Suddenly she spoke again, to herself, in a low voice: “How funny!” She

turned to me and beckoned: “Mr Foulkes!”

I left my papers on the table and joined her at the open window; it was

just to the right of the hall door and commanded a wide view of the

park, which, stretching in gentle undulations, with copses scattered

here and there among the turf, gave a fine sense of spaciousness and

elbow-room--the best things mere wealth can give, in my humble opinion.

“It must be Nettie,” she said; “but why--why is she riding like that?”

I followed with my eyes the direction in which she pointed.

“And where’s father?”

Still a mile or more away, visible now, but from moment to moment hidden

by an intervening copse and once or twice by a deep dip in the ground, a

horse came towards us at a gallop--a reckless gallop. The next instant

the faintest echo of a cry, its purport indistinguishable, fell on our

ears.

“It is Nettie,” said Beatrice Gladwin, her eyes suddenly meeting mine.

We stood there for a moment, then she walked quickly into the adjoining

hall, and out on to the steps in front of the door. I followed, leaving

my papers to look after themselves on the table. When I came up to her

she said nothing, but caught my wrist with her left hand and held it

tightly.

Now we heard what Nettie’s cry was. The monotonous horror of it never

ceased for an instant. “Help! Help! Help!” It was incessant, and now, as

she reached the drive, sounded loud and shrill in our ears. The men in

the stables heard it; two of them ran out at top speed to meet the

galloping horse. But horse and rider were close up to us by now. I broke

away from Miss Gladwin, who clung to me with a strong unconscious grip,

and sprang forward. I was just in time to catch Nettie as she fell from

the saddle, and the grooms brought her horse to a standstill. Even in my

arms she still cried shrilly, “Help, help, help!”

No misunderstanding was possible. “Where? Where?” was all I asked, and

at last she gasped, “By Toovey’s farm.”

One of the grooms was on her horse in a moment and made off for the

spot. Nettie broke away from me, staggering to the steps, stumbling over

her habit as she went, and sank down in a heap; she ceased now to cry

for help, and began to sob convulsively. Beatrice seemed stunned. She

said nothing; she looked at none of us; she stared after the man on

horseback who had started for Toovey’s farm. The second groom spoke to

me in a low voice: “Where’s the master’s horse?”

Nettie heard him. She raised her eyes to his--the blue eyes a little

while ago so radiant, now so full of horror. “They neither of them

moved,” she said.

So it was. They were found together under the hedgerow; the horse was

alive, though its back was broken, and a shot the only mercy. Sir Thomas

was quite dead.

That night I carried my papers back to the office, and satisfied myself,

as my duty was, that the existing will lay in its place in the office

safe; since the morning that document had, so to say, gone up in the

world very much. So had Miss Gladwin. She was mistress of all.

III

As may be imagined, the situation evoked a great deal of sympathy and

occasioned an even greater quantity of talk. Killed four days before his

wedding! The poor little bride! She had lost so much more than merely

Sir Thomas! The general opinion of the Bittleton Club, which may be

taken as representative of the views of the county, was that Miss

Gladwin ought to “do something” for Miss Tyler. There was much

difference as to the extent of this suggested generosity: almost every

figure between five thousand and fifty thousand pounds had its

supporters. I think that of the entire roll of members only two had no

proposal to submit (hypothetically) to Miss Gladwin. One was myself,

tongue-tied by my position as her lawyer; the other was Spencer Fullard,

who did nothing but smoke and tap his leg with his walking-stick while

the question was under discussion. I remembered his summary of the

lady--“hard, but a sportsman.” The hard side might indicate that she

would leave the situation as fate had made it. What did the sportsman in

her say? I found myself wondering what Captain Fullard’s views were,

supposing he had taken the trouble--which, however, seemed to be a

pleasure to his fellow-members--to arrive at any.

To tell the truth, I resented the gossip about her all the more because

I could not stifle an inward feeling that if they had known her as well

as I did--or, perhaps I should say, had seen her as often as I had

(which is a safer way of putting it when a woman’s in the case)--they

would have gossiped not less, but more. She was strange, and, I suppose,

hard, in her total ignoring of the idea that there was any such question

at all as that which kept the Bittleton clubmen--and of course their

wives--so much on the gog. Nettie Tyler did not leave Worldstone Park.

It may be assumed that her bills were paid, and probably she had

pocket-money. There the facts of the case came to a sudden stop. Had

Beatrice Gladwin turned her into a “companion”? Anybody who chose to put

it in that light was, on the apparent facts, extremely hard to

contradict or to blame, but, as I felt, not at all hard to be annoyed

at. Well, I had always hated the Tyler project.

Meanwhile Miss Gladwin was exhibiting, as I had foreseen she would,

extraordinary efficiency; and her efficiency gave me plenty of work,

besides the routine and not small business incident on the transmission

of so considerable an estate as Sir Thomas’s. She was going in for

building as soon as the death duties were out of the way; meanwhile she

gathered the reins of her affairs into her own hands and regulated every

detail very carefully. Sir Thomas, like many men successful in large

concerns, had been easy-going about his private interests. I was

constantly at Worldstone Park, often spending from Saturday to Monday

there, and devoting the Sunday, less church time, to its mistress’s

service. She was good enough to treat me with great candour, and

discussed all things very openly--except Miss Nettie Tyler.

And what of Miss Nettie Tyler? I do not consider--and I speak with no

favourable prejudice--that that young lady’s behaviour was open to very

serious criticism. It surprised me favourably. I admit that she was

meek; now and then I thought her rather obtrusively meek. But then she

might naturally have been crushed; she might well have been an

insupportably mournful companion. She was neither. I could not call her

helpful, because she was one of the helpless so far as practical affairs

go. But she was reasonably cheerful, and she put forward no claim of any

sort whatsoever. She did not appear to think that Beatrice ought to “do

anything” for her beyond what she was doing; and that, to my certain

knowledge, did not include the gift of even the smallest of all the

various sums suggested at the Bittleton Club. All you could say was

that the lady who was to have been mistress of Worldstone Park still

lived there, and made for the moment remarkably little difference. When

one comes to think it over, this was really immensely to her credit. She

might have made life there impossible. Or did she know that in such a

case Miss Gladwin would send her away quite calmly? Let us give credit

where credit is possible, and adopt the more favourable interpretation.

Things went very well indeed in a very difficult situation--till Spencer

Fullard made his entry on the stage.

