think Frank had better keep out of the way, though, for a

bit. Oh! by the way, the Rector and Jenny are coming to dinner."

"What does Jenny say to it all?" asked Dick gently.

"Oh! Jenny laughs."

These two young men--for Archie was only twenty-five, and Dick a year or

two older--were quite remarkably like one another in manner and general

bearing. Each, though their faces were entirely different, wore that

same particular form of mask that is fashionable just now. Each had a

look in his eyes as if the blinds were down--rather insolent and yet

rather pleasant. Each moved in the same kind of way, slow and

deliberate; each spoke quietly on rather a low note, and used as few

words as possible. Each, just now, wore a short braided dinner-jacket of

precisely the same cut.

For the rest, they were quite unlike. Archie was clean-shaven, of a

medium sort of complexion, with a big chin and rather loosely built;

Dick wore a small, pointed brown beard, and was neat and alert. Neither

of them did anything particular in the world. Archie was more or less

tied to his father, except in the autumn--for Archie drew the line at

Homburg, and went about for short visits, returning continually to look

after the estate; Dick lived in a flat in town on six hundred a year,

allowed him by his mother, and was supposed to be a sort of solicitor.

They saw a good deal of one another, off and on, and got on together

rather better than most brothers; certainly better than did Archie and

Frank. It was thought a pity by a good many people that they were only

cousins.

* * * * *

Then, as they gossiped gently, the door suddenly opened and a girl came

in.

She was a very striking girl indeed, and her beauty was increased just

now by obvious excitement held well in check. She was tall and very

fair, and carried herself superbly, looking taller than she really was.

Her eyes, particularly bright just now, were of a vivid blue, wide-open

and well set in her face; her mouth was strong and sensible; and there

was a glorious air of breeziness and health about her altogether. She

was in evening dress, and wore a light cloak over her white shoulders.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said--"Oh! good evening, Mr. Dick!--but

there's something wrong. Clarkson ran out to tell us that Lord

Talgarth--it's a telegram or something. Father sent me to tell you."

Archie looked at her a second; then he was gone, swiftly, but not

hurriedly. The girl turned to Dick.

"I'm afraid it's something about Frank," she said. "I heard Clarkson

mention his name to father. Is there any more news?"

Dick laid down his cue across the table.

"I only came an hour ago," he said. "Archie was telling me just now."

Jenny went across to the deep chair on the hearth, threw off her cloak

and sat down.

"Lord Talgarth's--well--if he was my father I should say he was in a

passion. I heard his voice." She smiled a little.

Dick leaned against the table, looking at her.

"Poor Frank!" he said.

She smiled again, more freely.

"Yes ... poor, dear Frank! He's always in hot water, isn't he?"

"I'm afraid it's serious this time," observed Dick. "What did he want to

become a Catholic for?"

"Oh, Frank's always unexpected!"

"Yes, I know; but this happens to be just the one very thing--"

She looked at him humorously.

"Do you know, I'd no notion that Lord Talgarth was so deeply religious

until Frank became a Catholic."

"Yes, I know," said Dick. "But it is just his one obsession. Frank must

have known that."

"And I've not the slightest doubt," said Jenny, "that that was an

additional reason for his doing it."

"Well, what'll happen?"

She jerked her head a little.

"Oh! it'll pass off. You'll see. Frank'll find out, and then we shall

all be happy ever afterwards."

"But meantime?"

"Oh! Frank'll go and stay with friends a month or two. I daresay he'll

come to the Kirkbys', and I can go and see him."

"Suppose he does something violent? He's quite capable of it."

"Oh! I shall talk to him. It'll be all right. I'm very sensible indeed,

you know. All my friends tell me that."

Dick was silent.

"Don't you think so?"

"Think what?"

"That I'm very sensible."

Dick made a little movement with his head.

"Oh! I suppose so. Yes, I daresay.... And suppose my uncle cuts him off

with a shilling? He's quite capable of it. He's a very heavy father, you

know."

"He won't. I shall talk to him too."

"Yes; but suppose he does?"

She threw him a swift glance.

"Frank'll put the shilling on his watch-chain, after it's been shown

with all the other wedding-presents. What are you going to give me, Mr.

Dick?"

"I shall design a piece of emblematic jewelry," said Dick very gravely.

"When's the wedding to be?"

"Well, we hadn't settled. Lord Talgarth wouldn't make up his mind. I

suppose next summer some time."

"Miss Jenny--"

"Yes?"

"Tell me--quite seriously--what you'd do if there was a real row--a

permanent one, I mean--between Frank and my uncle?"

"Dear Mr. Dick--don't talk so absurdly. I tell you there's not going to

be a row. I'm going to see to that myself."

"But suppose there was?"

Jenny stood up abruptly.

"I tell you I'm a very sensible person, and I'm not going to imagine

absurdities. What do you want me to say? Do you want me to strike an

attitude and talk about love in a cottage?"

"Well, that would be one answer."

"Very well, then. That'll do, won't it? You can take it as said.... I'm

going to see what's happening."

But as she went to the door there came footsteps and voices outside; and

the next moment the door opened suddenly, and Lord Talgarth, followed by

his son and the Rector, burst into the room.

(II)

I am very sorry to have to say it, but the thirteenth Earl of Talgarth

was exactly like a man in a book--and not a very good book. His

character was, so to speak, cut out of cardboard--stiff cardboard, and

highly colored, with gilt edges showing here and there. He also, as has

been said, resembled a nobleman on the stage of the Adelphi. He had a

handsome inflamed face, with an aquiline nose and white eyebrows that

moved up and down, and all the other things; he was stout and tall,

suffered from the gout, and carried with him in the house a black stick

with an india-rubber pad on the end. There were no shades about him at

all. Construct a conventionally theatrical heavy father, of noble

family, and you have Lord Talgarth to the life. There really are people

like this in the world--of whom, too, one can prophesy, with tolerable

certainty, how they will behave in any given situation.

Certainly, Lord Talgarth was behaving in character now. He had received

meek Mr. Mackintosh's deferential telegram, occupying several sheets,

informing him that his son had held an auction of all his belongings,

and had proposed to take to the roads; asking, also, for instructions as

to how to deal with him. And the hint of defiant obstinacy on the part

of Frank--the fact, indeed, that he had taken his father at his

word--had thrown that father into a yet more violent fit of passion.

Jenny had heard him spluttering and exclamatory with anger as she came

into the hall (the telegram had but that instant been put into his

hands), and even now the footmen, still a little pale, were exchanging

winks in the hall outside; while Clarkson, his valet, and the butler

stood in high and subdued conference a little way off.

What Lord Talgarth would really have wished was that Frank should have

written to him a submissive--even though a disobedient--letter, telling

him that he could not forego his convictions, and preparing to assume

the _rôle_ of a Christian martyr. For he could have sneered at this, and

after suitable discipline forgiven its writer more or less. Of course,

he had never intended for one instant that his threats should really be

carried out; but the situation--to one of Lord Talgarth's

temperament--demanded that the threats should be made, and that Frank

should pretend to be crushed by them. That the boy should have behaved

like this brought a reality of passion into the affair--disconcerting

and infuriating--as if an actor should find his enemy on the stage was

armed with a real sword. There was but one possibility left--which Lord

Talgarth instinctively rather than consciously grasped at--namely, that

an increased fury on his part should once more bring realities back

again to a melodramatic level, and leave himself, as father, master both

of the situation and of his most disconcerting son. Frank had behaved

like this in minor matters once or twice before, and Lord Talgarth had

always come off victor. After all, he commanded all the accessories.

* * * * *

When the speeches had been made--Frank cut off with a shilling, driven

to the Colonies, brought back again, and finally starved to death at his

father's gates--Lord Talgarth found himself in a chair, with Jenny

seated opposite, and the rest of the company gone to dinner. He did not

quite realize how it had all been brought about, nor by whose

arrangement it was that a plate of soup and some fish were to come

presently, and Jenny and he to dine together.

He pulled himself together a little, however, and began to use phrases

again about his "graceless son," and "the young villain," and "not a

penny of his." (He was, of course, genuinely angry; that must be

understood.)

Then Jenny began to talk.

"I think, you know," she said quietly, "that you aren't going the right

way to work. (It's very impertinent of me, isn't it?--but you did say

just now you wanted to hear what I thought.)"

"Of course I do; of course I do. You're a sensible girl, my dear. I've

always said that. But as for this young--"

"Well, let me say what I think. (Yes, put the soup down here, will you.

Is that right, Lord Talgarth?)." She waited till the man was gone again

and the old man had taken up his spoon. Then she took up her own. "Well,

I think what you've done is exactly the thing to make Frank more

obstinate than ever. You see, I know him very well. Now, if you'd only

laughed at him and patted his head, so to speak, from the beginning, and

told him you thought it an excellent thing for a boy of his character,

who wants looking after--"

Lord Talgarth glared at her. He was still breathing rather heavily, and

was making something of a noise over his soup.

"But how can I say that, when I think--"

"Oh! you can't say it now, of course; it's too late. No; that would

never do. You must keep it up--only you mustn't be really angry. Why not

try a little cold severity?"

She looked so charming and humorous that the old man began to melt a

little. He glanced up at her once or twice under his heavy eyebrows.

"I wonder what you'll do," he said with a kind of gruffness, "when you

find you've got to marry a pauper?"

"I shan't have to marry a pauper," said Jenny. "That wouldn't do

either."

"Oh! you're counting on that eight hundred a year still, are you?"

Jenny allowed a little coldness to appear on her face. Rude banter was

all very well, but it mustn't go too far. (Secretly she allowed to

herself sometimes that this old man had elements of the cad in his

character.)

"That's entirely my own affair," she said, "and Frank's."

Lord Talgarth blazed up a little.

"And the eight hundred a year is mine," he said.

Jenny laid down her spoon as the servant reappeared with the fish and

the menu-card. He came very opportunely. And while her host was

considering what he would eat next, she was pondering her next move.

Jenny, as has been said, was an exceedingly sensible girl. She had grown

up in the Rectory, down at the park gates; and since her mother's death,

three years previously, had managed her father's house, including her

father, with great success. She had begun to extend her influence, for

the last year or two, even over the formidable lord of the manor

himself, and, as has been seen, was engaged to his son. Her judgment was

usually very sound and very sane, and the two men, with the Rector, had

been perfectly right just now in leaving the old man to her care for an

hour or so. If anything could quiet him it would be this girl. She was

quite fearless, quite dignified, and quite able to hold her own. And her

father perceived that she rather enjoyed it.

When the man had gone out again, she resumed:

"Well, let's leave it," she said, "for a day or two. There's no hurry,

and--"

"But I must answer this--this telegram," he growled. "What am I to say

to the feller?"

"Tell him to follow his discretion, and that you have complete

confidence--"

"But--"

"Yes; I know you haven't, really. But it'll do no harm, and it'll make

him feel important."

"And what if the boy does take to the roads?"

"Let him," said Jenny coolly. "It won't kill him."

He looked up at her again in silence.

Jenny herself was very far from comfortable, though she was conscious of

real pleasure, too, in the situation. She had seen this old man in a

passion pretty often, but she had never seen him in a passion with any

real excuse. No one ever thwarted him. He even decided where his doctor

should send him for his cure, and in what month, and for how long. And

she was not, therefore, quite certain what would happen, for she knew

Frank well enough to be quite sure that he meant what he said. However,

she reflected, the main thing at present was to smooth things down all

round as far as possible. Then she could judge.

"Can't make out why you ever consented to marry such a chap at all!" he

growled presently.

"Oh, well--" said Jenny.

(III)

It was a delicious evening, and the three men, after dinner, strolled

out on to the broad terrace that ran, looking over the lake, straight up

and down the long side of the house. They had not had the advantage,

since the servants were in the room, of talking over the situation as

they wished, and there was no knowing when Lord Talgarth and Jenny might

emerge. So they sat down at a little stone table at the end furthest

from the smoking-room, and Archie and Dick lit their cigarettes.

There is not a great deal to say about the Rector. The most effective

fact about him was that he was the father of Jenny. It was a case, here,

of "Averill following Averill": his father and grandfather, both second

sons, as was the Rector himself, had held the living before him, and had

performed the duties of it in the traditional and perfectly respectable

way. This one was a quiet middle-aged man, clean-shaven except for two

small whiskers. He wore a white tie, and a small gold stud was visible

in the long slit of his white shirt-front. He was on very easy terms in

this house, in an unintimate manner, and dined here once a fortnight or

so, without saying or hearing anything of particular interest. He had

been secretly delighted at his daughter's engagement, and had given his

consent with gentle and reserved cordiality. He was a Tory, not exactly

by choice, but simply--for the same reason as he was Church of

England--because he was unable, in the fiber of him, to imagine anything

else. Of course, Lord Talgarth was the principal personage in his world,

simply because he was Lord Talgarth and owned practically the whole

parish and two-thirds of the next. He regarded his daughter with the

greatest respect, and left in her hands everything that he decently

could. And, to do her justice, Jenny was a very benevolent, as well as

capable, despot. In short, the Rector plays no great part in this drama

beyond that of a discreet, and mostly silent, Greek chorus of

unimpeachable character. He disapproved deeply, of course, of Frank's

change of religion--but he disapproved with that same part of him that

appreciated Lord Talgarth. It seemed to him that Catholicism, in his

daughter's future husband, was a defect of the same kind as would be a

wooden leg or an unpleasant habit of sniffing--a drawback, yet not

insuperable. He would be considerably relieved if it could be cured.

* * * * *

The three men sat there for some while without interruption from the

smoking-room, while the evening breeze died, the rosy sky paled, and the

stars came out one by one, like diamonds in the clear blue. They said,

of course, all the proper things, and Dick heard a little more than he

had previously known.

Dick was always conscious of a faint, almost impersonal, resentment

against destiny when he stayed at Merefield. It was obvious to him that

the position of heir there was one which would exactly have suited his

tastes and temperament. He was extremely pleased to belong to the

family--and it was, indeed, a very exceptional family as regards

history: it had been represented in nearly every catastrophe since the

Norman Conquest, and always on the winning side, except once--but it was

difficult to enjoy the distinction as it deserved, living, as he did, in

a flat in London all by himself. When his name was mentioned to a

well-informed stranger, it was always greeted by the question as to

whether he was one of the Guiseleys of Merefield, and it seemed to him

singularly annoying that he could only answer "First cousin." Archie, of

course, was a satisfactory heir; there was no question of that--he was

completely of Dick's own school of manner--but it seemed a kind of

outrage that Frank, with his violent convictions and his escapades,

should be Archie's only brother. There was little of that repose about

him that a Guiseley needed.

It would be about half-past nine that the sound of an opening door, and

voices, from the further end of the terrace, told them that the

smoking-room conference was over, and they stood up as Jenny, very

upright and pale in the twilight, with her host at her side, came up

towards them. Dick noticed that the cigar his uncle carried was smoked

down almost to the butt, and augured well from that detail. The old

man's arm was in the girl's, and he supported himself on the other side,

limping a little, on his black stick.

He sat down with a grunt and laid his stick across the table.

"Well, boys, we've settled it," he said. "Jenny's to write the

telegram."

"No one need be anxious any more," announced Jenny imperturbably. "Lord

Talgarth's extremely angry still, as he has every right to be, and

Frank's going to be allowed to go on the tramp if he wants to."

The Rector waited, in deferential silence, for corroboration.

"Jenny's a very sensible girl," observed Lord Talgarth. "And what she

says is quite right."

"Do you mean to say--" began Archie.

The old man frowned round at him.

"All that I've said holds good," he said.

"Frank's made his bed and he must lie on it. I warned him. And Jenny

sees that, too."

Archie glanced at the girl, and Dick looked hard at her, straight into

her face. But there was absolutely no sign there of any perturbation.

Certainly she looked white in the falling dusk, but her eyes were merry

and steadfast, and her voice perfectly natural.

"That's how we've settled it," she said. "And if I'm satisfied, I

imagine everyone else ought to be. And I'm going to write Frank a good

long letter all by myself. Come along, father, we must be going. Lord

Talgarth isn't well, and we mustn't keep him up."

(IV)

When the last game of billiards had been played, and whisky had been

drunk, and Archie had taken up his candle, Dick stood still, with his

own in his hand.

"Aren't you coming?" said Archie.

Dick paused.

"I think I'll smoke one more cigarette on the terrace," he said. "It's a

heavenly night, and I want to get the taste of the train out of my

mouth."

"All right, then. Lock up, will you, when you come in? I'm off."

It was, indeed, a heavenly night. Behind him as he sat at the table

where they had had coffee the great house shimmered pale in the summer

twilight, broken here by a line or two of yellow light behind shuttered

windows, here with the big oriel window of the hall, blazing with coats,

fully illuminated. (He must remember, he thought, to put out the lights

there as he went to bed.)

And about him was the great soft, sweet-smelling darkness, roofed in by

the far-off sky alight with stars; and beneath him in the valley he

could catch the glimmer of the big lake and the blotted masses of pine

and cypress black against it.

It was here, then, under these circumstances, that Dick confessed to

himself, frankly and openly for the first time, that he was in love with

Jenny Launton.

He had known her for years, off and on, and had thought of her as a

pretty girl and a pleasant companion. He had skated with her, ridden

with her, danced with her, and had only understood, with a sense of mild

shock, at the time of her engagement to Frank six months before, that

she was of an age to become a wife to someone.

That had been the beginning of a process which culminated to-night, as

he now understood perfectly. Its next step had been a vague wonder why

Archie hadn't fallen in love with her himself; and he had explained it

by saying that Archie had too great a sense of his own importance to

permit himself to marry a rector's daughter with only a couple of

hundred a year of her own. (And in this explanation I think he was quite

correct.) Then he had begun to think of her himself a good

deal--dramatically, rather than realistically--wondering what it would

feel like to be engaged to her. If a younger son could marry her, surely

a first cousin could--even of the Guiseleys. So it had gone on, little

by little. He had danced with her here at Christmas--just after the

engagement--and had stayed on a week longer than he had intended. He had

come up again at Easter, and again at Whitsuntide, though he always

protested to his friends that there was nothing to do at Merefield in

the summer. And now here he was again, and the thing had happened.

At first, as he sat here, he tried to analyze his attitude to Frank.

He had never approved of Frank altogether; he didn't quite like the

queer kinds of things that Frank did; for Frank's reputation at

Merefield was very much what it was at Cambridge. He did ridiculous and

undignified things. As a small boy, he had fought at least three pitched

battles in the village, and that was not a proper thing for a Guiseley

to do. He liked to go out with the keepers after poachers, and Dick,

very properly, asked himself what keepers were for except to do that

kind of thing for you? There had been a bad row here, too, scarcely

eighteen months ago; it had been something to do with a horse that was

ill-treated, and Frank had cut a very absurd and ridiculous figure,

getting hot and angry, and finally thrashing a groom, or somebody, with

his own hands, and there had been uncomfortable talk about police-courts

and actions for assault. Finally, he had fallen in love with, proposed

to, and become engaged to, Jenny Launton. That was an improper thing for

a younger son to do, anyhow, at his age, and Dick now perceived that the

fact that Jenny was Jenny aggravated the offense a hundredfold. And,

last of all, he had become a Catholic--an act of enthusiasm which seemed

to Dick really vulgar.

Altogether, then, Frank was not a satisfactory person, and it would do

him no harm to have a little real discipline at last....

* * * * *

It was the striking of midnight from the stable clock that woke Dick up

from his deep reverie, and was the occasion of his perceiving that he

had come to no conclusion about anything, except that Frank was an ass,

that Jenny was--well--Jenny, and that he, Dick, was an ill-used person.

I do not like to set down here, even if I could, all the considerations

that had passed through Dick's mind since a quarter-past eleven, simply

because the very statement of them would give a false impression. Dick

was not a knave, and he did not deceive himself about himself more than

most of us do. Yet he had considered a number of points that, strictly

speaking, he ought not to have considered. He had wondered whether Frank

would die; he had wondered whether, if he did not, Lord Talgarth would

really be as good as his word; and, if so, what effect that would have

on Jenny. Finally, he had wondered, with a good deal of intellectual

application, what exactly Jenny had meant when she had announced all

that about the telegram she was going to send in Lord Talgarth's name,

and the letter she was going to send in her own. (He had asked Archie

just now in the smoking-room, and he, too, had confessed himself beaten.

Only, he had been quite sure that jenny would get her way and obtain

Frank's forgiveness.)

Also, in the course of his three-quarters of an hour he had considered,

for perhaps the hundredth time since he had come to the age of

discretion, what exactly three lives between a man and a title stood

for. Lord Talgarth was old and gouty; Archie was not married, and showed

no signs of it; and Frank--well, Frank was always adventurous and

always in trouble.

Well, I have set down the points, after all. But it must not be thought

that the gentleman with the pointed brown beard and thoughtful eyes, who

at five minutes past twelve went up the two steps into the smoking-room,

locked the doors, as he had been directed, took up his candle and went

to bed, went with an uneasy conscience, or, in fact, was a villain in

any way whatever.

CHAPTER III

(I)

The first spot in Frank's pilgrimage which I have been able to visit and

identify in such a way that I am able to form to myself a picture of his

adventure more or less complete in all its parts, lies about ten miles

north-west of Doncaster, in a little valley, where curiously enough

another pilgrim named Richard lived for a little while nearly six

hundred years ago.

Up to the time of Frank's coming there, in the season of hay-making,

numberless little incidents of his experience stand out, vivid, indeed,

but fragmentary, yet they do not form to my mind a coherent whole. I

think I understand to some extent the process by which he became

accustomed to ordinary physical hard living, into which the initiation

began with his series of almost wholly sleepless nights and heavy

sleep-burdened days. Night was too strange--in barns, beneath hay-ricks,

in little oppressive rooms, in stable-lofts--for him to sleep easily at

first; and between his tramps, or in the dinner-hour, when he managed to

get work, he would drop off in the hot sunshine down into depths of

that kind of rest that is like the sea itself--glimmering gulfs, lit by

glimpses of consciousness of the grass beneath his cheek, the bubble of

bird-song in the copses, stretching down into profound and utter

darkness.

Of how the little happenings of every day wore themselves into a

coherent whole, and modified, not indeed himself, but his manner of life

and his experience and knowledge, I can make no real picture at all. The

first of these took place within ten miles of Cambridge on his first

morning, and resulted in the bruised face which Mr. Harris noticed; it

concerned a piece of brutality to a dog in which Frank interfered....

(He was extraordinarily tender to animals.) Then there was the learning

as to how work was obtained, and, even more considerable, the doing of

the work. The amateur, as Frank pointed out later, began too vigorously

and became exhausted; the professional set out with the same

deliberation with which he ended. One must not run at one's spade, or

hoe, or whatever it was; one must exercise a wearisome self-control ...

survey the work to be done, turn slowly, spit on one's hands, and after

a pause begin, remembering that the same activity must show itself, if

the work was to be renewed next day, up to the moment of leaving off.

Then there was the need of becoming accustomed to an entirely different

kind of food, eaten in an entirely different way, and under entirely

different circumstances. There was experience to be gained as to washing

clothes--I can almost see Frank now by a certain kind of stream,

stripped to the waist, waiting while his shirt dried, smoking an

ill-rolled cigarette, yet alert for the gamekeeper. Above all, there was

an immense volume of learning--or, rather, a training of instinct--to be

gained respecting human nature: a knowledge of the kind of man who would

give work, the kind of man who meant what he said, and the kind of man

who did not; the kind of woman who would threaten the police if milk or

bread were asked for--Frank learned to beg very quickly--the kind of

woman who would add twopence and tell him to be off, and the kind of

woman who, after a pause and a slow scrutiny, would deliberately refuse

to supply a glass of water. Then there was the atmosphere of the little

towns to be learned--the intolerable weariness of pavements, and the

patient persistence of policemen who would not allow you to sit down. He

discovered, also, during his wanderings, the universal fact that

policemen are usually good-hearted, but with absolutely no sense of

humor whatever; he learned this through various attempts to feign that

the policeman was in fancy-dress costume and had no real authority. He

learned, too, that all crimes pale before "resisting the police in the

execution of their duty"; then, he had to learn, to, the way in which

other tramps must be approached--the silences necessary, the sort of

questions which were useless, the jokes that must be laughed at and the

jokes that must be resented.

All this is beyond me altogether; it was beyond even Frank's own powers

of description. A boy, coming home for the holidays for the first time,

cannot make clear to his mother, or even to himself, what it is that has

so utterly changed his point of view, and his relations towards familiar

things.

* * * * *

So with Frank.

He could draw countless little vignettes of his experiences and

emotions--the particular sensation elicited, for example, by seeing

through iron gates happy people on a lawn at tea--the white china, the

silver, the dresses, the flannels, the lawn-tennis net--as he went past,

with string tied below his knees to keep off the drag of the trousers,

and a sore heel; the emotion of being passed by a boy and a girl on

horseback; the flood of indescribable associations roused by walking for

half a day past the split-oak paling of a great park, with lodge-gates

here and there, the cooing of wood-pigeons, and the big house, among

its lawns and cedars and geranium-beds, seen now and then, far off in

the midst. But what he could not describe, or understand, was the inner

alchemy by which this new relation to things modified his own soul, and

gave him a point of view utterly new and bewildering. Curiously enough,

however (as it seems to me), he never seriously considered the

possibility of abandoning this way of life, and capitulating to his

father. A number of things, I suppose--inconceivable to

myself--contributed to his purpose; his gipsy blood, his extraordinary

passion for romance, the attraction of a thing simply because it was

daring and unusual, and finally, a very exceptionally strong will that,

for myself, I should call obstinacy.

The silence--as regards his old world--was absolute and unbroken. He

knew perfectly well that by now letters and telegrams must be waiting

for him at Jack's home, including at least one from Jenny, and probably

a dozen; but as to Jenny, he knew she would understand, and as to the

rest, he honestly did not care at all. He sent her a picture postcard

once or twice--from Ely, Peterborough, Sleaford and Newark--towns where

he stayed for a Sunday (I have seen in Sleaford the little room where he

treated himself to a bed for two nights)--and was content. He made no

particular plans for the future; he supposed something would turn up;

and he settled with himself, by the help of that same will which I have

mentioned before, that he would precipitate no conclusions till he

reached Barham later on in the early autumn.

His faith and morals during these weeks are a little difficult to

describe. As regards his morals, at least in one particular point, he

had formulated the doctrine that, when he was very hungry, game might

not be touched, but that rabbits and birds were permissible if they

could be snared in the hedges of the high-road. He became an expert at

this kind of thing, and Jack has described to me, as taught by Frank, a

few devices of which I was entirely ignorant. Frank tramped for a couple

of days with a gamekeeper out of work, and learned these things from

him, as well as one or two simple methods of out-of-door cookery. As

regards his religion, I think I had better not say much just now; very

curious influences were at work upon him: I can only say that Frank

himself has described more than once, when he could be induced to talk,

the extraordinary, and indeed indescribable, thrill with which he saw,

now and again, in town or country, a priest in his vestments go to the

altar--for he heard mass when he could....

So much, then, is all that I can say of the small, detached experiences

that he passed through, up to the point when he came out one evening at

sunset from one of the fields of Hampole where he had made hay all day,

when his job was finished, and where he met, for the first time, the

Major and Gertie Trustcott.

(II)

They were standing with the sunset light behind them, as a glory--two

disreputable figures, such as one sees in countless thousands along all

the high-roads of England in the summer. The Major himself was a lean

man, with a red mustache turning gray, deep-set, narrow, blood-shot

eyes, a chin and very square jaw shaved about two days previously. He

had an old cricketing cap on his head, trousers tied up with string,

like Frank's, and one of those long, square-tailed, yellowish coats with

broad side-pockets such as a gamekeeper might have worn twenty years

ago. One of his boots was badly burst, and he, seemed to rest his weight

by preference on the other foot. He was not prepossessing; but Frank

saw, with his newly-gained experience, that he was different from other

tramps. He glanced at the girl and saw that she too was not quite of the

regular type, though less peculiar than her companion; and he noticed

with an odd touch at his heart that she had certain characteristics in

common with Jenny. She was not so tall, but she had the same colored

hair under a filthy white sun-bonnet and the same kind of blue eyes: but

her oval face again was weak and rather miserable. They were both deeply

sunburned.

Frank had learned the discretion of the roads by now, and did no more

than jerk his head almost imperceptibly as he went past. (He proposed to

go back to the farm to get his dwindled belongings, as the job was over,

and to move on a few miles northward before sleeping.)

As he went, however, he knew that the man had turned and was looking

after him: but he made no sign. He had no particular desire for company.

He also knew by instinct, practically for certain, that these two were

neither husband and wife, nor father and daughter. The type was obvious.

"I say, sir!"

Frank turned as bucolically as he could.

"I say, sir--can you direct this lady and myself to a lodging?"

Frank had tried to cultivate a low and characterless kind of voice, as

of a servant or a groom out of work. He knew he could never learn the

proper accent.

"Depends on what kind of lodging you want, sir."

"What'd suit you 'ud suit us," said the Major genially, dropping the

"sir."

"I'm going further, sir," said Frank. "I've done my job here."

The Major turned to the girl, and Frank caught the words, "What d'you

say, Gertie?" There was a murmur of talk; and then the man turned to him

again:

"If you've no objection, sir, we'll come with you. My good lady here is

good for a mile or two more, she says, and we'd like some company."

Frank hesitated. He did not in the least wish for company himself. He

glanced at the girl again.

"Very good, sir," he said. "Then if you'll wait here I'll be back in

five minutes--I've got to get my belongings."

He nodded to the low farm buildings in the valley just below the

village.

"We will await you here, sir," said the Major magnificently, stroking

his mustache.

* * * * *

As Frank came back up the little hill a few minutes later, he had made

up his mind as to what to say and do. It was his first experience of a

gentleman-tramp, and it was obvious that under the circumstances he

could not pretend to be anything else himself. But he was perfectly

determined not to tell his name. None of his belongings had anything

more than his initials upon them, and he decided to use the name he had

already given more than once. Probably they would not go far together;

but it was worth while to be on the safe side.

He came straight up to the two as they sat side by side with their feet

in the ditch.

"I'm ready, sir," he said. "Yes; you've spotted me all right."

"University man and public school boy," said the Major without moving.

"Eton and Cambridge," said Frank.

The Major sprang up.

"Harrow and the Army," he said. "Shake hands."

This was done.

"Name?" said the Major.

Frank grinned.

"I haven't my card with me," he said. "But Frank Gregory will do."

"I understand," said the Major. "And 'The Major' will do for me. It has

the advantage of being true. And this lady?--well, we'll call her my

wife."

Frank bowed. He felt he was acting in some ridiculous dream; but his

sense of humor saved him. The girl gave a little awkward bow in

response, and dropped her eyes. Certainly she was very like Jenny, and

very unlike.

"And a name?" asked Frank. "We may as well have one in case of

difficulties."

The Major considered.

"What do you say to Trustcott?" he asked. "Will that do?"

"Perfectly," said Frank. "Major and Mrs. Trustcott.... Well, shall we be

going?"

* * * * *

Frank had no particular views as to lodgings, or even to roads, so long

as the direction was more or less northward. He was aiming, generally

speaking, at Selby and York; and it seemed that this would suit the

Major as well as anything else. There is, I believe, some kind of

routine amongst the roadsters; and about that time of the year most of

them are as far afield as at any time from their winter quarters. The

Major and Mrs. Trustcott, he soon learned, were Southerners; but they

would not turn homewards for another three months yet, at least. For

himself, he had no ideas beyond a general intention to reach Barham some

time in the autumn, before Jack went back to Cambridge for his fourth

year.

"The country is not prepossessing about here," observed the Major

presently; "Hampole is an exception."

Frank glanced back at the valley they were leaving. It had, indeed, an

extraordinarily retired and rural air; it was a fertile little tract of

ground, very limited and circumscribed, and the rail that ran through it

was the only sign of the century. But the bright air was a little dimmed

with smoke; and already from the point they had reached tall chimneys

began to prick against the horizon.

"You have been here before?" he said.

"Why, yes; and about this time last year, wasn't it, Gertie? I

understand a hermit lived here once."

"A hermit might almost live here to-day," said Frank.

"You are right, sir," said the Major.

* * * * *

Frank began to wonder, as he walked, as to why this man was on the

roads. Curiously enough, he believed his statement that he had been in

the army. The air of him seemed the right thing. A militia captain would

have swaggered more; a complete impostor would have given more details.

Frank began to fish for information.

"You have been long on the roads?" he said.

The Major did not appear to hear him.

"You have been long on the roads?" persisted Frank.

The other glanced at him furtively and rather insolently. "The younger

man first, please."

Frank smiled.

"Oh, certainly!" he said. "Well, I have left Cambridge at the end of

June only."

"Ah! Anything disgraceful?"

"You won't believe me, I suppose, if I say 'No'?"

"Oh! I daresay I shall."

"Well, then, 'No.'"

"Then may I ask--?"

"Oh, yes! I was kicked out by my father--I needn't go into details. I

sold up my things and came out. That's all!"

"And you mean to stick to it?"

"Certainly--at least for a year or two."

"That's all right. Well, then--Major--what did we say? Trustcott? Ah,

yes, Trustcott. Well, then, I think we might add 'Eleventh Hussars';

that's near enough. The final catastrophe was, I think, cards. Not that

I cheated, you understand. I will allow no man to say that of me. But

that was what was said. A gentleman of spirit, you understand, could not

remain in a regiment when such things could be said. Then we tumbled

downhill; and I've been at this for four years. And, you know, sir, it

might be worse!"

Frank nodded.

Naturally he did not believe as necessarily true this terse little

story, and he was absolutely certain that if cards were mixed up in it

at all, obviously the Major had cheated. So he just took the story and

put it away, so to speak. It was to form, he perceived, the

understanding on which they consorted together. Then he began to wonder

about the girl. The Major soon supplied a further form.

"And Mrs. Trustcott, here? Well, she joined me, let us say, rather more

than eighteen months ago. We had been acquainted before that, however.

That was when I was consenting to serve as groom to some--er--some

Jewish bounder in town. Mrs. Trustcott's parents live in town."

The girl, who had been trudging patiently a foot or two behind them,

just glanced up at Frank and down again. He wondered exactly what her

own attitude was to all this. But she made no comment.

"And now we know one another," finished the Major in a tone of genial

finality. "So where are you taking us--er--Mr. Gregory?"

(III)

They were fortunate that night.

The part of Yorkshire where they were traveling consists chiefly of an

innumerable quantity of little cottages, gathered for the most part

round collieries. One has the impression--at any rate, from a

motor--that there is nothing but villages. But that is not a fact. There

are stretches of road, quite solitary at certain hours; and in one of

these they noticed presently a little house, not twenty yards from the

road, once obviously forming part of a row of colliers' cottages, of

which the rest were demolished.

It was not far off from ruin itself, and was very plainly uninhabited.

Across the front door were nailed deal props, originally, perhaps, for

the purpose of keeping it barred, and useful for holding it in its

place. The Major and Gertie kept watch on the road while Frank pushed

open the crazy little gate and went round to the back. A minute later he

called to them softly.

He had wrenched open the back door, and within in the darkness they

could make out a little kitchen, stripped of everything--table,

furniture, and even the range itself. The Major kicked something

presently in the gloom, swore softly, and announced he had found a

kettle. They decided that all this would do very well.

