‘Because, m’sieur, it is too late. See, it wants but a little to

midnight. It might arouse suspicion in this place, where every brick has

an eye. To-morrow, you return to your own country. How imprudent to risk

your liberty thus, at the eleventh hour!’

His head approved the wisdom of the woman’s words. Once again, he saw her

as she was—callous, mercenary, possibly—but, for the rest, an ordinary

hard-working housewife of her class.

Again he sat down, watching the flashing points of her needles, until

his mind gave a sudden slip—and he found himself thinking with drowsy

amusement of the Sheep in ‘Alice through the Looking-glass.’

He roused himself with a violent start—to find that madame had laid down

her wool, and was watching him intently. The reflection from the lamp

fell on her eyes, lighting therein twin balls of orange flame.

‘What is it, madame?’

‘Nothing! I thought I heard a knocking at the street door, that is all.’

‘I heard nothing. But, then, I was nearly asleep.’

‘Best so.’ Her voice thickened. ‘Get all the sleep you can—in preparation

for the morrow!’

As she snatched up her knitting, he stared at her, all drowsiness

dissipated by her words. He watched her furious energy, trying the while

to conceive some adequate motive for her unusual vigil and her evident

wish for his own company.

Of a sudden, instinct supplied the knowledge.

_Madame was waiting for something to happen._

Like vultures scenting their prey, his nerves instantly swooped down on

their victim, agonising him with the refined torture of mirage. As the

parched traveller feasts hollow eyes on waving date-palm and bubbling

well, so Quality, with aching intensity of longing, saw a clear picture

of his own familiar room. He smelt the faint odour of worn leather; heard

the crackling whisper of the wood fire; felt the muzzle of his hound

moist against his hand.

Would the day never come? He looked at the clock, crookedly upheld by

misshapen gilded cupids.

Only a quarter to twelve.

Slowly, slowly, the minutes ticked away. The night was dying hard.

Presently, Quality noticed that madame had laid down her needles and was

again listening. Her tense attitude, flattened ears, and craning neck

told of an intensity of purpose that would strain her aural organs beyond

the limits of their powers.

He saw her sudden start—the involuntary wince.

‘_Footsteps_, m’sieur! Do you not hear them? Footsteps without in the

street!’

‘I can hear nothing!’

‘But they are passing this way. Open the window, and see if there is

anyone in the street!’

_What_ was she? Quality could not decide. Merely the shrewd, suspicious

housewife, with natural fears—or the composite fearsome creation of his

diseased imagination?

With the reluctant step of one who fears a snare, he walked to the

window, and, opening it, looked out into the street.

A deep tranquillity reigned without. The old houses, steeped in the milky

bath of moonshine, seemed to sway gently, as though in sleep; the sable

shadow of the drinking-fountain seemed to rock, as though the ancient

town slumbered to the croon of some unheard lullaby.

‘Ah, how peaceful!’ Madame had arisen and was now standing by his side.

Her breath, onion-flavoured from her last meal, fell on his cheek in hot

puffs.

‘What a picture! And see the leaves, how they fly!’

At a sudden gust of wind, the withered foliage arose from the bare boughs

like a flock of birds, and soared into the air in a mad ecstasy of

flight—rising, wheeling, swooping—only to sink, feebly fluttering, to the

pavement.

With a cold chill of premonition, Quality recalled his own dream of

impotent flight.

‘See, the floating leaves are like _revenants_! Or, perhaps, the

souls—ever rising in their thousands—swarming from field and trench.

Whither? Whither?—Ah!’

She recoiled with a cry as a leaf, fluttering in through the window,

brushed against her face, and then fell, brown and shrivelled, at her

feet.

She stooped and picked it up.

‘_Blasted!_’

The sound of her whisper was terrible. In the moonlight, her face

appeared to be blanched to a greenish-white hue. Involuntarily, Quality

saw, in a lightning flash of clairvoyance, the white, dripping face of a

peasant boy, with wolfish eyes glowing yellow, as he felt the edge of his

axe with tremulous fingers.

‘Ah, m’sieur, our last night together!’ Inspired by unusual affection,

madame pressed his arm. ‘To-morrow, you will be gone. But what of me?

_Hélas!_ what of me?’

‘You?’ Quality strove to speak naturally. ‘Oh, very soon I hope the

Allies will make good, and your town be again cleared of the enemy.’

‘The enemy? Ah!’

Madame broke off abruptly. Following the direction of her gaze, Quality

also looked at the fountain darkly carven against the luminous sky.

Obedient to the dictate of his mountebank nerves, it slightly altered its

position. Or was it a shape that slipped farther into the depths of its

shadow?

‘The enemy!’ Madame raised her voice shrilly, with startling lack of

caution. ‘Who is the enemy? Have you ever given a thought to the lot of

us who live in a province that to-day is French and to-morrow German? Can

one say with certainty: “This one is French; that one German”? No, no,

m’sieur! My name may be French as the wife of a French spouse, but I have

German blood in my veins—German sympathies—love of the Fatherland—deep

hatred for all his foes!’

Again the fountain moved, to give sign that it had heard.

In a last desperate effort to preserve his sanity, Quality slammed down

the window, forcing a laugh the while.

‘Come, madame! That’s not a very friendly sentiment. You cannot mean what

you say. You are overstrung—got nerves.’

‘Nerves? _Bien!_ To-night, I see always M. Lemoine.’

She sank down heavily, her fingers groping for her knitting. The steel

needles began to click with mechanical precision.

Quality looked at the clock. It wanted but three minutes to twelve.

The day was near its birth.

At the same moment, madame broke the silence.

‘Courage, m’sieur!’ Her teeth flashed in a smile. ‘We were both wrong.

There were no footsteps, after all!’

Her words, vibrant with cheerful sympathy, awoke in Quality a response

that was almost electric. Suspicion and fear melted at the warm touch

of humanity. The devils that had possessed and tormented him, went out

of him, leaving him wrapped in a foretaste of that peace that passeth

understanding.

He saw the room dimly, as though through a veil of blue transparency, in

a new guise. It was the abode of warmth and comfort—a domestic interior.

Madame, smiling over her work, was a type of tranquil femininity.

Suddenly, without warning, the all-pervading calm was shattered.

There was the sound of loud knocking on the street door. The violent

double-beat of Quality’s heart seemed almost its echo. He started

upright, every frayed nerve at utmost stretch; his eyes searching

madame’s face as though he would read therein the Riddle of the Sphinx.

There was a rapid, breathless exchange of question and answer.

‘There is some one at the door, madame.’

‘I hear.’

‘Who can it be?’

‘Who knows? Visitors, perhaps.’

‘At this hour! Why do you not open to them?’

‘Why? Marie will doubtless hear.’

In the pause that followed, the knocking again sounded, louder and more

peremptory, as though the door were battered by the impact of a mailed

fist.

Still mute to its summons, madame sat motionless, her needles flying with

incredible rapidity.

Then, higher up in the building, a door opened. Hurried shuffling

footsteps descended the stair and pattered along the passage.

‘_C’est_ Marie.’

As she spoke, Madame raised her face, and, for the first time, Quality

saw her eyes.

Swiftly he averted his own, shrinking back before that stare of unholy

guilt.

She had betrayed him.

For a fractional measure of time, he was rent by the throes of an

elemental passion to grip the woman’s throat and wring out her life in

bubbling breaths. But the wholly foreign impulse came and passed almost

simultaneously at the grating scream of a withdrawn bolt.

The sound of a man’s voice, sharp and peremptory, drowned the woman’s

quavering tones in a rapid colloquy.

Then there was silence, followed by the slam of a door.

Quality’s whole frame shook in a tempestuous ague of suspense.

Had they gone again? Was the blow to be averted at the eleventh hour?

Were his hopes yet to find consummation?

Even as he asked the question, the answer came.

There was the sound of heavy footsteps along the passage.

Once more, Quality’s hunted glance flickered around the room, with the

sharpened sense of the trapped quarry, seeking desperately for some

channel of escape.

His eyes fell upon the papers lying on the table before him. He began

to read them with dull interest. _Who_ was this Hubert Quality whose

harmlessness and integrity were vouched for in black and white! What of

him?

Bereft of all sense of identity—calmly expectant—he watched the door

burst open.

It seemed the final performance of an oft-rehearsed drama. Inside—they

were actually inside at last; these oft-dreamed-of figures of his

fears—stern-faced men, wearing the grey Prussian uniform.

Before him was the officer, seemingly magnified to unhuman stature, in

long, belted coat and spiked helmet. His eyes, blue and polar, raked the

room. His voice, sharp and metallic, gave the word of command. He was no

man, but merely a vehicle of inexorable justice—a machine that has found

its range.

Slowly, slowly, Quality arose to his feet. He stretched out his hands.

Arose—only to sink back in his seat. For, at the sound of a woman’s

laugh, he realised that he was but the spectator in another’s drama.

With a soldier on either side of her, madame stood rigid and frozen.

No need for plea or denial; in her lying outburst of apostasy to the

fountain, she had made her ultimate appeal.

As the spy passed through the doorway, Quality saw her face. And it was

even as the face of M. Lemoine.