His coming made a difference from the very first. I think that the two

girls had been living in a kind of numbness which prevented them from

feeling as acutely as they naturally might the position in which the

freak of fate had placed them. Each lived in thought till he came--in

the thought of what had been and would have been; to neither had the

actual become the truly real. There had been a barrier between them.

Nettie’s excellent behaviour and Beatrice’s remarkable efficiency had

alike been masks, worn unconsciously, but none the less and by no less

sufficient disguises. They had lived in the shadow of the death. Fullard

brought back life--which is to say, he brought back conflict.

Nothing was further from his original idea. Like Sir Thomas, he was a

descendant-worshipper--born to it, moreover, which Sir Thomas had not

been. I was his high priest, so, of course, I knew what he was about. He

came to woo the rich Miss Gladwin, picking up his wooing (he had

excellently easy manners) just at the spot where he had dropped it when

Sir Thomas Gladwin announced his engagement to Miss Nettie Tyler.

“Dropped” is a word too definite. “Suspended” might do, or even

“attenuated.” He was a captain--let us say that he had called a halt to

reconnoitre his ground, but had not ordered a retreat. Events had

cleared the way for him. He advanced again.

Should I blame him? My father would have blessed him, though he might

have advised him to lay an egg and die. No; Worldstone was rich enough

to warrant his living, but of Gatworth there was left an annual income

of hardly eight hundred pounds. But three hundred years in the county

behind it! Three hundred years since the cadet branch migrated from

Gloucestershire, where the Fullards had been since the Flood! It was my

duty to bless his suit, and I did. It was no concern of mine that he

had, in confidence, called Miss Gladwin “hard.” He had called her a

“sportsman,” too. Set one off against the other, remembering his

position and his cult.

Sir Thomas had been dead a year when Fullard and I first spent a Sunday

together at Worldstone Park. He had been there before; so had I: but we

had not chanced to coincide. It was May, and spring rioted about us. The

girls, too, had doffed some of their funereal weeds; Nettie wore white

and black, Beatrice black and white. Life was stirring in the place

again. Nettie was almost gay, Beatrice no longer merely efficient. For

the first time I found it possible to slip a dram of pleasure into the

cup of a business visit. Curiously enough, the one person who was, as I

supposed, there on the pleasantest errand, wore the most perturbed

aspect. The fate of lovers? I am not sure. I have met men who took the

position with the utmost serenity. But if one were uncertain to whom one

was making love? The notion was a shock at first.

The girls went to church in the morning; Fullard and I walked round and

round the garden, smoking our pipes. I expatiated on Miss Gladwin’s

remarkable efficiency. “A splendid head!” I said with enthusiasm.

“A good-looking pair in their different ways,” was his somewhat

unexpected reply.

“I meant intellectually,” I explained, with a laugh.

“Miss Tyler’s no fool, mind you,” remarked the captain.

I realised that his thoughts had not been with my conversation. Where

had they been? In my capacity of high priest, I went on commending Miss

Gladwin. He recalled himself to listen, but the sense of duty was

obvious. Suddenly I recollected that he had not met Nettie Tyler before

Sir Thomas died. He had been on service during the two years she had

lived in Worldstone village.

IV

After lunch we all sat together on the lawn. Yes, life was there, and

the instinct for life, and for new life. Poor Sir Thomas’s brooding

ghost had taken its departure. I was glad, but the evidence of my eyes

made me also uneasy. The situation was not developing on easy lines.

With his ears Fullard listened to Beatrice Gladwin; with his eyes he

watched the girl who was to have been her all-powerful stepmother, who

was now her most humble dependant. I saw it--I, a man. Were the girls

themselves unconscious? The idea is absurd. If anybody were unconscious,

it was Fullard himself; or, at least, he thought his predicament

undetected. I suggested to Nettie that she and I might take a walk: a

high priest has occasionally to do things like that when there is no

chaperon about. She refused, not meekly now, but almost pertly. Beatrice

raised her eyes for a moment, looked at her, and coloured ever so

slightly. I think we may date the declaration of war from that glance.

The captain did not see it: he was lighting a cigarette. None the less,

the next moment he rose and proposed to accompany me himself. That did

almost as well--how far I had got into the situation!--and I gladly

acquiesced. We left the two ladies together, or, to be precise, just

separating; they both, it appeared, had letters to write.

I should say at once that Spencer Fullard was one of the most honest

men I have ever known (besides being one of the best-looking). If he

came fortune-hunting, it was because he believed that pursuit to be his

duty--duty to self, to ancestors, and, above all, to descendants. But,

in truth, when he came first, it had not been in unwilling obedience to

duty’s spur. He had liked Miss Gladwin very much; he had paid her

attentions, even flirted with her; and, in the end, he liked her very

much still. But there is a thing different from liking--a thing violent,

sudden, and obliterating. It makes liking cease to count.

We talked little on our visit to the home farm. I took occasion once

more to point out Miss Gladwin’s efficiency. Fullard fidgeted: he did

not care about efficiency in women--that seemed plain. I ventured to

observe that her investment of money on the estate was likely to pay

well; he seemed positively uncomfortable. After these conversational

failures, I waited for him. We were on our way back before he accepted

the opening.

“I say, Foulkes,” he broke out suddenly, “do you suppose Miss Tyler’s

going to stay here permanently?”

“I don’t know. Why shouldn’t she?”

He swished at the nettles as he made his next contribution to our meagre

conversation. “But Beatrice Gladwin will marry some day soon, I expect.”

“Well?”

I was saying little, but at this point Fullard went one better. He just

cocked his eye at me, leaving me to read his meaning as I best could.

“In that case, of course, she’d be sent away,” said I, smiling.

“Kicked out?” He grumbled the question, half under his breath.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Everything would be done kindly, no doubt.”

“Not fair on the chap, either,” he remarked after some moments. I think

that my mind supplied the unspoken part of his conversation quite

successfully: he was picturing the household _à trois_; he himself was,

in his mind’s eye, “the chap,” and under the circumstances he thought

“the chap” ought not to be exposed to temptation. I agreed, but kept my

agreement, and my understanding, to myself.

“What appalling bad luck that poor little girl’s had!”

“One of them had to have very bad luck,” I reminded him. “Sir Thomas

contrived that.”

He started a little. He had forgotten the exceedingly bad luck which

once had threatened Miss Gladwin, the girl he had come to woo. The

captain’s state of feeling was, in fact, fairly transparent. I was sorry

for him--well, for all of them--because he certainly could not afford to

offer his hand to Nettie Tyler.