* * * * *

Tramps do not demand very much, and these were completely contented when

they had made a small fire, damped down with a turf to prevent it

smoking, had boiled a little water, stewed some tea, and eaten what they

had. Even this was not luxurious. The Major produced the heel of a

cheese and two crushed-looking bananas, and Frank a half-eaten tin of

sardines and a small, stale loaf. The Major announced presently that he

would make a savory; and, indeed, with cheese melted on to the bread,

and sardines on the top, he did very well. Gertie moved silently about;

and Frank, in the intervals of rather abrupt conversation with the

Major, found his eyes following her as she spread out their small

possessions, vanished up the stairs and reappeared. Certainly she was

very like Jenny, even in odd little details--the line of her eyebrows,

the angle of her chin and so forth--perhaps more in these details than

in anything else. He began to wonder a little about her--to imagine her

past, to forecast her future. It seemed all rather sordid. She

disappeared finally without a word: he heard her steps overhead, and

then silence.

Then he had to attend to the Major a little more.

"It was easy enough to tell you," said that gentleman.

"How?"

"Oh, well, if nothing else, your clothes."

"Aren't they shabby enough?"

The Major eyed him with half-closed lids, by the light of the single

candle-end, stuck in its own wax on the mantelshelf.

"They're shabby enough, but they're the wrong sort. There's the cut,

first--though that doesn't settle it. But these are gray flannel

trousers, for one thing, and then the coat's not stout enough."

"They might have been given me," said Frank, smiling.

"They fit you too well for that."

"I'll change them when I get a chance," observed Frank.

"It would be as well," assented the Major.

* * * * *

Somehow or another the sense of sordidness, which presently began to

affect Frank so profoundly, descended on him for the first time that

night. He had managed, by his very solitariness hitherto, to escape it

so far. It had been possible to keep up a kind of pose so far; to

imagine the adventure in the light of a very much prolonged and very

realistic picnic. But with this other man the thing became impossible.

It was tolerable to wash one's own socks; it was not so tolerable to see

another man's socks hung up on the peeling mantelpiece a foot away from

his own head, and to see two dirty ankles, not his own, emerging from

crazy boots.

The Major, too, presently, when he grew a trifle maudlin over his own

sorrows, began to call him "Frankie," and "my boy," and somehow it

mattered, from a man with the Major's obvious record. Frank pulled

himself up only just in time to prevent a retort when it first happened,

but it was not the slightest use to be resentful. The thing had to be

borne. And it became easier when it occurred to him to regard the Major

as a study; it was even interesting to hear him give himself away, yet

all with a pompous appearance of self-respect, and to recount his first

meeting with Gertie, now asleep upstairs.

The man was, in fact, exactly what Frank, in his prosperous days, would

have labeled "Bounder." He had a number of meaningless little

mannerisms--a way of passing his hand over his mustache, a trick of

bringing a look of veiled insolence into his eyes; there were subjects

he could not keep away from--among them Harrow School, the Universities

(which he called 'Varsity), the regiment he had belonged to, and a

certain type of adventure connected with women and champagne. And

underneath the whole crust of what the Major took to be breeding, there

was a piteous revelation of a feeble, vindictive, and rather nasty

character. It became more and more evident that the cheating

incident--or, rather, the accusation, as he persisted in calling

it--was merely the last straw in his fall, and that the whole thing had

been the result of a crumbly unprincipled kind of will underneath,

rather than of any particular strain of vice. He appeared, even now, to

think that his traveling about with a woman who was not his wife was a

sort of remnant of fallen splendor--as a man might keep a couple of

silver spoons out of the ruin of his house.

"I recommend you to pick up with one," remarked the Major. "There are

plenty to be had, if you go about it the right way."

"Thanks," said Frank, "but it's not my line."

(IV)

The morning, too, was a little trying.

Frank had passed a tolerable night. The Major had retired upstairs about

ten o'clock, taking his socks with him, presumably to sleep in them, and

Frank had heard him creaking about upstairs for a minute or two; there

had followed two clumps as the boots were thrown off; a board suddenly

spoke loudly; there was a little talking--obviously the Major had

awakened Gertie in order to make a remark or two--and then silence.

Frank had not slept for half an hour; he was thinking, with some

depression, of the dreary affair into which he had been initiated, of

the Major, and of Gertie, for whom he was beginning to be sorry. He did

not suppose that the man actually bullied her; probably he had done this

sufficiently for the present--she was certainly very quiet and

subdued--or perhaps she really admired him, and thought it rather

magnificent to travel about with an ex-officer. Anyhow, it was rather

deplorable....

* * * * *

When he awoke next morning, the depression was on him still; and it was

not lifted by the apparition of Gertie on which he opened his eyes from

his corner, in an amazingly dirty petticoat, bare-armed, with her hair

in a thick untidy pig-tail, trying to blow the fire into warmth again.

Frank jumped up--he was in his trousers and shirt.

"Let me do that," he said.

"I'll do it," said Gertie passionlessly.

* * * * *

The Major came down ten minutes later, considerably the worse for his

night's rest. Yesterday he had had a day's beard on him; to-day he had

two, and there was a silvery sort of growth in the stubble that made it

look wet. His eyes, too, were red and sunken, and he began almost

instantly to talk about a drink. Frank stood it for a few minutes, then

he understood and capitulated.

"I'll stand you one," he said, "if you'll get me two packets of

Cinderellas."

"What's the good of that?" said the Major. "Pubs aren't open yet. It's

only just gone five."

"You'll have to wait, then," said Frank shortly.

Presently the Major did begin to bully Gertie. He asked her what the

devil was the good of her if she couldn't make a fire burn better than

that. He elbowed her out of the way and set to work at it himself. She

said nothing at all. Yet there was not the faintest use in Frank's

interfering, and, indeed, there was nothing to interfere in.

Food, too, this morning, seemed disgusting; and again Frank learned the

difference between a kind of game played by oneself and a reality in

which two others joined. There had been something almost pleasing about

unrolling the food wrapped up at supper on the previous night, and

eating it, with or without cooking, all alone; but there was something

astonishingly unpleasant in observing sardines that were now common

property lying in greasy newspaper, a lump of bread from which their

hands tore pieces, and a tin bowl of warmish cocoa from which all must

drink. This last detail was a contribution on the part of Major and Mrs.

Trustcott, and it would have been ungracious to refuse. The Major, too,

was sullen and resentful this morning, and growled at Gertie more than

once.

Even the weather seemed unpropitious as they set out together again soon

after six. Rain had fallen in the night, yet not all the rain that there

was overhead. There were still clouds hanging, mixed with the smoke from

the chimneys; the hedges seemed dulled and black in spite of their

green; the cinder path they walked on was depressing, the rain-fed road

even more so. They passed a dozen men on their way to the pits, who made

remarks on the three, and retaliation was out of the question.

* * * * *

It was very disconcerting to Frank to find the difference that his new

circumstances made; and yet he did not seriously consider changing them.

It seemed to him, somehow or other, in that strange fashion in which

such feelings come, that the whole matter was pre-arranged, and that the

company in which he found himself was as inevitably his--at least for

the present--as the family to a child born into it. And there was, of

course, too, a certain element of relief in feeling himself no longer

completely alone; and there was also, as Frank said later, a curious

sense of attraction towards, and pity for, Gertie that held him there.

At the first public-house that was open the Major stopped.

"I'll get your Cinderellas now, if you like," he said.

This had not been Frank's idea, but he hardly hesitated.

"All right," he said. "Here's fourpence."

The Major vanished through the swing-doors as a miner came out, and a

gush of sweet and sickly scent--beer, spirits, tobacco--poured upon the

fresh air. And there was a vision of a sawdusted floor and spittoons

within.

Frank looked at Gertie, who had stopped like a patient donkey, and, like

a prudent one, had let her bundle instantly down beside the Major's.

"Like one, too?" he said.

She shook her head.

"Not for me." ... And no more.

In a couple of minutes the Major was out again.

"Only had one packet left," he said, and with an air of extreme

punctiliousness and magnanimity replaced one penny in Frank's hand. He

had the air of one who is insistent on the little honesties of life.

There was also a faintly spirituous atmosphere about him, and his eyes

looked a little less sunken.

Then he handed over the cigarettes.

"Shouldn't mind one myself," he said genially.

Frank gave him one before lighting his own.

"You're a good sort," said the Major, "and I wish I could give you one

of my old cigars I used to give my friends."

"Ah! well, when your ship comes home," observed Frank, throwing away his

match.

The Major nodded his head as with an air of fallen grandeur.

"Well," he said, "_vorwärts_. That means 'forward,' my dear," he

explained to Gertie.

Gertie said nothing. They took up their bundles and went on.

(V)

It was not till a week later that Gertie did that which was to effect so

much in Frank--she confided in him.

The week had consisted of the kind of thing that might be

expected--small negligible adventures; work now and then--the Major and

Frank working side by side--a digging job on one day, the carrying of

rather dingy smoke-stained hay on another, the scraping of garden-paths

that ran round the small pink house of a retired tradesman, who observed

them magnificently though a plate-glass window all the while, with a

cigar in his teeth, and ultimately gave them ninepence between them.

They slept here and there--once, on a rainy night, in real lodgings,

once below a haystack. Frank said hardly a word to Gertie, and did

little more than listen to the Major, who was already beginning to

repeat himself; but he was aware that the girl was watching him.

The crisis came about under circumstances that might be expected--on a

rather sentimental kind of Sunday evening, in a village whose name I

forget (perhaps it was Escrick) between Selby and York. Frank had made a

small excursion by himself in the morning and had managed to hear mass;

they had dined well off cold bacon and beans, and had walked on in the

afternoon some miles further; and they came to the village a little

after six o'clock. The Major had a blister, which he had exhibited at

least four times to the company, and had refused to go further; and as

they came to the outskirts of the village, volunteered to go and look

for shelter, if the two would wait for him at a stile that led across

fields to the old church.

The scene was rather like the setting of the last act in a melodrama of

a theater on the Surrey side of the Thames--the act in which the injured

heroine, with her child, sinks down fainting as the folk are going to

church in the old village on a June evening among the trees--leading up

to moonlight effects and reunion. There was no organ to play "off," but

the bells were an excellent substitute, and it was these that presently

melted the heart of Gertie.

When the Major had disappeared, limping, the two climbed over the stile

and sat down with their bundles under the hedge, but they presently

found that they had chosen something of a thoroughfare. Voices came

along presently, grew louder, and stopped as the speakers climbed the

stile. The first pair was of a boy and girl, who instantly clasped again

mutual waists, and went off up the path across the field to the

churchyard without noticing the two tramps; their heads were very near

together.

Then other couples came along, old and young, and twice a trio--one, two

young men in black, who skirmished on either side of a very sedate girl

in white; one, two girls who shoved one another, and giggled, walking in

step three yards behind another young man with his hat on one side, who

gloried in being talked at and pretended to be rapt in abstraction. Then

some children came; then a family--papa walking severely apart in a silk

hat, and mamma, stout and scarlet-faced, in the midst of the throng.

Finally there came along a very old Darby and Joan, who with many

Yorkshire ejaculations helped one another over the stile, and moved on

with bent heads, scolding one another affectionately. It was as this

last couple reached the spot where the path ran into the corn that the

peal of four bells broke out, and Gertie broke down.

Frank had not been noticing her particularly. He was gloomy himself; the

novelty of the whole affair had gone; the Major was becoming

intolerable, and Frank's religion was beginning to ebb from his

emotions. Mass this morning had not been a success from an emotional

point of view; he had had an uncomfortable seat on a pitch-pine bench in

a tin church with an American organ; the very young priest had been

tiresome and antipathetic.... Frank had done his best, but he was tired

and bored; the little church had been very hot, and it was no longer any

fun to be stared at superciliously by a stout tradesman as he came out

into the hot sunshine afterwards.

Just now he had been watching the figures make their appearance from the

stile, re-form groups and dwindle slowly down to the corn, and their

heads and shoulders bob along above it--all with a kind of resentment.

These people had found their life; he was still looking for his. He was

watching, too, the strangely unreal appearance of the sunlit fields, the

long shadows, the golden smoky light, and the church tower, set among

cypresses half a mile away--yet without any conscious sentiment. He had

not said a word to Gertie, nor she to him, and he was totally taken by

surprise when, after the first soft crash of bells for evening service,

she had suddenly thrown herself round face forward among the grasses and

burst out sobbing.

"My dear girl!" said Frank, "whatever's the matter?" Then he stopped.

* * * * *

Fortunately, the procession of worshipers had run dry, and the two were

quite alone. He sat upright, utterly ignorant of what to say. He thought

perhaps she was in pain ... should he run for the Major or a doctor?...

Then, as after a minute or two of violent sobbing she began a few

incoherent words, he understood.

"Oh! I'm a wicked girl ... a wicked girl ... it's all so beautiful ...

the church bells ... my mother!"

* * * * *

He understood, then, what had precipitated this crisis and broken down

the girl's reserve. It was, in fact, exactly that same appeal which

holds a gallery breathless and tearful in the last act of a Surrey-side

melodrama--the combination of Sunday quiet, a sunset, church bells,

associations and human relationships; and Gertie's little suburban soul

responded to it as a bell to a bell-rope. It was this kind of thing that

stood to her for holiness and peace and purity, and it had gone clean

through her heart. And he understood, too, that it was his presence

that had allowed her to break down. The Major's atmosphere had held her

taut so far. Frank was conscious of a lump in his own throat as he

stared out, helpless, first at the peaceful Sunday fields and then down

at the shaking shoulders and the slender, ill-clad, writhed form of

Gertie.... He did not know what to do ... he hoped the Major would not

be back just yet. Then he understood he must say something.

"Don't cry," he said. "The Major--"

She sat up on the instant in sudden consternation, her pretty, weak,

sunburned face disfigured with tears, but braced for the moment by fear.

"No, no," said Frank; "he isn't coming yet; but--"

Then she was down again, moaning and talking. "Oh!... Oh!... I'm a

wicked girl.... My mother!... and I never thought I should come to

this!"

"Well, why don't you chuck it?" said Frank practically.

"I can't!... I can't! I ... I love him!"

That had not occurred to this young man as a conceivable possibility,

and he sat silenced. The church-bells pealed on; the sun sank a little

lower; Gertie sobbed more and more gently; and Frank's mind worked like

a mill, revolving developments. Finally, she grew quiet, lay still, and,

as the bells gave place to one of their number, sat up. She dabbed at

her eyes with a handful of wet grass, passed her sleeve across them once

or twice, and began to talk.

"I ... I'm very silly, Frankie," she said, "but I can't help it. I'm

better now. Don't tell George."

"Of course I shan't!" said Frank indignantly.

"You're a gentleman too," said Gertie. (Frank winced a little,

interiorly, at the "too.") "I can see that you're polite to a lady. And

I don't know however I came to tell you. But there it is, and no harm's

done."

"Why don't you leave him?" said Frank courageously. A little wave of

feeling went over her face.

"He's a gentleman," she said.... "No, I can't leave him. But it does

come over you sometimes; doesn't it?" (Her face wavered again.) "It was

them bells, and the people and all."

"Where's your home?"

She jerked her head in a vague direction.

"Down Londonwards," she said. "But that's all done with. I've made my

bed, and--"

"Tell me plainly: does he bully you?"

"Not to say bully," she said. "He struck me once, but never again."

"Tell me if he does it again."

A small, sly, admirative look came into her eyes. "We'll see," she said.

* * * * *

Frank was conscious of a considerable sense of disappointment. The thing

had been almost touching just now, as the reserve first broke up, but it

was a very poor little soul, it seemed to him, that had at last made its

appearance. (He did not yet see that that made it all the more

touching.) He did not quite see what to do next. He was Christian enough

to resent the whole affair; but he was aristocratic enough in his

fastidiousness to think at this moment that perhaps it did not matter

much for people of this sort. Perhaps it was the highest ideal that

persons resembling the Major and Gertie could conceive. But her next

remark helped to break up his complacency.

"You're a Catholic," she said. "People say that you Catholics don't mind

this kind of thing--me and the Major, I mean."

There was a dreadful sort of sly suggestiveness about this remark that

stung him. He exploded: and his wounded pride gave him bitterness.

"My good girl," he said, "Catholics simply loathe it. And even,

personally, I think it's beastly."

"Well--I ..."

"I think it's beastly," said Frank didactically. "A good girl like you,

well-brought-up, good parents, nice home, religious--instead of which

"--he ended in a burst of ironical reminiscence--"you go traveling about

with a--" he checked himself--"a man who isn't your husband. Why don't

you marry him?"

"I can't!" wailed Gertie, suddenly stricken again with remorse; "his

wife's alive."

Frank jumped. Somehow that had never occurred to him. And yet how

amazingly characteristic of the Major!

"Well--leave him, then!"

"I can't!" cried poor Gertie. "I can't!... I can't!"

CHAPTER IV

(I)

Frank awoke with a start and opened his eyes.

But it was still dark and he could see nothing. So he turned over on the

other side and tried to go to sleep.

The three of them had come to this little town last night after two or

three days' regular employment; they had sufficient money between them;

they had found a quite tolerable lodging; they had their programme, such

as it was, for the next day or so; and--by the standard to which he had

learned to adjust himself--there was no sort of palpable cause for the

horror that presently fell on him. I can only conjecture that the origin

lay within, not without, his personality.

The trouble began with the consciousness that on the one side he was

really tired, and on the other that he could not sleep and, to clinch

it, the knowledge that a twenty-mile walk lay before him. He began to

tell himself that sleep was merely a question of will--of will

deliberately relaxing attention. He rearranged his position a little;

shifted his feet, fitted himself a little more closely into the

outlines of the bed, thrust one hand under the pillow and bade himself

let go.

Then the procession of thoughts began as orderly as if by signal.

He found himself presently, after enumerating all the minor physical

points of discomfort--the soreness of his feet, the knobbiness of the

bed, the stuffiness of the room in which the three were sleeping, the

sound of the Major's slow snoring--beginning to consider the wisdom of

the whole affair. This was a point that he had not consciously yet

considered, from the day on which he had left Cambridge. The impetus of

his first impulse and the extreme strength of his purpose had, up to the

present--helped along by novelty--kept him going. Of course, the moment

had to come sooner or later; but it seems a little hard that he was

obliged to face it in that peculiarly dreary clarity of mind that falls

upon the sleepless an hour or two before the dawn.

For, as he looked at it all now, he saw it as an outsider would see it,

no longer from the point of view of his own personality. He perceived a

young man, of excellent abilities and prospects, sacrificing these

things for an idea that fell to pieces the instant it was touched. He

touched it now with a critical finger, and it did so fall to pieces;

there was, obviously, nothing in it at all. It was an impulse of silly

pride, of obstinacy, of the sort of romance that effects nothing. There

was Merefield waiting for him--for he knew perfectly well that terms

could be arranged; there was all that leisureliness and comfort and

distinction in which he had been brought up and which he knew well how

to use; there was Jenny; there was his dog, his horse ... there was, in

fact, everything for which Merefield stood. He saw it all now,

visualized and clear in the dark; and he had exchanged all

this--well--for this room, and the Major's company, and back-breaking

toil.... And for no reason.

So he regarded all this for a good long while; with his eyes closed,

with the darkness round him, with every detail visible and insistent,

seen as in the cold light of morning before colors reassert themselves

and reconcile all into a reasonable whole....

"... I must really go to sleep!" said Frank to himself, and screwed up

his eyes tight.

There came, of course, a reaction presently, and he turned to his

religion. He groped for his rosary under his pillow, placed before him

(according to the instructions given in the little books) the "Mystery

of the Annunciation to Mary," and began the "Our Father." ... Half-way

through it he began all over again to think about Cambridge, and

Merefield and Jack Kirkby, and the auction in his own rooms, and his

last dinner-party and the design on the menu-cards, and what a fool he

was; and when he became conscious of the rosary again he found that he

held in his fingers the last bead but three in the fifth decade. He had

repeated four and a half decades without even the faintest semblance of

attention. He finished them hopelessly, and then savagely thrust the

string of beads under his pillow again; turned over once more,

rearranged his feet, wished the Major would learn how to sleep like a

gentleman; and began to think about his religion in itself.

* * * * *

After all, he began to say to himself, what proof was there--real

scientific proof--that the thing was true at all? Certainly there was a

great deal of it that was, very convincing--there was the curious ring

of assertion and confidence in it, there was its whole character,

composed (like personality) of countless touches too small to be

definable; there was the definite evidence adduced from history and

philosophy and all the rest. But underneath all that--was there, after

all, any human evidence in the world sufficient to establish the

astounding dogmas that lay at the root? Was it conceivable that any such

evidence could be forthcoming?

He proceeded to consider the series of ancient dilemmas which, I

suppose, have presented themselves at some time or another to every

reasonable being--Free-will and Predestination; Love and Pain;

Foreknowledge and Sin; and their companions. And it appeared to him, in

this cold, emotionless mood, when the personality shivers, naked, in the

presence of monstrous and unsympathetic forces, that his own religion,

as much as every other, was entirely powerless before them.

He advanced yet further: he began to reflect upon the innumerable little

concrete devotions that he had recently learned--the repetition of

certain words, the performance of certain actions--the rosary for

instance; and he began to ask himself how it was credible that they

could possibly make any difference to eternal issues.

These things had not yet surrounded themselves with the atmosphere of

experience and association, and they had lost the romance of novelty;

they lay before him detached, so to say, and unconvincing.

I do not mean to say that during this hour he consciously disbelieved;

he honestly attempted to answer these questions; he threw himself back

upon authority and attempted to reassure himself by reflecting that

human brains a great deal more acute than his own found in the dilemmas

no final obstacles to faith; he placed himself under the shelter of the

Church and tried to say blindly that he believed what she believed. But,

in a sense, he was powerless: the blade of his adversary was quicker

than his own; his will was very nearly dormant; his heart was entirely

lethargic, and his intellect was clear up to a certain point and

extraordinarily swift....

Half an hour later he was in a pitiable state; and had begun even to

question Jenny's loyalty. He had turned to the thought of her as a last

resort for soothing and reassurance, and now, in the chilly dawn, even

she seemed unsubstantial.

He began by remembering that Jenny would not live for ever; in fact, she

might die at any moment; or he might; and he ended by wondering,

firstly, whether human love was worth anything at all, and, secondly,

whether he possessed Jenny's. He understood now, with absolute

certitude, that there was nothing in him whatever which could possibly

be loved by anyone; the whole thing had been a mistake, not so much on

his part as on Jenny's. She had thought him to be something he was not.

She was probably regretting already the engagement; she would certainly

not fulfill it. And could she possibly care for anyone who had been such

an indescribable fool as to give up Merefield, and his prospects and his

past and his abilities, and set out on this absurd and childish

adventure? So once more he came round in a circle and his misery was

complete.

* * * * *

He sat up in bed with a sudden movement as the train of thought clicked

back into its own beginning, clasped his hands round his knees and

stared round the room.

The window showed a faint oblong of gray now, beyond where the Major

breathed, and certain objects were dingily and coldly visible. He

perceived the broken-backed chair on which his clothes were heaped--with

the exception of his flannel shirt, which he still wore; he caught a

glimmer of white where Gertie's blouse hung up for an airing.

He half expected that things would appear more hopeful if he sat up in

bed. Yet they did not. The sight of the room, such as it was, brought

the concrete and material even more forcibly upon him--the gross things

that are called Facts. And it seemed to him that there were no facts

beyond them. These were the bones of the Universe--a stuffy bedroom, a

rasping flannel suit, a cold dawn, a snoring in the gloom, and three

bodies, heavy with weariness.... There once had been other facts:

Merefield and Cambridge and Eton had once existed; Jenny had once been a

living person who loved him; once there had been a thing called

Religion. But they existed no longer. He had touched reality at last.

* * * * *

Frank drew a long, dismal sigh; he lay down; he knew the worst now; and

in five minutes he was asleep.

(II)

Of course, the thing wore away by midday, and matters had readjusted

themselves. But the effect remained as a kind of bruise below the

surface. He was conscious that it had once been possible for him to

doubt the value of everything; he was aware that there was a certain

mood in which nothing seemed worth while.

It was practically his first experience of the kind, and he did not

understand it. But it did its work; and I date from that day a certain

increased sort of obstinacy that showed itself even more plainly in his

character. One thing or the other must be the effect of such a mood in

which--even though only for an hour or two--all things other than

physical take on themselves an appearance of illusiveness: either the

standard is lowered and these things are treated as slightly doubtful;

or the will sets its teeth and determines to live by them, whether they

are doubtful or not. And the latter I take to be the most utter form of

faith.

* * * * *

About midday the twine round Frank's bundle broke abruptly, and every

several article fell on to the road. He repressed a violent feeling of

irritation, and turned round to pick them up. The Major and Gertie

instinctively made for a gate in the hedge, rested down their bundles

and leaned against it.

Frank gathered the articles--a shirt, a pair of softer shoes, a razor

and brush, a tin of potted meat, a rosary, a small round cracked

looking-glass and a piece of lead piping--and packed them once more

carefully together on the bank. He tested his string, knotted it, drew

it tight, and it broke again. The tin of potted meat--like some small

intelligent animal--ran hastily off the path and dived into a small

drain.

A short cry of mirth broke from the Major, and Gertie smiled.

Frank said nothing at all. He lay down on the road, plunged his arm into

the drain and drew up the potted meat; it had some disagreeable-looking

moist substance adhering to it, which he wiped off on to his sleeve, and

then regretted having done so. Again he packed his things; again he drew

the string tight, and again it snapped.

"Lord! man, don't be so hard on it."

Frank looked up with a kind of patient fury. His instinct was to kick

every single object that lay before him on the path as hard as possible

in every direction.

"Have you any more string?" he said.

"No. Stick the things in your pocket and come on."

Frank made no answer. He went to the hedge and drew out a long supple

twig of hazel, stripped it of its leaves, and once more tried, with it,

to tie up his parcel. But the angle was too acute, and just as the twig

tightened satisfactorily it snapped, and this time the razor slid out

sideways into a single minute puddle that lay on the path.

The Major snorted in mirthful impatience.

"But--"

"Kindly let me alone," said Frank icily. "The thing's got to go like

this, or not at all."

He drew out the razor from the puddle, opened it and dried the blade on

his sleeve. During the process Gertie moved suddenly, and he looked up.

When he looked down again be perceived that he had slit a neat slice

into the cloth of his jacket.

He remained quite still for one moment. Then he sat down on the bank,

and examined the twine once more.

The Major began to make slightly offensive comments. Then Frank looked

up.

"You can go to hell!" he said quite softly, "or anywhere else you like.

But I'm going to do up the bundle in my way and not yours."

* * * * *

Now that is a sort of parable. It really happened, for it was reported

to a witness by Frank himself exactly as I have told it, and it seems to

me a very good little symbol of his state of mind. It is quite

indefensible, of course--and especially his regrettable language that

closed the interview; but it gives a pleasant little glimpse, I think,

of Frank's character just now, in section. The things had to go in a

certain way: he saw no adequate reason to change that way, and

ultimately, of course, the twine held. It must have been a great

satisfaction to him.

(III)

It seems that Frank must have been allowed just now to sample several

different kinds of moods, for he had a very different kind of awakening

a day or two later.

They had come to some piece of open country that I am unable to

identify, and for some reason or other determined to spend the night out

of doors. There was a copse a hundred yards away from the road, and in

the copse a couple of small shelters built, probably, for wood-pigeon

shooting. The Major and Gertie took possession of one, and Frank of the

other, after they had supped in the dark under the beeches.

* * * * *

Frank slept deeply and well, half waking once, however, at that strange

moment of the night when the earth turns and sighs in her sleep, when

every cow gets up and lies down again. He was conscious of a shrill

crowing, thin as a bugle, from some farm-yard out of sight; then he

turned over and slept again.

When he awoke it was daylight. He lay on his back looking at the network

of twigs overhead, the beech leaves beyond, and the sky visible only in

glimpses--feeling extremely awake and extremely content. Certainly he

was a little stiff when he moved, but there was a kind of interior

contentment that caused that not to matter.

After a minute or two he sat up, felt about for his shoes and slipped

them on. Then he unwound the wrapping about his neck, and crept out of

the shelter.

It was that strange pause before the dawn when the light has broadened

so far as to extinguish the stars, and to bring out all the colors of

earth into a cold deliberate kind of tint. Everything was absolutely

motionless about him as he went under the trees and came out above the

wide park-land of which the copse was a sort of barrier. The dew lay

soaking and thick on the grass slopes, but there was not yet such light

as to bring out its sparkle; and everywhere, dotted on the green before

him, sat hundreds of rabbits, the nearest not twenty yards away.

The silence and the solemnity of the whole seemed to him extraordinary.

There was not a leaf that stirred--each hung as if cut of steel; there

was not a bird which chirped nor a distant cock that crew; the rabbits

eyed him unafraid in this hour of truce.

It seemed to him like some vast stage on to which he had wandered

unexpectedly. The performance of the day before had been played to an

end, the night scene-shifting was finished, and the players of the new

eternal drama were not yet come. An hour hence they would be all about:

the sounds would begin again; men would cross the field-paths, birds

would be busy; the wind would awake and the ceaseless whisper of leaves

answer its talking. But at present the stage was clear-swept, washed,

clean and silent.

It was the solemnity then that impressed him most--solemnity and an air

of expectation. Yet it was not mere expectation. There was a suggestion

of the fundamental and the normal, as if perhaps movement and sound

were, after all, no better than interruptions; as if this fixed poise of

nature were something complete in itself; as if these trees hung out

their leaves to listen to something that they could actually hear, as if

these motionless creatures of the woodland were looking upon something

that they could actually see; as if there were some great secret

actually present and displayed in dead silence and invisibility before

those only who possessed the senses necessary to perceive it.

* * * * *

It was odd to regard life from this standpoint--to look back upon the

days and their incidents that were past, forward upon the days and

incidents to come. Again it was possible for Frank to look upon these

things as an outsider and a deliberate critic--as he had done in the

stuffy room of the lodging-house in the town. Yet now, though he was

again an outsider, though he was again out of the whirl of actual

living, he seemed to be looking at things--staring out, as he was,

almost unseeingly at the grass slopes before him--from exactly the

opposite side. Then, they had seemed to him the only realities, these

tangible physical things, and all else illusion: now it was the physical

things that were illusive, and something else that was real. Once again

the two elements of life lay detached--matter and spirit; but it was as

obviously now spirit that was the reality as it had been matter a day or

two before. It was obviously absurd to regard these outward things on

which he looked as anything but a frame of something completely

different. They were too silent, too still, too little self-sufficient

to be complete in themselves. Something solid lay embraced within

them....

So, then, he stared and ruminated, scarcely perceiving that he thought,

so intensely conscious was he of that of which he thought. It was not

that he understood anything of that on which he looked; he was but aware

that there was something to be understood. And the trees hung rigid

above him, and the clear blue sky still a hard stone beyond them, not

yet flushed with dawn; and the grass lay before him, contracted, it

seemed, with cold, and every blade soaked in wet; and the silence was

profound....

Then a cock crew, a mile away, a thin, brazen cry; a rabbit sat up, then

crouched and bolted, and the spell faded like a mist.

Frank turned and walked back under the trees, to see if the Major was

awake.

CHAPTER V

(I)

We are arrived now at one of those few deplorable incidents in Frank's

career, against which there is no defense. And the painful thing about

it is that Frank never seemed to think that it required any defense. He

shows no penitence for it in his diary: and yet moralists are united in

telling us that we must never do evil that good may come. It is only,

paralleled by his rash action in leaving Cambridge in defiance of all

advice and good sense; so far, that is to say, as a legally permissible

act, however foolish, can be paralleled by one of actual crime.

Moralists, probably, would tell us, in fact, that the first led

inevitably to the second.

It fell out in this way.

Once or twice in his travels with the Major he had been haunted by an

uncomfortable suspicion that this or that contribution that the warrior

made to their common table had not been come by honestly. When a

gentleman, known to possess no more than tenpence, and with a

predilection to drink, leaves the shelter of a small copse; let us say,

at seven o'clock, and reappears, rather breathless, forty minutes later

with a newly-plucked fowl--or even with a fowl not plucked at all, and

still warm, or with half a dozen eggs; and, in addition, issues out

again later in the evening and returns with a strong smell of spirits

and a watery eye--it seems a little doubtful as to whether he has been

scrupulously honest. In cases of this kind Frank persevered in making

some excuse for not joining in the festivity: he put it to himself as

being a matter of pride; but it is hard to understand that it was simply

that in a young man who made no scruple of begging in cases of

necessity. However, there it was, and even the Major, who began by

protesting, ended by acquiescing.

* * * * *

They were somewhere in the neighborhood of Market Weighton when the

thing happened--I cannot identify the exact spot. The situation was as

follows:

They had secured an excellent barn for their night's lodging--facing on

the road on the outskirts of a village. Behind them were, the farm

buildings, and the farmer's household gone to bed. The sun had set and

it was dark. They had supped sparingly, of necessity, and had finished

every morsel of food. (Frank had even found himself mechanically

gathering up crumbs on a wet finger.) They had had a bad week of it;

the corn was not yet ready for cutting, and there seemed no work

anywhere for honest men. The Major's gloom had become terrible; he had

even made remarks upon a choice between a workhouse and a razor. He had

got up after supper and turned his waistcoat pockets inside out to

secure the last possible grains of tobacco, and had smoked about a

quarter of a pipeful gathered in this way without uttering one word. He

had then uttered a short string of them, had seized his cap and

disappeared.

Frank, too, was even more heavy and depressed than usual. The last

shreds of romance were gone from his adventure long ago, and yet his

obstinacy held firm. But he found he could not talk much. He watched

Gertie listlessly as she, listless too, began to spread out nondescript

garments to make a bed in the corner. He hardly spoke to her, nor she to

him.

He was beginning to feel sleepy, when he heard rather hurried steps, as

of one trying to run on tiptoe, coming up the lane, and an instant later

in popped the Major.

"Put out that damned light!" he whispered sharply.

The candle end went out with the swiftness of thought.

"What's up?" Frank roused himself to ask. There had been a strenuous

look about the face seen an instant before that interested him.

There was dead silence. Gertie seemed frozen into motionlessness in her

corner, almost as if she had had experience of this kind of thing

before. Frank listened with all his ears; it was useless to stare into

the dark: here in this barn the blackness was complete.

At first there was no sound at all, except a very soft occasional scrape

of a boot-nail that betokened that the Major was seeking cover

somewhere. Then, so suddenly that he started all over, Frank felt a hand

on his arm and smelt a tobacco-laden breath. (Alas! there had been no

drink to-night.)

"See here, Frankie, my boy.... I ... I've got the thing on me.... What

shall I do with it?... It's no good chucking it away: they'd find it."

"Got what?" whispered Frank.

"There was a kid coming along ... she had a tin of something ... I don't

even know what it is.... And ... and she screamed out and someone ran

out. But they couldn't spot me; it was too dark."

"Hush!" whispered Frank sharply, and the hand tightened on his arm. But

it was only a rat somewhere in the roof.

"Well?" he said.

"Frankie ... I suppose you wouldn't take it from me ... and ... and be

off somewhere. We could meet again later.... I ... I'm afraid someone

may have spotted us coming through the village earlier. They'll ...

they'll search, I expect."