* * * * *

The clock struck twelve.

Through the shrivelled sheath of the dead night broke the glorious

promise of the new day.

E. L. WHITE.

_IN THE NORTH SEA._

BY LIEUTENANT R.N.

The operation that I am about to describe was not one of primary

importance, nor is it likely to be chronicled in the History of the War

when that comes to be written; but it was nevertheless an incident of

some interest and hazard, and serves to demonstrate the completeness of

England’s command of the sea.

It was one day in March 1915 that we left our base and steamed eastward

across the North Sea towards the enemy’s coast. We were not a strong

force, but we were all fast ships, light cruisers and destroyers,

and could show a clean pair of heels to any German big ships that we

might meet. It was not expected, however, that the Germans would show

themselves outside their ports, for it was less than two months since

the _Blucher_ had met her end at the hands of Beatty’s battle-cruisers,

and the German squadrons were not prepared as yet, either morally or

materially, for another encounter.

Accompanying us, that is escorted by us, were three seaplane carriers,

the object of our operations being a repetition of the Christmas Day air

raid.

All the way across we had fine calm weather, and our hopes ran high that

the conditions would be sufficiently favourable for launching aircraft;

for aircraft, and especially seaplanes which are encumbered with heavy

air-resisting floats, are still sufficiently in their infancy to require

very favourable weather conditions if they are to operate successfully at

sea.

At daylight on the following morning we found ourselves some thirty

odd miles off the enemy’s coast in a position favourable for launching

our attack, and since, coincidently, some wily astrologer, in a fit of

verbose optimism, had prophesied a naval battle for this date we had

considerable hopes of ‘something doing.’

As day broke a heavy mist lay across our horizon which, spreading outward

from the coast, limited visibility to two or three miles. We assured

ourselves, however, that as soon as the sun rose the mist would clear,

and so for about half an hour the squadron manœuvred to and fro, the

while optimist and pessimist, according to their respective fancies,

conceived momentary, and usually imaginary, changes in the density of the

mist.

The pilots of the seaplanes were rapidly swallowing an early breakfast—it

is one of the outstanding disadvantages of war that one has to eat and

fight at times altogether repellent to the digestion—or else, with

conscientious mechanics, were giving their engines a final test, as the

familiar roar of the gnomes echoing from the carriers plainly told us.

But ere long the optimists proved themselves the truer prophets, for by 7

A.M. or so the mist was perceptibly thinner, and the flagship signalled

the course which would bring us to our exact destination.

Stationed on each side of us as a submarine screen were divisions of

destroyers, whilst the seaplane carriers, hauling out of line, formed up

separately with their own destroyer escort.

At about 7.45 the preparatory signal flew from the flagship’s masthead,

and with all hands at the guns we stood by, whilst the seaplane carriers

prepared to hoist out their machines. But, alas for the aspirations of

man, at this very moment a thick bank of fog gathered ahead of us, and in

less than five minutes the squadron was enveloped in a ‘pea-soup’ fog,

hiding ship from ship as effectively as if a cloud of poison gas had been

launched at us.

Flying was definitely off, but only to be replaced by another game, for

we were now steaming twenty knots direct at Germany, and it would ill

befit the pride of the British Navy if a squadron of her daisiest ships

stranded helplessly on the Hun coast.

But here was a problem. Before you turn a squadron the amount of the

turn must be indicated to all ships; yet here visual signals were

impossible—they would not have been visual in such a fog; syren signals

were inadvisable on account of their noisy advertisement, and also the

process of sound signalling is very slow; a wireless signal was an

alternative, and was the quickest and surest way, but it was a way very

liable to inform the enemy as to our whereabouts, for an English wireless

call is as different to a German one as a gentleman to a Hun, so that any

signal we made would be easily picked up by adjacent enemy stations, and

the ‘strength’ of the signals would tell them how close we were.

War, however, is a succession of risks, and since the need demanded, the

signal was made. (One hopes it caused a flutter in the German dovecots.)

The leading ships turned a right angle to starboard by two successive

turns of four points, the rest of the squadron followed in their wake,

and for a few minutes we ran parallel to the coast; the same signals and

manœuvre repeated, and we had reversed our original course, and were

steaming seawards with our stems to Germany.

How simple it sounds, doesn’t it? but the practical execution of such

signals is not so easy in a fog, when the guide you are groping after

cannot be seen and is able to show herself only by the bubbles which

rise in her wake. Add to this that you have all had to reduce your speed

by signal, which means that if you obey the signal a minute too late

your excess speed causes you to rush up alongside your next ahead, or if

you obey too soon you will drop astern and can no longer pick out those

invaluable swirls and bubbles. But, worst danger of all, if one ship

misses the signal and holds steadily on her course whilst her consorts

ahead and astern and on each side of her turn at right angles, what is

going to prevent a collision? ‘Joss,’ and ‘joss’ in large quantities, is

the only preventative I can cite, and this was the very element that was

absent that day.

One of the rear destroyers was the ‘lucky party’ who missed the

signal—the first alter course signal by wireless—and she continued on her

course, whilst those ahead and outside her altered across her bows.

The aforesaid ‘joss’ might have caused her to cross the line through a

gap, but instead there suddenly loomed right ahead of her, out of the

dense pall of fog, the blurred silhouette of a light cruiser, and before

ever the engines could be reversed or the helm put over she had crashed

bows on at twenty knots into the beam of the cruiser.

The comparatively frail bows of the destroyer crumpled under the blow

like so much brown paper, and the boat recoiled with fifteen feet of her

bow ‘concertina-ed’ in.

Yet never a soul on board of her was hurt. ‘Joss’ certainly made up

leeway there, but in the bigger vessel such was not the case. The impact

of the blow had lifted a torpedo tube off its mounting and had thrown it

inboard against the casings, crushing five unfortunate men, of whom three

lost their lives.

In addition the hull of the ship had suffered considerable damage, so

that her speed was reduced to a bare ten knots, whilst the destroyer, at

first able to steam six knots, could soon make no headway at all.

And all this, mark you, within thirty miles of the German coast in a

‘pea-soup’ fog, so that no sooner had the two ships collided and fallen

apart than they were lost to sight of each other and of the remainder

of the fleet, who continued their groping course seaward, the majority

unaware that aught was amiss.

One destroyer, however, had noted the accident, and altering out from her

station stood by her damaged consort and forthwith made preparations to

take her in tow; for if one thing was more evident than another, it was

the desirability of getting the damaged ships away to seaward before the

fog should lift leaving them to be discovered by some inquisitive Hun

submarine or aircraft patrol.

A wireless signal—it had to be done—was sent as soon as possible to the

flagship from the damaged cruiser, and the squadron turned back on their

track to try to locate and assist the damaged craft. But noon came—it was

soon after 8 A.M. when the two ships collided—and there was no sign of

the destroyer. The fog still hung thick over us all. Four P.M. came and

passed and still we searched anxiously to and fro, peering continually

into the thick wall of fog, and groping vaguely and blindly after our

next ahead, catching a glimpse now and again of her mast or funnels only

to lose her completely the next minute, and recommence the chase of her

wake, assisted periodically by a fog buoy she veered astern.

From time to time, raucously and rashly, we would make signals on our

syren hoping that the cripples would hear us, and periodically we tried

wireless signals; but all to no effect, and night came leaving us still

anxious for, and out of touch of our destroyer.

The damaged light cruiser was making her own way back to port, and two

more destroyers that had lost touch with us during our fog manœuvring

were also ordered home, but we should have been much happier for news of

our ‘lame duck.’

The Germans still appeared to be unaware of our presence, despite our

proximity to their coasts, but at any moment some prowling submarine

might find us and give the show away, forcing us to scupper the destroyer

lest she should fall into the enemy’s hands.

During the night the ships of our squadron were spread a couple of miles

apart, so as to search over a greater area, but dawn on the next day

came and still never a sign of our objective. We had received a signal

of her estimated position, but neither she nor we were at all sure of

our positions—it is not possible to be so in the North Sea amongst the

variable currents, especially so in this case after so many alterations

of course and speed and when it has not been possible to get a fix from

the land or observations of the sun or stars for thirty-six hours. But

with the new day the fog drifted away and there was soon a visibility of

three or four miles.

Mr. Clerk of the Weather, however, was apparently unsatisfied with the

capers he had already led us, and now substituted for the fog a rising

wind and sea, so that we had visions of the damaged craft foundering

before we might pick her up.

At 9 A.M. the flagship ordered one of the light cruisers to make all

preparations for taking the destroyer in tow as soon as met with, but not

until 2 P.M., thirty hours after the collision, did we at last sight her.

She made a weird sight.

Her crumpled bows, unable to stand the strain of the ship’s motion any

longer, had fallen off into the sea, so that from another ship one could

look right into her and see her storerooms and other compartments, whilst

the muzzle of her foremost gun, at ordinary times twenty feet or so back

from her bows, now protruded over the ‘front’ of the ship like a tree

outgrowing from a cliff.