Somewhere on the way back from the home farm I lost Captain Spencer

Fullard. Miss Tyler’s letters must have been concise; there was the

gleam of a white frock, dashed here and there with splashes of black, in

the park. Fullard said he wanted more exercise, and I arrived alone on

the lawn, where my hostess sat beside the tea-table. Feeling guilty for

another’s sin, as one often does, I approached shamefacedly.

She gave me tea, and asked, with a businesslike abruptness which I

recognised as inherited, “What are they saying about me?”

That was Gladwin all over! To say not a word for twelve months, because

for twelve months she had not cared; then to blurt it out! Because she

wanted light? Obviously that was the reason--the sole reason. She had

not cared before; now something had occurred to make her think, to make

her care, to make the question of her dealings with Miss Tyler

important. I might have pretended not to understand, but there was a

luxury in dealing plainly with so fine a plain-dealer; I told her the

truth without shuffling.

“On the whole, it’s considered that you would be doing the handsome

thing in giving her something,” I answered, sipping my tea.

She appreciated the line I took. She had expected surprise and fencing;

it amused and pleased her to meet with neither. She was in the mood (by

the way, we could see the black-dashed white frock and Fullard’s manly

figure a quarter of a mile away) to meet frankness with its fellow.

“She never put in a word for me,” she said, smiling. “With father, I

mean.”

“She doesn’t understand business,” I pleaded.

“I’ve been expected to sympathise with her bad luck!”

So had I--by the captain, half-an-hour before. But I did not mention it.

“The Bittleton Club thinks I ought to--to do something?”

I laughed at her taking our club as the arbiter. She had infused a

pretty irony into her question.

“It does, Miss Gladwin.” My answer maintained the ironical note.

“Then I will,” said she, with a highly delusive appearance of

simplicity.

I could not quite make her out, but it came home to me that her secret

resentment against Nettie Tyler was very bitter.

She spoke again in a moment: “A word from her would have gone a long way

with father.”

“That’s all in the past, isn’t it?” I murmured soothingly.

“The past!” She seemed to throw doubt on the existence of such a thing.

The captain’s manly figure and the neat little shape in white and black

were approaching us. The stress of feeling has to be great before it

prevents sufferers from turning up to tea. Miss Gladwin glanced toward

her advancing guests, smiled, and relighted the spirit-lamp under the

kettle. I suppose I was looking thoughtful, for the next moment she

said, “Rather late in the day to do anything? Is that what’s in your

mind? Will they say that?”

“How can I tell? Your adherents say you’ve been like sisters.”

“I never had a sister younger and prettier than myself,” said she. She

waved her hand to the new arrivals, now close on us. “I nearly had a

stepmother like that, though,” she added.

I did not like her at that moment; but is anybody attractive when he is

fighting hard for his own? Renunciation is so much more picturesque. She

was fighting--or preparing to fight. I had suddenly realised the

position, for all that the garden was so peaceful, and spring was on us,

and Nettie’s new-born laugh rang light across the grass, so different

from the cry we once had heard from her lips in that place.

Beatrice Gladwin looked at me with a suddenly visible mockery in her

dark eyes. She had read my thoughts, and she was admitting that she had.

She was very “hard.” Fullard was perfectly right. Yet I think that if

she had been alone at that moment she might have cried. That was just an

impression of mine; really she gave no tangible ground for it, save in

an odd constraint of her mouth. The next moment she laughed.

“I like a fight to be a fair fight,” she said, and looked steadily at me

for a moment. She raised her voice and called to them: “Come along; the

tea’s getting cold.” She added to me, “Come to my room at ten to-morrow,

please.”

The rest of the evening she was as much like velvet as it was in a

Gladwin to be. But I waited. I wanted to know how she meant to arrange

her fair fight. She wanted one. A sportsman, after all, you see.

V

She was not like velvet when we met the next morning after breakfast in

her study: her own room was emphatically a study, and in no sense a

boudoir. She was like iron, or like the late Sir Thomas when he gave me

instructions for his new will and for the settlement on his intended

marriage with Miss Nettie Tyler. There was in her manner the same

clean-cut intimation that what she wanted from me was not advice, but

the promptest obedience. I suppose that she had really made up her mind

the day before--even while we talked on the lawn, in all probability.

“I wish you, Mr Foulkes,” she said, “to be so good as to make

arrangements to place one hundred thousand pounds at my disposal at the

bank as soon as possible.”

I knew it would be no use, but my profession demanded a show of demur.

“A very large sum just now--with the duties--and your schemes for the

future.”

“I’ve considered the amount carefully; it’s just what appears to me

proper and sufficient.”

“Then I suppose there’s no more to be said,” I sighed resignedly.

She looked at me with a slight smile. “Of course you guess what I’m

going to do with it?” she asked.

“Yes, I think so. You ought to have it properly settled on her, you

know. It should be carefully tied up.”

The suggestion seemed to annoy her.

“No,” she said sharply. “What she does with it, and what becomes of it,

have nothing to do with me. I shall have done my part. I shall

be--free.”

“I wish you would take the advice of somebody you trust.”

That softened her suddenly. She put her hand out across the table and

pressed mine for a moment. “I trust you very much. I have no other

friend I trust so much. Believe that, please. But I must act for myself

here.” She smiled again, and with the old touch of irony added, “It will

satisfy your friends at the Bittleton Club?”

“It’s a great deal too much,” I protested, with a shake of the head.

“Thirty would have been adequate; fifty, generous; a hundred thousand is

quixotic.”

“I’ve chosen the precise sum most carefully,” Miss Gladwin assured me.

“And it’s anything but quixotic,” she added, with a smile.

A queer little calculation was going on in my brain. Wisdom (or

interest, which you will) and twenty-five thousand a year against love

and three thousand--was that, in her eyes, a fair fight? Perhaps the

reckoning was not so far out. At any rate, love had a chance--with three

thousand pounds a year. There is more difference between three thousand

pounds and nothing than exists between three thousand and all the rest

of the money in the world.

“Is Miss Tyler aware of your intentions?”

“Not yet, Mr Foulkes.”

“She’ll be overwhelmed,” said I. It seemed the right observation to

offer.

For the first time, Miss Gladwin laughed openly. “Will she?” she

retorted, with a scorn that was hardly civil. “She’ll think it less than

I owe her.”

“You owe her nothing. What you may choose to give----”

Miss Gladwin interrupted me without ceremony “She confuses me with

fate--with what happened--with her loss--and--and disappointment. She

identifies me with all that.”

“Then she’s very unreasonable.”