"You can do your own dirty work," whispered Frank earnestly through the

darkness.

"Frankie, my boy ... don't be hard on a poor devil.... I ... I can't

leave Gertie."

"Well, hide it somewhere."

"No good--they'd ... Good God--!"

The voice was stricken into silence once more, as a light, hardly seen

before it was gone again, shone through a crack in the side of the barn.

Then there was unmistakable low talking somewhere.

Frank felt the man, crouched at his side, suddenly stand up noiselessly,

and in that instant his own mind was made up.

"Give it here, you fool," he said. "Here!"

He felt a smooth flat and circular thing thrust suddenly into his hands

with a whisper that he could not catch, and simultaneously he heard a

rush of footsteps outside. He had just time to stuff the thing inside

his coat and roll over as if asleep when the door flew open, and three

or four men, with a policeman at their head, burst into the barn.

(II)

It would be charitable, I think, to suppress the name of the small

market-town where the trial was held. The excellent magistrates who

conducted it certainly did their best under very difficult

circumstances; for what are you to do if a man accused of theft

cordially pleads guilty? and yet, certainly it would distress them to

hear of a very obvious miscarriage of justice executed at their hands.

On Friday morning at ten o'clock the vehicles began to arrive--the motor

of the country gentleman, the dog-cart of the neighboring rector, and

the brougham of the retired general. It was the General who presided.

The court-room was not more dismal than court-rooms usually are. When I

visited it on my little pilgrimage, undertaken a few months ago, it had

been repainted and the woodwork grained to represent oak. Even so, it

was not cheering.

At the upper end, under one of the windows, were ranged five seats on a

daïs, with a long baize-covered table before them. Then, on a lower

level, stood the clerk's and solicitors' table, fenced by a rail from

the vulgar crowd who pressed in, hot and excited, to see the criminals

and hear justice done. There was a case arising from an ancient family

feud, exploded at last into crime; one lady had thrown a clog at another

as the last repartee in a little dialogue held at street doors; the clog

had been well aimed, and the victim appeared now with a very large white

bandage under her bonnet, to give her testimony. This swelled the crowd

beyond its usual proportions, as both ladies were well known in society.

The General was a kindly-looking old man (Frank recognized his name as

soon as he heard it that morning, though he had never met him before)

and conversed cheerily with his brother magistrates as they took their

seats. The Rector was--well, like other rectors, and the Squire like

other squires.

* * * * *

It was a quarter to twelve before the ladies' claims were adjusted. They

were both admonished in a paternal kind of way, and sent about their

business, since there was disputed evidence as to whether or not the

lady with the bandage had provoked the attack, not only by her language,

but by throwing a banana-skin at the lady without the bandage. They were

well talked to, their husbands were bidden to keep them in order, and

they departed, both a little crestfallen, to discuss the whole matter

over a pint of beer.

There was a little shifting about in court; a policeman, looking

curiously human without his helmet, pushed forward from the door and

took his place by the little barrier. The magistrates and the clerk and

the inspector all conferred a little together, and after an order or

two, the door near the back of the court leading from the police-cells

opened, and Frank stepped forward into the dock, followed by another

policeman who clicked the barrier behind the prisoner and stood,

waiting, like Rhadamanthus. Through the hedge of the front row of the

crowd peered the faces of Gertie and the Major.

We need not bother with the preliminaries--in fact, I forget how they

ran--Frank gave his name of Frank Gregory, his age as twenty-two years,

his occupation as casual laborer, and his domicile as no fixed abode.

The charge was read to him. It was to the effect that he, on the night

of Tuesday, the twenty-third instant, had in the village (whose name I

choose to forget, if I ever knew it), seized from Maggie Cooper, aged

nine years, a tin of preserved salmon, with intent to steal. The

question put to the prisoner was: Did he or did he not plead guilty?

"I plead guilty, sir," said Frank, without a tremor.

He had been two full days in the cells by now, and it had not improved

his appearance. He was still deeply sunburned, but he was a little pale

under the eyes, and he was unshaven. He had also deliberately rumpled

his hair and pulled his clothes to make them look as untidy as possible.

He answered in a low voice, so as to attract as little attention as

possible. He had given one quick look at the magistrates as he came in,

to make sure he had never met them out shooting or at dinner-parties,

and he had been deeply relieved to find them total strangers.

"You plead guilty, eh?" said the General.

Frank nodded.

"Well, well! let's hear the whole story. Where is the complainant?"

A rather pale and awe-stricken child appeared somewhere in a little box

opposite Frank, with a virtuous mother in black silk behind her. It

appeared that this child was on her way to her aunt--her father was a

grocer--with a tin of salmon that had been promised and forgotten (that

was how she came to be out so late). As she reached the corner by

Barker's Lane a man had jumped at her and seized the tin. (No; he had

not used any other violence.) She had screamed at the top of her voice,

and Mrs. Jennings' door had opened. Then the man had run away.

"Had she seen the man clearly?" No, she hadn't seen him at all; she had

just seen that he was a man. ("Called himself one," put in a voice.) The

witness here cast an indignant--almost vindictive--look at Frank.

Then a few corroborations were issued. Mrs. Jennings, a widow lady,

keeping house for her brother who was a foreman in Marks' yard, ratified

the statement about the door being opened. She was going to shut up for

the night when she heard the child scream. Her brother, a severe-looking

man, with a black beard, finished her story. He had heard his sister

call out, as he was taking off his boots at the foot of the stairs; he

had run out with his laces dangling, in time to see the man run past the

public-house fifty yards up the street. No ... he, too, had not seen the

man clearly, but he had seen him before, in company with another; the

two had come to his yard that afternoon to ask for work and been

refused, as they wanted no more hands.

"Well, what had happened then?"

He had hammered at two or three doors as he ran past, among them that of

the police-constable, and himself had run on, in time to hear the

prisoner's footsteps run up the lane leading to the barn. He had stopped

then as he was out of breath, and as he thought they would have the man

now, since there was no exit from the lane except through Mr. Patten's

farm-yard, and if he'd gone that way they'd have heard the dogs.

Finally the police-constable corroborated the entire story, and added

that he, in company with the foreman and two other men, had "proceeded"

to the barn immediately, and there had found the prisoner, who was

pretending to be asleep, with the tin of salmon (produced and laid on

the table) hidden inside his jacket. He had then taken him into custody.

"Was there any one else in the barn?"

Yes--two persons, who gave the names of George and Gertie Trustcott.

These were prepared to give evidence as to the prisoner's identity, and

as to his leaving and returning to the barn on the evening in question,

if the magistrate wished.... Yes; they were present in court.

* * * * *

The General began to turn a little testy as the constable finished. He

seemed a magistrate who liked to be paternal, and he appeared to grow

impatient under the extraordinarily correct language of the policeman.

He turned to Frank--seeming to forget all about the two witnesses not

yet called--and spoke rather sharply:

"You don't deny all that? You plead guilty, eh?"

"Yes, sir," said Frank, gazing at the very pink salmon emblazoned on

the tin.

"Why did you do it?"

"I was hungry, sir."

"Hungry, eh? An able-bodied lad like you? Can't you work, then?"

"When I can get it, sir," said Frank

"Eh?... eh? Well, that's true enough. You couldn't get it that day,

anyhow. Mr. What's-his-name's told us that."

"Yes, sir."

Then the Rector leaned forward swiftly--to Frank's horror.

"You speak like an educated man."

"Do I, sir? I'm very pleased to hear it."

There was a faint snigger in court.

"Where were you educated?" persisted the Rector.

"Am I bound to incriminate myself, sir?"

"Incriminate?" said the General suddenly interested. "Eh? you mean,

after a good education. I see. No, of course you're not, my lad."

"Thank you, sir."

"And you plead guilty? And you'd like the case dealt with now?"

"If you please, sir."

The clerk rose swiftly in his place and began to whisper to the

magistrates behind his hand. Frank understood perfectly what was

happening; he understood that it was doubtful whether or no his case

could be dealt with in this court. He exploded within himself a violent

adjuration to the Supreme Authorities, and the next instant the General

sat back.

"Nonsense! nonsense! It isn't highway robbery at all within the meaning

of the term. We'll deal with it now--eh, gentlemen?"

There was a little more whispering, and finally the General settled

himself and took up a quill pen.

"Well, we'll deal with it now, my lad, as you wish. I'm sorry to see a

fellow like you in this position--particularly if you've had a good

education, as you seem to have had. Cowardly thing, you know, to attack

a child like that, isn't it? even if you were hungry. You ought to be

more hardy than that, you know--a great fellow like you--than to mind a

bit of hunger. Boys like you ought to enlist; that'd make a man of you

in no time. But no.... I know you; you won't.... You'd sooner loaf about

and pick up what you can--sooner than serve His Majesty. Well, well,

there's no compulsion--not yet; but you should think over it. Come and

see me, if you like, when you've done your time, and we'll see what can

be done. That'd be better than loafing about and picking up tins of

salmon, eh?"

"Well, I've no more to say. But you just think over it. And we'll give

you fourteen days."

* * * * *

Then as Frank went out he saw the three magistrates lean back in

conversation.

(III)

I find it very hard to explain, even to myself, the extraordinary

depression that fell upon Frank during his fourteen days. He could

hardly bear even to speak of it afterwards, and I find in his diary no

more than a line or two, and those as bald as possible. Apparently it

was no kind of satisfaction to him to know that the whole thing was

entirely his own doing, or that it was the thought of Gertie that had

made him, in the first instance, take the tin from the Major. Yet it was

not that there was any sense of guilt, or even of mistake. One would

have thought that from everybody's point of view, and particularly

Gertie's, it would be an excellent thing for the Major to go to prison

for a bit. It would certainly do him no harm, and it would be a real

opportunity to separate the girl from his company. As for any wrong in

his pleading guilty, he defended it (I must say, with some adroitness)

by saying that it was universally acknowledged that the plea of "Not

Guilty" is merely formal, and in no way commits one to its intrinsic

truth (and he is right there, at least according to Moral Theology as

well as common sense) and, therefore, that the alternative plea is also

merely formal.

And yet he was depressed by his fourteen days to the verge of

melancholia.

There are several contributory causes that may be alleged.

First, there is the extreme ignominy of all the circumstances, beginning

with the paternal scolding in court, in the presence of grocers and

persons who threw clogs, continuing with the dreary journey by rail, in

handcuffs, and the little crowds that gathered to laugh or stare, and

culminating with the details of the prison life. It is not pleasant for

a cleanly man to be suspected of dirt, to be bathed and examined all

over by a man suffering himself apparently from some species of eczema;

it is not pleasant to be ordered about peremptorily by uniformed men,

who, three months before, would have touched their hats to you, and to

have to do things instantly and promptly for the single reason that one

is told to do them.

Secondly, there was the abrupt change of life--of diet, air and

exercise....

Thirdly, there was the consideration, the more terrible because the more

completely unverifiable, as to what difference all this would make, not

only to the regard of his friends for him, but to his own regard for

himself. Innocence of a fault does not entirely do away with the

distress and stigma of its punishment. He imagined himself telling

Jenny; he tried to see her laughing, and somehow he could not. It was

wholly uncharacteristic of all that he knew of her, and yet somehow,

night after night, as the hours dragged by, he seemed to see her looking

at him a little contemptuously.

"At any rate," he almost heard her say, "if you didn't do it, you made a

friend of a man who did. And you were in prison."

Oh! there are countless excellent explanations of his really terrible

depression; and yet somehow it does not seem to me at all in line with

what I know of Frank, to think that they explain it in the least. I

prefer to believe, with a certain priest who will appear by and by, that

the thing was just one stage of a process that had to be accomplished,

and that if it had not come about in this way, it must have come about

in another. As for his religion, all emotional grasp of that fled, it

seemed finally, at the touch of real ignominy. He retained the

intellectual reasons for which he had become a Catholic, but the thing

seemed as apart from him as his knowledge of law--such as it

was--acquired at Cambridge, or his proficiency in lawn-tennis. Certainly

it was no kind of consolation to him to reflect on the sufferings of

Christian martyrs!

It was a Friday evening when he came out and went quickly round the

corner of the jail, in order to get away from any possibility of being

identified with it.

He had had a short interview with the Governor--a very conscientious and

religious man, who made a point of delivering what he called "a few

earnest words" to every prisoner before his release. But, naturally

enough, they were extraordinarily off the point. It was not helpful to

Frank to have it urged upon him to set about an honest livelihood--it

was what he had tried to do every day since June--and not to go about

robbing innocent children of things like tins of salmon--it was the very

last thing he had ever dreamed of doing.

* * * * *

He had also had more than one interview with the chaplain of the

Established Church, in consequence of his resolute refusal to

acknowledge any religious body at all (he had determined to scotch this

possible clue to his identification); and those interviews had not been

more helpful than any other. It is not of much use to be entreated to

turn over a new leaf when you see no kind of reason for doing so; and

little books left tactfully in your cell, directed to the same point,

are equally useless. Frank read them drearily through. He did not

actually kick them from side to side of his cell when he had finished;

that would have been offensive to the excellent intentions of the

reverend gentleman....

Altogether I do not quite like to picture Frank as he was when he came

out of jail, and hurried away. It is such a very startling contrast with

the gayety with which he had begun his pilgrimage.

* * * * *

He had had plenty of time to think over his plans during the last

fortnight, and he went, first, straight to the post-office. The Governor

had given him half-a-crown to start life with, and he proposed to

squander fourpence of it at once in two stamps, two sheets of paper and

two envelopes.

His first letter was to be to Jack; the second to Major Trustcott, who

had thoughtfully given him the address where he might be found about

that date.

But there were to be one or two additional difficulties first.

He arrived at the post-office, went up the steps and through the swing

doors. The place had been newly decorated, with a mahogany counter and

light brass lattice rails, behind which two young ladies of an

inexpressibly aristocratic demeanor and appearance were engaged in

conversation: their names, as he learned from a few sentences he

listened to before daring to interrupt so high a colloquy, were Miss

Mills and Miss Jamieson.

After a decent and respectful pause Frank ventured on his request.

"Two stamps, two sheets of paper and two envelopes, please ... miss."

(He did manage that!)

Miss Mills continued her conversation:

"So I said to her that that would never do, that Harold would be sure to

get hold of it, and that then--"

Frank shuffled his feet a little. Miss Mills cast him a high glance.

"--There'd be trouble, I said, Miss Jamieson."

"You did quite right, dear."

"Two stamps, two sheets of paper and two envelopes, please, miss." He

clicked four pence together on the counter. Miss Mills rose slowly from

her place, went a yard or two, and took down a large book. Frank watched

her gratefully. Then she took a pen and began to make entries in it.

"Two stamps, two sheets of paper and two envelopes, please."

Frank's voice shook a little with anger. He had not learned his lesson

yet.

Miss Mills finished her entry; looked at Frank with extreme disdain,

and finally drew out a sheet of stamps.

"Pennies?" she inquired sharply.

"Please."

Two penny stamps were pushed across and two pennies taken up.

"And now two sheets of paper and two envelopes, please, miss," went on

Frank, encouraged. He thought himself foolish to be angry. Miss Jamieson

uttered a short laugh and glanced at Miss Mills. Miss Mills pursed her

lips together and took up her pen once more.

"Will you be good enough to give me what I ask for, at once, please?"

The whole of Frank blazed in this small sentence: but Miss Mills was

equal to it.

"You ought to know better," she said, "than to come asking for such

things here! Taking up a lot of time like that."

"You don't keep them?"

Miss Mills uttered a small sound. Miss Jamieson tittered.

"Shops are the proper places for writing-paper. This is a post-office."

Words cannot picture the superb high breeding shown in this utterance.

Frank should have understood that he had been guilty of gross

impertinence in asking such things of Miss Mills; it was treating her

almost as a shop-girl. But he was extremely angry by now.

"Then why couldn't you have the civility to tell me so at once?"

Miss Jamieson laid aside a little sewing she was engaged on.

"Look here, young man, you don't come bullying and threatening here.

I'll have to call the policeman if you do.... I was at the railway

station last Friday week, you know."

Frank stood still for one furious instant. Then his heart sank and he

went out without a word.

* * * * *

The letters got written at last, late that evening, in the back room of

a small lodging-house where he had secured a bed. I have the one he

wrote to Jack before me as I write, and I copy it as it stands. It was

without address or date.

"DEAR JACK,

"I want you to do, something for me. I want you to go to

Merefield and see, first, Jenny, and then my father; and tell

them quite plainly and simply that I've been in prison for a

fortnight. I want Jenny to know first, so that she can think of

what to say to my father. The thing I was sent to prison for

was that I pleaded guilty to stealing a tin of salmon from a

child called Mary Cooper. You can see the account of the case

in the County Gazette for last Saturday week, the

twenty-seventh. The thing I really did was to take the tin from

somebody else I was traveling with. He asked me to.

"Next, I want you to send on any letters that may have come for

me to the address I enclose on a separate piece of paper.

Please destroy the address at once; but you can show this

letter to Jenny and give her my love. You are not to come and

see me. If you don't, I'll come and see you soon.

"Things are pretty bad just now, but I'm going to go through

with it.

"Yours,

"F.

"P.S.--By the way, please address me as Mr. F. Gregory when you

write."

* * * * *

He was perfectly obstinate, you understand, still.

* * * * *

Frank's troubles as regards prison were by no means exhausted by his

distressing conversation with the young ladies in the post office, and

the next one fell on him as he was leaving the little town early on the

Saturday morning.

He had just turned out of the main street and was going up a quiet side

lane that looked as if it would lead to the York Road, when he noticed

a disagreeable little scene proceeding up a narrow _cul-de-sac_ across

whose mouth he was passing.

A tall, loose-limbed young man, in his working-clothes, obviously

slightly excited with drink, had hold of a miserable old man by the

scruff of the neck with one hand, and was cuffing him with the other.

Now I do not wish to represent Frank as a sort of knight-errant, but the

fact is that if anyone with respectable and humane ideas goes on the

tramp (I have this from the mouth of experienced persons) he has to make

up his mind fairly soon either to be a redresser of wrongs or to be

conveniently short-sighted. Frank was not yet sufficiently experienced

to have learned the wisdom of the second alternative.

He went straight up the _cul-de-sac_ and without any words at all hit

the young man as hard as possible under the ear nearest to him.

There seems to have been a moment of amazed silence; the young man

dropped the old one, who fled out into the lane, and struck back at

Frank, who parried. Simultaneously a woman screamed somewhere; and faces

began to appear at windows and doors.

It is curious how the customs of the Middle Ages, as well as some of

their oaths, seem to have descended to the ranks of the British

working-man. In the old days--as also in prize-fights to-day--it was

quite usual to assail your adversary with insults as well as with blows.

This was done now. The young man, with a torrent of imprecations,

demanded who Frank thought he was, asked where he was coming to,

required of society in general an explanation of a stranger's

interfering between a son and a qualified father. There was a murmur of

applause and dissent, and Frank answered, with a few harmless expletives

such as he had now learned to employ as a sort of verbal disguise, that

he did not care how many sons or fathers were in question, that he did

not propose to see a certain kind of bully abuse an old man, and that he

would be happy to take the old man's place....

Then the battle was set.

Frank had learned to box in a certain small saloon in Market Street,

Cambridge, and knew perfectly well how to take care of himself. He

received about half the force of one extremely hard blow just on his

left cheek-bone before he got warmed to his work; but after that he did

the giving and the loose-limbed young man the receiving, Frank was even

scientific; he boxed in the American manner, crouching, with both arms

half extended (and this seems to have entirely bewildered his adversary)

and he made no effort to reach the face. He just thumped away steadily

below the spot where the ribs part, and where--a doctor informs me--a

nerve-center, known as the _solar plexus_, is situated. He revolved,

too, with considerable agility, round his opponent, and gradually drew

the battle nearer and nearer to the side lane outside. He knew enough of

slum-chivalry by now to be aware that if a sympathizer, or sycophant, of

the young man happened to be present, he himself would quite possibly

(if the friend happened to possess sufficient courage) suddenly collapse

from a disabling blow on the back of the neck. Also, he was not sure

whether there was any wife in the question; and in this case it would be

a poker, or a broken bottle, held dagger-wise, that he would have to

meet. And he wished therefore to have more room round him than the

_cul-de-sac_ afforded.

But there was no need for precaution.

The young man had begun to look rather sickly under the eyes and to

hiccup three or four times in distressed manner; when suddenly the

clamor round the fight ceased. Frank was aware of a shrill old voice

calling out something behind him; and the next instant, simultaneously

with the dropping of his adversary's hands, he himself was seized from

behind by the arms, and, writhing, discerned is blue sleeve and a gloved

hand holding him.

"Now, what's all this?" said a voice in his ear.

There was a chorus of explanation, declaring that "'Alb" had been set

upon without provocation. There was a particularly voluble woman with

red arms and an exceedingly persuasive manner, who advanced from a

doorway and described the incident from her own point of view. She had

been hanging out the children's things, she began, and so forth; and

Frank was declared the aggressor and "'Alb" the innocent victim.

Then the chorus broke out again, and "'Alb," after another fit of

hiccupping, corroborated the witnesses in a broken and pathetically

indignant voice.

Frank tore himself from one embracing arm and faced round, still held by

the other.

"All right; I shan't run away.... Look here; that's a black lie. He was

hitting that old man. Where is he? Come on, uncle, and tell us all about

it."

The old man advanced, his toothless face contorted with inexplicable

emotion, and corroborated the red-armed woman, and the chorus generally,

with astonishing volubility and emphasis.

"You old fool!" said Frank curtly. "What are you afraid of? Let's have

the truth, now. Wasn't he hitting you?"

"He, he, he!" giggled the old man, torn by the desire of

self-preservation on one side and, let us hope, by a wish for justice on

the other. "He warn't hittin' of me. He's my son, he is.... 'Alb is....

We were just having--"

"There! get out of this," said the policeman, releasing Frank with a

shove. "We don't want your sort here. Coming and making trouble.... Yes;

my lad. You needn't look at me like that. I know you."

"Who the deuce are you talking to?" snapped Frank.

"I know who I'm talking to, well enough," pronounced the policeman

judicially. "F. Gregory, ain't it? Now you be off out of this, or you'll

be in trouble again."

There was something vaguely kindly about the man's manner, and Frank

understood that he knew very tolerably where the truth lay, but wished

to prevent further disturbance. He gulped down his fury. It was no good

saying anything; but the dense of the injustice of the universe was very

bitter. He turned away--

A murmur of indignation broke out from the crowd, bidding the policeman

do his duty.

And as Frank went up the lane, he heard that zealous officer addressing

the court with considerable vigor. But it was very little comfort to

him. He walked out of the town with his anger and resentment still hot

in his heart at the indignity of the whole affair.

(V)

By the Sunday afternoon Frank was well on his way to York.

It was a heavy, hot day, sunny, but with brooding clouds on the low

horizons; and he was dispirited and tired as he came at last into a

small, prim village street rather after two o'clock (its name, once

more, I suppress).

His possessions by now were greatly reduced. His money had gone, little

by little, all through his journey with the Major, and he had kept of

other things only one extra flannel shirt, a pair of thick socks and a

small saucepan he had bought one day. The half-crown that the Governor

had given him was gone, all but fourpence, and he wanted, if possible,

to arrive at York, where he was to meet the Major, at least with that

sum in his possession. Twopence would pay for a bed and twopence more

for supper.

Half-way up the street he stopped suddenly. Opposite him stood a small

brick church, retired by a few yards of turf, crossed by a path, from

the iron railings that abutted on the pavement: and a notice-board

proclaimed that in this, church of the Sacred Heart mass was said on

Sundays at eleven, on holidays of obligation at nine, and on weekdays at

eight-thirty A.M. Confessions were heard on Saturday evenings

and on Thursday evenings before the first Friday, from eight

to nine P.M. Catechism was at three P.M. on Sundays; and

rosary, sermon and benediction at seven P.M. A fat cat, looking

as if it were dead, lay relaxed on the grass beneath this board.

The door was open and Frank considered an instant. But he thought that

could wait for a few minutes as he glanced at the next house. This was

obviously the presbytery.

Frank had never begged from a priest before, and he hesitated a little

now. Then he went across the street into the shadow on the other side,

leaned against the wall and looked. The street was perfectly empty and

perfectly quiet, and the hot summer air and sunshine lay on all like a

charm. There was another cat, he noticed, on a doorstep a few yards

away, and he wondered how any living creature in this heat could

possibly lie like that, face coiled round to the feet, and the tail laid

neatly across the nose. A dreaming cock crooned heart-brokenly somewhere

out of sight, and a little hot breeze scooped up a feather of dust in

the middle of the road and dropped again.

Even the presbytery looked inviting on a day like this. He had walked a

good twenty-five miles to-day, and the suggestion of a dark, cool room

was delicious. It was a little pinched-looking house, of brick, like the

church, squeezed between the church and a large grocery with a

flamboyant inscription over its closed shutters. All the windows were

open, hung inside with cheap lace curtains, and protected with

dust-screens. He pictured the cold food probably laid out within, and

his imagination struck into being a tall glass jug of something like

claret-cup, still half-full. Frank had not dined to-day.

Then he limped boldly across the street, rapped with the cast-iron

knocker, and waited.

Nothing at all happened.

* * * * *

Presently the cat from the notice-board appeared round the corner, eyed

Frank suspiciously, decided that he was not dangerous, came on, walking

delicately, stepped up on to the further end of the brick stair, and

began to arch itself about and rub its back against the warm angle of

the doorpost. Frank rapped again, interrupting the cat for an instant,

and then stooped down to scratch it under the ear. The cat crooned

delightedly. Steps sounded inside the house; the cat stopped writhing,

and as the door opened, darted in noiselessly with tail erect past the

woman who held the door uninvitingly half open.

She had a thin, lined face and quick black eyes.

"What do you want?" she asked sharply, looking up and down Frank's

figure with suspicion. Her eyes dwelt for a moment on the bruise on his

cheek-bone.

"I want to see the priest, please," said Frank.

"You can't see him."

"I am very sorry," said Frank, "but I must see him."

"Coming here begging!" exclaimed the woman bitterly. "I'd be ashamed! Be

off with you!"

Frank's dignity asserted itself a little.

"Don't speak to me in that tone, please. I am a Catholic, and I wish to

see the priest."

The woman snorted; but before she could speak there came the sound of an

opening door and a quick step on the linoleum of the little dark

passage.

"What's all this?" said a voice, as the woman stepped back.

He was a big, florid young man, with yellow hair, flushed as if with

sleep; his eyes were bright and tired-looking, and his collar was

plainly unbuttoned at the back. Also, his cassock was unfastened at the

throat and he bore a large red handkerchief in his hand. Obviously this

had just been over his face.

Now, I do not blame this priest in the slightest. He had sung a late

mass--which never agreed with him--and in his extreme hunger he had

eaten two platefuls of hot beef, with Yorkshire pudding, and drunk a

glass and a half of solid beer. And he had just fallen into a deep sleep

before giving Catechism, when the footsteps and voices had awakened him.

Further, every wastrel Catholic that came along this road paid him a

call, and he had not yet met with one genuine case of want. When he had

first come here he had helped beggars freely and generously, and he

lived on a stipend of ninety pounds a year, out of which he paid his

housekeeper fifteen.

"What do you want?" he said.

"May I speak to you, father?" said Frank.

"Certainly. Say what you've got to say."

"Will you help me with sixpence, father?"

The priest was silent, eyeing Frank closely.

"Are you a Catholic?"

"Yes, father."

"I didn't see you at mass this morning."

"I wasn't here this morning. I was walking on the roads."

"Where did you hear mass?"

"I didn't hear it at all, father. I was on the roads."

"What's your work?"

"I haven't any."

"Why's that?"

Frank shrugged his shoulders a little.

"I do it when I can get it," he said.

"You speak like an educated man."

"I am pretty well educated."

The priest laughed shortly.

"What's that bruise on your cheek?"

"I was in a street fight, yesterday, father."

"Oh, this is ridiculous!" he said. "Where did you come from last?"

Frank paused a moment. He was very hot and very tired.... Then he spoke.

"I was in prison till Friday," he said. "I was given fourteen days on

the charge of robbing a child, on the twenty-sixth. I pleaded guilty.

Will you help me, father?"

If the priest had not been still half stupid with sleep and indigestion,

and standing in the full blaze of this hot sun, he might have been

rather struck by this last sentence. But he did have those

disadvantages, and he saw in it nothing but insolence.

He laughed again, shortly and angrily.

"I'm amazed at your cheek," he said. "No, certainly not! And you'd

better learn manners before you beg again."

Then he banged the door.

* * * * *

About ten minutes later he woke up from a doze, very wide awake indeed,

and looked round. There lay on the table by him a Dutch cheese, a large

crusty piece of bread and some very soft salt butter in a saucer. There

was also a good glass of beer left--not claret-cup--in a glass jug, very

much as Frank had pictured it.

He got up and went out to the street door, shading his eyes against the

sun. But the street lay hot and dusty in the afternoon light, empty from

end to end, except for a cat, nose in tail, coiled on the grocery

door-step.

Then he saw two children, in white frocks, appear round a corner, and he

remembered that it was close on time for Catechism.

CHAPTER VI

(I)

About the time that Frank was coming into the village where the priest

lived, Jenny had just finished lunch with her father. She took a book,

two cigarettes, a small silver matchbox and a Japanese fan, and went out

into the garden. She had no duties this afternoon; she had played the

organ admirably at the morning service, and would play it equally

admirably at the evening service. The afternoon devotions in the little

hot Sunday school--she had decided, in company with her father a year or

two ago--and the management of the children, were far better left in the

professional hands of the schoolmistress.

She went straight out of the drawing-room windows, set wide and shaded

by awnings, and across the lawn to the seat below the ancient yews.

There she disposed herself, with her feet up, lit a cigarette, buried

the match and began to read.

* * * * *

She had not heard from Frank for nearly three weeks; his last

communication had been a picture postcard of Selby Abbey, with the

initial "F" neatly printed at the back. But she was not very greatly

upset. She had written her letter as she had promised, and had heard

from Jack Kirkby, to whose care she sent it, that he had no idea of

Frank's whereabouts, and that he would send on the letter as soon as he

knew more. She supposed that Frank would communicate with her again as

soon as he thought proper.

Other circumstances to be noted were that Dick had gone back to town

some while ago, but would return almost immediately now for the

grouse-shooting; that Archie and Lord Talgarth were both up at the

house--indeed, she had caught sight of them in the red-curtained

chancel-pew this morning, and had exchanged five words with them both

after the service--and that in all other respects other things were as

they had been a month ago.

The Dean of Trinity had telegraphed in great dismay on the morning

following his first communication that Frank had gone, and that no one

had the slightest idea of his destination; he had asked whether he

should put detectives on the track, and had been bidden, in return,

politely but quite firmly, to mind his own business and leave Lord

Talgarth's younger son to Lord Talgarth.

It was a sleepy afternoon, even up here among the hills, and Jenny had

not read many pages before she became aware of it. The Rectory garden

was an almost perfect place for a small doze; the yews about her made a

grateful shade, and the limes behind them even further cooled the air,

and, when the breeze awoke, as one talking in his sleep, the sound about

her was as of gentle rain. The air was bright and dusty with insects;

from the limes overhead, the geranium beds, and the orchard fifty yards

away, came the steady murmur of bees and flies.

Jenny woke up twenty minutes later with a sudden start, and saw someone

standing almost over her. She threw her feet down, still bewildered by

the sudden change and the glare on which she opened her eyes, and

perceived that it was Jack Kirkby, looking very dusty and hot.

"I am so sorry," said Jack apologetically, "but I was told you were out

here."

She did not know Jack very well, though she had known him a long time.

She looked upon him as a pleasant sort of boy whom she occasionally met

at lawn-tennis parties and flower shows, and things like that, and she

knew perfectly how to talk to young men.

"How nice of you to came over," she said. "Did you bicycle? Have

something to drink?"

She made room for him on the seat and held out her second cigarette.

"It's your last," said Jack.

"I've lots more in the house."

She watched him as he lit it, and as the last shreds of sleep rolled

away, put the obvious question.

"You've news of Frank?"

Jack threw away the match and drew two or three draughts of smoke before

answering.

"Yes," he said.

"Where is he?"

"He gave an address at York, though he wasn't there when he wrote. I

sent your letter on there yesterday."

"Oh I did he give any account of himself?"

Jack looked at her.

"Well, he did. I've come about that. It's not very pleasant."

"Is he ill?" asked Jenny sharply.

"Oh, no; not at all; at least, he didn't say so."

"What's the matter, then?"

Jack fumbled in his breast-pocket and drew out a letter, which he held a

moment before unfolding.

"I think you'd better read what he says, Miss Launton. It isn't

pleasant, but it's all over now. I thought I'd better tell you that

first."

She held out her hand without speaking.

Jack gave it her, and addressed himself carefully to his cigarette. He

didn't like this kind of thing at all, he wished Frank wouldn't give him

unpleasant commissions. But, of course, it had to be done. He looked out

at the lawn and the sleepy house, but was aware of nothing except the

girl beside him in her white dress and the letter in her hands. When she

had finished it, she turned back and read it again. Then she remained

perfectly still, with the letter held on her knee.

"Poor, dear old boy!" she said suddenly and quietly.

An enormous wave of relief rolled up and enveloped Jack. He had been

exceedingly uncomfortable this morning, ever since the letter had come.

His first impulse had been to ride over instantly after breakfast; then

he had postponed it till lunch; then he had eaten some cold beef about

half-past twelve and come straight away. He told himself he must give

her plenty of time to write by the late Sunday night post.

He had not exactly distrusted Jenny; Frank's confidence was too

overwhelming and too infectious. But he had reflected that it was not a

wholly pleasant errand to have to inform a girl that her lover had been

in prison for a fortnight. But the tone in which she had just said those

four words was so serene and so compassionate that he was completely

reassured. This really was a fine creature, he said to himself.

"I'm extraordinarily glad you take it like that," he said.

Jenny looked at him out of her clear, direct eyes.

"You didn't suppose I should abuse him, did you?... How exactly like

Frank! I suppose he did it to save some blackguard or other."

"I expect that was it," said Jack.

"Poor, dear old boy!" she said again.

There was a moment's silence. Then Jack began again:

"You see, I've got to go and tell Lord Talgarth. Miss Launton, I wish

you'd come with me. Then we can both write by to-night's post."

Jenny said nothing for an instant. Then:

"I suppose that would be best," she said. "Shall we go up pretty soon? I

expect we shall find him in the garden."

Jack winced a little. Jenny smiled at him openly.

"Best to get it over, Mr. Jack. I know it's like going to the dentist.

But it can't be as bad as you think. It never is. Besides, you'll have

somebody to hold your hand, so to speak."

"I hope I shan't scream out loud," observed Jack. "Yes, we'd better

go--if you don't mind."

He stood up and waited. Jenny rose at once.

"I'll go and get a hat. Wait for me here, will you? I needn't tell

father till this evening."

(II)

The park looked delicious as they walked slowly up the grass under the

shade of the trees by the side of the drive. The great beeches and elms

rose in towering masses, in clump after clump, into the distance, and

beneath the nearest stood a great stag with half a dozen hinds about

him, eyeing the walkers. The air was very still; only from over the hill

came the sound of a single church bell, where some infatuated clergyman

hoped to gather the lambs of his flock together for instruction in the

Christian religion.