The men’s living spaces right forward had retired to the bottom of the

North Sea, and the waves were rolling in, unhindered, against the capstan

engine, anchor chain lockers, and foremost mess decks. Yet the ship was

still seaworthy, for a transverse bulkhead, which stretches across the

ship and runs from the foc’sle deck right down to the keel, was keeping

her watertight and preventing other compartments from being flooded—no

small advertisement for the efficient work of our Corps of Naval

Constructors.

The large area of this bulkhead, however, made it impossible to tow the

ship bows first, for the pressure against it under such conditions would

be tremendous and too much even for the efficiency of her construction.

The only alternative, therefore, was to tow her stern first. We knew this

would be a fairly difficult operation, for she had already been twice in

tow of the destroyer that had originally stood by her and each time the

strain of the tow had parted the wires.

It was after an hour and a half’s work, by about 3 P.M., that we managed

to get our wires into her, for it is no easy task in a seaway when one

cannot have a boat, but must steam past as close to the other ship as

safety will permit, towing astern of you a small hawser with a cask at

the end, which the ship to be towed endeavours to pick up.

Then if she gets it you attach to the small hawser a larger hemp hawser,

and to that the big wire by which you will tow, one end of which she

hauls in and makes fast to herself, whilst you have the other end secured

to your stern, and off you go. At least so you should in theory, but in

this case we had secured the wire but two or three minutes when a wave

lifted us up and simultaneously swung the destroyer’s stern off in an

opposite direction, throwing a heavy strain on the wire which forthwith

parted; so we had to start again.

This time we used the very largest wire we had, which was correspondingly

more difficult to handle and harder to get to the destroyer, and not

until 6 P.M., just as the light started to fail, were we able to get it

to the destroyer. And all this time, you must remember, we made a sitting

target for a submarine.

The remainder of the squadron were steaming round and round us acting as

far as they could as a submarine screen, and individually, I don’t doubt,

cursing us heartily for the length of time we were taking. But no enemy

craft found us (such opportunities will be missed by fleets which operate

in canals), and as twilight settled in we steamed slowly ahead, with

rising hopes that this time the tow might hold and that we might succeed

in getting her in.

Steaming at revolutions ordinarily sufficient to give us eight knots we

made good four to five.

The sea was gradually getting up all the time, and the destroyer was

towing crabwise through the water, not dead astern of us so as to give

a straight haul, but out on our quarter which put variable strains and

jerks on her and on the wire; more especially on the latter at the

‘nip’—that part where the wire led into the two ships, and where the bend

due to her not being dead astern of us, came in.

The wind too was on our beam, and the seas rolling on swept the

destroyer’s stern away from us causing our wire, a second later, to bring

it back with a sudden jerk. Still for half an hour or so all went well,

and the remainder of the squadron closed around us, zigzagging to and

fro, as we all shaped course for home.

But fate, as you will guess, had no intention of giving up the

game so easily, and at 6.45 P.M. our wire broke at the ‘nip.’ The

‘I-told-you-so’s’ were in evidence.

We had now no other wire strong enough to tow by, and so, to the

disappointment of us all, another cruiser was detailed to take on the

job. Disappointing as it was to us, it must have been far more than

that to the destroyer. For thirty-six hours she had lain helpless, with

alternate fears of being captured or of breaking up, and that after a

sudden collision which would have been sufficient to shake the nerves of

many. Four times had she hauled in towing wires, and on each occasion

they had parted soon afterwards. Pitched and tossed about in the North

Sea swell, tired and wet and with a good deal of their kit gone under, I

should think that many of her crew were in that state of mind which is

called ‘fed up.’ And now she had to start the game again.

But, profiting by our experience of how great the strain was under

the particular conditions, the new cruiser took special precautions,

the which I will not detail lest the Bosches benefit. By very clever

seamanship and after over three hours’ hard work, mostly in the dark, the

destroyer was again in tow, this time more securely; and so we started

again on our journey home.

There is not really much more worth relating, for the wind, sea, a couple

of snowstorms, our anxious lookout at daylight next morning to see if any

enemy were about, and our precautions against submarine attack—these are

everyday war events, and make dull reading.

Suffice it to say that our command of the sea was a sufficiently real

factor to allow the cripple to be towed home unmolested a few hundred

miles, and we came to our base as if no enemy fleet were within a

thousand miles—who can accuse the Teuton of no sense of humour when he

designated the water we steamed over the ‘German Ocean’?

So, comparatively tamely, concluded a trip which had at one time promised

unusual excitement, but which anyhow gave us for four days some interest

out of the ordinary, besides to some a fair measure of anxiety.

But wouldn’t Old Tirpitz be peevish if he knew of the chance he had

missed?

PRESS BUREAU: PASSED FOR PUBLICATION.

_MASTER GEORGE POLLOCK._

George Frederick Pollock, formerly senior Master of the King’s Bench and

King’s Remembrancer, was born on June 1, 1821, and died on May 20, 1915,

just before his ninety-fourth birthday. His faculties, his interests, and

his affections remained as fresh as ever up to the last. Apart from his

unusual personal charm as a human being, his range of reminiscences was

extraordinary, not only by reason of his great age and retentive memory,

but also of his native and characteristic versatility. I often urged

him to collect them, and indeed a publisher offered to send a shorthand

writer for as long as was necessary to dictate a volume. But he said that

what he wanted was a ‘Boswell,’ and even if such a prodigy had been found

George Pollock would most probably have been too tired or bored to go on

for many days continuously.

In more recent years I made notes of most conversations that I had with

him, but I fear that a full harvest could only have been achieved by

everyone following my example, and even my own jottings were sadly casual.

I remember being startled by his remarking one day how delighted he was

to see G.R. on the mail-carts. It made him feel ‘quite a boy again.’ He

had not seen any of the Georges, but had been astonished, walking down

Whitehall as a youth, to see a genial gentleman suddenly look out of his

carriage window and put out his tongue. This turned out to be His Majesty

King William IV, who wished to indicate to some old naval friends on the

pavement that his elevation to the throne had not made him too proud. No

wonder that my eldest daughter, on being taken to see him, promptly asked

him for his impressions of the execution of Charles I, and was sadly

disappointed to find that her great-great-uncle had not attended the

ceremony.

George Pollock was no mere lawyer. He was, as his father, the Chief

Baron, used proudly to announce to his friends, a first-rate mechanic,

and had made a complete study and hobby of clocks and watches.[11] The

family watches were always chosen by him and are still going as no other

watches go, though they were always a little erratic at first. His

accurate observation was never at fault, as when he took up a silver

teapot at a wedding reception from among the presents and remarked that

it had a hole in it. He told me that when he was leaving Wimbledon he

saw his old plumber and said ‘I wish you could explain how it was that

I always had to get my pipes put right once a year until ten years ago,

when you were too busy and I had to attend to them myself, since when

they have never gone wrong.’ The plumber smiled significantly and replied

‘Well, sir, we must live somehow.’ Members of the family who had mishaps

with bicycles used to find that the mere mention of the name of Pollock

evoked kindly welcome and sometimes even an offer to repair the machine

free of charge. This was no doubt partly due to his own ungrudging

benevolence. In an age when we are all being exhorted to economise it is

refreshing to remember that an official in the Law Courts not so very

long ago penetrated a large crowd on a London pavement and discovered

George Pollock extended over a grating from which he was trying with an

umbrella to extract a penny which an urchin in tears professed to have

dropped down the abyss. He was a well-known arbitrator in patent cases.

He had some knowledge of astronomy, and counted Sir George Airey and Sir

Norman Lockyer among his friends, not to mention other scientific men

such as Faraday, Owen, and Hooker.

The John Murray of his day consulted him as to publishing 500 copies

of the ‘Origin of Species.’ Murray was extremely sceptical as to the

soundness of the work, and thought 500 copies as large a number as it was

prudent to print. He remarked that the Darwinian theory was as absurd

as though one should contemplate a fruitful union between a poker and a

rabbit. George Pollock read the book and remarked that the contents were

probably beyond the comprehension of any scientific man then living. But

he advised publishing 1000 copies, because Mr. Darwin had so brilliantly

surmounted the formidable obstacles which he was honest enough to put in

his own path. This is an interesting example of the way in which a man of

good general ability, accustomed as a lawyer is to apply broad principles

of reason to different kinds of subject-matter, may arrive at sounder

conclusions than a specialist.

Talks with him were always a liberal education, because they gave

first-hand impressions of an excellent observer in regard to many

characters whose biographies are often written by persons who have not

even seen the subject of the biography. It was thus thrilling for me, who

had always admired the career of Mrs. Norton and read a recent account

of her life, to hear that at a time when the differences between Mr. and

Mrs. George Norton were most acute the Chief Baron put his house at the

disposal of both so that Mrs. Norton should see her children there. She

was accustomed to meet them in a room at one end of which George Pollock

(on at least one occasion) sat and read the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’

while she played with them at the other end. Usually his sister Mary was

there. The heroines of history are not always wholly approved by their

contemporaries. An old man, long since dead, told me that the advent of

Florence Nightingale was not at first popular with the soldiers in the

Crimea, because they felt embarrassed by the idea of female nursing.