“I daresay; but I can understand.” She smiled. “I can understand very

well how one girl can seem like that to another, Mr Foulkes--how she can

embody everything of that sort.” She paused and then added: “If I

thought for a moment that she’d be--what was your foolish word?--oh

yes, ‘overwhelmed,’ I wouldn’t do it. But I know her much too well. You

remember that my adherents say we’ve been like sisters? Don’t sisters

understand each other?”

“You’re hard on her--hard and unfair,” I said. Her bitterness was not

good to witness.

“Perhaps I’m hard; I’m not unfair.” Her voice trembled a little; her

composure was not what it had been at the beginning of our interview.

“At any rate, I’m trying to be fair now; only you mustn’t--you must

not--think that she’ll be overwhelmed.”

“Very well,” said I. “I won’t think that. And I’ll put matters in train

about the money. You’ll have to go gently for a bit afterwards, you

know. Even you are not a gold mine.” She nodded, and I rose from my

chair. “Is that all for to-day?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so,” she said. “You’re going away?”

“Yes, I must get back to Bittleton. The office waits.”

She gave me her hand. “I shall see you again before long,” she said.

“Remember, I’m trying to be fair--fair to everybody. Yes, fair to myself

too. I think I’ve a right to fair treatment. I’m giving myself a chance

too, Mr Foulkes. Good-bye.”

Her dismissal was not to be questioned, but I should have liked more

light on her last words. I had seen enough to understand her impulse to

give Nettie Tyler a fair field, to rid her of the handicap of penury, to

do the handsome thing, just when it seemed most against her own

interest. That was the sportsmanlike side of her, working all the more

strongly because she disliked her rival. I saw too, though not at the

time quite so clearly, in what sense she was trying to be fair to

Captain Spencer Fullard: she thought the scales were weighted too

heavily against the disinterested--shall I say the romantic?--side of

that gentleman’s disposition. But that surely was quixotic, and she had

denied quixotism. Yet it was difficult to perceive how she was giving

herself a chance, as she had declared. She seemed to be throwing her

best chance away; so it appeared in my matter-of-fact eyes. Or was she

hoping to dazzle Fullard with the splendour of her generosity? She had

too much penetration to harbour any such idea. He would think the gift

handsome, even very handsome, but he would be no more overwhelmed than

Nettie Tyler herself. Even impartial observers at Bittleton had talked

of fifty thousand pounds as the really proper thing. If Fullard were in

love with Nettie, he would think double the amount none too much; and if

he were not--well, then, where was Beatrice Gladwin’s need for fair

treatment--her need to be given a chance at all? For, saving love, she

held every card in the game.

I went back to Bittleton, kept my own counsel, set the business of the

money on foot, and waited for the issue of the fair fight. No whisper

about the money leaked through to the Bittleton Club; but I heard of a

small party at Worldstone Park, and Spencer Fullard was one of the

guests. Therefore battle was joined.

VI

The following Saturday fortnight the _Bittleton Press_ scored what

journalists call a “scoop” at the expense of the rival and Radical

organ, the _Advertiser_. Such is the reward of sound political

principle! Here is the paragraph--“exclusive,” the editor was careful to

make you understand:

We are privileged to announce that a marriage has been arranged and

will shortly be solemnised between Captain Spencer Fullard, D.S.O.,

of Gatworth Hall, and Henrietta, daughter of the late Rev. F. E.

Tyler, Vicar of Worldstone. We extend, in the name of the county,

our cordial congratulations to the happy pair. Captain Fullard is

the representative of a name ancient and respected in the county,

and has done good service to his King and country. The romantic

story of the lady whose affections he has been so fortunate as to

win will be fresh in the minds of our readers. As we sympathised

with her sorrow, so now we may with her joy. We understand that

Miss Gladwin of Worldstone Park, following what she is confident

would have been the wish of her lamented father, the late

much-respected Sir Thomas Gladwin, Bart., M.P., D.L., J.P., C.A.,

is presenting the prospective bride with a wedding present which in

itself amounts to a fortune. Happy they who are in a position to

exercise such graceful munificence and to display filial affection

in so gracious a form! It would be indiscreet to mention figures,

but rumour has not hesitated to speak of what our gay forefathers

used to call “a plum.” We are not at liberty to say more than that

this in no way overstates the amount.

Whereupon, of course, the Bittleton Club at once doubled it, and Miss

Gladwin’s fame filled the air.

This was all very pretty, and it must be admitted that Beatrice Gladwin

had performed her task in a most tactful way. For reasons connected with

the known condition of the finances of the Gatworth Hall estate, it

sounded so much better that Miss Gladwin’s present should come as a

result of the engagement than--well, the other way round. The other way

round would have given occasion for gossip to the clubmen of Bittleton.

But now--Love against the World, and an entirely unlooked-for bonus

of--“a plum,” as the editor, with a charming eighteenth-century touch,

chose to describe the benefaction. That was really ideal.

Really ideal; and, of course, in no way at all correspondent to the

facts of the case. The truth was that Miss Beatrice Gladwin had secured

her “fair fight”--and, it seemed, had lost it very decisively and very

speedily. As soon as it was reasonably possible--and made so by Miss

Gladwin’s action--for Fullard to think of marrying Nettie Tyler, he had

asked her to be his wife. To which question there could be only one

answer. Miss Gladwin had given away too much weight; she should have

quartered that “plum,” I thought.

But that would not have made a “fair fight”? Perhaps not. Perhaps a fair

fight was not to be made at all under the circumstances. But the one

thing which, above all, I could not see was the old point that had

puzzled me before. It might be fair to soften the conflict between

Captain Fullard’s love and Captain Fullard’s duty as a man of ancient

stock. It might be fair to undo some of fate’s work and give Nettie

Tyler a chance of the man she wanted--freedom to fight for him--just

that, you understand. But where came in the chance for herself of which

Beatrice Gladwin had spoken?

As I have said, I was Captain Fullard’s lawyer as well as Miss

Gladwin’s, and he naturally came to me to transact the business incident

on his marriage. Beatrice Gladwin proved right: he was not overwhelmed,

nor, from his words, did I gather that Miss Tyler was. But they were

both highly appreciative.

The captain was also inclined to congratulate himself on his knowledge

of character, his power of reading the human heart.

“Hard, if you like,” he said, sitting in my office arm-chair; “but a

sportsman in the end, as I told you she was. I knew one could rely on

her doing the right thing in the end.”

“At considerable cost,” I remarked, sharpening a pencil.