"That's a beauty," said Jack, waving a languid hand towards the stag.

"Did you ever hear of the row Frank and I got into when we were boys?"

Jenny smiled. She had been quite silent since leaving the Rectory.

"I heard of a good many," she said. "Which was this?"

Jack recounted a story of Red Indians and ambuscades and a bow and

arrows, ending in the flight of a frantic stag over the palings and

among the garden beds; it was on a Sunday afternoon, too.

"Frank was caned by the butler, I remember; by Lord Talgarth's express

orders. Certainly he richly deserved it. I was a guest, and got off

clear."

"How old were you?"

"We were both about eleven, I think."

"Frank doesn't strike me as more than about twelve now," observed Jenny.

"There's something in that," admitted Jack.... "Oh! Lord! how hot it

is!" He fanned himself with his hat.

* * * * *

There was no sign of life as they passed into the court and up to the

pillared portico; and at last, when the butler appeared, the irregular

state of his coat-collar showed plainly that he but that moment had put

his coat on.

(This would be about the time that Frank left the village after his

interview with the priest.)

Yes; it seemed that Lord Talgarth was probably in the garden; and, if

so, almost certainly in the little square among the yews along the upper

terrace. His lordship usually went there on hot days. Would Miss Launton

and Mr. Kirkby kindly step this way?

No; he was not to trouble. They would find their own way. On the upper

terrace?

"On the upper terrace, miss."

* * * * *

The upper terrace was the one part of the old Elizabethan garden left

entirely unaltered. On either side rose up a giant wall of yew, shaped

like a castle bastion, at least ten feet thick; and between the two ran

a broad gravel path up to the sun-dial, bordered on either side by huge

herbaceous beds, blazing with the color of late summer. In two or three

places grass paths crossed these, leading by a few yards of turf to

windows cut in the hedge to give a view of the long, dazzling lake

below, and there was one gravel path, parallel to these, that led to the

little yew-framed square built out on the slope of the hill.

Two very silent persons now came out from the house by the garden door

on the south side, turned along the path, went up a dozen broad steps,

passed up the yew walk and finally turned again down the short gravel

way and stood abashed.

His lordship was indeed here!

A long wicker chair was set in one angle, facing them, in such a

position that the movement of the sun would not affect the delightful

shade in which the chair stood. A small table stood beside it, with the

_Times_ newspaper tumbled on to it, a box of cigars, a spirit-bottle of

iridescent glass, a syphon, and a tall tumbler in which a little ice lay

crumbled at the bottom. And in the wicker chair, with his mouth wide

open, slept Lord Talgarth.

"Good gracious!" whispered Jenny.

There was a silence, and then like far-off thunder a slow meditative

snore. It was not an object of beauty or dignity that they looked upon.

"In one second I shall laugh," asserted Jenny, still in a cautious

whisper.

"I think we'd better--" began Jack; and stopped petrified, to see one

vindictive-looking eye opened and regarding him, it seemed, with an

expression of extraordinary malignity. Then the other eye opened, the

mouth abruptly closed and Lord Talgarth sat up.

"God bless my soul!"

He rolled his eyes about a moment while intelligence came back.

"You needn't be ashamed of it," said Jenny. "Mr. Jack Kirkby caught me

at it, too, half an hour ago."

His lordship's senses had not even now quite returned. He still stared

at them innocently like a child, cleared his throat once or twice, and

finally stood up.

"Jack Kirkby, so it is! How do, Jack? And Jenny?

"That's who we are," said Jenny. "Are you sure you're quite recovered?"

"Recovered! Eh--!" (He emitted a short laugh.) "Sit down. There's chairs

somewhere."

Jack hooked out a couple that were leaning folded against the low wall

of yew beneath the window and set them down.

"Have a cigar, Jack?"

"No, thanks."

They were on good terms--these two. Jack shot really well, and was smart

and deferential. Lord Talgarth asked no more than this from a young man.

"Well--what's the matter?"

Jack left it thoughtfully for Jenny to open the campaign. She did so

very adroitly.

"Mr. Jack came over to see me," she said, "and I thought I couldn't

entertain him better than by bringing him up to see you. You haven't

such a thing as a cigarette, Lord Talgarth?"

He felt about in his pockets, drew out a case and pushed it across the

table.

"Thanks," said Jenny; and then, without the faintest change of tone:

"We've some news of Frank at last."

"Frank, eh? Have you? And what's the young cub at, now?"

"He's in trouble, as usual, poor boy!" remarked Jenny, genially. "He's

very well, thank you, and sends you his love."

Lord Talgarth cast her a pregnant glance.

"Well, if he didn't, I'm sure he meant to," went on Jenny; "but I

expect he forgot. You see, he's been in prison."

The old man jerked such a face at her, that even her nerve failed for an

instant. Jack saw her put her cigarette up to her mouth with a hand that

shook ever so slightly. And yet before the other could say one word she

recovered herself.

"Please let me say it right out to the end first," she said. "No; please

don't interrupt! Mr. Jack, give me the letter ... oh! I've got it." (She

drew it out and began to unfold it, talking all the while with

astonishing smoothness and self-command.) "And I'll read you all the

important part. It's written to Mr. Kirkby. He got it this morning and

very kindly brought it straight over here at once."

Jack was watching like a terrier. On the one side he saw emotions so

furious and so conflicting that they could find no expression, and on

the other a restraint and a personality so complete and so compelling

that they simply held the field and permitted no outburst. Her voice was

cool and high and natural. Then he noticed her flick a glance at

himself, sideways, and yet perfectly intelligible. He stood up.

"Yes, do just take a stroll, Mr. Kirkby.... Come back in ten minutes."

And as he passed out again through the thick archway on to the terrace

he heard, in an incredibly matter-of-fact voice, the letter begin.

"DEAR JACK...."

Then he began to wonder what, as a matter of interest, Lord Talgarth's

first utterance would be. But he felt he could trust Jenny to manage

him. She was an astonishingly sane and sensible girl.

(III)

He was at the further end of the terrace, close beneath the stable wall,

when the stable clock struck the quarter for the second time. That would

make, he calculated, about seventeen minutes, and he turned reluctantly

to keep his appointment. But he was still thirty yards away from the

opening when a white figure in a huge white hat came quickly out. She

beckoned to him with her head, and he followed her down the steps. She

gave him one glance as if to reassure him as he caught her up, but said

not a word, good or bad, till they had passed through the house again,

and were well on their way down the drive.

"Well?" said Jack.

Jenny hesitated a moment.

"I suppose anyone else would have called him violent," she said. "Poor

old dear! But it seems to me he behaved rather well on the

whole--considering all things."

"What's he going to do?"

"If one took anything he said as containing any truth at all, it would

mean that he was going to flog Frank with his own hands, kick him first

up the steps of the house then down again, and finally drown him in the

lake with a stone round his neck. I think that was the sort of

programme."

"But--"

"Oh! we needn't be frightened," said Jenny. "But if you ask me what he

will do, I haven't the faintest idea."

"Did you suggest anything?"

"He knows what my views are," said jenny.

"And those?"

"Well--make him a decent allowance and let him alone."

"He won't do that!" said Jack. "That's far too sensible."

"You think so?"

"That would solve the whole problem, of course," went on Jack, "marriage

and everything. I suppose it would have to be about eight hundred a

year. And Talgarth must have at least thirty thousand."

"Oh! he's more than that," said Jenny. "He gives Mr. Dick twelve

hundred."

There was a pause. Jack did not know what to think. He was only quite

certain that the thing would have been far worse if he had attempted to

manage it himself.

"Well, what shall I say to Frank?" he asked. Jenny paused again.

"It seems to me the best thing for you to do is not to write. I'll write

myself this evening, if you'll give me his address, and explain--"

"I can't do that," said Jack. "I'm awfully sorry, but--"

"You can't give me his address?"

"No, I'm afraid I mustn't. You see, Frank's very particular in his

letter...."

"Then how can I write to him? Mr. Kirkby, you're really rather--"

"By George! I've got it!" cried Jack. "If you don't mind my waiting at

the Rectory. Why shouldn't you write to him now, and let me take the

letter away and post it? It'll go all the quicker, too, from Barham."

He glanced at her, wondering whether she were displeased. Her answer

reassured him.

"That'll do perfectly," she said, "if you're sure you don't mind

waiting."

The Rectory garden seemed more than ever a harbor from storm as they

turned into it. The sun was a little lower now, and the whole lawn lay

in shadow. As they came to the door she stopped.

"I think I'd better go and get it over," she said. "I can tell father

all about it after you've gone. Will you go now and wait there?" She

nodded towards the seat where they had sat together earlier.

* * * * *

But it was nearly an hour before she came out again, and a neat maid, in

apron and cap, had come discreetly out with the tea-things, set them

down and retired.

Jack had been thinking of a hundred things, which all centered round

one--Frank. He had had a real shock this morning. It had been

intolerable to think of Frank in prison, for even Jack could guess

something of what that meant to him; and the tone of the letter had been

so utterly unlike what he had been accustomed to from his friend. He

would have expected a bubbling torrent of remarks--wise and

foolish--full of personal descriptions and unkind little sketches. And,

indeed, there had come this sober narration of facts and requests....

But in all this there was one deep relief--that it should be a girl like

Jenny who was the heart of the situation. If she had been in the least

little bit disturbed, who could tell what it would mean to Frank? For

Frank, as he knew perfectly well, had a very deep heart indeed, and had

enshrined Jenny in the middle of it. Any wavering or hesitation on her

part would have meant misery to his friend. But now all was perfectly

right, he reflected; and really, after all, it did not matter very much

what Lord Talgarth said or did. Frank was a free agent; he was very

capable and very lovable; it couldn't possibly be long before something

turned up, and then, with Jenny's own money the two could manage very

well. And Lord Talgarth could not live for ever; and Archie would do the

right thing, even if his father didn't.

* * * * *

It was after half-past four before he looked up at a glint of white and

saw Jenny standing at the drawing-room window. She stood there an

instant with a letter in her hand; then she stepped over the low sill

and came towards him across the grass, serene and dignified and

graceful. Her head was bare again, and the great coils of her hair

flashed suddenly as they caught a long horizontal ray from the west.

"Here it is," she said. "Will you direct it? I've told him everything."

Jack nodded.

"That's excellent!" he said. "It shall go to-night."

He glanced up at her and saw her looking at him with just the faintest

wistfulness. He understood perfectly, he said to himself: she was still

a little unhappy at not being allowed to send the letter herself. What a

good girl she was!

"Have some tea before you go?" she said.

"Thanks. I'd better not. They'll be wondering what's happened to me."

As he shook hands he tried to put something of his sympathy into his

look. He knew exactly how she was feeling, and he thought her splendidly

brave. But she hardly met his eyes, and again he felt he knew why.

As he opened the garden gate beyond the house he turned once more to

wave. But she was busy with the tea-things, and a black figure was

advancing briskly upon her from the direction of the study end of the

house.

CHAPTER VII

(I)

Life had been a little difficult for the Major for the last fortnight or

so. Not only was Frank's material and moral support lacking to him, but

the calls upon him, owing to Gertie's extreme unreasonableness, had

considerably increased. He had explained to her, over and over again,

with a rising intensity each time, how unselfishly he had acted

throughout, how his sole thought had been for her in his recent course

of action. It would never have done, he explained pacifically, for a

young man like Frank to have the responsibility of a young girl like

Gertie on his hands, while he (the Major) was spending a fortnight

elsewhere. And, in fact, even on the most economical grounds he had

acted for the best, since it had been himself who had been charged in

the matter of the tin of salmon, it would not have been a fortnight, but

more like two months, during which the little community would have been

deprived of his labor. He reminded her that Frank had had a clean record

up to that time with the police....

But explanation had been fruitless. Gertie had even threatened a

revelation of the facts of the case at the nearest police-station, and

the Major had been forced to more manly tactics with her. He had not

used a stick; his hands had served him very well, and in the course of

his argument he had made a few insincere remarks on the mutual relations

of Frank and Gertie that the girl remembered.

* * * * *

He had obtained a frugal little lodging in one of the small streets of

York, down by the river--indeed looking straight on to it; and, for a

wonder, five days' regular work at the unloading of a string of barges.

The five days expired on the Saturday before Frank was expected, but he

had several shillings in hand on the Sunday morning when Frank's letter

arrived, announcing that he hoped to be with them again on Sunday night

or Monday morning. Two letters, also, had arrived for his friend on the

Sunday morning--one in a feminine handwriting and re-directed, with an

old postmark of June, as well as one of the day before--he had held it

up to the light and crackled it between his fingers, of course, upon

receiving it--and the other an obvious bill--one postmark was Cambridge

and the other Barham. He decided to keep them both intact. Besides,

Gertie had been present at their delivery.

The Major spent, on the whole, an enjoyable Sunday. He lay in bed till

a little after twelve o'clock, with a second-hand copy of the Sporting

Times, and a tin of tobacco beside him. They dined at about one o'clock,

and he managed to get a little spirit to drink with his meal. He had

walked out--not very far--with Gertie in the afternoon, and had managed

by representing himself as having walked seven miles--he was determined

not to risk anything by foolishly cutting it too fine--to obtain a

little more. They had tea about six, and ate, each of them, a kippered

herring and some watercress. Then about seven o'clock Frank suddenly

walked in and sat down.

"Give me something to eat and drink," he said.

He looked, indeed, extraordinarily strained and tired, and sat back on

the upturned box by the fireplace as if in exhaustion. He explained

presently when Gertie had cooked another herring, and he had drunk a

slop-basinful of tea, that he had walked fasting since breakfast, but he

said nothing about the priest. The Major with an air of great

preciseness measured out half a finger of whisky and insisted, with the

air of a paternal doctor, upon his drinking it immediately.

"And now a cigarette, for God's sake," said Frank. "By the way, I've got

some work for to-morrow."

"That's first-rate, my boy," said the Major. "I've been working myself

this week."

Frank produced his fourpence and laid it on the corner of the table.

"That's for supper and bed to-night," he said.

"Nonsense, my boy; put it back in your pocket."

"Kindly take that fourpence," remarked Frank. "You can add some

breakfast to-morrow, if you like."

* * * * *

He related his adventures presently--always excepting the priest--and

described how he had met a man at the gate of a builder's yard this

evening as he came through York, who had promised him a day's job, and

if things were satisfactory, more to follow.

"He seemed a decent chap," said Frank.

* * * * *

The Major and Gertie had not much to relate. They had left the

market-town immediately after Frank's little matter in the magistrates'

court, and had done pretty well, arriving in York ten days ago. They

hardly referred to Frank's detention, though he saw Gertie looking at

him once or twice in a curiously shy kind of way, and understood what

was in her mind. But for very decency's sake the Major had finally to

say something.

"By the way, my boy, I won't forget what you did for me and for my

little woman here. I'm not a man of many words, but--"

"Oh! that's all right," said Frank sleepily. "You'll do as much for me

one day."

The Major assented with fervor and moist eyes. It was not till Frank

stood up to go to bed that anyone remembered the letters.

"By the way, there are two letters come for you," said the Major,

hunting in the drawer of the table. Frank's bearing changed. He whisked

round in an instant.

"Where are they?"

They were put into his hand. He looked at them carefully, trying to make

out the postmark--turned them upside down and round, but he made no

motion to open them.

"Where am I to sleep?" he said suddenly. "And can you spare a bit of

candle?"

(And as he went upstairs, it must have been just about the time that the

letter-box at Barham was cleared for the late Sunday post.)

(II)

Frank lay a long time awake in the dark that night, holding tight in his

hand Jenny's letter, written to him in June. The bill he had not even

troubled to open.

For the letter said exactly and perfectly just all those things which

he most wished to hear, in the manner in which he wished to hear them.

It laughed at him gently and kindly; it called him an extraordinarily

silly boy; it said that his leaving Cambridge, and, above all, his

manner of leaving it--Frank had added a postscript describing his

adventure with the saddle and the policeman--were precisely what the

writer would have expected of him; it made delightful and humorous

reflections upon the need of Frank's turning over a new leaf--there was

quite a page of good advice; and finally it gave him a charming

description--just not over the line of due respect--of his father's

manner of receiving the news, with extracts from some of the choicest

remarks made upon that notable occasion. It occupied four

closely-written pages, and if there were, running underneath it

all, just the faintest taint of strain and anxiety, loyally

concealed--well--that made the letter no less pleasant.

I have not said a great deal about what Jenny meant to Frank, just

because he said so very little about her himself. She was, in fact,

almost the only element in his variegated life upon which he had not

been in the habit of pouring out torrential comments and reflections.

His father and Archie were not at all spared in his conversation with

his most intimate friends; in fact, he had been known, more than once,

in a very select circle at Cambridge, to have conducted imaginary

dialogues between those two on himself as their subject, and he could

imitate with remarkable fidelity his Cousin Dick over a billiard-table.

But he practically never mentioned Jenny; he had not even a photograph

of her on his mantelpiece. And it very soon became known among his

friends, when the news of his engagement leaked out through Jack, that

it was not to be spoken of in his presence. He had preserved the same

reticence, it may be remembered, about his religion.

And so Frank at last fell asleep on a little iron bedstead, just

remembering that it was quite possible he might have another letter from

her to-morrow, if Jack had performed his commission immediately. But he

hardly expected to hear till Tuesday.

* * * * *

Gertie was up soon after five next morning to get breakfast for her men,

since the Major had announced that he would go with Frank to see whether

possibly there might not be a job for him too; and as soon as they had

gone, very properly went to sleep again on the bed in the sitting-room.

Gertie had a strenuous time of it, in spite of the Major's frequently

expressed opinion that women had no idea what work was. For, first,

there was the almost unending labor of providing food and cooking it as

well as possible; there was almost a standing engagement of mending and

washing clothes; there were numerous arguments to be conducted, on terms

of comparative equality, if possible, with landladies or farmers'

wives--Gertie always wore a brass wedding-ring and showed it sometimes a

little ostentatiously; and, finally, when the company was on the march,

it was only fair that she should carry the heavier half of the luggage,

in order to compensate for her life of luxury and ease at other times.

Gertie, then, was usually dog-tired, and slept whenever she could get a

chance.

It was nearly eight o'clock before she was awakened again by sharp

knocking on her door; and on opening it, found the landlady' standing

there, examining a letter with great attention. (It had already been

held up to the light against the kitchen window.)

"For one of your folks, isn't it, Mrs.--er--" Gertie took it. It was

written on excellent paper, and directed in a man's handwriting to Mr.

Gregory:

"Thank you, Mrs.--er--" said Gertie.

Then she went back into her room, put the letter carefully away in the

drawer of the table and set about her household business.

About eleven o'clock she stepped out for a little refreshment. She had,

of course, a small private exchequer of her own, amounting usually to

only a few pence, of which the Major knew nothing. This did not strike

her as at all unfair; she only wondered gently sometimes at masculine

innocence in not recognizing that such an arrangement was perfectly

certain. She got into conversation with some elder ladies, who also had

stepped out for refreshment, and had occasion, at a certain point, to

lay her wedding-ring on the bar-counter for exhibition. So it was not

until a little after twelve that she remembered the time and fled. She

was not expecting her men home to dinner; in fact, she had wrapped up

provisions for them in fragments of the Major's _Sporting Times_ before

they had left; but it was safer to be at home. One never knew.

As she came into the room, for an instant her heart leaped into her

mouth, but it was only Frank.

"Whatever's the matter?" she said.

"Turned off," said Frank shortly. He was sitting gloomily at the table

with his hands in his pockets.

"Turned off?"

He nodded.

"What's up?"

"'Tecs," said Frank.

Gertie's mouth opened a little.

"One of them saw me going in and wired for instructions. He had seen the

case in the police-news and thought I answered to the description. Then

he came back at eleven and told the governor."

"And--"

"Yes."

There was a pause.

"And George?"

"Oh! he's all right," said Frank a little bitterly. "There's nothing

against him. Got any dinner, Gertie? I can't pay for it ... oh, yes, I

can; here's half a day." (He chucked ninepence upon the table; the

sixpence rolled off again, but he made no movement to pick it up.)

Gertie looked at him a moment.

"Well--" she began emphatically, then she stooped to pick up the

sixpence.

Frank sighed.

"Oh! don't begin all that--there's a good girl. I've said it all

myself--quite adequately, I assure you."

Gertie's mouth opened again. She laid the sixpence on the table.

"I mean, there's nothing to be said," explained Frank. "The point

is--what's to be done?"

Gertie had no suggestions. She began to scrape out the frying-pan in

which the herrings had been cooked last night.

"There's a letter for you," she said suddenly.

Frank sat up.

"Where?"

"In the drawer there--by your hand. Frankie...."

Frank tore at the handle and it came off. He uttered a short

exclamation. Then, with infinite craft he fitted the handle in again,

wrapped in yet one more scrap of the _Sporting Times_, and drew out the

drawer. His face fell abruptly as he saw the handwriting.

"That can wait," he muttered, and chucked the letter face downwards on

to the table.

"Frankie," said the girl again, still intent on her frying-pan.

"Well?"

"It's all my fault," she said in a low voice.

"Your fault! How do you make that out?"

"If it hadn't been for me, you wouldn't have taken the tin from George,

and...."

"Oh, Lord!" said Frank, "if we once begin on that!... And if it hadn't

been for George, he wouldn't have taken the tin; and if it hadn't been

for Maggie Cooper, there wouldn't have been the tin; and if it hadn't

been for Maggie's father's sister, she wouldn't have gone out with it.

It's all Maggie's father's sister's fault, my dear! It's nothing to do

with you."

The words were brisk enough, but the manner was very heavy. It was like

repeating a lesson learned in childhood.

"That's all right," began Gertie again, "but--"

"My dear girl, I shall be annoyed if you go back to all that. Why can't

you let it alone? The point is, What's to happen? I can't go on sponging

on you and the Major."

Gertie flushed under her tan.

"If you ever leave us," she said, "I'll--"

"Well?"

"I'll ... I'll never leave George."

Frank was puzzled for a moment. It seemed a _non sequitur_.

"Do you mean--"

"I've got me eyes," said Gertie emphatically, "and I know what you're

thinking, though you don't say much. And I've been thinking, too."

Frank felt a faint warmth rise in his own heart. "You mean you've been

thinking over what I said the other day?"

Gertie bent lower over her frying-pan and scraped harder than ever.

"Do stop that confounded row one second!" shouted Frank.

The noise stopped abruptly. Gertie glanced up and down again. Then she

began again, more gently.

"That's better," said Frank.... "Well, I hope you have," he went on

paternally. "You're a good girl, Gertie, and you know better. Go on

thinking about it, and tell me when you've made up your mind. When'll

dinner be ready?"

"Half an hour," said Gertie.

"Well, I'll go out for a bit and look round."

He took up the letter carelessly and went out.

(III)

As he passed the window Gertie glanced towards it with the corner of her

eye. Then, frying-pan still in hand, she crept up to the angle and

watched him go down the quay.

A very convenient barrel was set on the extreme edge of the embankment

above the water, with another beside it, and Frank made for this

immediately. She saw him sit on one of the barrels and put the letter,

still unopened, on the top of the other. Then he fumbled in his pockets

a little, and presently a small blue cloud of smoke went upwards like

incense. Gertie watched him for an instant, but he did not move again.

Then she went back to her frying-pan.

Twenty minutes later dinner was almost ready.

Gertie had spread upon the table, with great care, one of the Major's

white pocket-handkerchiefs. He insisted upon those being, not only

retained, but washed occasionally, and Gertie understood something of

his reasons, since in the corner of each was embroidered a monogram, of

which the letters were not "G.T." But she never could make out what they

were.

Upon this tablecloth she had placed on one side a black-handled fork

with two prongs, and a knife of the same pattern (this was for Frank)

and on the other a small pewter tea-spoon and a knife, of which the only

handle was a small iron spike from which the wood had fallen away. (This

was for herself.) Then there was a tooth-glass for Frank, and a

teacup--without a handle, but with a gold flower in the middle of it, to

make up--for herself. In the center of the pocket-handkerchief stood a

crockery jug, with a mauve design of York Minster, with a thundercloud

behind it and a lady and gentleman with a child bowling a hoop in front

of it. This was the landlady's property, and was half full of beer.

Besides all this, there were two plates, one of a cold blue color, with

a portrait of the Prince Consort, whiskers and hat complete, in a small

medallion in the center, and the other white, with a representation of

the Falls of Lodore. There was no possibility of mistaking any of the

subjects treated upon these various pieces of table-ware, since the

title of each was neatly printed, in various styles, just below the

picture.

Gertie regarded this array with her head on one side. It was not often

that they dined in such luxury. She wished she had a flower to put in

the center. Then she stirred the contents of the frying-pan with an iron

spoon, and went again to the window.

The figure on the barrel had not moved; but even as she looked she saw

him put out his hand to the letter. She watched him. She saw him run a

finger inside the envelope, and toss the envelope over the edge of the

quay. Then she saw him unfold the paper inside and become absorbed.

This would never do. Gertie's idea of a letter was that it occupied at

least several minutes to read through; so she went out quickly to the

street door to call him in.

She called him, and he did not turn his head, nor even answer.

She called him again.

(IV)

The letter that Frank read lies, too, with a few other papers, before me

as I write.

It runs as follows:

"MY DEAR FRANK,

"I know you won't like what I have to say, but it has to be

said. Believe me, it costs me as much to write as you to

read--perhaps more.

"It is this: Our engagement must be at an end.

"You have a perfect right to ask me for reasons, so I will give

them at once, as I don't want to open the subject again. It

would do no kind of good. My mind is absolutely made up.

"My main reason is this: When I became engaged to you I did not

know you properly. I thought you were quite different from what

you are. I thought that underneath all your nice wildness, and

so on, there was a very solid person. And I hinted that, you

will remember, in my first letter, which I suppose you have

received just before this. And now I simply can't think that

any longer.

"I don't in the least blame you for being what you are: that's

not my business. But I must just say this--that a man who can

do what you've done, not only for a week or two, as I thought

at first, as a sort of game, but for nearly three months, and

during that time could leave me with only three or four

postcards and no news; above all, a man who could get into

such disgrace and trouble, and actually go to prison, and yet

not seem to mind much--well, it isn't what I had thought of

you.

"You see, there are a whole lot of things together. It isn't

just this or that, but the whole thing.

"First you became a Catholic, without telling me anything until

just before. I didn't like that, naturally, but I didn't say

anything. It isn't nice for a husband and wife to be of

different religions. Then you ran away from Cambridge; then you

got mixed up with this man you speak of in your letter to Jack;

and you must have been rather fond of him, you know, to go to

prison for him, as I suppose you did. And yet, after all that,

I expect you've gone to meet him again in York. And then

there's the undeniable fact of prison.

"You see, it's all these things together--one after another. I

have defended you to your father again and again; I haven't

allowed anybody to abuse you without standing up for you; but

it really has gone too far. You know I did half warn you in

that other letter. I know you couldn't have got it till just

now, but that wasn't my fault; and the letter shows what I was

thinking, even three months ago.

"Don't be too angry with me, Frank. I'm very fond of you still,

and I shall always stand up for you when I can. And please

don't answer this in any way. Jack Kirkby isn't answering just

yet. I asked him not, though he doesn't know why.

"Your father is going to send the news that the engagement is

broken off to the newspapers.

"Yours sincerely,

"JENNY LAUNTON."

PART II

CHAPTER I

(I)

Barham, as all Yorkshire knows, lies at the foot of a long valley, where

it emerges into the flatter district round Harrogate. It has a railway

all to itself, which goes no further, for Barham is shut in on the north

by tall hills and moors, and lies on the way to nowhere. It is almost

wholly an agricultural town, and has a curious humped bridge, right in

the middle of the town, where men stand about on market days and discuss

the price of bullocks. It has two churches--one, disused, on a

precipitous spur above the town, surrounded by an amazingly irregular

sort of churchyard, full, literally, to bursting (the Kirkbys lie there,

generation after generation of them, beneath pompous tombs), and the

other church a hideous rectangular building, with flat walls and

shallow, sham Gothic windows. It was thought extremely beautiful when it

was built forty years ago. The town itself is an irregular and rather

picturesque place, with a twisting steep High Street, looking as if a

number of houses had been shot at random into this nook among the hills

and left to find their own levels.

The big house where the Kirkbys have lived since the middle of the

seventeenth century is close to the town, as the squire's house ought to

be, and its park gates open right upon the northern end of the old

bridge. There's nothing of great interest in the house (I believe there

is an old doorway in the cellar, mentioned in guide-books), since it was

rebuilt about the same time as the new church first rose. It is just a

big, comfortable, warm, cool, shady sort of house, with a large hall and

a fine oak staircase, surrounded by lawns and shrubberies, that adjoin

on the west the lower slopes, first of the park and then of the moors

that stretch away over the horizon.

There is a pleasant feudal air about the whole place--feudal, in a small

and neighborly kind of way. Jack's father died just a year before his

only son came of age; and Jack himself, surrounded by sisters and an

excellent and beneficently-minded mother, has succeeded to all the

immemorial rights and powers, written and unwritten, of the Squire of

Barham. He entertained me delightfully for three or four days a few

months ago, when I was traveling about after Frank's footsteps, and I

noticed with pleasure as we drove through the town that there was

hardly a living creature in the town whom he did not salute; and who did

not salute him.

He took me first to the bridge and pulled up in the middle of it, to

point out a small recess in it, over the central pier, intended, no

doubt, to give shelter to foot-passengers before the bridge was widened,

in case a large vehicle came through.

"There," he said. "That's the place I first saw Frank when he came."

We drove on up through the town, and at the foot of the almost

precipitous hill leading up to the ruined church we got out, leaving the

dog-cart in charge of the groom. We climbed the hill slowly, for it was

a hot day, Jack uttering reminiscences at intervals (many of which are

recorded in these pages) and turned in at the churchyard gate.

"And this was the place," said Jack, "where I said good-by to him."

(II)

It was on the twenty-fifth of September, a Monday, that Jack sat in the

smoking-room, in Norfolk jacket and gaiters, drinking tea as fast as he

possibly could. He had been out on the moors all day, and was as thirsty

as the moors could make him, and he had been sensual enough to smoke a

cigarette deliberately before beginning tea, in order to bring his

thirst to an acute point.

Then, the instant he had finished he snatched for his case again, for

this was to be the best cigarette of the whole day, and discovered that

his sensuality had overreached itself for once, and that there were none

left. He clutched at the silver box with a sinking heart,

half-remembering that he had filled his case with the last of them this

morning. It was a fact, and he knew that there were no others in the

house.

This would never do, and he reflected that if he sent a man for some

more, he would not get them for at least twenty minutes. (Jack never

could understand why an able-bodied footman always occupied twenty

minutes in a journey that ought to take eight.) So he put on his cap

again, stepped out of the low window and set off down the drive.

* * * * *

It was getting a little dark as he passed out of the lodge-gates. The

sun, of course, had set at least an hour before behind the great hill to

the west, but the twilight proper was only just beginning. He was nearly

at the place now, and as he breasted the steep ascent of the bridge,

peered over it, at least with his mind's eye, at the tobacconist's

shop--first on the left--where a store of "Mr. Jack's cigarettes" was

always on hand.

He noticed in the little recess I have just spoken of a man leaning

with his elbows on the parapet, and staring out up the long reach of the

stream to the purple evening moors against the sky and the luminous

glory itself; and as he came opposite him, wondered vaguely who it was

and whether he knew him. Then, as he got just opposite him, he stopped,

uneasy at heart.

* * * * *

Naturally Frank was never very far away from Jack's thoughts just

now--ever since, indeed, he had heard the news in a very discreet letter

from the Reverend James Launton a week or two ago. (I need not say he

had answered this letter, not to the father, but to the daughter, but

had received no reply.)

He had written a frantic letter to Frank himself then, but it had been

returned, marked: "Unknown at this address." And ever since he had eyed

all tramps on the road with an earnestness that elicited occasionally a

salute, and occasionally an impolite remark.

The figure whose back he saw now certainly was not much like Frank; but

then--again--it was rather like him. It was dressed in a jacket and

trousers so stained with dust and wet as to have no color of their own

at all, and a cloth cap of the same appearance. A bundle tied up in a

red handkerchief, and a heavy stick, rested propped against an angle of

the recess.

Jack cleared his throat rather loud and stood still, prepared to be

admiring the view, in case of necessity; the figure turned an eye over

its shoulder, then faced completely round; and it was Frank Guiseley.

Jack for the first instant said nothing at all, but stood transfixed,

with his mouth a little open and his eyes staring. Frank's face was

sunburned almost beyond recognition, his hair seemed cut shorter than

usual, and the light was behind him.

Then Jack recovered.

"My dear man," he said, "why the--"

He seized him by the hands and held him, staring at him.

"Yes; it's me all right," said Frank. "I was just wondering--"

"Come along, instantly.... Damn! I've got to go to a tobacconist's; it's

only just here. There isn't a cigarette in the house. Come with me?"

"I'll wait here," said Frank.

"Will you? I shan't be a second."

It was, as a matter of fact, scarcely one minute before Jack was back;

he had darted in, snatched a box from the shelf and vanished, crying out

to "put it down to him." He found Frank had faced round again and was

staring at the water and sky and high moors. He snatched up his friend's

bundle and stick.

"Come along," he said, "we shall have an hour or two before dinner."

Frank, in silence, took the bundle and stick from him again, firmly and

irresistibly, and they did not speak again till they were out of

ear-shot of the lodge. Then Jack began, taking Frank's arm--a custom for

which he had often been rebuked.

"My dear old man!" he said. "I ... I can't say what I feel. I know the

whole thing, of course, and I've expressed my mind plainly to Miss

Jenny."

"Yes?"

"And to your father. Neither have answered, and naturally I haven't been

over again.... Dick's been there, by the way."

Frank made no comment.

"You look simply awful, old chap," pursued Jack cheerily. "Where on

earth have you been for the last month? I wrote to York and got the

letter returned."

"Oh! I've been up and down," said Frank impassively.

"With the people you were with before--the man, I mean?"

"No. I've left them for the present. But I shall probably join them

again later."

"Join...!" began the other aghast.

"Certainly! This thing's only just begun," said Frank, with that same

odd impassivity. "We've seen the worst of it, I fancy."

"But you don't mean you're going back! Why, it's ridiculous!"

Frank stopped. They were within sight of the house now and the lights

shone pleasantly out.

"By the way, Jack, I quite forgot. You will kindly give me your promise

to make no sort of effort to detain me when I want to go again, or I

shan't come any further."

"But, my dear chap--"

"Kindly promise at once, please."

"Oh, well! I promise, but--"

"That's all right," said Frank, and moved on.

* * * * *

"I say," said Jack, as they came up to the hall door. "Will you talk now

or will you change, or what?"

"I should like a hot bath first. By the way, have you anyone staying in

the house?"

"Not a soul; and only two sisters at home. And my mother, of course."

"What about clothes?"

"I'll see about that. Come on round to the smoking-room window. Then

I'll get in Jackson and explain to him. I suppose you don't mind your

name being known? He'll probably recognize you, anyhow."

"Not in the least, so long as no one interferes."

Jack rang the bell as soon as they came into the smoking-room, and Frank

sat down in a deep chair. Then the butler came. He cast one long look at

the astonishing figure in the chair.