Similarly, Mrs. Norton was thought by some to be ‘playing to the

gallery,’ and in the opinion of Baron Martin ‘talked to too many men’ on

one occasion when crossing the Atlantic. But George Pollock nevertheless

sympathised, as his father did, with her position as regards her children.

His talk, as might be expected, shed light on social usages of the past.

One night the Duchess of Somerset was driving near Wimbledon and her

carriage fell into a ditch. George Pollock was passing and assisted her

and the coachman to get the vehicle out of the ditch and collect various

toys and pieces of china back into the carriage. The next morning the

Duchess, ‘in a refined manner,’ sent a military friend to convey her

acknowledgments but did not come herself, since, for aught she knew, her

benefactor might have had a ‘vulgar wife who would return the call.’

He mentioned that baths first came into fashion in the ’fifties, and

caused much annoyance to a certain old colonel because they encumbered

the officers’ luggage. ‘These young men,’ he complained, ‘keep washing

themselves till there is not a bit of natural smell about them.’ The only

unpardonable smell was of course tobacco. Even onions were preferable.

Though the late King Edward introduced smoking as far as he could,

even when his hosts drove him into the stable-room, George Pollock,

despite his respect for the Church, felt it his duty, even in 1883, to

remonstrate with a curate who smoked a cigar at a garden party.

His attitude to the divorce question interested me. He mentioned that all

the lawyers of the time strongly supported the Act of 1857 in spite of

ecclesiastical opposition. But he felt himself ‘incompetent to form an

opinion’ on the question, which curiously illustrated the survival of the

old Catholic tradition that marriage should be an institution entirely

subject to ecclesiastical control and jurisdiction.

He naturally told many stories of his father and the law. One of his

earliest memories was of mischievously abstracting Scarlett’s spectacles

from the back of his coat just as he was about to read an important

letter to the jury. This was in 1833, when he was a boy of twelve. He

mentioned how his brother judges would give way to Maule for fear of his

ability and sharp tongue till on one occasion Maule, after delivering

judgment and then hearing all the other judgments, suddenly remarked:

‘After mature consideration, I differ from my learned brothers. I

have come to the conclusion that my judgment was wrong, and the first

misgivings that occurred to me about it were due to the fact that my

brothers agreed with it.’

As a boy of eighteen he had attended the famous trial of John Frost

and others whom his father ably defended on a charge of high treason

at Monmouth. He used to relate with great gusto the objection to the

proceedings taken on the ground that the list of witnesses had not been

handed to the prisoners _with_ the copy of the indictment as prescribed

by the Act of Queen Anne. It was in that trial that a woman was closely

cross-examined about the movements of her husband who had returned home

very late and come straight up to bed. ‘As he was getting into bed,’ she

said, ‘his words were⸺’ But here she was sharply interrupted by Counsel:

‘You must not tell us what he _said_, because that is not evidence; you

can only tell us what he _did_.’

His grandfather, David Pollock, had come to London from Berwick and

started a saddler and military contractor’s business at Charing Cross.

David’s father was a bookseller at Berwick-on-Tweed, and his grandfather

(George Pollock thought) was a cobbler at Perth in the seventeenth

century. David died in 1815, and was embarrassed by the fact that

Parliament did not allow enough money to cover the liabilities of the

Duke of York, not to mention those of the Duke of Kent. He was sometimes

in attendance on Royalty itself, when he had to present himself in Court

dress. But David died solvent in 1815, and his business was carried

on for two years afterwards by his widow and his son William. William

died early at the age of thirty-five. Another son, David, who became

before his death Lord Chief Justice of Bombay, was sixty-seven at the

time of his death. He has been described as a singularly lovable man.

Of the other sons George, my great-uncle’s godfather, was ultimately a

Field-Marshal, and Frederick the Chief Baron of the Exchequer. It was

quite usual for one of the sons to sleep under the counter if the house

was more full than usual, and more than one slept there on the occasion

of David’s funeral. The other son, John, was an adventurous solicitor. He

was renowned for his prowess at racquets and generally as an athlete. In

the same day he once walked from London to Windsor, won a foot race, and

walked back again.

But the hero of George Pollock’s stories was usually his father, the

Chief Baron, whose judgments bulk so large in the Common Law of England.

Unlike his brother John, he thought taking exercise a bore unless it took

the form of dancing or of leaping over tables and chairs, as a friend

of mine who is still alive saw him doing at an hotel in Norwich after

receiving a pair of white gloves, when he was about seventy-five years

old. He drove up from Hatton every day in his family coach, though his

sedentary habits never prevented his doing justice to his excellent brown

sherry, a few bottles of which I once had the privilege of possessing

in my own cellar. Though he kept very open house at Hatton, he had a

frugal mind in less essential matters. Thus, on consulting Sir Harris

Nicolas in regard to tracing the family coat of arms, he was told that

it would cost £100 in London, but subsequently discovered that the same

operation could be performed in Edinburgh for £20, which gave him great

satisfaction. There is a romantic legend that the Pollocks were ruined by

the Hanoverians in the Rebellion of 1715, and that the Pollock boar is

to be found on a prison wall in Carlisle Castle, presumably carved by a

Pollock in captivity. But the Chief Baron cared little for these things,

and derived pleasure from recording that his father was a saddler and

that he owed much to his mother’s co-operation in the family business and

belief in himself when a boy. His career at Trinity College, Cambridge,

was mainly due to her unsparing efforts.

He had a very human sympathy with prisoners. I have a volume of his

notes of evidence, and in one of the murder trials he lays great stress

to the jury on the fact that there was no Court of Criminal Appeal.

There is a story of a certain burglar having been induced by the prison

chaplain to atone for his crime by pleading guilty before the Chief

Baron. But after an interval in the Court the burglar returned to the

chaplain _acquitted_. ‘When I saw that good kind man sitting in Court,’

he explained, ‘I knew I should be acquitted and really could not bring

myself to plead guilty.’

I have put together as much as I can have recorded of George Pollock’s

reminiscences. Probably there is better material at the disposal of

others, but perhaps this attempt to collect what I heard may stimulate a

better qualified relation or friend to write something worthier of him.

Such a collection would to some extent mitigate the loss of his winning

personality. For a man to be missed as he now is after dying on the verge

of his ninety-fourth birthday shows how little old age can extinguish

a rare and singularly loving spirit. Up to the last he answered every

letter by return of post, and his letters were as affectionate as on

the other hand they were businesslike when the occasion demanded. We

shall not see his like again. Even his type is gone. The combination of

kindliness, geniality, and pawky humour that distinguished him is not to

be found in our day.

‘Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus

Tam cari capitis?’

E. S. P. HAYNES.

FOOTNOTES

[11] He chose the clock which now stands in the smoking-room of the

Athenæum.

_LADY CONNIE._

BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.

Copyright, 1915, by Mrs. Humphry Ward in the United States of America.

CHAPTER XVI.

Constance Bledlow stepped out of the Bletchley train into the crowded

Oxford station. Annette was behind her. As they made their way towards

the luggage van, Connie saw a beckoning hand and face. They belonged to

Nora Hooper, and in another minute Connie found herself taken possession

of by her cousin. Nora was deeply sunburnt. Her colour was more garishly

red and brown, her manner more trenchant than ever. At sight of Connie

her face flushed with a sudden smile, as though the owner of the face

could not help it. Yet they had only been a few minutes together before

Connie had discovered that, beneath the sunburn, there was a look of

tension and distress, and that the young brown eyes, usually so bright

and bold, were dulled with fatigue. But to notice such things in Nora was

only to be scorned. Connie held her tongue.

‘Can’t you leave Annette to bring the luggage, and let us walk up?’ said

Nora.

Connie assented, and the two girls were soon in the long and generally

crowded street leading to the Corn-market. Nora gave rapidly a little

necessary information. Term had just begun, and Oxford was ‘dreadfully

full.’ She had got another job of copying work at the Bodleian, for which

she was being paid by the University Press, and what with that and the

work for her coming exam., she was ‘pretty driven.’ But she liked it;

that was what suited her. Alice and her mother were ‘all right.’

‘And Uncle Ewen?’ said Connie.

Nora paused a moment.

‘Well, you won’t think he looks any the better for his holiday,’ she said

at last, with an attempt at a laugh. ‘And of course he’s doing ten times

too much work. Hang work! I loathe work: I want to “do nothing for ever

and ever.”’

‘Why don’t you set about it, then?’ laughed Connie.

‘Because⸺’ Nora began impetuously; and then shut her lips. She diverged

to the subject of Mr. Pryce. They had not seen or heard anything of him

for weeks, she said, till he had paid them an evening call, the night

before—the first evening of the new term.

Connie interrupted.

‘Oh, but that reminds me,’ she said eagerly. ‘I’ve got an awfully nice

letter—to-day—from Lord Glaramara. Mr. Pryce is to go up and see him.’

Nora whistled.

‘You have! Well, that settles it. He’ll now graciously allow himself to

propose. And then we shall all pretend to be greatly astonished. Alice

will cry, and mother will say, “She never expected to lose her daughter

so soon”—etc. What a humbug everybody is!’ said the child, bitterly, with

more emphasis than grammar.

‘But suppose he doesn’t get anything!’ cried Connie, alarmed at such a

sudden jump from the possible to the certain.