“It’s liberal--very liberal. Oh, we feel that. But, of course, the

circumstances pointed to liberality.” He paused, then added:

“And I don’t know that we ought to blame her for taking time to think it

over. Of course it made all the difference to me, Foulkes.”

There came in the captain’s admirable candour. Between him and me there

was no need--and, I may add, no room--for the romantic turn which the

_Bittleton Press_ had given to the course of events; that was for public

consumption only.

“But for it I couldn’t possibly have come forward--whatever I felt.”

“As a suitor for Miss Tyler’s hand?” said I.

The captain looked at me; gradually a smile came on his remarkably

comely face.

“Look here, Foulkes,” said he very good-humouredly, “just you

congratulate me on being able to do as I like. Never mind what you may

happen to be thinking behind that sallow old fiddle-head of yours.”

“And Miss Tyler is, I’m sure, radiantly happy?”

Captain Fullard’s candour abode till the end. “Well, Nettie hasn’t done

badly for herself, looking at it all round, you know.”

With all respect to the late Sir Thomas, and even allowing for a

terrible shock and a trying interval, I did not think she had.

Miss Gladwin gave them a splendid wedding at Worldstone. Her manner to

them both was most cordial, and she was gay beyond the wont of her staid

demeanour. I do not think there was affectation in this.

When the bride and bridegroom--on this occasion again by no means

overwhelmed--had departed amidst cheers, when the rout of guests had

gone, when the triumphal arch was being demolished and the rustics were

finishing the beer, she walked with me in the garden while I smoked a

cigar. (There’s nothing like a wedding for making you want a cigar.)

After we had finished our gossiping about how well everything had gone

off--and that things in her house should go off well was very near to

Beatrice Gladwin’s heart--we were silent for a while. Then she turned to

me and said: “I’m very content, Mr Foulkes.” Her face was calm and

peaceful; she did not look so hard.

“I’m glad that doing the handsome thing brings content. I wonder if you

know how glad I am?”

“Yes, I know. You’re a good friend. But you’re making your old mistake.

I wasn’t thinking just then of what you call the handsome thing. I was

thinking of the chance that I gave myself.”

“I never quite understood that,” said I.

She gave a little laugh. “But for that ‘handsome thing,’ he’d certainly

have asked me--he’d have had to, poor man--me, and not her. And he’d

have done it very soon.”

I assented--not in words, just in silence and cigar smoke.

She looked at me without embarrassment, though she was about to say

something that she might well have refused to say to any living being.

She seemed to have a sort of pleasure in the confession--at least an

impulse to make it that was irresistible. She smiled as she

spoke--amused at herself, or, perhaps, at the new idea she would give me

of herself.

“If he had,” she went on--“if he had made love to me, I couldn’t have

refused him--I couldn’t, indeed. And yet I shouldn’t have believed a

word he was saying--not a word of love he said. I should have been a

very unhappy woman if I hadn’t given myself that chance. You’ve been a

little behind the scenes. Nobody else has. I want you to know that I’m

content.” She put her hand in mine and gave me a friendly squeeze. “And

to-morrow we’ll get back to business, you and I,” she said.

THE PRINCE CONSORT

I had known her for some considerable time before I came to know him.

Most of their acquaintance were in the same case; for to know him was

among the less noticeable and the less immediate results of knowing her.

You might go to the house three or four times and not happen upon him.

He was there always, but he did not attract attention. You joined Mrs

Clinton’s circle, or, if she were in a confidential mood, you sat with

her on the sofa. She would point out her daughter, and Muriel, attired

in a wonderful elaboration of some old-fashioned mode, would talk to you

about “Mamma’s books,” while Mrs Clinton declared that, do what she

would, she could not prevent the darling from reading them. Perhaps,

when you had paid half-a-dozen visits, Mr Clinton would cross your path.

He was very polite, active for your comfort, ready to carry out his

wife’s directions, determined to be useful. Mrs Clinton recognised his

virtues. She called him an “old dear,” with a fond pitying smile on her

lips, and would tell you, with an arch glance and the slightest of

shrugs, that “he wrote too.” If you asked what he wrote, she said that

it was “something musty,” but that it kept him happy, and that he never

minded being interrupted, or even having nowhere to write, because

Muriel’s dancing lesson occupied the dining-room, “and I really couldn’t

have him in my study. One must be _alone_ to work, mustn’t one?” She

could not be blamed for holding her work above his; there was nothing at

all to show for his; whereas hers not only brought her a measure of

fame, as fame is counted, but also doubled the moderate private income

on which they had started housekeeping--and writing--thirteen or

fourteen years before. Mr Clinton himself would have been the last to

demur to her assumption; he accepted his inferiority with an

acquiescence that was almost eagerness. He threw himself into the task

of helping his wife, not of course in the writing, but by relieving her

of family and social cares. He walked with Muriel, and was sent to

parties when his wife was too busy to come. I recollect that he told me,

when we had become friendly, that these offices made considerable

inroads on his time. “If,” he said apologetically, “I had not acquired

the habit of sitting up late, I should have difficulty in getting

forward with my work. As it happens, Millie doesn’t work at night--the

brain must be fresh for _her_ work--and so I can have the study then;

and I am not so liable to--I mean, I have not so many other calls then.”

I liked Clinton, and I do not mean by that that I disliked Mrs Clinton.

Indeed I admired her very much, and her husband’s position in the

household seemed just as natural to me as it did to himself and to

everybody else. Young Gregory Dulcet, who is a poet and a handsome

impudent young dog, was felt by us all to have put the matter in a shape

that was at once true in regard to our host, and pretty in regard to our

hostess, when he referred, apparently in a casual way, to Mr Clinton as

“the Prince Consort.” Mrs Clinton laughed and blushed; Muriel clapped

her hands and ran off to tell her father. She came back saying that he

was very pleased with the name, and I believe that very possibly he

really was. Anyhow, young Dulcet was immensely pleased with it; he

repeated it, and it “caught on.” I heard Mrs Clinton herself, with a

half-daring, half-modest air, use it more than once. Thus Mrs Clinton

was led to believe herself great: so that she once asked me if I thought

that there was any prospect of _The Quarterly_ “doing her.” I said that

I did not see why not. Yet it was not a probable literary event.

Thus Mr Clinton passed the days of an obscure useful life, helping his

wife, using the dining-room when dancing lessons did not interfere, and

enjoying the luxury of the study in the small hours of the morning. And

Mrs Clinton grew more and more pitiful to him; and Muriel more and more

patronising; and the world more and more forgetful. And then, one fine

morning, as I was going to my office, the Prince Consort overtook me. He

was walking fast, and he carried a large, untidy, brown-paper parcel. I

quickened my pace to keep up with his.