"Oh!--er--Jackson, this is Mr. Frank Guiseley. He's going to stay here.

He'll want some clothes and things. I rather think there are some suits

of mine that might do. I wish you'd look them out."

"I beg your pardon, sir?

"This is Mr. Frank Guiseley--of Merefield.... It is, really! But we

don't want more people talking than are necessary. You understand?

Please don't say anything about it, except that he's come on a

walking-tour. And please tell the housekeeper to get the Blue Room

ready, and let somebody turn on the hot water in the bath-room until

further notice. That's all, Jackson ... and the clothes. You

understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"And get the _eau de lubin_ from my dressing-room and put it in the

bath-room. Oh, yes; and the wooden bowl of soap."

"These clothes of mine are not to be thrown away, please, Jackson,"

said Frank gravely from the chair. "I shall want them again."

"Yes, sir."

"That's all, then," said Jack.

Mr. Jackson turned stiffly and left the room.

"It's all right," said Jack. "You remember old Jackson. He won't say a

word. Lucky no one saw us as we came up."

"It doesn't matter much, does it?" said Frank.

There was a pause.

"I say, Frank, when will you tell me--"

"I'll answer any questions after dinner to-night. I simply can't talk

now."

Dinner was a little difficult that night.

Mrs. Kirkby had been subjected to a long lecture from her son during the

half hour in which she ought to have been dressing, in order to have it

firmly implanted in her mind that Frank--whom she had known from a

boy--was simply and solely in the middle of a walking-tour all by

himself. She understood the situation perfectly in a minute and a

half--(she was a very shrewd woman who did not say much)--but Jack was

not content. He hovered about her room, fingering photographs and

silver-handled brushes, explaining over and over again how important it

was that Frank should be made to feel at his case, and that Fanny and

Jill--(who were just old enough to come to dinner in white high-necked

frocks that came down to their very slender ankles, and thick pig-tails

down their backs)--must not be allowed to bother him. Mrs. Kirkby said,

"Yes, I understand," about a hundred and thirty times, and glanced at

the clock. She stood with one finger on the electric button for at least

five minutes before venturing to ring for her maid, and it was only that

lady's discreet tap at one minute before eight that finally got Jack out

of the room. He looked in on Frank in the middle of his dressing, found

to his relief that an oldish suit of dress-clothes fitted him quite

decently, and then went to put on his own. He came down to the

drawing-room seven minutes after the gong with his ears very red and his

hair in a plume, to find Frank talking to his mother, and eyed by his

sisters who were pretending to look at photographs, with all the ease in

the world.

But dinner itself was difficult. It was the obvious thing to talk about

Frank's "walking-tour"; and yet this was exactly what Jack dared not do.

The state of the moors, and the deplorable ravages made among the young

grouse by the early rains, occupied them all to the end of fish; to the

grouse succeeded the bullocks: to the bullocks, the sheep, and, by an

obvious connection--obvious to all who knew that gentleman--from the

sheep to the new curate.

But just before the chocolate _soufflée_ there came a pause, and Jill,

the younger of the two sisters, hastened to fill the gap.

"Did you have a nice walking-tour, Mr. Guiseley?"

Frank turned to her politely.

"Yes, very nice, considering," he said.

"Have you been alone all the time?" pursued Jill, conscious of a social

success.

"Well, no," said Frank. "I was traveling with a ... well, with a man who

was an officer in the army. He was a major."

"And did you--"

"That's enough, Jill," said her mother decidedly. "Don't bother Mr.

Guiseley. He's tired with his walk."

The two young men sat quiet for a minute or two after the ladies had

left the room. Then Jack spoke.

"Well?" he said.

Frank looked up. There was an odd, patient kind of look in his eyes that

touched Jack a good deal. Frank had not been distinguished for

submissiveness hitherto.

"Oh! a bit later, if you don't mind," he said. "We can talk in the

smoking-room."

(IV)

"Well, I'll tell you the whole thing as far as I understand it," began

Frank, as the door closed behind Jackson, who had brought whisky and

candles. "And then I'll answer any questions you want."

He settled himself back in his chair, stretching out his legs and

clasping his hands behind his head. Jack had a good view of him and

could take notice of his own impressions, though he found them hard to

put into words afterwards. The words he finally chose were "subdued" and

"patient" again, and there are hardly two words that would have been

less applicable to Frank three months before. At the same time his

virility was more noticeable than ever; he had about him, Jack said,

something of the air of a very good groom--a hard-featured and sharp,

yet not at all unkindly look, very capable and, at the same time, very

much restrained. There was no sentimental nonsense about him at all--his

sorrow had not taken that form.

"Well, I needn't talk much about Jenny's last letter and what happened

after that. I was entirely unprepared, of course. I hadn't the faintest

idea--Well, she was the one person about whom I had no doubts at all! I

actually left the letter unread for a few minutes (the envelope was in

your handwriting, you know)--because I had to think over what I had to

do next. The police had got me turned away from a builder's yard--"

Jack emitted a small sound. He was staring at Frank with all his eyes.

"Yes; that's their way," said Frank. "Well, when I read it, I simply

couldn't think any more at all for a time. The girl we were traveling

with--she had picked up with the man I had got into trouble over, you

know--the girl was calling me to dinner, she told me afterwards. I

didn't hear a sound. She came and touched me at last, and I woke up. But

I couldn't say anything. They don't even now know what's the matter. I

came away that afternoon. I couldn't even wait for the Major--"

"Eh?"

"The Major.... Oh! that's what the chap calls himself. I don't think

he's lying, either. I simply couldn't stand him another minute just

then. But I sent them a postcard that night--I forget where from;

and--There aren't any letters for me, are there?

"One or two bills."

"Oh! well, I shall hear soon, I expect. I must join them again in a day

or two. They're somewhere in this direction, I know."

"And what did you do?"

Frank considered.

"I'm not quite sure. I know I walked a great deal. People were awfully

good to me. One woman stopped her motor--and I hadn't begged, either--"

"You! Begged!"

"Lord, yes; lots of times.... Well, she gave me a quid, and I didn't

even thank her. And that lasted me very well, and I did a little work

too, here and there."

"But, good Lord! what did you do?"

"I walked. I couldn't bear towns or people or anything. I got somewhere

outside of Ripon at last, and went out on to the moors. I found an old

shepherd's hut for about a week or ten days--"

"And you--"

"Lived there? Yes. I mended the hut thoroughly before I came away. And

then I thought I'd come on here."

"What were you doing on the bridge?"

"Waiting till dark. I was going to ask at the lodge then whether you

were at home."

"And if I hadn't been?"

"Gone on somewhere else, I suppose."

Jack tried to help himself to a whisky and soda, but the soda flew out

all over his shirt-front like a fountain, and he was forced to make a

small remark. Then he made another.

"What about prison?"

Frank smiled.

"Oh! I've almost forgotten that. It was beastly at the time, though."

"And ... and the Major and the work! Lord! Frank, you do tell a story

badly."

He smiled again much more completely.

"I'm too busy inside," he said. "Those things don't seem to matter much,

somehow."

"Inside? What the deuce do you mean?"

Frank made a tiny deprecating gesture.

"Well, what it's all about, you know ... Jack."

"Yes."

"It's a frightfully priggish thing to say, but I'm extraordinarily

interested as to what's going to happen next--inside, I mean. At least,

sometimes; and then at other times I don't care a hang."

Jack looked bewildered, and said so tersely. Frank leaned forward a

little.

"It's like this, you see. Something or other has taken me in hand: I'm

blessed if I know what. All these things don't happen one on the top of

the other just by a fluke. There's something going on, and I want to

know what it is. And I suppose something's going to happen soon."

"For God's sake do say what you mean!"

"I can't more than that. I tell you I don't know. I only wish somebody

could tell me."

"But what does it all amount to? What are you going to do next?"

"Oh! I know that all right. I'm going to join the Major and Gertie

again."

"Frank!"

"Yes?... No, not a word, please. You promised you wouldn't. I'm going to

join those two again and see what happens."

"But why?"

"That's my job. I know that much. I've got to get that girl back to her

people again. She's not his wife, you know."

"But what the devil--"

"It seems to me to matter a good deal. Oh! she's a thoroughly stupid

girl, and he's a proper cad; but that doesn't matter. It's got to be

done; or, rather, I've got to try to do it. I daresay I shan't succeed,

but that, again, doesn't matter. I've got to do my job, and then we'll

see."

Jack threw up his hands.

"You're cracked!" he said.

"I daresay," said Frank solemnly.

There was a pause. It seemed to Jack that the whole thing must be a

dream. This simply wasn't Frank at all. The wild idea came to him that

the man who sat before him with Frank's features was some kind of

changeling. Mentally he shook himself.

"And what about Jenny?" he said.

Frank sat perfectly silent and still for an instant. Then he spoke

without heat.

"I'm not quite sure," he said. "Sometimes I'd like to ... well, to make

her a little speech about what she's done, and sometimes I'd like to

crawl to her and kiss her feet--but both those things are when I'm

feeling bad. On the whole, I think--though I'm not sure--that is not my

business any more; in fact, I'm pretty sure it's not. It's part of the

whole campaign and out of my hands. It's no good talking about that any

more. So please don't, Jack."

"One question?"

"Well?"

"Have you written to her or sent her a message?"

"No."

"And I want to say one other thing. I don't think it's against the

bargain."

"Well?"

"Will you take five hundred pounds and go out to the colonies?"

Frank looked up with an amused smile.

"No, I won't--thanks very much.... Am I in such disgrace as all that,

then?"

"You know I don't mean that," said Jack quietly.

"No, old chap. I oughtn't to have said that. I'm sorry."

Jack waved a hand.

"I thought perhaps you'd loathe England, and would like--And you don't

seem absolutely bursting with pride, you know."

"Honestly, I don't think I am," said Frank. "But England suits me very

well--and there are the other two, you know. But I'll tell you one thing

you could do for me."

"Yes?"

"Pay those extra bills. I don't think they're much."

"That's all right," said Jack. "And you really mean to go on with it

all?"

"Why, yes."

(V)

The moors had been pretty well shot over already since the twelfth of

August, but the two had a very pleasant day, for all that, a couple of

days later. They went but with a keeper and half a dozen beaters--Frank

in an old homespun suit of Jack's, and his own powerful boots, and made

a very tolerable bag. There was one dramatic moment, Jack told me, when

they found that luncheon had been laid at a high point on the hills from

which the great gray mass of Merefield and the shimmer of the lake in

front of the house were plainly visible only eight miles away. The flag

was flying, too, from the flagstaff on the old keep, showing, according

to ancient custom, that Lord Talgarth was at home. Frank looked at it a

minute or two with genial interest, and Jack wondered whether he had

noticed, as he himself had, that even the Rectory roof could be made

out, just by the church tower at the foot of the hill.

Neither said anything, but as the keeper came up to ask for orders as

they finished lunch, he tactfully observed that there was a wonderful

fine view of Merefield.

"Yes," said Frank, "you could almost make out people with a telescope."

* * * * *

The two were walking together alone as they dropped down, an hour before

sunset, on to the upper end of Barham. They were both glowing with the

splendid air and exercise, and were just in that state of weariness that

is almost unmixed physical pleasure to an imaginative thinker who

contemplates a hot bath, a quantity of tea, and a long evening in a

deep chair. Frank still preserved his impassive kind of attitude towards

things in general, but Jack noticed with gentle delight that he seemed

more off his guard, and that he even walked with something more of an

alert swing than he had on that first evening when they trudged up the

drive together.

Their road led them past the gate of the old churchyard, and as they

approached it, dropping their feet faster and faster down the steep

slope, Jack noticed two figures sitting on the road-side, with their

feet in the ditch--a man and a girl. He was going past them, just

observing that the man had rather an unpleasant face, with a ragged

mustache, and that the girl was sunburned, fair-haired and rather

pretty, when he became aware that Frank had slipped behind him. The next

instant he saw that Frank was speaking to them, and his heart dropped to

zero.

"All right," he heard Frank say, "I was expecting you. This evening,

then.... I say, Jack!"

Jack turned.

"Jack, this is Major and Mrs. Trustcott, I told you of. This is my

friend, Mr.--er--Mr. Jack."

Jack bowed vaguely, overwhelmed with disgust.

"Very happy to make your acquaintance, sir," said the Major,

straightening himself in a military manner. "My good lady and I were

resting here. Very pleasant neighborhood."

"I'm glad you like it," said Jack.

"Then, this evening," said Frank again. "Can you wait an hour or two?"

"Certainly, my boy," said the Major. "Time's no consideration with us,

as you know."

(Jack perceived that this was being said at him, to show the familiarity

this man enjoyed with his friend.)

"Would nine o'clock be too late?"

"Nine o'clock it shall be," said the Major.

"And here?"

"Here."

"So long, then," said Frank. "Oh, by the way--" He moved a little closer

to this appalling pair, and Jack stood off, to hear the sound of a

sentence or two, and then the chink of money.

"So long, then," said Frank again. "Come along, Jack; we must make

haste."

"Good-evening, sir," cried the Major, but Jack made no answer.

* * * * *

"Frank, you don't mean to tell me that those are the people?"

"That's the Major and Gertie--yes."

"And what was all that about this evening?"

"I must go, Jack. I'm sorry; but I told you it couldn't be more than a

few days at the outside."

Jack was silent, but it was a hard struggle.

"By the way, how shall we arrange?" went on the other. "I can't take

these clothes, you know; and I can't very well be seen leaving the house

in my own."

"Do as you like," snapped Jack.

"Look here, old man, don't be stuffy. How would it do if I took a bag

and changed up in that churchyard? It's locked up after dark, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"You've got a key, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, that's it. And I'll leave the bag and the key in the hedge

somewhere."

Jack was silent.

Jack held himself loyally in hand that evening, but he could not talk

much. He consented to explain to his mother that Frank had to be off

after dinner that night, and he also visited the housekeeper's room, and

caused a small bundle, not much larger than a leg of mutton, including

two small bottles which jingled together, to be wrapped up in brown

paper--in which he inserted also a five-pound note (he knew Frank would

not take more)--and the whole placed in the bag in which Frank's old

clothes were already concealed. For the rest of the evening he sat,

mostly silent, in one chair, trying not to watch Frank in another;

pretending to read, but endeavoring to picture to his imagination what

he himself would feel like if he were about to join the Major and Gertie

in the churchyard at nine o'clock.... Frank sat quite quiet all the

evening, reading old volumes of _Punch_.

They dined at half-past seven, by request--Frank still in his homespun

suit. Fanny and Jill were rather difficult. It seemed to them both a

most romantic thing that this black-eyed, sunburned young man, with whom

they had played garden-golf the day before, should really be continuing

his amazing walking-tour, in company with two friends, at nine o'clock

that very night. They wondered innocently why the two friends had not

been asked to join them at dinner. It was exciting, too, and unusual,

that this young man should dine in an old homespun suit. They asked a

quantity of questions. Where was Mr. Guiseley going first? Frank didn't

quite know; Where would he sleep that night? Frank didn't quite know; he

would have to see. When was the walking-tour going to end? Frank didn't

quite know. Did he really like it? Oh, well, Frank thought it was a good

thing to go on a walking tour, even if you were rather uncomfortable

sometimes.

The leave-taking was unemotional. Jack had announced suddenly and

loudly in the smoking-room before dinner that he was going to see the

last of Frank, as far as the churchyard; Frank had protested, but had

yielded. The rest had all said good-by to him in the hall, and at a

quarter to nine the two young men went out into the darkness.

(VI)

It was a clear autumn night--a "wonderful night of stars"--and the skies

blazed softly overhead down to the great blotted masses of the high

moors that stood round Barham. It was perfectly still, too--the wind had

dropped, and the only sound as the two walked down the park was the low

talking of the stream over the stones beyond the belt of trees fifty

yards away from the road.

Jack was sick at heart; but even so, he tells me, he was conscious that

Frank's silence was of a peculiar sort. He felt somehow as if his friend

were setting out to some great sacrifice in which he was to suffer, and

was only partly conscious of it--or, at least, so buoyed by some kind of

exaltation or fanaticism as not to realize what he was doing. (He

reminded me of a certain kind of dream that most people have now and

then, of accompanying some friend to death: the friend goes forward,

silent and exultant, and we cannot explain nor hold him back.

"That was the sort of feeling," said Jack lamely.)

* * * * *

Jack had the grim satisfaction of carrying the bag in which, so to

speak, the knife and fillet were hidden. He changed his mood half a

dozen times even in that quarter of an hour's walk through the town. Now

the thing seemed horrible, like a nightmare; now absurdly preposterous;

now rather beautiful; now perfectly ordinary and commonplace. After all,

Jack argued with himself, there are such people as tramps, and they

survive. Why should not Frank? He had gipsy blood in him, too. What in

the world was he--Jack--frightened of?

"Do you remember our talking about your grandmother?" he said suddenly,

as they neared the lodge.

"Yes. Why?"

"Only I've just thought of something else. Wasn't one of your people

executed under Elizabeth?"

"By gad, yes; so he was. I'd quite forgotten. It was being on the wrong

side for once."

"How--the wrong side?"

There was amusement in Frank's voice as he answered.

"It was for religion," he said. "He was a Papist. All the rest of them

conformed promptly. They were a most accommodating lot. They changed

each time without making any difficulty. I remember my governor telling

us about it once. He thought them very sensible. And so they were, by

George! from one point of view."

"Has your religion anything to do with all this?"

"Oh, I suppose so," said Frank, with an indifferent air.

* * * * *

There were a good many doors open in the High Street as they went up it,

and Jack saluted half a dozen people mechanically as they touched their

hats to him as he passed in the light from the houses.

"What does it feel like being squire?" asked Frank.

"Oh, I don't know," said Jack.

"Rather good fun, I should think," said Frank.

* * * * *

They were nearing the steep part of the ascent presently, and the church

clock struck nine.

"Bit late," said Frank.

"When will you come again?" asked the other suddenly. "I'm here another

fortnight, you know, and then at Christmas again. Come for Christmas if

you can."

"Ah! I don't know where I shall be. Give my love to Cambridge, though."

"Frank!"

"Yes?"

"Mayn't I say what I think?"

"No!"

* * * * *

Ah! there was the roof of the old church standing out against the stars,

and there could be no more talking. They might come upon the other two

at any moment now. They went five steps further, and there, in the

shadow of the gate, burned a dull red spot of fire, that kindled up as

they looked, and showed for an instant the heavy eyes of the Major with

a pipe in his mouth.

* * * * *

"Good-evening, sir," came the military voice, and the girl rose to her

feet beside him. "You're just in time."

"Good-evening," said Jack dully.

"We've had a pleasant evening of it up here, Mr. Kirkby, after we'd

stepped down and had a bit of supper at the 'Crown.'"

"I suppose you heard my name there," said Jack.

"Quite right, sir."

"Give us the key," said Frank abruptly.

He unlocked the door and pushed it back over the grass-grown gravel.

"Wait for me here, will you?" he said to Jack.

"I'm coming in. I'll show you where to change."

* * * * *

Twenty yards of an irregular twisted path, over which they stumbled two

or three times, led them down to the little ruined doorway at the west

end of the old church. Jack's father had restored the place admirably,

so far as restoration was possible, and there stood now, strong as ever,

the old tower, roofed and floored throughout, abutting on the four

roofless walls, within which ran the double row of column bases.

Jack struck a light, kindled a bicycle lamp he had brought with him, and

led the way.

"Come in here," he said.

Frank followed him into the room at the base of the tower and looked

round.

"This looks all right," he said. "It was a Catholic church once, I

suppose?

"Yes; the parson says this was the old sacristy. They've found things

here, I think--cupboards in the wall, and so on."

"This'll do excellently," said Frank. "I shan't be five minutes."

Jack went out again without a word. He felt it was a little too much to

expect him to see the change actually being made, and the garments of

sacrifice put on. (It struck him with an unpleasant shock, considering

the form of his previous metaphor, that he should have taken Frank into

the old sacristy.)

He sat down on the low wall, built to hold the churchyard from slipping

altogether down the hill-side, and looked out over the little town

below.

The sky was more noticeable here; one was more conscious of the enormous

silent vault, crowded with the steady stars, cool and aloof; and,

beneath, of the feverish little town with sparks of red light dotted

here and there, where men wrangled and planned and bargained, and

carried on the little affairs of their little life with such astonishing

zest. Jack was far from philosophical as a rule, but it is a fact that

meditations of this nature did engross him for a minute or two while he

sat and waited for Frank, and heard the low voices talking in the lane

outside. It even occurred to him for an instant that it was just

possible that what Frank had said in the smoking-room before dinner was

true, and that Something really did have him in hand, and really, did

intend a definite plan and result to emerge from this deplorable and

quixotic nonsense. (I suppose the contrast of stars and human lights may

have helped to suggest this sort of thing to him.)

Then he gave himself up again to dismal considerations of a more

particular kind.

* * * * *

He heard Frank come out, and turned to see him in the dim light, bag in

hand, dressed again as he had been three days ago. On his head once more

was the indescribable cap; on his body the indescribable clothes. He

wore on his feet the boots in which he had tramped the moors that day.

(How far away seemed that afternoon now, and the cheerful lunch in the

sunshine on the hill-top!)

"Here I am, Jack."

Then every promise went to the winds. Jack stood up and took a step

towards him.

"Frank, I do implore you to give up this folly. I asked you not to do it

at Cambridge, and I ask you again now. I don't care a damn what I

promised. It's simple madness, and--"

Frank had wheeled without a word, and was half-way to the gate. Jack

stumbled after him, calling under his breath; but the other had already

passed through the gate and joined the Major and Gertie before Jack

could reach him.

"And so you think up here is the right direction?" Frank was saying.

"I got some tips at the 'Crown,'" said the Major. "There are some farms

up there, where--"

"Frank, may I speak to you a minute?"

"No.... All right, Major; I'm ready at once if you are."

He turned towards Jack.

"By the way," he said, "what's in this parcel?"

"Something to eat and drink," murmured Jack.

"Oh ... I shan't want that, thanks very much. Here's the bag with the

clothes in it. I'm awfully grateful, old man, for all your kindness.

Awfully sorry to have bothered you."

"By the way, Frankie," put in the hateful voice at his side, "I'll take

charge of that parcel, if you don't want it."

"Catch hold, then," said Frank. "You're welcome to it, if you'll carry

it. You all right, Gertie?"

The girl murmured something inaudible. As at their first meeting, she

had said nothing at all. The Major lifted a bundle out of the depths of

the hedge, slung it on his stick, and stood waiting, his face again

illuminated with the glow of his pipe. He had handed the new parcel to

Gertie without a word.

"Well, good-by again, old man," said Frank, holding out his hand. He,

too, Jack saw, had his small bundle wrapped up in the red handkerchief,

as on the bridge when they had first met. Jack took his hand and shook

it. He could say nothing.

Then the three turned and set their faces up the slope. He could see

them, all silent together, pass up, more and more dim in the darkness of

the hedge, the two men walking together, the girl a yard behind them.

Then they turned the corner and were gone. But Jack still stood where

Frank had left him, listening, until long after the sound of their

footfalls had died away.

(VII)

Jack had a horrid dream that night.

He was wandering, he thought, gun in hand after grouse, alone on the

high moors. It was one of those heavy days, so common in dreams, when

the light is so dim that very little can be seen. He was aware of

countless hill-tops round him, and valleys that ran down into profound

darkness, where only the lights of far-off houses could be discerned.

His sport was of that kind peculiar to sleep-imaginings. Enormous birds,

larger than ostriches, rose occasionally by ones or twos with incredible

swiftness, and soared like balloons against the heavy, glimmering sky.

He fired at these and feathers sprang from them, but not a bird fell.

Once he inflicted an indescribable wound ... and the bird sped across

the sky, blotting out half of it, screaming. Then as the screaming died

he became aware that there was a human note in it, and that Frank was

crying to him, somewhere across the confines of the wold, and the horror

that had been deepening with each shot he fired rose to an intolerable

climax. Then began one of the regular nightmare chases: he set off to

run; the screaming grew fainter each instant; he could not see his way

in the gloom; he clambered over bowlders; he sank in bogs, and dragged

his feet from them with infinite pains; his gun became an unbearable

burden, yet he dared not throw it from him; he knew that he should need

it presently.... The screaming had ceased now, yet he dared not stop

running; Frank was in some urgent peril, and he knew it was not yet too

late, if he could but find him soon. He ran and ran; the ground was

knee-deep now in the feathers that had fallen from the wounded birds; it

was darker than ever, yet he toiled on hopelessly, following, as he

thought, the direction from which the cries had come. Then as at last he

topped the rise of a hill, the screaming broke out again, shrill and

frightful, close at hand, and the next instant he saw beneath him in the

valley a hundred yards away that for which he had run so far. Running up

the slope below, at right angles to his own path came Frank, in the

dress-clothes he had borrowed, with pumps upon his feet; his hands were

outstretched, his face white as ashes, and he screamed as he ran.

Behind him ran a pack of persons whose faces he could not see; they ran

like hounds, murmuring as they came in a terrible whining voice. Then

Jack understood that he could save Frank; he brought his gun to the

shoulder, aimed it at the brown of the pack and drew the trigger. A snap

followed, and he discovered that he was unloaded; he groped in his

cartridge-belt and found it empty.... He tore at his pockets, and found

at last one cartridge; and as he dashed it into the open breach, his gun

broke in half. Simultaneously the quarry vanished over an edge of hill,

and the pack followed, the leaders now not ten yards behind the flying

figure in front.

Jack stood there, helpless and maddened. Then he flung the broken pieces

of his gun at the disappearing runners; sank down in the gloom, and

broke out into that heart-shattering nightmare sobbing which shows that

the limit has been reached.

He awoke, still sobbing--certain that Frank was in deadly peril, if not

already dead, and it was a few minutes before he dared to go to sleep

once more.

CHAPTER II

(I)

The Rectory garden at Merefield was, obviously, this summer, the proper

place to spend most of the day. Certainly the house was cool--it was one

of those long, low, creeper-covered places that somehow suggest William

IV. and crinolines (if it is a fact that those two institutions

flourished together, as I think), with large, darkish rooms and wide,

low staircases and tranquil-looking windows through which roses peep;

but the shadow of the limes and the yews was cooler still. A table stood

almost permanently through those long, hot summer days in the place

where Dick had sat with Jenny, and here the Rector and his daughter

breakfasted, lunched and dined, day after day, for a really

extraordinarily long period.

Jenny herself lived in the garden even more than her father; she got

through the household business as quickly as possible after breakfast,

and came out to do any small businesses that she could during the rest

of the morning. She wrote a few letters, read a few books, sewed a

little, and, on the whole, presented a very domestic and amiable

picture. She visited poor people for an hour or so two or three days a

week, and occasionally, when Lord Talgarth was well enough, rode out

with him and her father after tea, through the woods, and sometimes with

Lord Talgarth alone.

She suffered practically no pangs of conscience at all on the subject of

Frank. Her letter had been perfectly sincere, and she believed herself

to have been exceedingly sensible. (It is, perhaps, one may observe, one

of the most dangerous things in the world to think oneself sensible; it

is even more dangerous than to be told so.) For the worst of it all was

that she was quite right. It was quite plain that she and Frank were not

suited to one another; that she had looked upon that particular quality

in him which burst out in the bread-and-butter incident, the leaving of

Cambridge, the going to prison, and so forth, as accidental to his

character, whereas it was essential. It was also quite certain that it

was the apotheosis of common-sense for her to recognize that, to say so,

and to break off the engagement.

Of course, she had moments of what I should call "grace," and she would

call insanity, when she wondered for a little while whether to be

sensible was the highest thing in life; but her general attitude to

these was as it would be towards temptation of any other kind. To be

sensible, she would say, was to be successful and effective; to be

otherwise was to fail and to be ineffective.

Very well, then.

* * * * *

At the beginning of September Dick Guiseley came to Merefield to shoot

grouse. The grouse, as I think I have already remarked, were backward

this year, and, after a kind of ceremonial opening, to give warning as

it were, on the twelfth of August, they were left in peace. Business was

to begin on the third, and on the evening of the second Dick arrived.

He opened upon the subject that chiefly occupied his thoughts just now

with Archie that night when Lord Talgarth had gone to bed. They were

sitting in the smoking-room, with the outer door well open to admit the

warm evening air. They had discussed the prospects of grouse next day

with all proper solemnity, and Archie had enumerated the people who were

to form their party. The Rector was coming to shoot, and Jenny was to

ride out and join them at lunch.

Then Archie yawned largely, finished his drink, and took up his candle.

"Oh! she's coming, is she?" said Dick meditatively.

Archie struck a match.

"How's Frank?" went on Dick.

"Haven't heard from him."

"Where is the poor devil?"

"Haven't an idea."

Dick emitted a monosyllabic laugh.

"And how's she behaving?"

"Jenny? Oh! just as usual. She's a sensible girl and knows her mind."

Dick pondered this an instant.

"I'm going to bed," said Archie. "Got to have a straight eye to-morrow."

"Oh! sit down a second.... I want to talk."

Archie, as a compromise, propped himself against the back of a chair.

"She doesn't regret it, then?" pursued Dick.

"Not she," said Archie. "It would never have done."

"I know," agreed Dick warmly. (It was a real pleasure to him that head

and heart went together in this matter.) "But sometimes, you know, women

regret that sort of thing. Wish they hadn't been quite so sensible, you

know."

"Jenny doesn't," said Archie.

Dick took up his glass which he had filled with his third

whisky-and-soda, hardly five minutes before, and drank half of it. He

sucked his mustache, and in that instant confidentialism rose in his

heart.

"Well, I'm going to have a shot myself," he said.

"What?"

"I'm going to have a shot. She can but say 'No.'"

Archie's extreme repose of manner vanished for a second. His jaw dropped

a little.

"But, good Lord! I hadn't the faintest--"

"I know you hadn't. But I've had it for a long time.... What d'you

think, Archie?"

"My good chap--"

"Yes, I know; leave all that out. We'll take that as read. What comes

next?"

Archie looked at him a moment.

"How d'you mean? Do you mean, do I approve?"

"Well, I didn't mean that," admitted Dick. "I meant, how'd I better set

about it?"

Archie's face froze ever so slightly. (It will be remembered that Jack

Kirkby considered him pompous.)

"You must do it your own way," he said.

"Sorry, old man," said Dick. "Didn't mean to be rude."

Archie straightened himself from the chair-back.

"It's all rather surprising," he said. "It never entered my head. I

must think about it. Good-night. Put the lights out when you come."

"Archie, old man, are you annoyed?"

"No, no; that's all right," said Archie.

And really and truly that was all that passed between these two that

night on the subject of Jenny--so reposeful were they.

(II)

There was a glorious breeze blowing over the hills as Jenny rode slowly

up about noon next day. The country is a curious mixture--miles of moor,

as desolate and simple and beautiful as moors can be, and by glimpses,

now and then in the valleys between, of entirely civilized villages,

with even a town or two here and there, prick-up spires and roofs; and,

even more ominous, in this direction and that, lie patches of smoke

about the great chimneys.

Jenny was meditative as she rode up alone. It is very difficult to be

otherwise when one has passed through one considerable crisis, and

foresees a number of others that must be met, especially if one has not

made up one's mind as to the proper line of action. It is all very well

to be sensible, but a difficulty occasionally arises as to which of two

or three courses is the more in accordance with that character. To be

impulsive certainly leads to trouble sometimes, but also, sometimes it

saves it.

Jenny looked charming in repose. She was in a delightful green habit;

she wore a plumy kind of hat; she rode an almost perfect little mare

belonging to Lord Talgarth, and her big blue, steady eyes roved slowly

round her as she went, seeing nothing. It was, in fact, the almost

perfect little mare who first gave warning of the approach to the

sportsmen, by starting violently all over at the sound of a shot, fired

about half a mile away. Jenny steadied her, pulled her up, and watched

between the cocked and twitching ears.

Below her, converging slowly upwards, away from herself, moved a line of

dots, each precisely like its neighbor in color (Lord Talgarth was very

particular, indeed, about the uniform of his beaters), and by each moved

a red spot, which Jenny understood to be a flag. The point towards which

they were directed culminated in a low, rounded hill, and beneath the

crown of this, in a half circle, were visible a series of low defenses,

like fortifications, to command the face of the slope and the dips on

either side. This was always the last beat--in this moor--before lunch;

and lunch itself, she knew, would be waiting on the other side of the

hill. Occasionally as she watched, she saw a slight movement behind

this or that butt--no more--and the only evidence of human beings,

beside the beaters, lay in the faint wreath of all but invisible smoke

that followed the reports, coming now quicker and quicker, as the grouse

took alarm. Once with a noise like a badly ignited rocket, there burst

over the curve before her a flying brown thing, that, screaming with

terrified exultation, whirred within twenty yards of her head and

vanished into silence. (One cocked ear of the mare bent back to see if

the rocket were returning or not.)

Jenny's meditations became more philosophical than ever as she looked.

She found herself wondering how much free choice the grouse--if they

were capable themselves of philosophizing--would imagine themselves to

possess in the face of this noisy but insidious death. She reminded

herself that every shred of instinct and experience that each furious

little head contained bade the owner of it to fly as fast and straight

as possible, in squawking company with as many friends as possible, away

from those horrible personages in green and silver with the agitating

red flags, and up that quiet slope which, at the worst, only emitted

sudden noises. A reflective grouse would perhaps (and two out of three

did) consider that he could fly faster and be sooner hidden from the

green men with red flags, if he slid crosswise down the valleys on

either side. But--Jenny observed--that was already calculated by these

human enemies, and butts (like angels' swords) commanded even these

approaches too.

It was obvious, then, that however great might be the illusion of free

choice, in reality there was none: they were betrayed hopelessly by the

very instincts intended to safeguard them; practical common-sense, in

this case, at least, led them straight into the jaws of death. A little

originality and impulsiveness would render them immortal so far as guns

were concerned....

Yes; but there was one who had been original, who had actually preferred

to fly straight past a monster in green on a gray mare rather than to

face the peaceful but deathly slopes; and he had escaped. But obviously

he was an exception. Originality in grouse--

At this point the mare breathed slowly and contemptuously and advanced a

delicate, impatient foot, having quite satisfied herself that danger was

no longer imminent; and Jenny became aware she was thinking nonsense.

* * * * *

There were a number of unimportant but well-dressed persons at lunch,

with most of whom Jenny was acquainted. These extended themselves on the

ground and said the right things one after another; and all began with

long drinks, and all ended with heavy meals. There were two other women

whom she knew slightly, who had driven up half an hour before.

Everything was quite perfect--down even to hot grilled grouse that

emerged from emblazoned silver boxes, and hot black coffee poured from

"Thermos" flasks. Jenny asked intelligent questions and made herself

agreeable.

At the close of lunch she found herself somehow sitting on a small rock

beside Dick. Lord Talgarth was twenty yards away, his gaitered legs very

wide apart, surveying the country and talking to the keeper. Her father

was looking down the barrels of his rather ineffective gun, and Archie,

with three or four other men and two women, a wife and a sister, was

smoking with his back against a rock.

"Shall you be in to-morrow?" asked Dick casually.

Jenny paused an instant.

"I should think so!" she said. "I've got one or two things to do."

"Perhaps I may look in? I want to talk to you about something if I may."

"Shan't you be shooting again?"