‘Oh, but he will! He’s the kind of person that gets things,’ said Nora

contemptuously. ‘Well, we wanted a bit of good news!’

Connie jumped at the opening.

‘Dear Nora!—have things been going wrong? You look awfully tired. Do tell

me!’

Nora checked herself at once. ‘Oh, not much more than usual,’ she said

repellently. ‘And what about you, Connie? Aren’t you very bored to be

coming back here, after all your grand times?’

They had emerged into the Corn. Before them was the old Church of St.

Mary Magdalen, and the modern pile of Balliol. In the distance stretched

the Broad, over which the October evening was darkening fast; the

Sheldonian in the far distance, with its statued railing; and the gates

of Trinity on the left. The air was full of bells, and the streets of

undergraduates; a stream of young men taking fresh possession, as it

were, of the grey city, which was their own as soon as they chose to come

back to it. The Oxford damp, the Oxford mist was everywhere, pierced by

lamps, and window-lights, and the last red of a stormy sunset.

Connie drew in her breath.

‘No, I am not sorry. I am very glad to be back—though my aunts have been

great dears to me.’

‘I’ll bet anything Annette isn’t glad to be back—after the Langmoors!’

said Nora, grimly.

Connie laughed.

‘She’ll soon settle in. What do you think?’ She slipped her arm into her

cousin’s. ‘I’m coming down to breakfast!’

‘You’re not! I never heard such nonsense! Why should you?’

Connie sighed.

‘I think I must begin to do something.’

‘Do something! For goodness’ sake, don’t!’ Nora’s voice was fierce. ‘I

did think _you_ might be trusted!’

‘To carry out _your_ ideals? So kind of you!’

‘If you take to muddling about with books and lectures and wearing ugly

clothes, I give you up,’ said Nora, firmly.

‘Nora, dear, I’m the most shocking ignoramus. Mayn’t I learn something?’

‘Mr. Sorell may teach you Greek. I don’t mind that.’

Connie sighed again, and Nora stole a look at the small pale face under

the sailor hat. It seemed to her that her cousin had somehow grown

beautiful in these months of absence. On her arrival in May, Connie’s

good looks had been a freakish and variable thing, which could be often

and easily disputed. She could always make a certain brilliant—or

bizarre—effect, by virtue of her mere slenderness and delicacy—combined

with the startling beauty of her eyes and hair. But the touch of sarcasm,

of a half-hostile remoteness, in her look and manner, were often enough

to belie the otherwise delightful impression of first youth, to suggest

something older and sharper than her twenty years had any right to be. It

meant that she had been brought up in a world of elder people, sharing

from her teens in its half amused, half sceptical judgments of men and

things. Nothing was to be seen of it in her roused moments of pleasure or

enthusiasm; at other times it jarred, as though one caught a glimpse of

autumn in the spring.

But since she and Nora had last met, something had happened. Some heat of

feeling or of sympathy had fused in her the elements of being; so that a

more human richness and warmth, a deeper and tenderer charm breathed from

her whole aspect. Nora, though so much the younger, had hitherto been the

comforter and sustainer of Connie; now for the first time, the tired girl

felt an impulse—firmly held back—to throw her arms round Connie’s neck,

and tell her own troubles.

She did not betray it however. There were so many things she wanted to

know. First—how was it that Connie had come back so soon? Nora understood

there were invitations—to the Tamworths’ and others. Mr. Sorell had

reported that the Langmoors wished to carry their niece with them on a

round of country-house visits in the autumn, and that Connie had firmly

stuck to it that she was due at Oxford for the beginning of term.

‘Why didn’t you go?’ said Nora, half scoffing—‘with all those frocks

wasting in the drawers!’

Connie retorted that as for parties, Oxford had seemed to her in the

summer term the most gay and giddy place she had ever been in, and that

she had always understood that in the October and Lent terms people dined

out every night.

‘But all the same—one can _think_ a little here,’ she said, slowly.

‘You didn’t care a bit about that when you first came!’ cried Nora. ‘You

despised us because we weren’t soldiers, or diplomats, or politicians.

You thought we were a little priggish provincial world where nothing

mattered. You were sorry for us because we had _only_ books and ideas!’

‘I wasn’t!’ said Connie, indignantly. ‘Only I didn’t think Oxford was

everything—and it isn’t! Nora!’—she looked round the Oxford street with

a sudden ardour, her eyes running over the groups of undergraduates

hurrying back to hall—‘do you think these English boys could ever—well,

_fight_—and _die_—for what you call ideas—for their country—as Otto

Radowitz could die for Poland?’

‘Try them!’ The reply rang out defiantly. Connie laughed.

‘They’ll never have the chance. Who’ll ever attack England? If we had

only something—something splendid, and not too far away!—to look back

upon, as the Italians look back on Garibaldi—or to long and to suffer

for, as the Poles long and suffer for Poland!’

‘We shall some day!’ said Nora, hopefully. ‘Mr. Sorell says every nation

gets its turn to fight for its life. I suppose Otto Radowitz has been

talking Poland to you?’

‘He talks it—and he _lives_ it,’ said Connie, with emphasis. ‘It’s

marvellous!—it shames one.’

Nora shrugged her shoulders.

‘But what can he _do_—with his poor hand! You know Mr. Sorell has taken a

cottage for him at Boar’s Hill—above Hinksey?’

Yes, Connie knew. She seemed suddenly on her guard.

‘But he can’t live alone?’ said Nora. ‘Who on earth’s going to look after

him?’

Connie hesitated. Down a side street she perceived the stately front

of Marmion, and at the same moment a tall man emerging from the dusk

crossed the street and entered the Marmion gate. Her heart leapt. No!

Absurd! He and Otto had not arrived yet. But already the Oxford dark,

and the beautiful Oxford distances were peopled for her with visions and

prophecies of hope. The old and famous city that had seen so much youth

bloom and pass, spoke magic things to her with its wise, friendly voice.

Aloud, she said—

‘You haven’t heard? Mr. Falloden’s going to live with him.’

Nora stopped in stupefaction.

‘_What?_’

Connie repeated the information—adding—

‘I daresay Mr. Sorell didn’t speak of it to you, because—he hates it.’

‘I suppose it’s just a theatrical _coup_,’ said Nora, passionately, as

they walked on—‘to impress the public.’

‘It isn’t!—it isn’t anything of the kind. And Otto had only to say No.’

‘It’s ridiculous!—preposterous! They’ll clash all day long.’

Connie replied with difficulty, as though she had so pondered and

discussed this matter with herself that every opinion about it seemed

equally reasonable.

‘I don’t think so. Otto wishes it.’

‘But why—but _why_?’ insisted Nora. ‘Oh, Connie!—as if Douglas Falloden

could look after anybody but himself!’

Then she repented a little. Connie smiled, rather coldly.

‘He looked after his father,’ she said, quietly. ‘I told you all that in

my letters. And you forget how it was—that he and Otto came across each

other again.’

Nora warmly declared that she had not forgotten it, but that it did not

seem to her to have anything to do with the extraordinary proposal that

the man more responsible than anyone else for the maiming—possibly for

the death—of Otto Radowitz, if all one heard about him were true, should

be now installed as his companion and guardian during these critical

months.

She talked with obvious and rather angry common sense, as one who had not

passed her eighteenth birthday for nothing.

But Connie fell silent. She would not discuss it, and Nora was obliged to

let the subject drop.

* * * * *

Mrs. Hooper, whose pinched face had grown visibly older, received her

husband’s niece with an evident wish to be kind. Alice, too, was almost

affectionate, and Uncle Ewen came hurrying out of his study to greet her.

But Connie had not been an hour in the house before she had perceived

that everybody in it was preoccupied and unhappy; unless, indeed, it

were Alice, who had evidently private thoughts of her own, which, to a

certain extent, released her from the family worries.

What was the matter? She was determined to know.

It happened that she and Alice went up to bed together. Nora had been

closeted with her father in the little school-room on the ground-floor,

since nine o’clock, and when Connie proposed to look in and wish them

good-night, Alice said uncomfortably—

‘Better not. They’re—they’re very busy.’

Connie ruminated. At the top of the stairs, she turned—

‘Look here—do come in to me, and have a talk!’

Alice agreed, after a moment’s hesitation. There had never been any

beginnings of intimacy between her and Connie, and she took Connie’s

advance awkwardly.

The two girls were however soon seated in Connie’s room where a blazing

fire defied the sudden cold of a raw and bleak October. The light danced

on Alice’s beady black eyes and arched brows, on her thin but very red

lips, on the bright patch of colour in each cheek. She was more than

ever like a Watteau sketch in black chalk, heightened with red, and the

dress she wore, cut after the pattern of an eighteenth century sacque,

according to an Oxford fashion of that day, fell in admirably with the

natural effect. Connie had very soon taken off her tea-gown, loosened

and shaken out her hair, and put on a white garment in which she felt at

ease. Alice noticed, as Nora had done, that Connie was fast becoming a

beauty; but whether the indisputable fact was to be welcomed or resented

had still to be decided.