“Sorry to hurry you, old fellow,” said he, “but I must be back in an

hour. A fellow’s coming to interview Millie, and I promised to be back

and show him over the house. She doesn’t want to lose more of her time

than is absolutely necessary: she’s in the thick of a new story, you

see. And Muriel’s got her fiddle lesson, so she can’t do it.”

“And what’s brought you out with the family wash?” I asked in

pleasantry, pointing to the parcel.

The Prince Consort blushed (though he must have been forty at least at

this date), pulled his beard, and said:

“This? Do you mean this? Oh, this is--well, it’s a little thing of my

own.”

“Of your own? What do you mean?” I asked.

“Didn’t Millie ever tell you that I write too? Well, I do when I can get

a few hours. And this is it. I’ve managed to get a fellow to look at it.

Millie spoke a word for me, you know.”

I do not know whether my expression was sceptical or offensive, but I

suppose it must have been one or the other, for the Prince Consort went

on hastily:

“Oh, I’m not going to be such an ass as to pay anything for having it

brought out, you know. They must do it on spec. or leave it alone.

Besides, they really like to oblige Millie, you see.”

“It doesn’t look very little,” I observed.

“Er--no. I’m afraid it’s rather long,” he admitted.

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, it’s dull, heavy stuff. I can’t do what Millie does, you see. It’s

not a novel.”

We parted at the door of the publisher who had been ready to oblige Mrs

Clinton, and would, I thought, soon regret his complaisance; and I went

on to my office, dismissing the Prince Consort and his “little thing”

from my mind.

I went to the Clintons’ about three months’ later, in order to bid them

farewell before starting for a holiday on the Continent. They were, for

a wonder, without other visitors, and when we had talked over Mrs

Clinton’s last production, she stretched out her hand and pointed to the

table.

“And there,” she said, with a little laugh, “is Thompson’s” (the Prince

Consort’s Christian name is Thompson) “_magnum opus_. Vincents’ have

just sent him his advance copies.”

The Prince Consort laughed nervously as I rose and walked to the table.

“Never mind, papa,” I heard Muriel say encouragingly. “You know Mr

George Vincent says it’s very good.”

“Oh, he thought that would please your mother,” protested the Prince

Consort.

I examined the two large thick volumes that lay on the table. I glanced

at the title page: and I felt sorry for the poor Prince Consort. It must

have been a terrible “grind” to write such a book--almost as bad as

reading it. But I said something civil about the importance and interest

of the subject.

“If you really don’t mind looking at it,” said the Prince Consort, “I

should like awfully to send you a copy.”

“Oh yes! You must read it,” said Mrs Clinton. “Why, _I’m_ going to

read--well, some of it! I’ve promised!”

“So am I,” said little Muriel, while the Prince Consort rubbed his hands

together with a sort of pride which was, on its other side, the

profoundest humility. He was wondering, I think, that he should have

been able to produce any book at all--even the worst of books--and

admiring a talent which he had not considered himself to possess.

“I’m going to worry everybody who comes here to buy it--or to order it

at Mudie’s, anyhow,” pursued Mrs Clinton. “What’s written in this house

must be read.”

“I hope Vincents’ won’t lose a lot over it,” said the Prince Consort,

shaking his head.

“Oh well, they’ve made a good deal out of me before now,” laughed his

wife lightly.

I did not take the Prince Consort’s book away with me to the Continent.

Whatever else it might be, it was certainly not holiday reading, and it

would have needed a portmanteau to itself. But the reverberation of the

extraordinary and almost unequalled “boom” which the book made reached

me in the recesses of Switzerland. I came on _The Times_ of three days

before in my hotel, and it had three columns and a half on Mr Thompson

Clinton’s work. The weekly _Budget_ which my sister sent to me at

Andermatt contained, besides a long review, a portrait of the Prince

Consort (he must have sat to them on purpose) and a biographical sketch

of him, quite accurate as to the remarkably few incidents which his

previous life contained. It was this sketch which first caused me to

begin to realise what was happening. For the sketch, after a series of

eulogies (which to my prepossessed mind seemed absurdly extravagant) on

the Prince Consort, reached its conclusion with the following

remark:--“Mr Thompson Clinton’s wife is also a writer, and is known in

the literary world as the author of more than one clever and amusing

novel.” I laid down the _Budget_ with a vague feeling that a revolution

had occurred. It was now Mrs Clinton who “wrote too.”

I was right in my feeling, yet my feeling was inadequate to the reality

with which I was faced on my return to England. The Prince Consort was

the hero of the hour. I had written him a line of warm congratulation,

and I settled at once to the book, not only in order to be able to talk

about it, but also because I could not, without personal investigation,

believe that he had done all they said. But he had. It was a wonderful

book--full of learning and research, acute and profound in argument, and

(greatest of all surprises) eminently lucid, polished, and even

brilliant in style; irony, pathos, wit--the Prince Consort had them all.

I laid the second volume down, wondering no longer that he had become an

authority, that his name appeared in the lists of public banquets, that

he was quoted now by one, now by the other, political party, and that

translations into French and German were to be undertaken by

distinguished _savants_.

And of course both _The Quarterly_ and _The Edinburgh_ had

articles--“did him,” as his wife had phrased it. Upon which, being

invited by Mrs Clinton to an evening party, I made a point of going.

There were a great many people there that night. A large group was on

the hearthrug. I am tall, and looking over the heads of the assembly I

saw the Prince Consort standing there. He was smiling, still rather

nervously, and was talking in quick eager tones. Everyone listened in

deferential silence, broken by murmurs of “Yes, yes,” or “How true!” or

“I never thought of that!” And Muriel held the Prince Consort’s hand,

and looked up at him with adoration in her young eyes. I rejoiced with

the Prince Consort in his hour of deserved triumph, but I did not,

somehow, find Muriel as “pretty a picture” as a lady told me later on

that she was. Indeed, I thought that the child would have been as

well--or better--in bed. I turned round and looked for Mrs Clinton. Ah,

there she was, on her usual sofa. By her side sat Lady Troughton;

nobody else was near. Mrs Clinton was talking very quickly and

vivaciously to her companion, who rose as I approached, gave me her

hand, and then passed on to join the group on the hearthrug. I sat down

by Mrs Clinton, and began to congratulate her on her husband’s

marvellous triumph.

“Yes,” said she, “do you see he’s in both the quarterlies?”