"No; I'm not very fit and shall take a rest."

Jenny was silent.

"About what time?" pursued Dick.

Jenny roused herself with a little start. She had been staring out over

the hills and wondering if that was the church above Barham that she

could almost see against the horizon.

"Oh! any time up to lunch," she said vaguely.

Dick stood up slowly with a satisfied air and stretched himself. He

looked very complete and trim, thought Jenny, from his flat cap to his

beautifully-spatted shooting-boots. (It was twelve hundred a year, at

least, wasn't it?)

"Well, I suppose we shall be moving directly," he said.

* * * * *

A beater came up bringing the mare just before the start was made.

"All right, you can leave her," said Jenny. "I won't mount yet. Just

hitch the bridle on to something."

It was a pleasant and picturesque sight to see the beaters, like a file

of medieval huntsmen, dwindle down the hill in their green and silver in

one direction, and, five minutes later, the sportsmen in another. It

looked like some mysterious military maneuver on a small scale; and

again Jenny considered the illusion of free choice enjoyed by the

grouse, who, perhaps, two miles away, crouched in hollows among the

heather. And yet, practically speaking, there was hardly any choice at

all....

Lady Richard, the wife of one of the men, interrupted her in a drawl.

"Looks jolly, doesn't it?" she said.

Jenny assented cordially.

(She hated this woman, somehow, without knowing why. She said to herself

it was the drawl and the insolent cold eyes and the astonishing

complacency; and she only half acknowledged that it was the beautiful

lines of the dress and the figure and the assured social position.)

"We're driving," went on the tall girl. "You rode, didn't you?

"Yes."

"Lord Talgarth's mare, isn't it? I thought I recognized her."

"Yes. I haven't got a horse of my own, you know," said Jenny

deliberately.

"Oh!"

Jenny suddenly felt her hatred rise almost to passion.

"I must be going," she said. "I've got to visit an old woman who's

dying. A rector's daughter, you know--"

"Ah! yes."

Then Jenny mounted from a rock (Lady Richard held the mare's head and

settled the habit), and rode slowly away downhill.

(III)

Dick approached the Rectory next day a little before twelve o'clock with

as much excitement in his heart as he ever permitted to himself.

Dick is a good fellow--I haven't a word to say against him, except

perhaps that he used to think that to be a Guiseley, and to have

altogether sixteen hundred a year and to live in a flat in St. James's,

and to possess a pointed brown beard and melancholy brown eyes and a

reposeful manner, relieved him from all further effort. I have wronged

him, however; he had made immense efforts to be proficient at billiards,

and had really succeeded; and, since his ultimate change of fortune, has

embraced even further responsibilities in a conscientious manner.

Of course, he had been in love before in a sort of way; but this was

truly different. He wished to marry Jenny very much indeed.... That she

was remarkably sensible, really beautiful and eminently presentable, of

course, paved the way; but, if I understand the matter rightly, these

were not the only elements in the case. It was the genuine thing. He did

not quite know how he would face the future if she refused him; and he

was sufficiently humble to be in doubt.

The neat maid told him at the door that Miss Launton had given

directions that he was to be shown into the garden if he came.... No;

Miss Launton was in the morning-room, but she should be told at once. So

Dick strolled across the lawn and sat down by the garden table.

He looked at the solemn, dreaming house in the late summer sunshine; he

observed a robin issue out from a lime tree and inspect him sideways;

and then another robin issue from another lime tree and drive the first

one away. Then he noticed a smear of dust on his own left boot, and

flicked it off with a handkerchief. Then, as he put his handkerchief

away again, he saw Jenny coming out from the drawing-room window.

She looked really extraordinarily beautiful as she came slowly across

towards him and he stood to meet her. She was bare-headed, but her face

was shadowed by the great coils of hair. She was in a perfectly plain

pink dress, perfectly cut, and she carried herself superbly. She looked

just a trifle paler than yesterday, he thought, and there was a very

reserved, steady kind of question in her eyes. (I am sorry to be obliged

to go on saying this sort of thing about Jenny every time she comes upon

the scene; but it is the sort of thing that everyone is obliged to go on

thinking whenever she makes her appearance.)

"I've got a good deal to say," said Dick, after they had sat a moment

or two. "May I say it right out to the end?"

"Why, certainly," said Jenny.

Dick leaned back and crossed one knee over the other. His manner was

exactly right--at any rate, it was exactly what he wished it to be, and

all through his little speech he preserved it. It was quite restrained,

extremely civilized, and not at all artificial. It was his method of

presenting a fact--the fact that he really was in love with this

girl--and was in his best manner. There was a lightness of touch about

this method of his, but it was only on the surface.

"I daresay it's rather bad form my coming and saying all this so soon,

but I can't help that. I know you must have gone through an awful lot in

the last month or two--perhaps even longer--but I don't know about that.

And I want to begin by apologizing if I am doing what I shouldn't. The

fact is that--well, that I daren't risk waiting."

He did not look at Jenny (he was observing the robin that had gone and

come again since Jenny had appeared), but he was aware that at his first

sentence she had suddenly settled down into complete motionlessness. He

wondered whether that was a good omen or not.

"Well, now," he said, "let me give a little account of myself first. I'm

just thirty-one; I've got four hundred a year of my own, and Lord

Talgarth allows me twelve hundred a year more. Then I've got other

expectations, as they say. My uncle gives me to understand that my

allowance is secured to me in his will; and I'm the heir of my aunt,

Lady Simon, whom you've probably met. I just mention that to show I'm

not a pauper--"

"Mr. Guiseley--" began Jenny.

"Please wait. I've not done yet. Do you mind? ... I'm a decent living

man. I'm not spotless, but I'll answer any questions you like to put--to

your father. I've not got any profession, though I'm supposed to be a

solicitor; but I'm perfectly willing to work if ... if it's wished, or

to stand for Parliament, or anything like that--there hasn't, so far,

seemed any real, particular reason why I should work. That's all. And I

think you know the sort of person I am, all round.

"And now we come to the point." (Dick hesitated a fraction of a second.

He was genuinely moved.) "The point is that I'm in love with you, and I

have been for some time past. I ... I can't put it more plainly ... (One

moment, please, I've nearly done.) ... I can't think of anything else;

and I haven't been able to for the last two or three months. I ... I ...

I'm fearfully sorry for poor old Frank; I'm very fond of him, you know,

but I couldn't help finding it an extraordinary relief when I heard the

news. And now I've come to ask you, perfectly straight, whether you'll

consent to be my wife."

Dick looked at her for the first time since he had begun his little

speech.

She still sat absolutely quiet (she had not even moved at the two words

she had uttered), but she had gone paler still. Her mouth was in repose,

without quiver or movement, and her beautiful eyes looked steadily on to

the lawn before her. She said nothing.

"If you can't give me an answer quite at once," began Dick again

presently, "I'm perfectly willing to--"

She turned and looked him courageously in the face.

"I can't say 'Yes,'" she said. "That would be absurd.... You have been

quite straightforward with me, and I must be straightforward with you.

That is what you wish, isn't it?"

Dick inclined his head. His heart was thumping furiously with

exultation--in spite of her words.

"Then what I say is this: You must wait a long time. If you had insisted

on an answer now, I should have said 'No.' I hate to keep you waiting,

particularly when I do really think it will be 'No' in the long run; but

as I'm not quite sure, and as you've been perfectly honest and

courteous, if you really wish it I won't say 'No' at once. Will that

do?"

"Whatever you say," said Dick.

"You mustn't forget I was engaged to Frank till quite lately. Don't you

see how that obscures one's judgment? I simply can't judge now, and I

know I can't.... You're willing to wait, then?--even though I tell you

now that I think it will be 'No'?"

"Whatever you say," said Dick again; "and may I say thank you for not

saying 'No' at once?"

A very slight look of pain came into the girl's eyes.

"I would sooner you didn't," she said. "I'm sorry you said that...."

"I'm sorry," said poor Dick.

There was a pause.

"One other thing," said Jenny. "Would you mind not saying anything to my

father? I don't want him to be upset any more. Have you told anybody

else you were--?"

"Yes," said Dick bravely, "I told Archie."

"I'm sorry you did that. Will you then just tell him exactly what I

said--exactly, you know. That I thought it would be 'No'; but that I

only didn't say so at once because you wished it."

"Very well," said Dick.

It was a minute or so before either spoke again. Jenny had that

delightful and soothing gift which prevents silence from being empty. It

is the same gift, in another form, as that which enables its possessor

to put people at their ease. (It is, I suppose, one of the elements of

tact.) Dick had a sense that they were still talking gently and

reasonably, though he could not quite understand all that Jenny was

meaning.

She interrupted it by a sudden sentence.

"I wonder if it's fair," she said. "You know I'm all but certain. I only

don't say so because--"

"Let it be at that," said Dick. "It's my risk, isn't it?"

(III)

When he had left her at last, she sat on perfectly still in the same

place. The robin had given it up in despair: this human creature was not

going to scratch garden-paths as she sometimes did, and disclose rich

worms and small fat maggots. But a cat had come out instead and was now

pacing with stiff forelegs, lowered head and trailing tail, across the

sunny grass, endeavoring to give an impression that he was bent on some

completely remote business of his own.

He paused at the edge of the shadow and eyed the girl malignantly.

"Wow!" said the cat.

There was no response.

"Wow!" said the cat.

Jenny roused herself.

"Wow!" said Jenny meditatively.

"Wow!" said the cat, walking on.

"Wow!" said Jenny.

Again there was a long silence.

"Wow!" said Jenny indignantly.

The cat turned a slow head sideways as he began to cross the path, but

said nothing. He waited for another entreaty, but Jenny paid no more

attention. As he entered the yews he turned once more.

"Wow!" said the cat, almost below his breath.

But Jenny made no answer. The cat cast one venomous look and

disappeared.

* * * * *

Then there came out a dog--a small brown and black animal, very sturdy

on his legs, and earnest and independent in air and manner. He was the

illegitimate offspring of a fox-terrier. He trotted briskly across from

the direction of the orchard, diagonally past Jenny. As he crossed the

trail of the cat he paused, smelt, and followed it up for a yard or two,

till he identified for certain that it proceeded from an acquaintance;

then he turned to resume his journey. The movement attracted the girl's

attention.

"Lama!" called Jenny imperiously. "Come here this instant!"

Lama put his head on one side, nodded and smiled at her indulgently, and

trotted on.

* * * * *

"Oh, dear me!" said Jenny, sighing out loud.

CHAPTER III

(I)

There lived (and still lives, I believe) in the small Yorkshire village

of Tarfield a retired doctor, entirely alone except for his servants, in

a large house. It is a very delightful house, only--when I stayed there

not long ago--it seemed to me that the doctor did not know how to use

it. It stands in its own grounds of two or three acres, on the

right-hand side of the road to a traveler going north, separated by a

row of pollarded limes from the village street, and approached--or,

rather, supposed to be approached--by a Charles II. gate of iron-scroll

work. I say "supposed to be approached" because the gate is invariably

kept locked, and access can only be gained to the house through the side

gate from the stable-yard. The grounds were abominably neglected when I

saw them; grass was growing on every path, and as fine a crop of weeds

surged up amongst the old autumn flowers as ever I have seen. The house,

too, was a sad sight. There here two big rooms, one on either side of

the little entrance-hall--one a dining-room, the other a sort of

drawing-room--and both were dreary and neglected-looking places. In the

one the doctor occasionally ate, in the other he never sat except when a

rare visitor came to see him, and the little room supposed to be a study

at the foot of the stairs in the inner hall that led through the kitchen

was hardly any better. I was there, I say, last autumn, and the

condition of the place must have been very much the same as that in

which it was when Frank came to Tarfield in October.

For the fact was that the doctor--who was possessed of decent private

means--devoted the whole of his fortune, the whole of his attention, and

the whole of his life--such as it was--to the study of toxins upstairs.

Toxins, I understand, have something to do with germs. Their study

involves, at any rate at present, a large stock of small animals, such

as mice and frogs and snakes and guinea-pigs and rabbits, who are given

various diseases and then studied with loving attention. I saw the

doctor's menagerie when I went to see him about Frank; they were chiefly

housed in a large room over the kitchen, communicating with the doctor's

own room by a little old powder-closet with two doors, and the smell was

indescribable. Ranks of cages and boxes rose almost to the ceiling, and

in the middle of the room was a large business-like looking wooden

kitchen-table with various appliances on it. I saw the doctor's room

also--terribly shabby, but undoubtedly a place of activity. There were

piles of books and unbound magazines standing about in corners, with

more on the table, as well as a heap of note-books. An array of glass

tubes and vary-colored bottles stood below the window, with a

microscope, and small wooden boxes on one side. And there was, besides,

something which I think he called an "incubator"--a metal affair,

standing on four slender legs; a number of glass tubes emerged from

this, each carefully stoppered with cotton wool, and a thermometer

thrust itself up in one corner.

A really high degree of proficiency in any particular subject invariably

leads to atrophy in other directions. A man who eats and breathes and

dreams Toxins, for instance, who lives so much in Toxins that he

corresponds almost daily with learned and unintelligible Germans; who

knows so much about Toxins that when he enters, with shabby trousers and

a small hand-bag, into the room of a polished specialist in Harley

Street, he sees as in a dream the specialist rise and bow before

him--who, when he can be persuaded to contribute a short and highly

technical article to a medical magazine, receives a check for

twenty-five guineas by return of post--a man of this kind is peculiarly

open to the danger of thinking that anything which cannot be expressed

in terms of Toxin is negligible nonsense. It is the characteristic

danger of every specialist in every branch of knowledge; even

theologians are not wholly immune.

It was so in the case of Dr. Whitty (I forget all the initials that

should follow his name). He had never been married, he never took any

exercise; occasionally, when a frog's temperature approached a crisis,

he slept in his clothes, and forgot to change them in the morning. And

he was the despair of the zealous vicar. He was perfectly convinced

that, since the force that underlay the production of Toxins could

accomplish so much, it could surely accomplish everything. He could

reduce his roses, his own complexion, the grass on his garden-paths, the

condition of his snakes', and frogs' skins, and the texture of his

kitchen-table--if you gave him time--to terms of Toxin; therefore,

argued Dr. Whitty, you could, if you had more time, reduce everything

else to the same terms. There wasn't such a thing as a soul, of

course--it was a manifestation of a combination of Toxins (or

anti-Toxins, I forget which); there was no God--the idea of God was the

result of another combination of Toxins, akin to a belief in the former

illusion. Roughly speaking, I think his general position was that as

Toxins are a secretion of microbes (I am certain of that phrase,

anyhow), so thought and spiritual experiences and so forth are a

secretion of the brain. I know it sounded all very brilliant and

unanswerable and analogous to other things. He hardly ever took the

trouble to say all this; he was far too much interested in what he

already knew, or was just on the point of finding out, to treat of these

extravagant and complicated ramifications of his subject. When he really

got to know his mice and bats, as they deserved to be known, it might be

possible to turn his attention to other things. Meanwhile, it was

foolish and uneconomical. So here he lived, with a man-of-all-work and

his man's wife, and daily went from strength to strength in the

knowledge of Toxins.

* * * * *

It was to this household that there approached, in the month of October,

a small and dismal procession of three.

The doctor was first roused to a sense of what was happening as he

shuffled swiftly through his little powder-closet one morning soon after

breakfast, bearing in his hand the corpse of a mouse which had at last,

and most disappointingly, succumbed to a severe attack of some hybrid of

leprosy. As he flew through to his microscope he became aware of an

altercation in the stable-yard beneath.

"I tell you he ain't a proper doctor," he heard his man explaining; "he

knows nothing about them things."

"My good fellow," began a high, superior voice out of sight; but Dr.

Whitty swept on, and was presently deep in indescribable disgustingness

of the highest possible value to the human race, especially in the South

Seas. Time meant nothing at all to him, when this kind of work was in

hand; and it was after what might be an hour or two hours, or ten

minutes, that he heard a tap on his door.

He uttered a sound without moving his eye, and the door opened.

"Very sorry, sir," said his man, "but there's a party in the yard as

won't--"

The doctor held up his hand for silence, gazed a few moments longer,

poked some dreadful little object two or three times, sighed and sat

back.

"Eh?"

"There's a party in the yard, sir, wants a doctor."

(This sort of thing had happened before.)

"Tell them to be off," he said sharply. He was not an unkindly man, but

this sort of thing was impossible. "Tell them to go to Dr. Foster."

"I 'ave, sir," said the man.

"Tell them again," said the doctor.

"I 'ave, sir. 'Arf a dozen times."

The doctor sighed--he was paying practically no attention at all, of

course. The leprous mouse had been discouraging; that was all.

"If you'd step down, sir, an instant--"

The doctor returned from soaring through a Toxined universe.

"Nonsense," he said sharply. "Tell them I'm not practicing. What do they

want?"

"Please, sir, it's a young man as 'as poisoned 'is foot, 'e says. 'E

looks very bad, and--"

"Eh? Poison?"

"Yes, sir."

The doctor appeared to reflect a moment (that mouse, you know--); then

he recovered.

"I'll be down directly," he said almost mechanically. "Take 'em all into

the study."

(II)

Dr. Whitty could hardly explain to me, even when he tried, exactly why

he had made an exception in this particular instance. Of course, I

understand perfectly myself why he did; but, for himself, all he could

say was that he supposed the word Poison happened to meet his mood. He

had honestly done with the mouse just now; he had no other very critical

case, and he thought he might as well look at the poisoned young man

for an instant, before finally despatching him to Dr. Foster, six miles

further on.

When he came into the study ten minutes later he found the party ranged

to meet him. A girl was sitting on a box in the corner by the window,

and stood up to receive him; a young man was sitting back in a Windsor

chair, with one boot off, jerking spasmodically; his eyes stared

unmeaningly before him. A tallish, lean man of a particularly

unprepossessing appearance was leaning over him with an air of immense

solicitude. They were all three evidently of the tramp-class.

What they saw--with the exception of Frank, I expect, who was too far

gone to notice anything--was a benignant-looking old man, very shabby,

in an alpaca jacket, with a rusty velvet cap on his head, and very

bright short-sighted eyes behind round spectacles. This figure appeared

in the doorway, stood looking at them a moment, as if bewildered as to

why he or they were there at all; and then, with a hasty shuffling

movement, darted across the floor and down on his knees.

The following colloquy was held as soon as the last roll of defiled

bandage had dropped to the floor, and Frank's foot was disclosed.

"How long's this been going on?" asked the doctor sharply, holding the

discolored thing carefully in his two hands.

"Well, sir," said the Major reflectively, "he began to limp about--let's

see--four days ago. We were coming through--"

The doctor, watching Frank's face curiously (the spasm was over for the

present), cut the Major short by a question to the patient.

"Now, my boy, how d'you feel now?"

Frank's lips moved; he seemed to be trying to lick them; but he said

nothing, and his eyes closed, and he grinned once or twice, as if

sardonically.

"When did these spasms begin?" went on the doctor, abruptly turning to

the Major again.

"Well, sir--if you mean that jerking--Frankie began to jerk about half

an hour ago when we were sitting down a bit; but he's seemed queer since

breakfast. And he didn't seem to be able to eat properly."

"How do you mean? D'you mean he couldn't open his mouth?"

"Well, sir, it was something like that."

The doctor began to make comments in a rapid undertone, as if talking to

himself; he pressed his hand once or twice against Frank's stomach; he

took up the filthy bandage and examined it. Then he looked at the boot.

"Where's the sock?" he asked sharply.

Gertie produced it from a bundle. He looked at it closely, and began to

mumble again. Then he rose to his feet.

"What's the matter with him, doctor?" asked the Major, trying to look

perturbed.

"We call it tetanus," said the doctor.

"Who are you, my man?" he said. "Any relation?"

The Major looked at him loftily.

"No, sir.... I am his friend."

"Ha! Then you must leave your friend in my charge. He shall be well in a

week at the latest."

The Major was silent.

"Well?" snapped the doctor.

"I understood from your servant, sir--"

"You speak like an educated man."

"I am an educated man."

"Ha--well--no business of mine. What were you about to say?"

"I understood from your servant, sir, that this was not quite in your

line; and since--"

The specialist smiled grimly. He snatched up a book from a pile on the

table, thrust open the title-page and held it out.

"Read that, sir.... As it happens, it's my hobby. Go and ask Dr.

Foster, if you like.... No, sir; I must have your friend; it's a good

sound case."

The Major read the title-page in a superior manner. It purported to be

by a James Whitty, and the name was followed by a series of distinctions

and of the initials, which I have forgotten. F.R.S. were the first.

"My name," said the doctor.

The Major handed the book back with a bow.

"I am proud to make your acquaintance, Dr. Whitty. I have heard of you.

May I present Mrs. Trustcott?"

Gertie looked confused. The doctor made a stiff obeisance. Then his face

became animated again.

"We must move your friend upstairs," he said. "If you will help, Mr.

Trustcott, I will call my servant."

(III)

It was about half-past nine that night that the doctor, having rung the

bell in the spare bedroom, met his man at the threshold.

"I'll sleep in this room to-night," he said; "you can go to bed. Bring

in a mattress, will you?"

The man looked at his master's face. (He looked queer-like, reported

Thomas later to his wife.)

"Hope the young man's doing well, sir?"

A spasm went over the doctor's face.

"Most extraordinary young man in the world," he said.... Then he broke

off. "Bring the mattress at once, Thomas. Then you can go to bed."

He went back and closed the door.

* * * * *

Thomas had seldom seen his master so perturbed over a human being

before. He wondered what on earth was the matter. During the few minutes

that he was in the room he looked at the patient curiously, and he

noticed that the doctor was continually looking at him too. Thomas

described to me Frank's appearance. He was very much flushed, he said,

with very bright eyes, and he was talking incessantly. And it was

evidently this delirious talking that had upset the doctor. I tried to

get out of Doctor Whitty what it was that Frank had actually said, but

the doctor shut up his face tight and would say nothing. Thomas was more

communicative, though far from adequate.

It was about religion, he said, that Frank was talking--about

religion.... And that was really about all that he could say of that

incident.

Thomas awoke about one o'clock that night, and, still with the

uneasiness that he had had earlier in the evening, climbed out of bed

without disturbing his wife, put on his slippers and great-coat and made

his way down the attic stairs. The October moon was up, and, shining

through the staircase window, showed him the door of the spare bedroom

with a line of light beneath it. From beyond that door came the steady

murmur of a voice....

Now Thomas's nerves were strong: he was a little lean kind of man, very

wiry and active, nearly fifty years old, and he had lived with his

master, and the mice and the snakes, and disagreeable objects in

bottles, for more than sixteen years. He had been a male nurse in an

asylum before that. Yet there was something--he told me later--that

gripped him suddenly as he was half-way down the stairs and held him in

a kind of agony which he could in no way describe. It was connected with

the room behind that lighted door. It was not that he feared for his

master, nor for Frank. It was something else altogether. (What a pity it

is that our system of education teaches neither self-analysis nor the

art of narration!)

He stood there--he told me--he should think for the better part of ten

minutes, unable to move either way, listening, always listening, to the

voice that rose and sank and lapsed now and then into silences that

were worse than all, and telling himself vigorously that he was not at

all frightened.

It was a creak somewhere in the old house that disturbed him and snapped

the thin, rigid little thread that seemed to paralyze his soul; and

still in a sort of terror, though no longer in the same stiff agony, he

made his way down the three or four further steps of the flight, laid

hold of the handle, turned it and peered in.

Frank was lying quiet so far as he could see. A night-light burned by

the bottles and syringes on the table at the foot of the bed, and,

although shaded from the young man's face, still diffused enough light

to shoes the servant the figure lying there, and his master, seated

beyond the bed, very close to it, still in his day-clothes--still, even,

in his velvet cap--his chin propped in his hand, staring down at his

patient, utterly absorbed and attentive.

There was nothing particularly alarming in all that, and yet there was

that in the room which once more seized the man at his heart and held

him there, rigid again, terrified, and, above all, inexpressibly awed.

(At least, that is how I should interpret his description.) He said that

it wasn't like the spare bedroom at all, as he ordinarily knew it (and,

indeed, it was a mean sort of room when I saw it, without a fireplace,

though of tolerable size). It was like another room altogether, said

Thomas.

He tried to listen to what Frank was saying, and I imagine he heard it

all quite intelligently; yet, once more, all he could say afterwards was

that it was about religion ... about religion....

So he stood, till he suddenly perceived that the doctor was looking at

him with a frown and contorted features of eloquence. He understood that

he was to go. He closed the door noiselessly; and, after another pause,

sped upstairs without a sound in his red cloth slippers.

(IV)

When Frank awoke to normal consciousness again, he lay still, wondering

what it was all about. He saw a table at the foot of his bed and noticed

on it a small leather case, two green bottles stoppered with

india-rubber, and a small covered bowl looking as if it contained

beef-tea. He extended his explorations still further, and discovered an

Hanoverian wardrobe against the left wall, a glare of light (which he

presently discerned to be a window), a dingy wall-paper, and finally a

door. As he reached this point the door opened and an old man with a

velvet skull-cap, spectacles, and a kind, furrowed face, came in and

stood over him.

"Well?" said the old man.

"I am a bit stiff," said Frank.

"Are you hungry?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, you're doing very well, if that's any satisfaction to you,"

observed the doctor, frowning on him doubtfully.

Frank said nothing.

The doctor sat down on a chair by the bed that Frank suddenly noticed

for the first time.

"Well," said the doctor, "I suppose you want to know the facts. Here

they are. My name is Whitty; I'm a doctor; you're in my house. This is

Wednesday afternoon; your friends brought you here yesterday morning.

I've given them some work in the garden. You were ill yesterday, but

you're all right now."

"What was the matter?"

"We won't bother about names," said the doctor with a kind sharpness.

"You had a blister; it broke and became a sore; then you wore one of

those nasty cheap socks and it poisoned it. That's all."

"That's in those bottles?" asked Frank languidly. (He felt amazingly

weak and stupid.)

"Well, it's an anti-toxin," said the doctor. "That doesn't tell you

much, does it?"

"No," said Frank.... "By the way, who's going to pay you, doctor? I

can't."

The doctor's face rumpled up into wrinkles. (Frank wished he wouldn't

sit with his back to the window.)

"Don't you bother about that, my boy. You're a case--that's what you

are."

Frank attempted a smile out of politeness.

"Now, how about some more beef-tea, and then going to sleep again?"

Frank assented.

* * * * *

It was not until the Thursday morning that things began to run really

clear again in Frank's mind. He felt for his rosary under his pillow and

it wasn't there. Then he thumped on the floor with a short stick which

had been placed by him, remembering that in some previous existence he

had been told to do this.

A small, lean man appeared at the door, it seemed, with the quickness of

thought.

"My rosary, please," said Frank. "It's a string of beads. I expect it's

in my trouser-pocket."

The man looked at him with extraordinary earnestness and vanished.

Then the doctor appeared holding the rosary.

"Is this what you want?" he asked.

"That's it! Thanks very much."

"You're a Catholic?" went on the other, giving it him.

"Yes."

The doctor sat down again.

"I thought so," he said.

Frank wondered why. Then a thought crossed his mind.

"Have I been talking?" he said. "I suppose I was delirious?"

The doctor made no answer for a moment; he was looking at him fixedly.

Then he roused himself.

"Well, yes, you have," he said.

Frank felt rather uncomfortable.

"Hope I haven't said anything I shouldn't."

The old man laughed shortly and grimly.

"Oh, no," he said. "Far from it. At least, your friends wouldn't think

so."

"What was it about?"

"We'll talk about that later, if you like," said the doctor. "Now I want

you to get up a bit after you've had some food."

* * * * *

It was with a very strange sensation that Frank found himself out in the

garden next day, in a sheltered corner, seated in a wicker chair in

which, by the help of bamboo poles, he had been carried downstairs by

Thomas and the Major, with the doctor leading the way and giving

directions as to how to turn the corners. The chair was brought out

through an irregularly-shaped little court at the back of the house and

set down in the warm autumn noon, against an old wall, with a big

kitchen garden, terribly neglected, spread before him. The smoke of

burning went up in the middle distance, denoting the heap of weeds

pulled by the Major and Gertie during the last three days. He saw Gertie

in the distance once or twice, in a clean sun-bonnet, going about her

business, but she made no sign. The smell of the burning weeds gave a

pleasant, wholesome and acrid taste to his mouth.

"Now then," said the doctor, "we can have our little talk." And he sat

down beside him on another chair.

* * * * *

Frank felt a little nervous, he scarcely knew why. It seemed to him that

it would be far better not to refer to the past at all. And it appeared

to him a little unusual that a doctor should be so anxious about it.

Twice or three times since yesterday this old man had begun to ask him a

question and had checked himself. There was a very curious eagerness

about him now.

"I'm awfully grateful and all that," said Frank. "Is there anything

special you want to know? I suppose I've been talking about my people?"

The doctor waved a wrinkled hand.

"No, no," he said, "not a word. You talked about a girl a little, of

course--everybody does; but not much. No, it isn't that."

Frank felt relieved. He wasn't anxious about anything else.

"I'm glad of that. By the way, may I smoke?"

The doctor produced a leather case of cigarettes and held it out.

"Take one of these," he said.

"Because," continued Frank, "I'm afraid I mustn't talk about my people.

The name I've got now is Gregory, you know." He lit his cigarette,

noticing how his fingers still shook, and dropped the match.

"No, it's not about that," said the doctor; "it's not about that."

Frank glanced at him, astonished by his manner.

"Well, then--?" he began.

"I want to know first," said the doctor slowly, "where you've got all

your ideas from. I've never heard such a jumble in my life. I know you

were delirious; but ... but it hung together somehow; and it seemed much

more real to you than anything else."

"What did?" asked Frank uncomfortably.

The doctor made no answer for a moment. He looked out across the untidy

garden with its rich, faded finery of wild flowers and autumn leaves,

and the yellowing foliage beyond the wall, and the moors behind--all

transfigured in October sunshine. The smoke of the burning weeds drew

heavenly lines and folds of ethereal lace-work across the dull splendors

beyond.

"Well," he said at last, "everything. You know I've heard hundreds and

hundreds of folks ..." he broke off again, "... and I know what people

call religion about here--and such a pack of nonsense ..." (He turned on

Frank again suddenly.) "Where d'you get your ideas from?"

"Do you mean the Catholic religion?" said Frank.

"Bah! don't call it that. I know what that is--" Frank interrupted him.

"Well, that's my religion," he said. "I haven't got any other."

"But ... but the way you hold it," cried the other; "the grip ... the

grip it has of you. That's the point. D'you mean to tell me--"

"I mean that I don't care for anything else in the whole world," said

Frank, stung with sudden enthusiasm.

"But ... but you're not mad! You're a very sensible, fellow. You don't

mean to tell me you really believe all that--all that about pain and so

on? We doctors know perfectly what all that is. It's a reaction of

Nature ... a warning to look out ... it's often simply the effects of

building up; and we're beginning to think--ah! that won't interest you!

Listen to me! I'm what they call a specialist--an investigator. I can

tell you, without conceit, that I probably know all that is to be known

on a certain subject. Well, I can tell you as an authority--"

Frank lifted his head a little. He was keenly interested by the fire

with which this other enthusiast spoke.

"I daresay you can," said Frank. "And I daresay it's all perfectly true;

but what in the world has all that got to do with it--with the use made

of it--the meaning of it? Now I--"

"Hush! hush!" said the doctor. "We mustn't get excited. That's no good."

He stopped and stared mournfully out again.

"I wish you could really tell me," he said more slowly. "But that's just

what you can't. I know that. It's a personal thing."

"But my dear doctor--" said Frank.

"That's enough," said the other. "I was an old fool to think it

possible--"

Frank interrupted again in his turn. (He was conscious of that

extraordinary mental clearness that comes sometimes to convalescents,

and he suddenly perceived there was something behind all this which had

not yet made its appearance.)

"You've some reason for asking all this," he said. "I wish you'd tell me

exactly what's in your mind."

The old man turned and looked at him with a kind of doubtful fixedness.

"Why do you say that, my boy?"

"People like you," said Frank smiling, "don't get excited over people

like me, unless there's something.... I was at Cambridge, you know. I

know the dons there, and--"

"Well, I'll tell you," said the doctor, drawing a long breath. "I hadn't

meant to. I know it's mere nonsense; but--" He stopped an instant and

called aloud: "Thomas! Thomas!"

Thomas's lean head, like a bird's, popped out from a window in the

kitchen court behind.

"Come here a minute."

Thomas came and stood before them with a piece of wash-leather in one

hand and a plated table-spoon in the other.

"I want you to tell this young gentleman," said the doctor

deliberately, "what you told me on Wednesday morning."

Thomas looked doubtfully from one to the other.

"It was my fancy, sir," he said.

"Never mind about that. Tell us both."

"Well, sir, I didn't like it. Seemed to me when I looked in--"

("He looked in on us in the middle of the night," explained the doctor.

"Yes, go on, Thomas.")

"Seemed to me there was something queer."

"Yes?" said the doctor encouragingly.

"Something queer," repeated Thomas musingly.... "And now if you'll

excuse me, sir, I'll have to get back--"

The doctor waved his hands despairingly as Thomas scuttled back without

another word.

"It's no good," he said, "no good. And yet he told me quite

intelligibly--"

Frank was laughing quietly to himself.

"But you haven't told me one word--"

"Don't laugh," said the old man simply. "Look here, my boy, it's no

laughing matter. I tell you I can't think of anything else. It's

bothering me."

"But--"

The doctor waved his hands.

"Well," he said, "I can say it no better. It was the whole thing. The

way you looked, the way you spoke. It was most unusual. But it affected

me--it affected me in the same way; and I thought that perhaps you could

explain."

(V)

It was not until the Monday afternoon that Frank persuaded the doctor to

let him go. Dr. Whitty said everything possible, in his emphatic way, as

to the risk of traveling again too soon; and there was one scene,

actually conducted in the menagerie--the only occasion on which the

doctor mentioned Frank's relations--during which he besought the young

man to be sensible, and to allow him to communicate with his family.

Frank flatly refused, without giving reasons.

The doctor seemed strangely shy of referring again to the conversation

in the garden; and, for his part, Frank shut up like a box. They seem

both to have been extraordinarily puzzled at one another--as such people

occasionally are. They were as two persons, both intelligent and

interested, entirely divided by the absence of any common language, or

even of symbols. Words that each used meant different things to the

other. (It strikes me sometimes that the curse of Babel was a deeper

thing than appears on the surface.)

The Major and Gertie, all this while, were in clover. The doctor had no

conception of what six hours' manual work could or could not do, and, in

return for these hours, he made over to the two a small disused

gardener's cottage at the end of his grounds, some bedding, their meals,

and a shilling the day. It was wonderful how solicitous the Major was as

to Frank's not traveling again until it was certain he was capable of

it; but Frank had acquired a somewhat short and decisive way with his

friend, and announced that Monday night must see them all cleared out.

The leave-taking--so far as I have been able to gather--was rather

surprisingly emotional. The doctor took Frank apart into the study where

he had first seen him, and had a short conversation, during which one

sovereign finally passed from the doctor to the patient.