Connie had no sooner settled herself on the small sofa she had managed to

fit into her room than she sprang up again:—

‘Stupid!—Where _are_ those letters!’ She rummaged in various drawers and

bags, hit upon what she wanted, after an impetuous hunt, and returned to

the fire.

‘Do you know I think Mr. Pryce has a good chance of that post? I got this

to-day.’

She held out a letter, smiling. Alice flushed and took it. It was from

Lord Glaramara, and it concerned that same post in the Conservative

Central Office on which Herbert Pryce had had his eyes for some time.

The man holding it had been ‘going’ for months, but was now, at last,

gone. The post was vacant, and Connie, who had a pretty natural turn for

wire-pulling, fostered by her Italian bringing up, had been trying her

hand, both with the Chancellor and her Uncle Langmoor.

‘You little intriguer!’ wrote Lord Glaramara—‘I will do what I can. Your

man sounds very suitable. If he isn’t, I can tell you plainly, he won’t

get the post. Neither political party can afford to employ fools just

now. But if he is what you say—well, we shall see! Send him up to see me,

at the House of Lords, almost any evening next week. He’ll have to take

his chance, of course, of finding me free. If I cotton to him, I’ll send

him on to somebody else. And—_don’t talk about it_! Your letter was just

like your mother. She had an art of doing these things!’

Alice read and re-read the note. When she looked up from it, it was with

a rather fluttered face.

‘Awfully good of you, Connie! May I show it—to Mr. Pryce?’

‘Yes—but get it back. Tell him to write to Lord Glaramara—to-morrow.

Well, now then’—Connie discovered and lit a cigarette, the sight of which

stirred in Alice a kind of fascinated disapproval,—‘now then, tell me

what’s the matter!—why Uncle Ewen looks as if he hadn’t had a day’s rest

since last term, and Nora’s so glum—and why he and she go sitting up at

night together when they ought to be in their beds?’

Connie’s little woman-of-the-world air—very evident in this speech—which

had always provoked Alice in their earlier acquaintance, passed now

unnoticed. Miss Hooper sat perplexed and hesitating, staring into the

fire. But with that note in her pocket, Alice felt herself at once in a

new and detached position towards her family.

‘It’s money, of course,’ she said at last, her white brow puckering.

‘It’s not only bills—they’re dreadfully worrying!—we seem never to get

free from them, but it’s something else—something quite new—which has

only happened lately. There was an old loan from the bank, that has been

going on for years. Father had almost forgotten it, and now they’re

pressing him. It’s dreadful! They know we’re so hard up.’

Connie in her turn looked perplexed. It was always difficult for her to

realise financial trouble on a small scale. Ruin on the Falloden scale

was intelligible to one who had heard much talk of the bankruptcies of

some of the great Roman families, owing to the building speculations of

Rome, after 1870. But the carking care that may come from lack of a few

hundred pounds, this the Risboroughs’ daughter had to learn; and she put

her mind to it, eagerly.

She propped her small chin on her hands, while Alice told her tale.

Apparently the improvement in the family finance, caused by Connie’s

three hundred, had been the merest temporary thing. The Reader’s

creditors had been held off for a few months; but the rain of tradesmen’s

letters had been lately incessant. And the situation had been greatly

worsened by a blow which had fallen just before the opening of term.

In a former crisis, five years before this date, a compassionate cousin,

one of the few well-to-do relations that Mrs. Hooper possessed, had

come to the rescue, and had given his name to the Hoopers’ bankers as

guarantee for a loan of £500. The loan was to have been repaid by yearly

instalments. But the instalments had not been paid, and the cousin had

most unexpectedly died of apoplexy during September, after three days’

illness. His heir would have nothing to say to the guarantee, and the

bank was pressing for repayment, in terms made all the harsher by the

existence of an over-draft, which the local manager knew in his financial

conscience ought not to have been allowed. His letters were now so many

sword-thrusts; and post-time was a time of terror.

‘Father doesn’t know what to do,’ said Alice despondently. ‘He and Nora

spend all their time trying to think of some way out. Father got his

salary the other day, and never put it into the bank at all. We must have

something to live on. None’—she hesitated—‘none of the tradesmen will

give us any credit.’ She flushed deeply over the confession.

‘Goodness!’ said Connie, opening her eyes still wider.

‘But if Nora knows that I’ve been telling you’—cried Alice-‘she’ll never

forgive me. She made me promise I wouldn’t tell you. But how can you

help knowing? If Father’s made a bankrupt, it wouldn’t be very nice for

you! How could you go on living with us? Nora thinks she’s going to

earn money—that Father can sell two wretched little books—and we can go

and live in a tiny house on the Cowley Road—and—and—all sorts of absurd

things!’

‘But why is it Nora that has to settle all these things?’ asked Connie in

bewilderment. ‘Why doesn’t your mother⸺’

‘Oh, because mother doesn’t know anything about the bills,’ interrupted

Alice. ‘She never can do a sum—or add up anything—and I’m no use at it

either. Nora took it all over last year, and she won’t let even me help

her. She makes out the most wonderful statements—she made out a fresh

one to-day—that’s why she had a headache when she came to meet you. But

what’s the good of statements? They won’t pay the bank.’

‘But why—why⸺’ repeated Connie, and then stopped, lest she should hurt

Alice’s feelings.

‘Why did we get into debt? I’m sure I don’t know!’ Alice shook her head

helplessly. ‘We never seemed to have anything extravagant.’

These things were beyond Connie’s understanding. She gave it up. But her

mind impetuously ran forward.

‘How much is wanted—altogether?’

Alice, reluctantly, named a sum not much short of a thousand pounds.

‘Isn’t it awful?’

She sighed deeply. Yet already she seemed to be talking of other people’s

affairs!

‘We can’t ever do it. It’s hopeless. Papa’s taken two little school-books

to do. They’ll kill him with work, and will hardly bring in anything.

And he’s full up with horrid exams and lectures. He’ll break down, and

it all makes him so miserable, because he can’t really do the work the

University pays him to do. And he’s never been abroad—even to Rome. And

as to Greece! It’s dreadful!’ she repeated mechanically.

Connie sprang up and began to pace the little room. The firelight played

on her mop of brown hair, bringing out its golden shades, and on the

charming pensiveness of her face. Alice watched her, thinking—‘_She_

could do it all, if she chose!’ But she didn’t dare to say anything, for

fear of Nora.

Presently Connie gave a great stretch.

‘It’s damnable!’ she said, with energy.

Alice’s instinct recoiled from the strong word. It wasn’t the least

necessary, she thought, to talk in that way.

Connie made a good many more enquiries—elicited a good many more facts.

Then suddenly she brought her pacing to a stop.

‘Look here—we must go to bed!—or Nora will be after us.’

Alice went obediently. As soon as the door had shut upon her, Connie went

to a drawer in her writing-table, and took out her bank-book. It had been

returned that morning and she had not troubled to look at it. There was

always enough for what she wanted.

Heavens!—what a balance. She had quite forgotten a windfall which had

befallen her lately—some complicated transaction relating to a great

industrial company in which she had shares—which had lately been

giving birth to other subsidiary companies, and somehow the original

shareholders, of whom Lord Risborough had been one, or their heirs and

representatives, had profited greatly by the business. It had all been

managed for her by her father’s lawyer, and of course by Uncle Ewen. The

money had been paid temporarily into her own account, till the lawyer

had made some further enquiries about a fresh investment they recommended.

But it was her own money. She was entitled—under the terms of her

father’s letter to Uncle Ewen—to do what she liked with it. And even

without it, there was enough in the bank. Enough for this—and for another

purpose also, which lay even closer to her heart.

‘I don’t want any more new gowns for six months,’ she decided

peremptorily. ‘It’s disgusting to be so well off. Well, now,—I wonder—I

wonder where Nora keeps those statements that Alice talks about?’

In the school-room of course. But not under lock and key. Nobody

ever locked drawers in that house. It was part of the general

happy-go-luckishness of the family.

Connie made up the fire, and sat over it, thinking hard. A new

cheque-book, too, had arrived with the bank-book. That was useful.

She waited till she heard the study door open, and Nora come upstairs,

followed soon by the slow and weary step of Uncle Ewen. Connie had

already lowered her gas before Nora reached the top landing.

The house was very soon silent. Connie turned her light on again, and

waited. By the time Big Ben had struck one o’clock, she thought it would

be safe to venture.

She opened her door with trembling, careful fingers, slipped off her

shoes, took a candle and stole downstairs. The school-room door creaked

odiously. But soon she was inside and looking about her.

There was Nora’s table, piled high with the books and note-books of her

English literature work. Everything else had been put away. But the top

drawer of the table was unlocked. There was a key in it, but it would not

turn, being out of repair, like so much else in the house.

Connie, full of qualms, slowly opened the drawer. It was horrid—horrid—to

do such things!—but what other way was there? Nora must be presented

with the _fait accompli_, otherwise she would upset everything—poor old

darling!