I said that such a tribute was only natural.

“And it’s selling wonderfully too,” she went on. “You may imagine how

much obliged Vincents’ are to me for sending him there!”

“Did you know he was doing it?” I asked.

“Oh, I knew he was working at something. Muriel used to be always

chaffing him about it.”

“She doesn’t chaff him now, I should think.”

“No,” said Mrs Clinton, twisting a ring on her finger round and round.

Suddenly the group opened, and the Prince Consort came through, leading

Muriel by the hand. He marched across the room, followed by his

admirers. I rose, and he stood close by his wife, and began to talk

about her last novel. He said that it was wonderfully clever, and told

us all to get it and read it. Everybody murmured that such was their

intention, and a lady observed:

“How charming for you to be able to provide your husband with

recreation, Mrs Clinton!”

“Papa doesn’t care about novels much, really,” said Muriel.

“You do, I suppose, young lady?” asked someone.

“I like papa’s book better,” the child answered, and we all laughed, Mrs

Clinton leading the chorus with almost exaggerated heartiness.

And then an enthusiastic woman must needs see where Mr Thompson Clinton

(the Prince Consort bid fair to be double-barrelled before long) worked.

She would take no denial, and at last Mrs Clinton rose, and, in spite of

her husband’s protests, led the way to the study. I had been in the

room a little while before I went abroad. It was much changed now. A row

of Mrs Clinton’s novels, indeed, still stood on the top of the whatnot,

but her “litter” (it had been her own playful name for her manuscripts

and other properties) had vanished. Large, fat, solemn books,

Blue-books, books of science, of statistics, and other horrors dominated

the scene.

“And to think that the great book was actually written in this very

room!” mused the enthusiastic woman in awestruck accents. “I shall

always be glad to have seen it.”

Again we murmured assent; and the enthusiastic woman, with an obviously

sudden remembrance of Mrs Clinton, turned to her, and said:

“Of course you don’t work in the same room?”

“Oh, I do my little writing anywhere,” smiled Mrs Clinton.

“In the dining-room, generally,” added Muriel “when it’s not wanted you

know.”

“Ah, well, you don’t need such complete quiet as Mr Thompson Clinton

must have to think out his books, do you?” asked the enthusiastic woman,

with a most amiable smile.

“There’s plenty of thought in my wife’s books,” said the Prince Consort.

“Oh yes, of that _sort_,” conceded the enthusiastic woman.

Then we went back to the drawing-room, and the worshippers gradually

took their leave, till only Lady Troughton and I were left. The child

Muriel looked at her watch.

“Papa’s got to go on to a party at the----,” she begun.

“There’s no hurry, my dear; no hurry at all,” interposed the Prince

Consort.

“And, anyhow, I’m not going out, Muriel,” said Mrs Clinton. “I’m not

asked there, you know.”

Yet Lady Troughton and I said “Good-bye.” The Prince Consort came

downstairs with us, and made us renew our promises to procure his wife’s

novel. “It’s really a striking book,” said he. “And, look here, Tom;

just write her a line, and tell her how much you like it, will you?

You’re sure to like it, you know.”

Lady Troughton stopped on the doorstep, and looked him full in the face.

She said nothing; neither did he. But when they shook hands I saw her

squeeze his. Then she was good enough to offer me a lift in her

carriage, and I handed her in and followed myself. We drove a quarter of

a mile or so in silence, and when we had gone thus far Lady Troughton

made what appeared to me to be the only remark that could possibly be

made.

“Poor little goose!” said Lady Troughton.

WHAT WAS EXPECTED OF MISS CONSTANTINE

I

“Do remember what’s expected of her!” cried my sister Jane.

It was not the first time that she had uttered this appeal; I daresay

she had good cause for making it. I had started with the rude masculine

idea that there was nothing expected--and nothing in particular to be

expected--of the girl, except that she should please herself and, when

the proper time came, invite the rest of us to congratulate her on this

achievement.

Jane had seen the matter very differently from the first. She was in

close touch with the Lexingtons and all their female friends and

relatives; she was imbued with their views and feelings, and was

unremitting in her efforts to pass them on to me. At least she made me

understand, even if I could not entirely share, what was felt at female

headquarters; but I was not going to let her see that. I did not want to

take sides in the matter, and had no intention of saying anything that

Jane could quote either to Lady Lexington or to Miss Constantine

herself.

“What is expected of her?” I asked carelessly, taking my pipe out of my

mouth.

“Nobody exactly presses her--well, there’s nobody who has the right--but

of course she feels it herself,” Jane explained. She knitted her brows

and added, “It must be overwhelming.”

“Then why in the world doesn’t she do it?” I asked. Here I was, I admit,

being aggravating, in the vulgar sense of that word. For Jane’s

demeanour hinted at the weightiest, the most disturbing reasons, and I

had in my heart very little doubt about what they were.

“Can’t you see for yourself?” she snapped back pettishly. “You were

dining there last night--have you no eyes?”

Thus adjured--and really Jane’s scorn is sometimes a little hard to

bear--I set myself to recover the impressions of the dinner-party. The

scene came back easily enough. I remembered that Katharine Constantine

and Valentine Hare had once more been sent in together, and had once

more sat side by side. I remembered also that Lady Lexington had once

more whispered to me, when I arrived, that the affair was “all but

settled,” and had once more said nothing about it when I left. I

remembered watching the pair closely.

True, I was placed, as a friend of the family, between Miss Boots, the

Lexingtons’ ex-governess, and Mr Sharples, Lady Lexington’s latest

curate (she always has one in tow; some of the earlier ones are now in a

fair way to achieve gaiters), so that there was nothing very likely to

distract my attention from the centre of interest. But I should have

watched them, anyhow. Who could be better to watch? Katharine, with her

positive incisive beauty (there was nothing of the elusive about her;

some may prefer a touch of it); the assurance of manner which her beauty

gave, and the consciousness of her thousands enhanced; her instinctive

assumption of being, of being most indisputably, Somebody; and to-night,

as it seemed, a new air about her, watchful, expectant, and telling of

excitement, even if it stopped short of nervousness--Katharine, with all

this, had a claim to attention not seriously challenged by Miss Boots’

schoolroom reminiscences, or Mr Sharples’ views on Church questions of

the day.

And Valentine too, the incomparable Val! Of course I watched him, as I

always have, when fortunate enough to be thrown into his company, with

a fascinated inquiring interest, asking myself always whether I was a

believer or whether scepticism crept into my estimate. Val, however,

demands, as the old writers were fond of saying, a fresh chapter to

himself. He shall have it, or at least a section.