I have often tried to represent to myself exactly what elements there

were in Frank that had such an effect upon this wise and positive old

man. He had been a very upsetting visitor in many ways. He had

distracted his benefactor from a very important mouse that had died of

leprosy; he had interfered sadly with working hours; he had turned the

house, comparatively speaking, upside down. Worse than all, he had--I

will not say modified the doctor's theories--that would be far too

strong a phrase; but he had, quite unconsciously, run full tilt against

them; and finally, worst of all, he had done this right in the middle of

the doctor's own private preserve. There was absolutely every element

necessary to explain Frank's remarks during his delirium; he was a

religiously-minded boy, poisoned by a toxin and treated by the

anti-toxin. What in the world could be expected but that he should rave

in the most fantastic way, and utter every mad conception and idea that

his subjective self contained. As for that absurd fancy of the doctor

himself, as well as of his servant that there was "something queer" in

the room--the more he thought of it, the less he valued it. Obviously it

was the result of a peculiar combination of psychological conditions,

just as psychological conditions were themselves the result of an

obscure combination of toxin--or anti-toxin--forces.

Yet for all that, argue as one may, the fact remained that this dry and

rather misanthropic scientist was affected in an astonishing manner by

Frank's personality. (It will appear later on in Frank's history that

the effect was more or less permanent.)

Still more remarkable to my mind was the very strong affection that

Frank conceived for the doctor. (There is no mystery coming: the doctor

will not ultimately turn out to be Frank's father in disguise; Lord

Talgarth still retains that distinction.) But it is plainly revealed by

Frank's diary that he was drawn to this elderly man by very much the

same kind of feelings as a son might have. And yet it is hardly possible

to conceive two characters with less in common. The doctor was a

dogmatic materialist--and remains so still--Frank was a Catholic. The

doctor was scientific to his finger-tips--Frank romantic to the same

extremities; the doctor was old and a confirmed stay-at-home--Frank was

young, and an incorrigible gipsy. Yet so the matter was. I have certain

ideas of my own, but there is no use in stating them, beyond saying

perhaps that each recognized in the other--sub-consciously only, since

each professed himself utterly unable to sympathize in the smallest

degree with the views of the other--a certain fixity of devotion that

was the driving-force in each life. Certainly, on the surface, there are

not two theories less unlike than the one which finds the solution of

all things in Toxin, and the other which finds it in God. But perhaps

there is a reconciliation somewhere.

* * * * *

The Major and Gertie were waiting in the stable-yard when the two other

men emerged. The Major had a large bag of apples--given him by Thomas at

the doctor's orders--which he was proceeding to add to Gertie's load at

the very moment when the two others came out. Frank took them, without a

word, and slung them over his own back.

The doctor stood blinking a moment in the strong sunshine.

"Well, good-by, my boy," he said. "Good luck! Remember that if ever you

come this way again--"

"Good-by, sir," said Frank.

He held out his disengaged hand.

Then an astonishing thing happened. The doctor took the hand, then

dropped it; threw his arms round the boy's neck, kissed him on both

cheeks, and hurried back through the garden gate, slamming it behind

him. And I imagine he ran upstairs at once to see how the mice were.

* * * * *

Well, that is the whole of the incident. The two haven't met since, that

I am aware. And I scarcely know why I have included it in this book. But

I was able to put it together from various witnesses, documentary and

personal, and it seemed a pity to leave it out.

CHAPTER IV

(I)

An enormous physical weariness settled down on Frank, as he trudged

silently with the Major, towards evening, a week later.

He had worked all the previous day in a farm-yard--carting manure, and

the like; and though he was perfectly well again, some of the spring had

ebbed from his muscles during his week's rest. This day, too, the first

of November, had been exhausting. They had walked since daybreak, after

a wretched night in a barn, plodding almost in silence, mile after mile,

against a wet south-west wind, over a discouraging kind of high-road

that dipped and rose and dipped again, and never seemed to arrive

anywhere.

It is true that Frank was no longer intensely depressed; quite another

process had been at work upon him for the last two or three months, as

will be seen presently; but his limbs seemed leaden, and the actual

stiffness in his shoulders and loins made walking a little difficult.

They were all tired together. They did not say much to one another.

They had, in fact, said all that there was to be said months ago; and

they were reduced--as men always are reduced when a certain pitch is

reached--to speak simply of the most elementary bodily things--food,

tobacco and sleep. The Major droned on now and then--recalling luxuries

of past days--actual roofs over the head, actual hot meat to put in the

mouth, actual cigars--and Frank answered him. Gertie said nothing.

* * * * *

She made up for it, soon after dark had fallen, by quite suddenly

collapsing into a hedge, and announcing that she would die if she didn't

rest. The Major made the usual remarks, and she made no answer.

Frank interposed suddenly.

"Shut up," he said. "We can't stop here. I'll go on a bit and see what

can be done."

And, as he went off into the darkness, leaving his bundle, he heard the

scolding voice begin again, but it was on a lower key and he knew it

would presently subside into a grumble, soothed by tobacco.

* * * * *

He had no idea as to the character of the road that lay before him. They

had passed through a few villages that afternoon, whose names meant

nothing to him, and he scarcely knew why, even, they were going along

this particular road. They were moving southwards towards London--so

much had been agreed--and they proposed to arrive there in another month

or so. But the country was unfamiliar to him, and the people seemed

grudging and uncouth. They had twice been refused the use of an outhouse

for the night, that afternoon.

It seemed an extraordinarily deserted road. There were no lights from

houses, so far as he could make out, and the four miles that had been

declared at their last stopping-place to separate them from the next

village appeared already more like five or six. Certainly the three of

them had between two and three shillings, all told; there was no actual

need of a workhouse just yet, but naturally it was wished to spend as

little as possible.

Then on a sudden he caught a glimpse of a light burning somewhere, that

appeared and vanished again as he moved, and fifty yards more brought

him to a wide sweep, a pair of gate-posts with the gate fastened back,

and a lodge on the left-hand side. So much he could make out dimly

through the November darkness; and as he stood there hesitating, he

thought he could see somewhere below him a few other lights burning

through the masses of leafless trees through which the drive went

downhill.

He knew very well by experience that lodge-keepers were, taken

altogether, perhaps the most unsympathetic class in the community. (They

live, you see, right on the high road, and see human nature at its

hottest and crossest as well as its most dishonest.) Servants at back

doors were, as a rule, infinitely more obliging; and, as obviously this

was the entrance to some big country house, the right thing to do would

be to steal past the lodge on tiptoe and seek his fortune amongst the

trees. Yet he hesitated; the house might be half a mile away, for all he

knew; and, certainly there was a hospitable look about the fastened-back

gate.

There came a gust of wind over the hills behind him, laden with wet....

He turned, went up to the lodge door and knocked.

He could hear someone moving about inside, and just as he was beginning

to wonder whether his double tap had been audible, the door opened and

disclosed a woman in an apron.

"Can you very kindly direct me--" began Frank politely.

The woman jerked her head sharply in the direction of the house.

"Straight down the hill," she said. "Them's the orders."

"But--"

It was no good; the door was shut again in his face, and he stood alone

in the dark.

This was all very unusual. Lodge-keepers did not usually receive

"orders" to send tramps, without credentials, on to the house which the

lodge was supposed to guard.... That open gate, then, must have been

intentional. Plainly, however, he must take her at her word; and as he

tramped down the drive, he began to form theories. It must be a fanatic

of some kind who lived here, and he inclined to consider the owner as

probably an eccentric old lady with a fad, and a large number of

lap-dogs.

As he came nearer, through the trees, he became still more astonished,

for as the branches thinned, he became aware of lights burning at such

enormous distances apart that the building seemed more like a village

than a house.

Straight before him shone a row of lighted squares, high up, as if hung

in air, receding in perspective, till blocked out by a black mass which

seemed a roof of some kind; far on the left shone some kind of

illuminated gateway, and to his right another window or two glimmered

almost beneath his feet.

Another fifty yards down the winding drive disclosed a sight that made

him seriously wonder whether the whole experience were real, for now

only a few steps further on, and still lower than the level at which he

was, stood, apparently, a porter's lodge, as of a great college. There

was a Tudor archway, with rooms above it and rooms on either side; a

lamp hung from the roof illuminated the dry stone pavement within, and

huge barred gates at the further end, shut off all other view. It looked

like the entrance to some vast feudal castle, and he thought again that

if an eccentric old lady lived here, she must be very eccentric indeed.

He began to wonder whether a seneschal in a belt hung with keys would

presently make his appearance: he considered whether or not he could

wind a horn, if there were no other way of summoning the retainers.

When at last he tapped at a small interior door, also studded and barred

with iron, and the door opened, the figure he did see was hardly less of

a shock to him than a seneschal would have been.

For there stood, as if straight out of a Christmas number, the figure of

a monk, tall, lean, with gray hair, clean-shaven, with a pair of merry

eyes and a brisk manner. He wore a broad leather band round his black

frock, and carried his spare hand thrust deep into it.

(II)

The monk sighed humorously.

"Another of them," he said. "Well, my man?"

"Please, father--"

The monk closed his eyes as in resignation.

"You needn't try that on," he said. "Besides, I'm not a father. I'm a

brother. Can you remember that?"

Frank smiled back.

"Very well, brother. I'm a Catholic myself."

"Ah! yes," sighed the monk briskly. "That's what they all say. Can you

say the 'Divine Praises'? Do you know what they are?... However, that

makes no difference, as--"

"But I can, brother. 'Blessed be God. Blessed be His--"

"But you're not Irish?"

"I know I'm not. But--"

"Are you an educated man? However, that's not my affair. What can I do

for you, sir?"

The monk seemed to take a little more interest in him, and Frank took

courage.

"Yes," he said, "I'm an educated man. My name's Frank Gregory. I've got

two friends out on the road up there--a man and a woman. Their name's

Trustcott--and the woman--"

"No good; no good," said the monk. "No women."

"But, brother, she really can't go any further. I'm very sorry, but we

simply must have shelter. We've got two or three shillings, if

necessary--"

"Oh, you have, have you?" said the monk keenly. "That's quite new. And

when did you touch food last? Yesterday morning? (Don't say 'S'elp me!'

It's not necessary.)"

"We last touched food about twelve o'clock to-day. We had beans and cold

bacon," said Frank deliberately. "We're perfectly willing to pay for

shelter and food, if we're obliged. But, of course, we don't want to."

The monk eyed him very keenly indeed a minute or two without speaking.

This seemed a new type.

"Come in and sit down a minute," he said. "I'll fetch the guest-master."

It was a very plain little room in which Frank sat, and seemed designed,

on purpose, to furnish no temptation to pilferers. There was a table,

two chairs, a painted plaster statue of a gray-bearded man in black

standing on a small bracket with a crook in his hand; a pious book, much

thumb-marked, lay face downwards on the table beside the oil lamp. There

was another door through which the monk had disappeared, and that was

absolutely all. There was no carpet and no curtains, but a bright little

coal fire burned on the hearth, and two windows looked, one up the drive

down which Frank had come, and the other into some sort of courtyard on

the opposite side.

About ten minutes passed away without anything at all happening. Frank

heard more than one gust of rain-laden wind dash against the little

barred window to the south, and he wondered how his friends were getting

on. The Major, at any rate, he knew, would manage to keep himself

tolerably dry. Then he began to think about this place, and was

surprised that he was not surprised at running into it like this in the

dark. He knew nothing at all about monasteries--he hardly knew that

there were such things in England (one must remember that he had only

been a Catholic for about five months), and yet somehow, now that he had

come here, it all seemed inevitable. (I cannot put it better than that:

it is what he himself says in his diary.)

Then, as he meditated, the door opened, and there came in a thin,

eager-looking elderly man, dressed like the brother who followed him,

except that over his frock he wore a broad strip of black stuff,

something like a long loose apron, hanging from his throat to his feet,

and his head was enveloped in a black hood.

Frank stood up and bowed with some difficulty. He was beginning to feel

stiff.

"Well," said the priest sharply, with his bright gray eyes, puckered at

the corners, running over and taking in the whole of Frank's figure from

close-cut hair to earthy boots. "Brother James tells me you wish to see

me."

"It was Brother James who said so, father," said Frank.

"What is it you want?"

"I've got two friends on the road who want shelter--man and woman. We'll

pay, if necessary, but--"

"Never mind about that," interrupted the priest sharply. "Who are you?"

"The name I go by is Frank Gregory."

"The name you go by, eh?... Where were you educated?"

"Eton and Cambridge."

"How do you come to be on the roads?"

"That's a long story, father."

"Did you do anything you shouldn't?"

"No. But I've been in prison since."

"And your name's Frank Gregory.... F.G., eh?"

Frank turned as if to leave. He understood that he was known.

"Well--good-night, father--"

The priest turned with upraised hand.

"Brother James, just step outside."

Then he continued as the door closed.

"You needn't go, Mr.--er--Gregory. Your name shall not be mentioned to a

living being without your leave."

"You know about me?"

"Of course I do.... Now be sensible, my dear fellow; go and fetch your

friends. We'll manage somehow." (He raised his voice and rapped on the

table.) "Brother James ... go up with Mr. Gregory to the porter's lodge.

Make arrangements to put the woman up somewhere, either there or in a

gardener's cottage. Then bring the man down here.... His name?"

"Trustcott," said Frank.

"And when you come back, I shall be waiting for you here."

(III)

Frank states in his diary that an extraordinary sense of familiarity

descended on him as, half an hour later, the door of a cell closed

behind Dom Hildebrand Maple, and he found himself in a room with a

bright fire burning, a suit of clothes waiting for him, a can of hot

water, a sponging tin and a small iron bed.

I think I understand what he means. Somehow or other a well-ordered

monastery represents the Least Common Multiple of nearly all pleasant

houses. It has the largeness and amplitude of a castle, and the

plainness of decent poverty. It has none of that theatricality which it

is supposed to have, none of the dreaminess or the sentimentality with

which Protestants endow it. He had passed just now through, first, a

network of small stairways, archways, vestibules and passages, and then

along two immense corridors with windows on one side and closed doors on

the other. Everywhere there was the same quiet warmth and decency and

plainness--stained deal, uncarpeted boards, a few oil pictures in the

lower corridor, an image or two at the turn and head of the stairs; it

was lighted clearly and unaffectedly by incandescent gas, and the only

figures he had seen were of two or three monks, with hooded heads (they

had raised these hoods slightly in salutation as he passed), each going

about his business briskly and silently. There was even a cheerful smell

of cooking at the end of one of the corridors, and he had caught a

glimpse of two or three aproned lay brothers, busy in the firelight and

glow of a huge kitchen, over great copper pans.

The sense of familiarity, then, is perfectly intelligible: a visitor to

a monastery steps, indeed, into a busy and well-ordered life, but there

is enough room and air and silence for him to preserve his individuality

too.

* * * * *

As soon as he was washed and dressed, he sat down in a chair before the

fire; but almost immediately there came a tap on his door, and the

somewhat inflamed face of the Major looked in.

"Frankie?" he whispered, and, reassured, came in and closed the door

behind. (He looked very curiously small and unimportant, thought Frank.

Perhaps it was the black suit that had been lent him.)

"By gad, Frankie ... we're in clover," he whispered, still apparently

under the impression that somehow he was in church. "There are some

other chaps, you know, off the roads too, but they're down by the lodge

somewhere." (He broke off and then continued.) "I've got such a queer

Johnnie in my room--ah! you've got one, too."

He went up to examine a small plaster statue of a saint above the

prie-dieu.

"It's all right, isn't it?" said Frank sleepily.

"And there's another Johnnie's name on the door. The Rev. S. Augustine,

or something."

He tip-toed back to the fire, lifted his tails, and stood warming

himself with a complacent but nervous smile.

(Frank regarded him with wonder.)

"What do all the Johnnies do here?" asked the Major presently. "Have a

rare old time, I expect. I bet they've got cellars under here all right.

Just like those chaps in comic pictures, ain't it?"

(Frank decided it was no use to try to explain.)

The Major babbled on a minute or two longer, requiring no answer, and

every now and then having his roving eye caught by some new marvel. He

fingered a sprig of yew that was twisted into a crucifix hung over the

bed. ("Expect it's one of those old relics," he said, "some lie or

other.") He humorously dressed up the statue of the saint in a

pocket-handkerchief, and said: "Let us pray," in a loud whisper, with

one eye on the door. And all the while there still lay on him apparently

the impression that if he talked loud or made any perceptible sound he

would be turned out again.

He was just beginning a few steps of a noiseless high-kicking dance when

there was a tap at the door, and he collapsed into an attitude of

weak-kneed humility. Dom Hildebrand came in.

"If you're ready," he said, "we might go down to supper."

* * * * *

Frank relates in his diary that of all else in the monastery, apart from

the church, the refectory and its manners impressed him most. (How easy

it is to picture it when one has once seen the ceremonies!)

He sat at a center table, with the Major opposite (looking smaller than

ever), before a cloth laid with knife, spoon and forks. All round the

walls on a low daïs, with their backs against them, sat a row of perhaps

forty monks, of every age, kind and condition. The tables were bare

wood, laid simply with utensils and no cloths, with a napkin in each

place. At the end opposite the door there sat at a table all alone a

big, portly, kindly-faced man, of a startlingly fatherly appearance,

clean-shaven, gray-haired, and with fine features. This was the Abbot.

Above him hung a crucifix, with the single word "_Sitio_" beneath it on

a small black label.

The meal began, however, with the ceremony of singing grace. The rows of

monks stood out, with one in the middle, facing the Abbot, each with his

hood forward and his hands hidden in his scapular. It was sung to a

grave tone, with sudden intonations, by the united voices in

unison--blessing, response, collect, psalm and the rest. (Frank could

not resist one glance at the Major, whose face of consternation

resembled that of a bird in the company of sedate cats.)

Then each went to his place, and, noiselessly, the orderly meal began

and continued to the reading first of the gospel, and then of a history,

from a pulpit built high in the wall. All were served by lay brothers,

girded with aprons; almost every movement, though entirely natural,

seemed ordered by routine and custom, and was distinguished by a serious

sort of courtesy that made the taking of food appear, for once, as a

really beautiful, august, and almost sacramental ceremony. The great

hall, too, with its pointed roof, its tiled floor, its white-wood

scrubbed tables, and its tall emblazoned windows, seemed exactly the

proper background--a kind of secular sanctuary. The food was plain and

plentiful: soup, meat, cheese and fruit; and each of the two guests had

a small decanter of red wine, a tiny loaf of bread, and a napkin. The

monks drank beer or water.

Then once more followed grace, with the same ceremonial.

When this was ended, Frank turned to see where Father Hildebrand was,

supposing that all would go to their rooms; but as he turned he saw the

Abbot coming down alone. He moved on, this great man, with that same

large, fatherly air, but as he passed the two guests, he inclined

slightly towards them, and Frank, with a glance to warn the Major,

understanding that they were to follow, came out of his place and passed

down between the lines of the monks, still in silence.

The Abbot went on, turned to the right, and as he moved along the

cloister, loud sonorous chanting began behind. So they went, on and on,

up the long lighted corridor, past door after door, as in some church

procession. Yet all was obviously natural and familiar.

They turned in at last beneath an archway to the left, went through a

vestibule, past a great stone of a crowned Woman with a Child in her

arms, and as they entered the church, the Abbot dipped his finger into a

stoop and presented it to Frank. Frank touched the drop of water, made

the sign of the cross, and presented again his damp finger to the Major,

who looked at him with a startled eye.

The Abbot indicated the front row of the seats in the nave, and Frank

went into it, to watch the procession behind go past, flow up the steps,

and disappear into the double rows of great stalls that lined the choir.

There was still silence--and longer silence, till Frank understood....

(IV)

His eyes grew accustomed to the gloom little by little, and he began to

be able to make out the magnificence of the place he was in. Behind him

stretched the immense nave, its roof and columns lost in darkness, its

sides faintly illuminated by the glimmer of single oil-lamps, each in a

small screened-off chapel. But in front of him was the greater splendor.

From side to side across the entrance to the choir ran the rood-screen,

a vast erection of brown oak and black iron, surmounted by a high loft,

from which glimmered down sheaves of silvered organ pipes, and, higher

yet, in deep shadow, he could make out three gigantic figures, of which

the center one was nailed to a cross. Beyond this began the stalls--dark

and majestic, broken by carving--jutting heads of kings and priests

leaning forward as if to breathe in the magnetism of that immense living

silence generated by forty men at their prayers. At the further end

there shone out faintly the glory of the High Altar, almost luminous, it

seemed, in the light of the single red spark that hung before it. Frank

could discern presently the gilded figures that stood among the

candlesticks behind, the throne and crucifix, the mysterious veiling

curtains of the Tabernacle.... Finally, in the midst of the choir,

stood a tall erection which he could not understand.

* * * * *

An extraordinary peace seemed to descend and envelop him as he looked--a

kind of crown and climax of various interior experiences that were

falling on him now--for the last few weeks. (It is useless trying to put

it into words. I shall hope to do my best presently by quoting Frank

himself.) There was a sense of home-coming; there was a sense of

astonishing sanity; there was a sense of an enormous objective peace,

meeting and ratifying that interior peace which was beginning to be his.

It appeared to him, somehow, as if for the first time he experienced

without him that which up to now he had chiefly found within. Certainly

there had been moments of this before--not merely emotional, you

understand--when heart and head lay still from their striving, and the

will reposed in Another Will. But this was the climax: it summed up all

that he had learned in the last few months; it soothed the last scars

away, it explained and answered--and, above all, correlated--his

experiences. No doubt it was the physical, as well as the spiritual,

atmosphere of this place, the quiet corridors, the warmth and the

plainness and the solidity, even the august grace of the refectory--all

these helped and had part in the sensation. Yet, if it is possible for

you to believe it, these were no more than the vessels from which the

heavenly fluid streamed; vessels, rather, that contained a little of

that abundance that surged up here as in a fountain....

Frank started a little at a voice in his ear.

"When's it going to begin?" whispered the Major in a hoarse,

apprehensive voice.

(V)

A figure detached itself presently from the dark mass of the stalls and

came down to where they were sitting. Frank perceived it was Father

Hildebrand.

"We're singing Mattins of the Dead, presently," he said in a low voice.

"It's All Souls' Eve. Will you stay, or shall I take you to your room?"

The Major stood up with alacrity.

"I'll stay, if I may," said Frank.

"Very well. Then I'll take Mr. Trustcott upstairs."

* * * * *

Half an hour later the ceremony began.

Here, I simply despair of description. I know something of what Frank

witnessed and perceived, for I have been present myself at this affair

in a religious house; but I do not pretend to be able to write it down.

First, however, there was the external, visible, audible service: the

catafalque, a bier-like erection, all black and yellow, guarded by

yellow flames on yellow candles--the grave movements, the almost

monstrous figures, the rhythm of the ceremonies, and the wail of, the

music of forty voices singing as one--all that is understood....

But the inner side of these things--the reverse of which these things

are but a coarse lining, the substance of which this is a shadow--that

is what passes words and transcends impressions.

It seemed to Frank that one section, at any rate, of that enormous truth

at which he had clutched almost blindly when he had first made his

submission to the Church--one chamber in that House of Life--was now

flung open before him, and he saw in it men as trees walking.... He was

tired and excited, of course; he was intensely imaginative; but there

are some experiences that a rise of temperature cannot explain and that

an imagination cannot originate....

For it seemed to him that here he was aware of an immeasurable need to

which those ministrations were addressed, and this whole was countless

in its units and clamant in its silence. It was as a man might see the

wall of his room roll away, beyond which he had thought only the night

to lie, and discern a thronging mass of faces crying for help, pressing

upon him, urging, yet all without sound or word. He attempts in his

diary to use phrases for all this--he speaks of a pit in which is no

water, of shadows and forms that writhe and plead, of a light of glass

mingled with fire; and yet of an inevitability, of a Justice which there

is no questioning and a Force that there is no resisting. And, on the

other side, there was this help given by men of flesh and blood like

himself--using ceremonies and gestures and strange resonant words....

The whole was as some enormous orchestra--there was the wail on this

side, the answer on that--the throb of beating hearts--there were

climaxes, catastrophes, soft passages, and yet the result was one vast

and harmonious whole.

It was the catafalque that seemed to him the veiled door to that other

world that so manifested itself--seen as he saw it in the light of the

yellow candles--it was as the awful portal of death itself; beneath that

heavy mantle lay not so much a Body of Humanity still in death, as a

Soul of Humanity alive beyond death, quick and yet motionless with pain.

And those figures that moved about it, with censor and aspersorium, were

as angels for tenderness and dignity and undoubted power. They were men

like himself, yet they were far more; and they, too, one day, like

himself, would pass beneath that pall and need the help of others that

should follow them....

* * * * *

Something of this is but a hint of what Frank experienced; it came and

went, no doubt, in gusts, yet all through he seems to have felt that

sense that here was a door into that great watching world beyond--that

here, in what is supposed by the world to be the narrow constraint of

religion, was a liberty and an outlook into realities such as the open

road and nature can but seldom give. But for my part, I can no more

follow him further than I can write down the passion of the lover and

the ecstasy of the musician. If these things could be said in words,

they would have been said long ago. But at least it was along this path

of perception that Frank went--a path that but continued the way along

which he had come with such sure swiftness ever since the moment he had

taken his sorrows and changed them from bitter to sweet. Some sentences

that he has written mean nothing to me at all....

Only this I see clearly, both from my talks with Father Hildebrand and

from the diary which Frank amplified at his bidding--that Frank had

reached the end of a second stage in his journey, and that a third was

to begin.

It is significant also, I think, in view of what is to follow, that the

last initiation of this stage should have taken place on such an

occasion as this.

CHAPTER V

(I)

There are certain moods into which minds, very much tired or very much

concentrated, occasionally fall, in which the most trifling things take

on them an appearance of great significance. A man in great anxiety, for

example, will regard as omens or warnings such things as the ringing of

a bell or the flight of a bird. I have heard this process deliberately

defended by people who should know better. I have heard it said that

those moods of intense concentration are, as a matter of fact states of

soul in which the intuitive or mystical faculties work with great

facility, and that at such times connections and correlations are

perceived which at other times pass unnoticed. The events of the world

then are, by such people, regarded as forming links in a chain of

purpose--events even which are obviously to the practical man merely the

effects of chance and accident. It is utterly impossible, says the

practical man, that the ringing of a bell, or the grouping of

tea-leaves, or the particular moment at which a picture falls from a

wall, can be anything but fortuitous: and it is the sign of a weak and

superstitious mind to regard them as anything else. There can be no

purpose or sequence except in matters where we can perceive purpose or

sequence.

Of course the practical man must be right; we imply that he is right,

since we call him practical, and I have to deplore, therefore, the fact

that Frank on several occasions fell into a superstitious way of looking

at things. The proof is only too plain from his own diary--not that he

interprets the little events which he records, but that he takes such

extreme pains to write them down--events, too, that are, to all

sensibly-minded people, almost glaringly unimportant and insignificant.

* * * * *

I have two such incidents to record between the the travelers' leaving

the Benedictine monastery and their arriving in London in December. The

Major and Gertie have probably long since forgotten the one which they

themselves witnessed, and, indeed, there is no particular reason why

they should remember it. Of the other Frank seems to have said nothing

to his friends. Both of them, however, are perfectly insignificant--they

concern, respectively, only a few invisible singers and a couple of

quite ordinary human beings. They are described with a wholly

unnecessary wealth of detail in Frank's diary, though without comment,

and I write them down here for that reason, and that reason only.

The first was as follows:

They were approaching a certain cathedral town, not a hundred miles from

London, and as the evening was clear and dry, though frosty, and money

was low, they determined to pass the night in a convenient brick-yard

about half a mile out of the town.

There was a handy shed where various implements were kept; the Major, by

the help of a little twisted wire, easily unfastened the door. They

supped, cooking a little porridge over a small fire which they were able

to make without risk, and lay down to sleep after a pipe or two.

Tramps go to sleep early when they mean business, and it could not have

been more than about eleven o'clock at night when Frank awoke with the

sense that he had slept long and deeply. He seems to have lain there,

content and quiet enough, watching the last ember dying in the brazier

where they had made their fire.... There was presently a stir from the

further corner of the shed, a match was struck, and Frank, from his

improvised pillow, beheld the Major's face suddenly illuminated by the

light with which he was kindling his pipe once more. He watched the face

with a sort of artistic interest for a few seconds--the drooping

shadows, the apparently cavernous eyes, the deep-shaded bar of the

mustache across the face. In the wavering light cast from below it

resembled the face of a vindictive beast. Then the Major whispered,

between his puffs:

"Frankie?"

"Yes."

"Oh! you're awake too, are you?"

"Yes."

A minute later, though they had spoken only in whispers, Gertie drew a

long sighing breath from her corner of the shed and they could hear that

she, too, sat up and cleared her throat.

"Well, this is a pretty job," said the Major jovially to the company

generally. "What's the matter with us?"

Frank said nothing. He lay still, with a sense of extraordinary content

and comfort, and heard Gertie presently lie down again. The Major smoked

steadily.

Then the singing began.

* * * * *

It was a perfectly still night, frost-bound and motionless. It was late

enough for the sounds of the town to have died away (cathedral towns go

to bed early and rise late), and, indeed, almost the only sounds they

had heard, even three or four hours before, had been the occasional

deliberate chime of bells, like a meditative man suddenly uttering a

word or two aloud. Now, however, everything was dead silent. Probably

the hour had struck immediately before they awoke, since Frank remarks

that it seemed a long time before four notes tolled out the quarter.

The singing came first as a sensation rather than as a sound, so far

away was it. It was not at once that Frank formulated the sense of

pleasure that he experienced by telling himself that someone was

singing.

At first it was a single voice that made itself heard--a tenor of

extraordinary clarity. The air was unknown to him, but it had the

character of antiquity; there was a certain pleasant melancholy about

it; it contained little trills and grace-notes, such as--before harmony

developed in the modern sense--probably supplied the absence of chords.

There was no wind on which the sound could rise or fall, and it grew

from a thread out of the distance into clear singing not a quarter of a

mile away....

The Major presently grunted over his pipe some expression of surprise;

but Frank could say nothing. He was almost holding his breath, so great

was his pleasure.

The air, almost regretfully, ran downhill like a brook approaching, an

inevitable full close; and then, as the last note was reached, a chord

of voices broke in with some kind of chorus.

The voices were of a quartette of men, and rang together like struck

notes, not loud or harsh, but, on the contrary, with a restrained

softness that must, I suppose, have been the result of very careful

training. It was the same air that they were repeating, but the

grace-notes were absent, and the four voices, in chord after chord,

supplied their place by harmony. It was impossible to tell what was the

subject of the song or even whether it were sacred or secular, for it

was of that period--at least, so I conjecture--when the two worlds were

one, and when men courted their love and adored their God after the same

fashion. Only there ran through all that air of sweet and austere

melancholy, as if earthly music could do no more than hint at what the

heart wished to express.

* * * * *

Frank listened in a sort of ecstasy. The music was nearer now, coming

from the direction from which the three travelers had themselves come

this afternoon. Presently, from the apparent diminuendo, it was plain

that the singers were past, and were going on towards the town. There

was no sound of footsteps; the Major remarked on that, when he could

get Frank to attend a few minutes later, when all was over; but there

were field paths running in every direction, as well as broad stretches

of grass beside the road, so the singers may very well have been walking

on soft ground. (These points are dispassionately noted down in the

diary.)

The chorus was growing fainter now; once more the last slopes of the

melody were in sight--those downhill gradations of the air that told of

the silence to come. Then once more, for an instant, there was silence,

till again, perhaps nearly a quarter of a mile away, the single tenor

voice began _da capo_. And the last that Frank heard, at the moment

before the quarter struck and, soft and mellow though it was, jarred the

air and left the ear unable to focus itself again on the tiny woven

thread of sound, was, once more the untiring quartette taking up the

melody, far off in the silent darkness.

It seems to me a curious little incident--this passing of four singers

in the night; it might have seemed as if our travelers, by a kind of

chance, were allowed to overhear the affairs of a world other than their

own--and the more curious because Frank seems to have been so much

absorbed by it. Of course, from a practical point of view, it is almost

painfully obvious what is the explanation. It must have been a quartette

from the cathedral choir, returning from some festivity in the suburbs;

and it must have happened that they followed the same route, though

walking on the grass, along which Frank himself had come that evening.

(II)

The second incident is even more ordinary, and once again I must declare

that nothing would have induced me to incorporate it into this story had

it not appeared, described very minutely in the sort of log-book into

which Frank's diary occasionally degenerates.

They were within a very few miles of the outskirts of London, and

December had succeeded November. They had had a day or two of work upon

some farm or other. (I have not been able to identify the place), and

had run into, and, indeed, exchanged remarks with two or three groups of

tramps also London bound.

They were given temporary lodgings in a loft over a stable, by the

farmer for whom they worked, and this stable was situated in a court at

the end of the village street, with gates that stood open all day,

since the yard was overlooked by the windows of the farmer's

living-house--and, besides, there was really nothing to steal.

They had finished their work in the fields (I think it had to do with

the sheep and mangel-wurzels, or something of the kind); they had

returned to their lodgings, received their pay, packed up their

belongings, and had already reached the further end of the village on

their way to London, when Frank discovered that he had left a pair of

socks behind. This would never do: socks cost money, and their absence

meant sore feet and weariness; so he told the Major and Gertie to walk

on slowly while he went back. He would catch them up, he said, before

they had gone half a mile. He hid his bundle under a hedge--every pound

of weight made a difference at the end of a day's work--and set off.

It was just at that moment between day and night--between four and five

o'clock--as he came back into the yard. He went straight through the

open gates, glancing about, to explain matters to the farmer if

necessary, but, not seeing him, went up the rickety stairs, groped his

way across to the window, took down his socks from the nail an which he

had hung them last night, and came down again.

As he came into the yard, he thought he heard something stirring within

the open door of the stable on his right, and thinking it to be the

farmer, and that an explanation would be advisable, looked in.

At first he saw nothing, though he could hear a horse moving about in

the loose-box in the corner. Then he saw a light shine beneath the crack

of the second door, beside the loose-box, that led into the farm-yard

proper; and the next instant the door opened, a man came in with a

lantern obviously just lighted, as the flame was not yet burned up, and

stopped with a half-frightened look on seeing Frank. But he said

nothing.

Frank himself was just on the point of giving an explanation when he,

too, stopped dead and stared. It seemed to him that he had been here

before, under exactly the same circumstances; he tried to remember what

happened next, but he could not....

For this was what he saw as the flame burned up more brightly.

The man who held the lantern and looked at him in silence with a

half-deprecating air was a middle-aged man, bearded and bare-headed. He

had thrown over his shoulders a piece of sacking, that hung from him

almost like a robe. The light that he carried threw heavy wavering

shadows about the stable, and Frank noticed the great head of a

cart-horse in the loose-box peering through the bars, as if to inquire

what the company wanted. Then, still without speaking, Frank let his

eyes rove round, and they stopped suddenly at the sight of yet one more

living being in the stable. Next to the loose-box was a stall, empty

except for one occupant; for there, sitting on a box with her back to

the manger and one arm flung along it to support her weight, was the

figure of a girl. Her head, wrapped in an old shawl, leaned back against

her arm, and a very white and weary face, absolutely motionless, looked

at him. She had great eyes, with shadows beneath, and her lips were half

opened. By her side lay a regular tramp's bundle.