Some loose sheets lay on the top of the papers in the drawer. The first

was covered with figures and calculations that told nothing. Connie

lifted it, and there, beneath, lay Nora’s latest ‘statement,’ at which

she and her father had no doubt been working that very night. It was

headed ‘List of liabilities,’ and in it every debt, headed by the Bank

claim which had broken the family back, was accurately and clearly

stated in Nora’s best hand. The total at the foot evoked a low whistle

from Connie. How had it come about? In spite of her luxurious bringing

up, there was a shrewd element—an element of competence—in the girl’s

developing character, which was inclined to suggest that there need be no

more difficulty in living on seven hundred a year than seven thousand,

if you knew you had to do it. Then she rebuked herself fiercely for a

prig—‘You just try it!—you Pharisee, you!’ And she thought of her own

dressmakers’ and milliners’ bills, and became in the end quite pitiful

over Aunt Ellen’s moderation. After all it might have been two thousand

instead of one! Of course it was all Aunt Ellen’s muddling, and Uncle

Ewen’s absent-mindedness.

She shaded her candle, and in a guilty hurry copied down the total on a

slip of paper lying on the table, and took the address of Uncle Ewen’s

bank, from the outside of the pass-book lying beside the bills. Having

done that, she closed the drawer again, and crept upstairs like the

criminal she felt herself. Her small feet in their thin stockings seemed

to her excited ears to be making the most hideous and unnatural noise on

every step. If Nora heard!

At last she was safe in her own room again. The door was locked and the

more agreeable part of the crime began. She drew out the new cheque-book

lying in her own drawer, and very slowly and deliberately wrote a cheque.

Then she put it up, with a few covering words—anxiously considered—and

addressed the envelope to the Oxford branch of a well-known banking firm,

her father’s bankers, to which her own account had been transferred

on her arrival at Oxford. Ewen Hooper had scrupulously refrained from

recommending his own bank, lest he should profit indirectly by his

niece’s wealth.

‘Annette shall take it,’ she thought—‘first thing. Oh, what a row

there’ll be!’

And then, uneasily pleased with her performance, she went to bed.

And she had soon forgotten all about her raid upon Uncle Ewen’s affairs.

Her thoughts floated to a little cottage on the hills, and its two coming

inhabitants. And in her dream she seemed to hear herself say—‘I oughtn’t

to be meddling with other people’s lives like this. I don’t know enough.

I’m too young! I want somebody to show me—I _do_!’

* * * * *

The following day passed heavily in the Hooper household. Nora and her

father were closeted together all the morning; and there was a sense of

brooding calamity in the air. Alice and Connie avoided each other, and

Connie asked no questions. After luncheon Sorell called. He found Connie

in the drawing-room alone, and gave her the news she was pining for. As

Nora had reported, a cottage on Boar’s Hill had been found. It belonged

to the head of an Oxford College, who had spent the preceding winter

there for his health, but had now been ordered abroad. It was very small,

pleasantly furnished, and had a glorious view, over Oxford in the hollow,

the wooded lines of Garsington and Nuneham, and the distant ridges of the

Chilterns. Radowitz was expected the following day, and his old college

servant, with a woman to cook and do housework, had been found to look

after him. He was working hard, at his symphony, and was on the whole

much the same in health,—very frail and often extremely irritable; with

alternations of cheerfulness and depression.

‘And Mr. Falloden?’ Connie ventured.

‘He’s coming soon—I didn’t ask,’ said Sorell shortly. ‘That arrangement

won’t last long.’

Connie hesitated.

‘But don’t _wish_ it to fail!’ she said, piteously.

‘I think the sooner it is over the better,’ said Sorell, with rather

stern decision. ‘Falloden ought never to have made the proposal, and it

was mere caprice in Otto to accept it. But you know what I think. I shall

watch the whole thing very anxiously; and try to have someone ready to

put into Falloden’s place—when it breaks down. Mrs. Mulholland and I

have it in hand. She’ll take Otto up to the cottage to-morrow and means

to mother Radowitz as much as he’ll let her. Now then’—he changed the

subject with a smile—‘are you going to enjoy your winter term?’

His dark eyes, as she met them, were full of an anxious affection.

‘I have forgotten all my Greek!’

‘Oh no—not in a month. Prepare me a hundred lines of the “Odyssey,” Book

VI! Next week I shall have some time. This first week is always a drive.

Miss Nora says she’ll go on again.’

‘Does she? She seems so—so busy.’

‘Ah, yes—she’s got some work for the University Press. Plucky little

thing! But she mustn’t overdo it.’

Connie dropped the subject. These conferences in the study, which had

gone on all day, had nothing to do with Nora’s work for the Press—that

she was certain of. But she only said—holding out her hands, with the

free gesture that was natural to her—

‘I wish someone would give me the chance of “overdoing it”! Do set me to

work—hard work! The sun never shines here.’

Her eyes wandered petulantly to the rainy sky outside, and the

high-walled college opposite.

‘Southerner! Wait till you see it shining on the Virginian creeper in our

garden quad. Oxford is a dream in October!—just for a week or two, till

the leaves fall. November is dreary, I admit. All the same—try and be

happy!’

He looked at her gravely and tenderly. She coloured a little as she

withdrew her hands.

‘Happy? That doesn’t matter—does it? But perhaps for a change—one might

try⸺’

‘Try what?’

‘Well!’—she laughed, but he thought there were tears in her eyes—‘to do

something—for somebody—occasionally.’

‘Ask Mrs. Mulholland! She has a genius for that kind of thing. Teach some

of her orphans!’

‘I couldn’t! They’d find me out.’

Sorell, rather puzzled, suggested that she might become a Home Student

like Nora, and go in for a Literature or Modern History Certificate.

Connie, who was now sitting moodily over a grate with no fire in it, with

her chin in her hands, only shook her head.

‘I don’t know anything—I never learnt anything. And everybody here’s so

_appallingly_ clever!’

Then she declared that she would go and have tea with the Master of

Beaumont, and ask his advice. ‘He told me to learn something,’—the tone

was one of depression, passing into rebellion—‘but I don’t want to learn

anything!—I want to do _something_!’

Sorell laughed at her.

‘Learning is doing!’

‘That’s what Oxford people think,’ she said defiantly. ‘I don’t agree

with them.’

‘What do _you_ mean by “doing”?’

Connie poked an imaginary fire.

‘Making myself happy’—she said slowly, ‘and—and a few other people!’

Sorell laughed again. Then rising to take his leave, he stooped over her.

‘Make _me_ happy—by undoing that stroke of yours—at Boar’s Hill!’

Connie raised herself, and looked at him steadily.

Then gravely and decisively she shook her head.

‘Not at all! I shall keep an eye on it!—so must you!’

Then, suddenly, she smiled—the softest, most radiant smile, as though

some hope within, far within, looked out. It was gone in a moment, and

Sorell went his way; but as one who had been the spectator of an event.

* * * * *

After his departure Connie sat on in the cold room, thinking about

Sorell. She was devoted to him—he was the noblest, dearest person. She

wished dreadfully to please him. But she wasn’t going to let him—

Well, what?

—to let him interfere with that passionate purpose which seemed to be

beating in her, and through her, like a living thing, though as yet she

had but vaguely defined it, even to herself.

* * * * *

After tea, which Mrs. Hooper dispensed with red eyes, and at which

neither Nora nor Dr. Hooper appeared, Constance found a novel, and

established herself in the deserted school-room. She couldn’t go out. She

was on the watch for a letter that might arrive. The two banks were only

a stone’s throw apart. The local post should deliver that letter about

six.

Once Nora looked in to find a document, and was astonished to see Connie

there. But she was evidently too harassed and miserable to talk. Connie

listened uneasily to the opening and shutting of a drawer, with which

she was already acquainted. Then Nora disappeared again. What were they

trying to do, poor dears!—Nora, and Uncle Ewen? What could they do?

The autumn evening darkened slowly. At last!—a ring and a double knock.

The study door opened, and Connie heard Nora’s step, and the click of the

letter-box. The study door closed again.

Connie put down her novel and listened. Her hands trembled. She was full

indeed of qualms and compunctions. Would they be angry with her? She had

meant it well.

Footsteps approaching—not Nora’s.

Uncle Ewen stood in the doorway—looking very pale and strained.

‘Connie, would you mind coming into my study? Something rather strange

has happened.’

Connie got up and slowly followed him across the hall. As she entered

the study, she saw Nora, with blazing eyes and cheeks, standing by her

father’s writing-table, aglow with anger or excitement—or both. She

looked at Connie as at an enemy, and Connie flushed a bright pink.

Uncle Ewen shut the door, and addressed his niece. ‘My dear Connie,

I want you, if you can—to throw some light on a letter I have just

received. Both Nora and I suspect your hand in it. If so, you have done

something I—I can’t permit.’

He held out a letter, which Connie took like a culprit. It was a

communication from his Oxford bankers to Professor Hooper, to the effect

that, a sum of £1100 having been paid in to his credit by a person who

desired to remain unknown, his debt to them was covered, and his account

showed a balance of about six hundred pounds.

‘My dear!’—his voice and hand shook—‘is that your doing?’

‘Of course it is!’ interrupted Nora passionately. ‘Look at her, father!

How _dared_ you, Connie, do such a thing without a word to father! It’s a

_shame_—a _disgrace_! We _could_ have found a way out—we could!’

And the poor child, worn out with anxiety and lack of sleep, and in her

sensitive pride and misery ready to turn on Connie and rend her, for

having dared thus to play Lady Bountiful without warning or permission,

sank into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and burst out sobbing.

Connie handed back the letter, and hung her head. ‘Won’t you—won’t you

let the person—who—sent the money remain unknown, Uncle Ewen?—as they

wished to be?’

Uncle Ewen sat down before his writing-table and he also buried his face

in his hands. Connie stood between them—as it were a prisoner at the

bar—looking now very white and childish.

‘Dear Uncle Ewen⸺’

‘How did you guess?’ said Nora vehemently, uncovering her face—‘I never

said a word to you!’

Connie gave a tremulous laugh.

‘Do you think I couldn’t see—that you were all dreadfully unhappy about

something? I—I made Alice tell me⸺’

‘Alice is a sieve!’ cried Nora. ‘I knew, Father, we could never trust

her.’

‘And then’—Connie went on—‘I—I did an awful thing. I’d better tell you. I

came and looked at Nora’s papers—in the school-room drawer. I saw that.’

She pointed penitentially to a sheet of figures lying on the study table.

Both Nora and her uncle looked up in amazement, staring at her.

‘It was at night,’ she said hurriedly—‘last night. Oh, I put it all

back!’—she turned, pleading, to Nora—‘just as I found it. You shouldn’t

be angry with me—you shouldn’t indeed!’

Then her own voice began to shake. She came and laid her hand on her

uncle’s shoulder.

‘Dear uncle Ewen—you know, I had that extra money! What did I want with

it? Just think—if it had been Mamma! Wouldn’t you have let her help? You

know you would! You couldn’t have been so unkind—Well then, I knew it

would be no good, if I came and asked you—you wouldn’t have let me. So

I—well, I just did it!’

Ewen Hooper rose from his table in great distress of mind.

‘But, my dear Connie—you are my ward—and I am your guardian! How can I

let you give me money?’

‘It’s my own money,’ said Connie firmly. ‘You know it is. Father wrote

to you to say I might spend it _now_, as I liked—all there was, except

the capital of my two thousand a year, which I mayn’t spend—till I’m

twenty-five. This has nothing to do with that. I’m quite free—and so are

you. _Do_ you think’—she drew herself up indignantly—‘that you’re going

to make me happy—by turning me out, and all—all of you going to rack and

ruin—when I’ve got that silly money lying in the bank? I won’t have it! I

don’t want to go and live in the Cowley Road! I won’t go and live in the

Cowley Road! You promised Father and Mother to look after me, Uncle Ewen,

and it isn’t looking after me⸺’

‘You can’t reproach me on that score as much as I do myself!’ said

Ewen Hooper, with emotion. ‘There’s something in that I admit—there’s

something in that.’

He began to pace the room. Presently, pausing beside Connie, he plunged

into an agitated and incoherent account of the situation—of the efforts

he had made to get even some temporary help—and of the failure of all of

them. It was the confession of a weak and defeated man; and as made by a

man of his age to a girl of Connie’s, it was extremely painful. Nora hid

her eyes again, and Connie got paler and paler.

At last she went up to him, holding out again appealing hands.

‘_Please_ don’t tell me any more! It’s all right. I just love you, Uncle

Ewen—and—and Nora! I want to help! It makes me happy. Oh, why won’t you

let me?’

He wavered.

‘You dear child!’ There was a silence. Then he resumed—as though feeling

his way—

‘It occurs to me—that I might consult Sorell. If he thought it right—if

we could protect you from loss⸺!’

Connie sprang at him and kissed him in delight.

‘Of course!—that’ll do splendidly! Mr. Sorell will see, at once, it’s

the right thing for me, and my happiness. I can’t be turned out—I really

can’t! So it’s settled. Yes—it’s _settled_!—or it will be directly—and

nobody need bother any more—need they? But—there’s one condition.’

Ewen Hooper looked at her in silence.

—‘That you—you and Nora—go to Rome this Christmas, this very Christmas,

Uncle Ewen! I think I put in enough—and I can give you such a lot of

letters!’

She laughed joyously, though she was very near crying.

‘I have never been able to go to Rome—or Athens—never!’ he said, in a low

voice, as he sat down again at his table. All the thwarted hopes, all the

sordid cares of years were in the quiet words.

‘Well, now you’re going!’ said Connie, shyly. ‘Oh, that would be ripping!

You’ll promise me that—you _must_, please!’

Silence again. She approached Nora, timidly.

‘Nora!’

Nora rose. Her face was stained with tears.

‘It’s all wrong,’ she said heavily—‘it’s all wrong. But—I give in. What I

said was a lie. There is nothing else in the world that we could possibly

do.’

And she rushed out of the room without another word. Connie looked

wistfully after her. Nora’s pain in receiving had stirred in her the

shamefaced distress in giving that lives in generous souls. ‘Why should I

have more than they?’

She stole out after Nora. Ewen Hooper was left staring at the letter from

his bankers, and trying to collect his thoughts. Connie’s voice was still

in his ears. It had all the sweetness of his dead sister’s.

* * * * *

Connie was reading in her own room before dinner. She had shut herself up

there, feeling rather battered by the emotions of the afternoon, when she

heard a knock that she knew was Nora’s.

‘Come in!’

Nora appeared. She had had her storm of weeping in private and got over

it. She was now quite composed, but the depression, the humiliation

even, expressed in her whole bearing dismayed Connie afresh.

Nora took a seat on the other side of the fire. Connie eyed her uneasily.

‘Are you ever going to forgive me, Nora?’ she said, at last.

Nora shrugged her shoulders.

‘You couldn’t help it. I see that.’

‘Thank you,’ said Connie meekly.

‘But what I _can’t_ forgive is that you never said a word⸺’

—‘To you? That you might undo it all? Nora, you really are an absurd

person!’ Connie sprang up, and came to kneel by the fire, so that she

might attack her cousin at close quarters. ‘We’re told it’s “more blessed

to give than to receive.” Not when you’re on the premises, Nora! I really

don’t think you need make me feel such an outcast! I say—how many nights

have you been awake lately?’

Nora’s lip quivered a little.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ she said shortly.

‘Yes, but it does matter! You promised to be my friend—and—you have been

treating me _abominably_!’ said Connie, with flashing eyes.

Nora feebly defended herself, but was soon reduced to accept a pair of

arms thrown round her, and a soft shoulder on which to rest an aching

head.

‘I’m no good,’ she said, despairingly. ‘I give up—everything.’

‘That’s all right!’ Connie’s tone was extremely cheerful. ‘Which means,

I hope, that you’ll give up that absurd copying in the Bodleian. You get

about twopence-halfpenny for it, and it’ll cost you your first-class. How

are you going to get a First I should like to know, with your head full

of bills, and _no_ sleep at nights!’

Nora flushed fiercely.

‘I want to earn my living—I mean to earn my living! And how do you

know—after all’—she held Connie at arm’s length—‘that Mr. Sorell’s going

to approve of what you’ve done? And Father won’t accept, unless he does.’

Connie laughed.

‘Mr. Sorell will do—exactly what pleases me. Mr. Sorell’—she began to

search for a cigarette—‘Mr. Sorell is an angel.’

A silence. Connie looked up, rather surprised.

‘Don’t you agree?’

‘Yes,’ said Nora in an odd voice.

Connie observed her. A flickering light began to play in the brown eyes.

‘H’m. Have you been doing some Greek already?—stealing a march on me?’

‘I had a lesson last week.’

‘Had you? The first I’ve heard of it!’ Connie fluttered up and down the

room in her white dressing-gown, occasionally breaking into a dance-step,

as though to work off a superfluity of spirits.

Finally she stopped in front of Nora, looking her up and down.

‘I dare you to hide anything again from me, Nora!’

Nora sat up.

‘There is nothing to hide,’ she said stiffly.

Connie laughed aloud; and Nora suddenly sprang from her chair, and ran

out of the room.

Connie was left panting a little. Life in Medburn Hall seemed certainly

to be running faster than of old!

‘I never gave him leave to fall in love with Nora!’ she thought, with

an unmistakable pang of common ordinary jealousy. She had been so long

accustomed to take her property in Sorell for granted!—and the summer

months had brought her into such intimate contact with him. ‘And he never

made love to me for one moment!—nor I to him. I don’t believe he’s made

love to Nora—I’m sure he hasn’t—_yet_. But why didn’t he tell me of that

Greek lesson?’

She stood before the glass, pulling down her hair, so that it fell all

about her.

‘I seem to be rather cut out for fairy-godmothering!’ she said pensively

to the image in the glass. ‘But there’s a good deal to do for the

post!—one must admit there’s a good deal to do: Nora’s got to be fixed

up—and all the money business. And then—then!’

She clasped her hands behind her head. Her eyelids fell, and through her

slight figure there ran a throb of yearning—of tender, yet despairing

passion.

‘If I could only mend things _there_, I might be some use. I don’t want

him to marry me—but just—just⸺’

Then her hands fell. She shook her head angrily.

‘You humbug!—you _humbug_! Who are you posing for now?’

(_To be continued._)