Frank looked at her steadily a moment, then he looked back at the man,

who still had not moved or spoken. The draught from the door behind blew

in and shook the flame of his lantern, and the horse sighed long and

loud in the shadows behind. Once more Frank glanced at the girl; she had

lowered her arm from the manger and now sat looking at him, it seemed,

with a curious intentness and expectancy.

There was nothing to be said. Frank bowed a little, almost

apologetically, and went out.

Now that was absolutely all that happened. Frank says so expressly in

his diary. He did not speak to them, nor they to him; nor was any

explanation given on either side. He went out across the yard in

silence, seeing nothing of the farmer, but hearing a piano begin to play

beyond the brightly lighted windows, of which he could catch a glimpse

over the low wall separating the yard from the garden. He walked quickly

up the village street and caught up his companions, as he had said, less

than half a mile further on. He said nothing to them of his

experience--indeed, what was there to say?--but he must have written it

down that same night when they reached their next lodging, and written

it down, too, with that minuteness of detail which surprised me so much

when I first read it.

* * * * *

For the explanation of the whole thing is as foolishly obvious as was

that of the singing that the three had heard in the suburbs of

Peterborough. Obviously a couple of tramps had turned into this stable

for shelter. Perhaps the girl was the man's daughter; perhaps his wife;

perhaps neither. Plainly they had no right there--and that would explain

the embarrassed silence of the two: they knew they were trespassing, and

feared to be turned away. Perhaps already they had been turned away from

the village inn. But the girl was obviously tired out, and the man had

determined to risk it.

That, then, was the whole affair--commonplace, and even a little sordid.

And yet Frank thought that it was worth writing down!

CHAPTER VI

_An extract, taken by permission, from a few pages of Frank Guiseley's

diary. These pages were written with the encouragement of Dom Hildebrand

Maple, O.S.B., and were sent to him later at his own request._

"... He told me a great many things that surprised me. For instance, he

seemed to know all about certain ideas that I had had, before I told him

of them, and said that I was not responsible, and he picked out one or

two other things that I had said, and told me that these were much more

serious....

"I went to confession to him on Friday morning, in the church. He did

not say a great deal then, but he asked if I would care to talk to him

afterwards. I said I would, and went to him in the parlor after dinner.

The first thing that happened was that he asked me to tell him as

plainly as I could anything that had happened to me--in my soul, I

mean--since I had left Cambridge. So I tried to describe it.

"I said that at first things went pretty well in my soul, and that it

was only bodily things that troubled me--getting fearfully tired and

stiff, being uncomfortable, the food, the sleeping, and so on. Then, as

soon as this wore off I met the Major and Gertie. I was rather afraid of

saying all that I felt about these; but he made me, and I told him how

extraordinarily I seemed to hate them sometimes, how I felt almost sick

now and then when the Major talked to me and told me stories.... The

thing that seemed to torment me most during this time was the contrast

between Cambridge and Merefield and the people there, and the company of

this pair; and the only relief was that I knew I _could_, as a matter of

fact, chuck them whenever I wanted and go home again. But this relief

was taken away from me as soon as I understood that I had to keep with

them, and do my best somehow to separate them. Of course, I must get

Gertie back to her people some time, and till that's done it's no good

thinking about anything else.

"After a while, however--I think it was just before I got into trouble

with the police--I began to see that I was a conceited ass for hating

the Major so much. It was absurd for me, I said, to put on airs, when

the difference between him and me was just that he had been brought up

in one way and I in another. I hated the things he did and said, not

because they were wrong, but because they were what I called 'bad form.'

That was really the whole thing. Then I saw a lot more, and it made me

feel miserable. I used to think that it was rather good of me to be kind

to animals and children, but I began to see that it was simply the way I

was made: it wasn't any effort to me. I simply 'saw red' when I came

across cruelty. And I saw that that was no good.

"Then I began to see that I had done absolutely nothing of any good

whatever--that nothing had _really_ cost me anything; and that the

things I was proud of were simply self-will--my leaving Cambridge, and

all the rest. They were theatrical, or romantic, or egotistical; there

was no real sacrifice. I should have minded much more not doing them. I

began to feel extraordinarily small.

"Then the whole series of things began that simply smashed me up.

"First there was the prison business. That came about in this way:

"I had just begun to see that I was all wrong with the Major--that by

giving way to my feelings about him (I don't mean that I ever showed it,

but that was only because I thought it more dignified not to!), I was

getting all wrong with regard to both him and myself, and that I must do

something that my whole soul hated if it was to be of any use. Then

there came that minute in the barn, when I heard the police were after

us, and that there was really no hope of escape. The particular thing

that settled me was Gertie. I knew, somehow, that I couldn't let the

Major go to prison while she was about. And then I saw that this was

just the very thing to do, and that I couldn't be proud of it ever,

because the whole thing was so mean and second-rate. Well, I did it, and

it did me a lot of good somehow. I felt really rolled in the dirt, and

that little thing in the post-office afterwards rubbed it in. I saw how

chock-full I must be of conceit really to mind that, as I did, and to

show off, and talk like a gentleman.

"Then there came the priest who refused to help me. That made me for a

time perfectly furious, because I had always said to myself that

Catholics, and especially priests, would always understand. But before I

got to York I saw what an ass I had made of myself. Of course, the

priest was perfectly right (I saw that before I got ten yards away,

though I wouldn't acknowledge it for another five miles). I was a dirty

tramp, and I talked like a brazen fool. (I remember thinking my

'openness' to him rather fine and manly!) Well, that made me smaller

still.

"Then a sort of despair came on me when the police got me turned out of

my work in York. I know it was only a little thing (though I still

think it unfair), but it was like a pebble in your boot when you're

already going lame from something else.

"And then came Jenny's letter. (I want to write about that rather

carefully.)

"I said just now that I was getting to feel smaller and smaller. That's

perfectly true, but there was still a little hard lump in the middle

that would not break. Things might have gone crumbling away at me for

ever, and I might have got smaller still, but they wouldn't have smashed

me.

"Now there were two things that I held on to all this time--my religion

and Jenny. I gave them turns, so to speak, though Jenny was never

absent. When everything religious tasted flat and dull and empty, I

thought about Jenny: when things were better--when I had those two or

three times I told Father Hildebrand about (...)--I still thought of

Jenny, and imagined how splendid it would be when we were both Catholics

together and married. But I never dreamed that Jenny would ever be angry

or disappointed. I wouldn't talk about her to anybody ever, because I

was so absolutely certain of her. I knew, I thought, that the whole

world might crumble away, but that Jenny would always understand, down

at the bottom, and that she and I would remain....

"Well, then came her letter.

"Honestly, I don't quite know what I was doing inside for the next week

or so. Simply everything was altered. I never had any sort of doubt that

she meant what she said, and it was as if there wasn't any sun or moon

or sky. It was like being ill. Things happened round me: I ate and drank

and walked, but the only thing I wanted was to get away, and get down

somewhere into myself and hide. Religion, of course, seemed no good at

all. I don't understand quite what people mean by 'consolations' of

religion. Religion doesn't seem to me a thing like Art or Music, in

which you can take refuge. It either covers everything, or it isn't

religion. Religion never has seemed to me (I don't know if I'm wrong)

one thing, like other things, so that you can change about and back

again.... It's either the background and foreground all in one, or it's

a kind of game. It's either true, or it's a pretense.

"Well, all this, in a way, taught me it was absolutely true. Things

wouldn't have held together at all unless it was true. But it was no

sort of satisfaction. It seemed to me for a while that it was horrible

that it was true; that it was frightful to think that God could be like

that--since this Jenny-business had really happened. But I didn't feel

all this exactly consciously at the time. I seemed as if I was ill, and

could only lie still and watch and be in hell. One thing, however,

Father Hildebrand thought very important (he asked me about it

particularly) was that I honestly did not feel any resentment whatever

against either God or Jenny. It was frightful, but it was true, and I

just had to lie still inside and look at it. He tells me that this shows

that the first part of the 'process,' as he called it, was finished (he

called it the 'Purgative Way'). And I must say that what happened next

seems to fit in rather well.

"The new 'process' began quite suddenly when I awoke in the shepherd's

hut one morning at Ripon. The instant I awoke I knew it. It was very

early in the morning, just before sunrise, but there was a little wood

behind me, and the birds were beginning to chirp.

"It's very hard to describe it in words, but the first thing to say is

that I was not exactly happy just then, but absolutely content. I think

I should say that it was like this: I saw suddenly that what had been

wrong in me was that I had made myself the center of things, and God a

kind of circumference. When He did or allowed things, I said, 'Why does

He?'--_from my point of view_. That is to say, I set up my ideas of

justice and love and so forth, and then compared His with mine, not mine

with His. And I suddenly saw--or, rather, I knew already when I

awoke--that this was simply stupid. Even now I cannot imagine why I

didn't see it before: I had heard people say it, of course--in sermons

and books--but I suppose it had meant nothing to me. (Father Hildebrand

tells me that I had seen it intellectually, but had never embraced it

with my will.) Because when one once really sees that, there's no longer

any puzzle about anything. One can simply never say 'Why?' again. The

thing's finished.

"Now this 'process' (as Father H. calls it) has gone on in a most

extraordinary manner ever since. That beginning near Ripon was like

opening a door into another country, and I've been walking ever since

and seeing new things. All sorts of things that I had believed as a

Catholic--things, I mean, which I assented to simply because the Church

said so, have, so to speak, come up and turned themselves inside out. I

couldn't write them down, because you can't write these things down, or

even put them intelligibly to yourself. You just _see that they are so_.

For instance, one morning at mass--quite suddenly--I saw how the

substance of the bread was changed, and how our Lord is united with the

soul at Communion--of course it's a mystery (that's what I mean by

saying that it can't be written down)--but I saw it, in a flash, and I

can see it still in a sort of way. Then another day when the Major was

talking about something or other (I think it was about the club he used

to belong to in Piccadilly), I understood about our Lady and how she is

just everything from one point of view. And so on. I had that kind of

thing at Doctor Whitty's a good deal, particularly when I was getting

better. I could talk to him all the time, too, or count the knobs on the

wardrobe, or listen to the Major and Gertie in the garden--and yet go on

all the time seeing things. I knew it wasn't any good talking to Doctor

Whitty himself much, though I can't imagine why a man like that doesn't

see it all for himself....

"It seems to me most extraordinary now that I ever could have had those

other thoughts I told Father H. about--I mean about sins, and about

wondering whether, after all, the Church was actually true. In a sort of

way, of course, they come back to me still, and I know perfectly well I

must be on my guard; but somehow it's different.

"Well, all this is what Father H. calls the 'Illuminative Way,' and I

think I understand what he means. It came to a sort of point on All

Souls' Eve at the monastery. I saw the whole thing then for a moment or

two, and not only Purgatory. But I will write that down later. And

Father H. tells me that I must begin to look forward to a new

'process'--what he calls the 'Way of Union.' I don't understand much

what he means by that; I don't see that more could happen to me. I am

absolutely and entirely happy; though I must say that there has seemed a

sort of lull for the last day or two--ever since All Souls' Day, in

fact. Perhaps something is going to happen. It's all right, anyhow. It

seems very odd to me that all this kind of thing is perfectly well known

to priests. I thought I was the first person who had ever felt quite

like this.

"I must add one thing. Father H. asked me whether I didn't feel I had a

vocation to the Religious Life; he told me that from everything he could

see, I had, and that my coming to the monastery was simply providential.

"Well, I don't agree, and I have told him so. I haven't the least idea

what is going to happen next; but I know, absolutely for certain, that I

have got to go on with the Major and Gertie to East London. Gertie will

have to be got away from the Major somehow, and until that is done I

mustn't do anything else.

"I have written all this down as plainly as I can, because I promised

Father H. I would."

PART III

CHAPTER I

Mrs. Partington was standing at the door of her house towards sunset,

waiting for the children to come back from school.

Her house is situated in perhaps the least agreeable street--Turner

Road--in perhaps the least agreeable district of East London--Hackney

Wick. It is a disagreeable district because it isn't anything in

particular. It has neither the tragic gayety of Whitechapel nor the

comparative refinement of Clapton. It is a large, triangular piece of

land, containing perhaps a square mile altogether, or rather more,

approached from the south by the archway of the Great Eastern Railway,

defined on one side by the line, and along its other two sides, partly

by the river Lea--a grimy, depressed-looking stream--and partly by the

Hackney Marshes--flat, dreary wastes of grass-grown land, useless as

building ground and of value only for Saturday afternoon recreations of

rabbit coursing and football. The dismalness of the place is beyond

description at all times of the year. In winter it is bleak and chilly;

in summer it is hot, fly-infested, and hideously and ironically

reminiscent of real fields and real grass. The population is calculated

to change completely about every three years, and I'm sure I am not

surprised. It possesses two important blocks of buildings besides the

schools--a large jam factory and the church and clergy-house of the Eton

Mission.

Turner Road is perhaps the most hopeless of all the dozen and a half of

streets. (It is marked black, by the way, in Mr. Booth's instructive

map.) It is about a quarter of a mile long and perfectly straight. It is

intersected at one point by another street, and is composed of tall dark

houses, with flat fronts, perhaps six or seven stories in height. It is

generally fairly silent and empty, and is inhabited by the most

characteristic members of the Hackney Wick community--quiet, white-faced

men, lean women, draggled and sharp-tongued, and countless

over-intelligent children--all of the class that seldom remain long

anywhere--all of the material out of which the real criminal is

developed. No booths or stalls ever stand here; only, on Saturday

nights, there is echoed here, as in a stone-lined pit, the cries and the

wheel-noises from the busy thoroughfare a hundred yards away round the

corner. The road, as a whole, bears an aspect of desperate and fierce

dignity; there is never here the glimpse of a garden or of flowers, as

in Mortimer Road, a stone's throw away. There is nothing whatever except

the tall, flat houses, the pavements, the lampposts, the grimy

thoroughfare and the silence. The sensation of the visitor is that

anything might happen here, and that no one would be the wiser. There is

an air of horrible discretion about these houses.

* * * * *

Mrs. Partington was--indeed is (for I went to see her not two months

ago)--of a perfectly defined type. She must have been a handsome factory

girl--dark, slender, and perfectly able to take care of herself, with

thin, muscular arms, generally visible up to the elbow, hard hands, a

quantity of rather untidy hair--with the tongue of a venomous orator and

any amount of very inferior sentiment, patriotic and domestic. She has

become a lean, middle-aged woman, very upright and very strong, without

any sentiment at all, but with a great deal of very practical human

experience to take its place. She has no illusions about either this

world or the next; she has borne nine children, of which three survive;

and her husband is almost uninterruptedly out of work. However, they are

prosperous (for Turner Road), and have managed, so far, to keep their

home together.

The sunset was framed in a glow of smoky glory at the end of the street

down which Mrs. Partington was staring, resembling a rather angry

search-light turned on from the gates of heaven. The street was still

quiet; but already from the direction of the Board-school came thin and

shrill cries as the swarm of children exploded in all directions. Mrs.

Partington (she would have said) was waiting for her children--Jimmy,

Maggie and 'Erb--and there were lying within upon the bare table three

thick slices of bread and black jam; as a matter of fact, she was

looking out for her lodgers, who should have arrived by midday.

Then she became aware that they were coming, even as she looked,

advancing down the empty street _en échelon_. Two of them she knew well

enough--they had lodged with her before; but the third was to be a

stranger, and she was already interested in him--the Major had hinted at

wonderful mysteries....

So she shaded her eyes against the cold glare and watched them

carefully, with that same firm, resolute face with which she always

looked out upon the world; and even as, presently, she exchanged that

quick, silent nod of recognition with the Major and Gertie, still she

watched the brown-faced, shabby young man who came last, carrying his

bundle and walking a little lame.

"You're after your time," she said abruptly.

The Major began his explanations, but she cut them short and led the way

into the house.

(II)

I find it very difficult to record accurately the impression that Frank

made upon Mrs. Partington; but that the impression was deep and definite

became perfectly clear to me from her conversation. He hardly spoke at

all, she said, and before he got work at the jam factory he went out for

long, lonely walks across the marshes. He and the Major slept together,

it seemed, in one room, and Gertie, temporarily with the children and

Mrs. Partington in another. (Mr. Partington, at this time, happened to

be away on one of his long absences.) At meals Frank was always quiet

and well-behaved, yet not ostentatiously. Mrs. Partington found no fault

with him in that way. He would talk to the children a little before they

went to school, and would meet them sometimes on their way back from

school; and all three of them conceived for him an immense and

indescribable adoration. All this, however, would be too long to set

down in detail.

It seems to have been a certain air of pathos which Mrs. Partington

herself cast around him, which affected her the most, and I imagine her

feeling to have been largely motherly. There was, however, another

element very obviously visible, which, in anyone but Mrs. Partington, I

should call reverence.... She told me that she could not imagine why he

was traveling with the Major and Gertie, so she at least understood

something of the gulf between them.

So the first week crept by, bringing us up to the middle of December.

* * * * *

It was on the Friday night that Frank came back with the announcement

that he was to go to work at the jam factory on Monday. There was a

great pressure, of course, owing to the approach of Christmas, and Frank

was to be given joint charge of a van. The work would last, it seemed,

at any rate, for a week or two.

"You'll have to mind your language," said the Major jocosely. (He was

sitting in the room where the cooking was done and where, by the way,

the entire party, with the exception of the two men, slept; and, at this

moment, had his feet on the low mantelshelf between the saucepan and

Jimmy's cap.)

"Eh?" said Frank.

"No language allowed there," said the Major. "They're damn particular."

Frank put his cap down and took his seat on the bed.

"Where's Gertie?" he asked. ("Yes, come on, Jimmie.")

Jimmie crept up beside him, looking at him with big black, reverential

eyes. Then he leaned against him with a quick smile and closed his eyes

ecstatically. Frank put an arm round the boy to support him.

"Oh! Gertie's gone to see a friend," said the Major. "Did you want her?"

Frank said nothing, and Mrs. Partington looked from one to the other

swiftly.

Mrs. Partington had gathered a little food for thought during the last

few days. It had become perfectly evident to her that the girl was very

much in love with this young man, and that while this young man either

was, or affected to be, ignorant of it, the Major was not. Gertie had

odd silences when Frank came into the room, or yet more odd

volubilities, and Mrs. Partington was not quite sure of the Major's

attitude. This officer and her husband had had dealings together in the

past of a nature which I could not quite determine (indeed, the figure

of Mr. Partington is still a complete mystery to me, and rather a

formidable mystery); and I gather that Mrs. Partington had learned from

her husband that the Major was not simply negligible. She knew him for a

blackguard, but she seems to have been uncertain of what kind was this

black-guardism--whether of the strong or the weak variety. She was just

a little uncomfortable, therefore, as to the significance of Gertie; and

had already wondered more than once whether or no she should say a

motherly word to the young man.

* * * * *

There came a sound of footsteps up the street as Mrs. Partington ironed

a collar of Jimmie's on the dining-room table, and laid down the iron as

a tap fell on the door. The Major took out his pipe and began to fill it

as she went out to see who was knocking.

"Oh! good evening, Mrs. Partington," sounded in a clear, high-bred voice

from the street door. "May I come in for a minute or two? I heard you

had lodgers, and I thought perhaps--"

"Well, sir, we're rather upside-down just now--and--"

"Oh! I won't disturb you more than a minute," came the other voice

again. There were footsteps in the passage, and the next instant, past

the unwilling hostess, there came a young, fresh-colored clergyman,

carrying a silk hat, into the lamplight of the kitchen. Frank stood up

instantly, and the Major went so far as to take down his feet. Then he,

too, stood up.

"Good evening!" said the clergyman. "May I just come in for a minute or

two? I heard you had come, and as it's in my district--May I sit down,

Mrs. Partington?"

Mrs. Partington with sternly knit lips, swept a brown teapot, a

stocking, a comb, a cup and a crumby plate off the single unoccupied

chair, and set it a little forward near the fire. Clergymen were, to her

mind, one of those mysterious dispensations of the world for which there

was no adequate explanation at all--like policemen and men's gamblings

and horse-races. There they were, and there was no more to be said. They

were mildly useful for entertaining the children and taking them to

Southend, and in cases of absolute despair they could be relied upon for

soup-tickets or even half-crowns; but the big mysterious church, with

its gilded screen, its curious dark glass, and its white little

side-chapel, with the Morris hangings, the great clergy-house, the

ladies, the parish magazine and all the rest of it--these were simply

inexplicable. Above all inexplicable was the passion displayed for

district-visiting--that strange impulse that drove four

highly-cultivated young men in black frock-coats and high hats and

ridiculous little collars during five afternoons in the week to knock at

door after door all over the district and conduct well-mannered

conversations with bored but polite mothers of families. It was one of

the phenomena that had to be accepted. She supposed it stood for

something beyond her perceptions.

"I thought I must come in and make your acquaintance," said the

clergyman, nursing his hat and smiling at the company. (He, too,

occasionally shared Mrs. Partington's wonder as to the object of all

this; but he, too, submitted to it as part of the system.) "People come

and go so quickly, you know--"

"Very pleased to see a clergyman," said the Major smoothly. "No

objection to smoke, sir, I presume?" He indicated his pipe.

"Not at all," said the clergyman. "In fact, I smoke myself; and if Mrs.

Partington will allow me--" He produced a small pink and gilded packet

of Cinderellas. (I think he thought it brought him vaguely nearer the

people to smoke Cinderellas.)

"Oh! no objection at all, sir," put in Mrs. Partington, still a little

grimly. (She was still secretly resenting being called upon at half-past

six. You were usually considered immune from this kind of thing after

five o'clock.)

"So I thought I must just look in and catch you one evening," explained

the clergyman once more, "and tell you that we're your friends here--the

clergy, you know--and about the church and all that."

He was an extremely conscientious young man--this Mr. Parham-Carter--an

old Etonian, of course, and now in his first curacy. It was all pretty

bewildering to him, too, this great and splendid establishment, the

glorious church by Bodley, with the Magnificat in Gothic lettering below

the roof, the well-built and furnished clergy-house, the ladies' house,

the zeal, the self-devotion, the parochial machinery, the Band of

Hope, the men's and boys' clubs, and, above all, the furious

district-visiting. Of course, it produced results, it kept up the

standards of decency and civilization and ideals; it was a weight in the

balances on the side of right and good living; the clubs kept men from

the public-house to some extent, and made it possible for boys to grow

up with some chance on their side. Yet he wondered, in fits of

despondency, whether there were not something wrong somewhere.... But he

accepted it: it was the approved method, and he himself was a learner,

not a teacher.

"Very kind of you, sir," said the Major, replacing his feet on the

mantelshelf. "And at what time are the services on Sunday?"

The clergyman jumped. He was not accustomed to that sort of question.

"I ..." he began.

"I'm a strong Churchman, sir," said the Major. "And even if I were not,

one must set an example, you know. I may be narrow-minded, but I'm

particular about all that sort of thing. I shall be with you on Sunday."

He nodded reassuringly at Mr. Parham-Carter.

"Well, we have morning prayer at ten-thirty next Sunday, and the Holy

Eucharist at eleven--and, of course, at eight."

"No vestments, I hope?" said the Major sternly.

Mr. Parham-Carter faltered a little. Vestments were not in use, but to

his regret.

"Well, we don't use vestments," he said, "but--"

The Major resumed his pipe with a satisfied air.

"That's all right," he said. "Now, I'm not bigoted--my friend here's a

Roman Catholic, but--"

The clergyman looked up sharply, and for the first time became

consciously conscious of the second man. Frank had sat back again on the

bed, with Jimmie beside him, and was watching the little scene quietly

and silently, and the clergyman met his eyes full. Some vague shock

thrilled through him; Frank's clean-shaven brown face seemed somehow

familiar--or was it something else?

Mr. Parham-Carter considered the point for a little while in silence,

only half attending to the Major, who was now announcing his views on

the Establishment and the Reformation settlement. Frank said nothing at

all, and there grew on the clergyman a desire to hear his voice. He

made an opportunity at last.

"Yes, I see," he said to the Major; "and you--I don't know your name?"

"Gregory, sir," said Frank. And again a little shock thrilled Mr.

Parham-Carter. The voice was the kind of thing he had expected from that

face.

* * * * *

It was about ten minutes later, that the clergyman thought it was time

to go. He had the Major's positive promise to attend at least the

evening service on the following Sunday--a promise he did not somehow

very much appreciate--but he had made no progress with Frank. He shook

hands all round very carefully, told Jimmie not to miss Sunday-school,

and publicly commended Maggie for a recitation she had accomplished at

the Band of Hope on the previous evening; and then went out, accompanied

by Mrs. Partington, still silent, as far as the door. But as he actually

went out, someone pushed by the woman and came out into the street.

"May I speak to you a minute?" said the strange young man, dropping the

"sir." "I'll walk with you as far as the clergy-house if you'll let me."

* * * * *

When they were out of earshot of the house Frank began.

"You're Parham-Carter, aren't you?" he said. "Of Hales'."

The other nodded. (Things were beginning to resolve themselves in his

mind.)

"Well, will you give me your word not to tell a soul I'm here, and I'll

tell you who I am? You've forgotten me, I see. But I'm afraid you may

remember. D'you see?"

"All right."

"I'm Guiseley, of Drew's. We were in the same division once--up to

Rawlins. Do you remember?"

"Good Lord! But--"

"Yes, I know. But don't let's go into that. I've not done anything I

shouldn't. That's not the reason I'm like this. It's just turned out so.

And there's something else I want to talk to you about. When can I come

and see you privately? I'm going to begin work to-morrow at the jam

factory."

The other man clutched at his whirling faculties.

"To-night--at ten. Will that do?"

"All right. What am I to say--when I ring the bell, I mean?"

"Just ask for me. They'll show you straight up to my room."

"All right," said Frank, and was gone.

(III)

Mr. Parham-Carter's room in the clergy-house was of the regular

type--very comfortable and pleasing to the eye, as it ought to be for a

young man working under such circumstances; not really luxurious; pious

and virile. The walls were a rosy distemper, very warm and sweet, and

upon them, above the low oak book-cases, hung school and college groups,

discreet sporting engravings, a glorious cathedral interior, and the

Sistine Madonna over the mantelpiece. An oar hung all along one ceiling,

painted on the blade with the arms of an Oxford college. There was a

small _prie-dieu_, surmounted by a crucifix of Ober-Ammergau

workmanship: there was a mahogany writing-table with a revolving chair

set before it; there were a couple of deep padded arm-chairs, a

pipe-rack, and a row of photographs--his mother in evening dress, a

couple of sisters, with other well-bred-looking relations. Altogether,

with the curtains drawn and the fire blazing, it was exactly the kind of

room that such a wholesome young man ought to have in the East of

London.

Frank was standing on the hearth-rug as Mr. Parham-Carter came in a

minute or two after ten o'clock, bearing a small tray with a covered

jug, two cups and a plate of cake.

"Good-evening again," said the clergyman. "Have some cocoa? I generally

bring mine up here.... Sit down. Make yourself comfortable."

Frank said nothing. He sat down. He put his cap on the floor by his

chair and leaned back. The other, with rather nervous movements, set a

steaming cup by his side, and a small silver box of cigarettes, matches

and an ash-tray. Then he sat down himself, took a long pull at his

cocoa, and waited with a certain apprehensiveness.

"Who else is here?" asked Frank abruptly.

The other ran through the three names, with a short biography of each.

Frank nodded, reassured at the end.

"That's all right," he said. "All before my time, I expect. They might

come in, you know."

"Oh, no!" said the clergyman. "I told them not, and--"

"Well, let's come to business," said Frank. "It's about a girl. You saw

that man to-day? You saw his sort, did you? Well, he's a bad hat. And

he's got a girl going about with him who isn't his wife. I want to get

her home again to her people."

"Yes?"

"Can you do anything? (Don't say you can if you can't, please....) She

comes from Chiswick. I'll give you her address before I go. But I don't

want it muddled, you know."

The clergyman swallowed in his throat. He had only been ordained

eighteen months, and the extreme abruptness and reality of the situation

took him a little aback.

"I can try," he said. "And I can put the ladies on to her. But, of

course, I can't undertake--"

"Of course. But do you think there's a reasonable chance? If not, I'd

better have another try myself."

"Have you tried, then?"

"Oh, yes, half a dozen times. A fortnight ago was the last, and I really

thought--"

"But I don't understand. Are these people your friends, or what?"

"I've been traveling with them off and on since June. They belong to

you, so far as they belong to anyone. I'm a Catholic, you know--"

"Really? But--"

"Convert. Last June. Don't let's argue, my dear chap. There isn't time."

Mr. Parham-Carter drew a breath.

There is no other phrase so adequate for describing his condition of

mind as the old one concerning head and heels. There had rushed on him,

not out of the blue, but, what was even more surprising, out of the very

dingy sky of Hackney Wick (and Turner Road, at that!), this astonishing

young man, keen-eyed, brown-faced, muscular, who had turned out to be a

school-fellow of his own, and a school-fellow whose reputation, during

the three hours since they had parted, he had swiftly remembered point

by point--Guiseley of Drew's--the boy who had thrown off his coat in

early school and displayed himself shirtless; who had stolen four out of

the six birches on a certain winter morning, and had conversed affably

with the Head in school yard with the ends of the birches sticking out

below the skirts of his overcoat; who had been discovered on the fourth

of June, with an air of reverential innocence, dressing the bronze

statue of King Henry VI. in a surplice in honor of the day. And now here

he was, and from his dress and the situation of his lodging-house to be

reckoned among the worst of the loafing class, and yet talking, with an

air of complete confidence and equality of a disreputable young

woman--his companion--who was to be rescued from a yet more disreputable

companion and restored to her parents in Chiswick.

And this was not all--for, as Mr. Parham-Carter informed me

himself--there was being impressed upon him during this interview a very

curious sensation, which he was hardly able, even after consideration,

to put into words--a sensation concerning the personality and presence

of this young man which he could only describe as making him feel

"beastly queer."

* * * * *

It seems to have been about this point that he first perceived it

clearly--distinguished it, that is to say, from the whole atmosphere of

startling and suggesting mystery that surrounded him.

He looked at Frank in silence a moment or two....

There Guiseley sat--leaning back in the red leather chair, his cocoa

still untouched. He was in a villainous suit that once, probably, had

been dark blue. The jacket was buttoned up to his chin, and a grimy

muffler surrounded his neck. His trousers were a great deal too short,

and disclosed above a yellow sock, on the leg nearest to him, about four

inches of dark-looking skin. His boots were heavy, patched, and entirely

uncleaned, and the upper toe-cap of one of them gaped from the leather

over the instep. His hands were deep in his pockets, as if even in this

warm room, he felt the cold.

There was nothing remarkable there. It was the kind of figure presented

by unsatisfactory candidates for the men's club. And yet there was about

him this air, arresting and rather disconcerting....

It was a sort of electric serenity, if I understand Mr. Parham-Carter

aright--a zone of perfectly still energy, like warmth or biting cold, as

of a charged force: it was like a real person standing motionless in

the middle of a picture. (Mr. Parham-Carter did not, of course, use such

beautiful similes as these; he employed the kind of language customary

to men who have received a public school and university education, half

slang and half childishness; but he waved his hands at me and distorted

his features, and conveyed, on the whole, the kind of impression I have

just attempted to set down.)

Frank, then, seemed as much out of place in this perfectly correct and

suitable little room as an Indian prince in Buckingham Palace; or, if

you prefer it, an English nobleman (with spats) in Delhi. He was just

entirely different from it all; he had nothing whatever to do with it;

he was wholly out of place, not exactly as regarded his manner (for he

was quite at his ease), but with regard to his significance. He was as a

foreign symbol in a familiar language.

Its effect upon Mr. Parham-Carter was quite clear and strong. He

instanced to me the fact that he said nothing to Frank about his soul:

he honestly confessed that he scarcely even wished to press him to come

to Evensong on Sunday. Of course, he did not like Frank's being a Roman

Catholic; and his whole intellectual being informed him that it was

because Frank had never really known the Church of England that he had

left it. (Mr. Parham-Carter had himself learned the real nature of the

Church of England at the Pusey House at Oxford.) But there are certain

atmospheres in which the intellectual convictions are not very

important, and this was one of them. So here the two young men sat and

stared at one another, or, rather, Mr. Parham-Carter stared at Frank,

and Frank looked at nothing in particular.

"You haven't drunk your cocoa," said the clergyman suddenly.

Frank turned abruptly, took up the cup and drank the contents straight

off at one draught.

"And a cigarette?"

Frank took up a cigarette and put in his mouth.

"By the way," he said, taking it out again, "when'll you send your

ladies round? The morning's best, when the rest of us are out of the

way."

"All right."

"Well, I don't think there's anything else?"

"My dear chap," said the other, "I wish you'd tell me what it's all

about--why you're in this sort of life, you know. I don't want to pry,

but--"

Frank smiled suddenly and vividly.

"Oh, there's nothing to say. That's not the point. It's by my own choice

practically. I assure you I haven't disgraced anybody."

"But your people--"

"Oh! they're all right. There's nothing the matter with them.... Look

here! I really must be going."

He stood up, and something seemed to snap in the atmosphere as he did

so.

"Besides, I've got to be at work early--"

"I say, what did you do then?"

"Do then? What do you mean?"

"When you stood up--Did you say anything?..."

Frank looked at him bewildered.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Mr. Parham-Carter did not quite know what he had meant himself. It was a

sensation come and gone, in an instant, as Frank had moved ... a

sensation which I suppose some people would call "psychical"--a

sensation as if a shock had vibrated for one moment through every part

of his own being, and of the pleasant little warm room where he was

sitting. He looked at the other, dazed for a second or two, but there

was nothing. Those two steady black eyes looked at him in a humorous

kind of concern....

He stood up himself.

"It was nothing," he said. "I think I must be getting sleepy."

He put out his hand.

"Good-night," he said. "Oh! I'll come and see you as far as the gate."

Frank looked at him a second.

"I say," he said; "I suppose you've never thought of becoming a

Catholic?"

"My dear chap--"

"No! Well, all right.... oh! don't bother to come to the gate."

"I'm coming. It may be locked."

* * * * *

Mr. Parham-Carter stood looking after Frank's figure even after it had

passed along the dark shop fronts and was turning the corner towards

Turner Road. Then it went under the lamplight, and disappeared.

It was a drizzling, cold night, and he himself was bareheaded; he felt

the moisture run down his forehead, but it didn't seem to be happening

to him. On his right rose up the big parish-hall where the

entertainments were held, and beyond it, the east end of the great

church, dark now and tenantless; and he felt the wet woodwork of the

gate grasped in his fingers.

He did not quite know what was happening to him but everything seemed

different. A hundred thoughts had passed through his mind during the

last half hour. It had occurred to him that he ought to have asked

Guiseley to come to the clergy-house and lodge there for a bit while

things were talked over; that he ought, tactfully, to have offered to

lend him money, to provide him with a new suit, to make suggestions as

to proper employment instead of at the jam factory--all those proper,

philanthropic and prudent suggestions that a really sensible clergyman

would have made. And yet, somehow, not only had he not made them, but it

was obvious and evident when he regarded them that they could not

possibly be made. Guiseley (of Drew's) did not require them, he was on

another line altogether.... And what was that line?

Mr. Parham-Carter leaned on the gate a full five minutes considering all

this. But he arrived at no conclusion.