But before ending this one, for the sake of symmetry and of my

reputation for stage management, also in order to justify at the

earliest possible moment the importance which Jane attached to the

events of the evening, let me add that just beyond me, on the other side

of Miss Boots, and consequently quite remote from Miss Constantine, sat

a short young man with a big round bullet of a head: it looked as if it

might be fired out of a cannon at a stone wall, with excellent results

from the besiegers’ point of view. This was Oliver Kirby, and I have to

own at once that the more than occasional glances which Miss Constantine

directed, or allowed to stray, towards our end of the table were meant,

as my observation suggested before the evening was out, for Kirby, and

not, as I had for some happy moments supposed, for me. I am never

ashamed of confessing to an amiable sort of mistake like that.

II

Without present prejudice to the question of his innermost personality,

Val was at least a triumph of externals. Perhaps I should say of

non-essentials--of things which a man might not have, and yet be

intrinsically as good a man--but, having which, he was, for all outside

and foreign purposes, a man far more efficient. Val was, as I shall

indicate in a moment, a bit of a philosopher himself, so he could not

with reason object to being thus philosophically considered. Birth had

been his discreet friend--a friend in setting him in the inner ring,

among the families which survive, peaks of aristocracy, above the flood

of democracy, and are more successful than Canute was in cajoling the

waves; discreet in so ordering descent that, unless a robust earl, his

uncle, died prematurely, Val had time to lead the House of Commons (or

anything of that sort) before suffering an involuntary ascension, which

might or might not be, at the political moment, convenient. He had

money, too--a competence without waiting for his uncle’s shoes. He had

no need to hunt a fortune: it was merely advisable for him, and natural

too, to annex one under temptations not necessarily unromantic. Nobody

could call Miss Constantine necessarily unromantic.

So much for birth, with all the extraordinary start it gives--a handicap

of no less than fifteen years, one might be inclined to say, roughly

generalising on a comparison of the chances of the “born” and of the

bourgeois. Now, about brains. If you come to think of it, brains were

really a concession on Val’s part; he could have achieved the Cabinet

without them--given a clever Prime Minister, at least. But he had

them--just as splendid shop-window brains as his birth was flawless

under the most minute Heralds’ College inspection. There was, indeed, a

lavishness about his mental endowment. He ventured to have more than one

subject--a dangerous extravagance in a rising statesman. North Africa

was his professional subject--his foreign affairs subject. But he was

also a linguist, an authority on French plays, and a specialist on the

Duc de Reichstadt. Also he had written a volume of literary essays; and,

finally, to add a sense of solidity to his intellectual equipment, he

was a philosopher. He had written, and Mr Murray had published, a short

book called “The Religion of Primitive Man.” This work he evolved on

quiet evenings in his flat off Berkeley Square in two months of an early

winter in London. All that can be said about it is that it sounded very

probable, and set forth in exceedingly eloquent language what primitive

man ought to have believed, even if he did not, because it led to a

most orthodox, if remote, conclusion. Whether he did or not, Val, and

most other people, had neither time nor inclination to discover. That

would, in fact, have needed a lot of reading. After all, Val might plead

the example of some eminent metaphysicians.

Birth, brains--now comes the rarest of Val’s possessions, one that must

be handled most delicately by one who would do Val justice at any cost.

I mean Val’s beauty. Val himself bore it lightly, with a debonair

depreciation which stopped only, but definitely, short of

unconsciousness. He had hereditary claims to it; a grandmother had

attracted--and by a rarer touch of distinction repelled--royalty. But

Val made it all his own. A slim figure, bordering on six feet; aquiline

features, a trifle ruddy in hue; hands long and slender; above all,

perhaps, a mass of black hair touched with white--ever so lightly

silver-clad. The greyness proclaimed itself premature, and brought

contrast to bear on the youthfulness of the face beneath--a face the

juvenility of which survived the problems of North Africa and his

triumphs in the _à priori_. Add to this, a fine tradition of schoolboy

and university athletics, and--well, a way with him of which women would

talk in moments of confidence.

Speaking quite seriously, I cannot suppose that such a fascinating

person has often appeared; never, surely, a more decorative? And it was

“all but settled”! Why, then, those glances toward our end of the table?

Because they were not for me, as I have already acknowledged. Kirby? The

bullet-head, with its close-cropped wire-thick hair? Could that draw her

eyes from the glories of Val’s sable-silver crown? These things are

unaccountable; such really appeared to be the case.

III

After dinner I used the freedom of old acquaintance to ask Lady

Lexington precisely what she meant by saying that it--the alliance

between Miss Constantine and Valentine Hare--was “all but settled.” We

chanced to be alone in the small drawing-room; through the curtained

archway we could see the rest of the company formed into groups. Val was

again by Miss Constantine’s side; Kirby was now standing facing them,

and apparently doing most of the talking.

“He hasn’t asked her in so many words yet,” said Lady Lexington; “but he

will soon, of course. It’s been practically settled ever since she came

to stay here--after her father’s death, you know. And it’s an ideal

arrangement.”

“Suppose she refuses him?”

“I sha’n’t suppose anything so ridiculous, George,” said my friend

sharply. “I hope I have more sense! What girl would refuse Valentine?”

“It would be heterodox,” I admitted.

“It would be lunacy, stark lunacy. Even for her--I admit she has a right

to look high--but even for her it will be a fine match. He’s got

everything before him. And then look how handsome, how fascinating he

is!” She laughed. “Old as I am, I wouldn’t trust myself with him,

George!”

“I haven’t met Kirby here before,” I observed, perhaps rather abruptly.

“Mr Kirby? Oh, he’s quite a _protégé_ of Frank’s. We met him in

Switzerland last winter, and Frank and he did all sorts of unsafe things

together--things you oughtn’t to do in winter.”

“He probably stops the avalanches with his head.”

“I really don’t know where he comes from or who he is, but he’s in the

Colonial Office, and Frank says they think enormous things of him there.

I like him, but, do you know, he’s rather hard to keep up a

conversation with. He always seems to say the last thing about a subject

first.”

“Very bad economy,” I agreed.

“Some people--well, I have heard people say it’s hardly polite--when

they’re just thinking of something to say themselves, you know----”

“He probably can’t help it,” I pleaded.

“Katharine seems to like him, though, and I daresay she’ll get Val to

give him a lift in the future.”

“You’re treating it as quite settled.”

“Well, it really is; I feel sure of that. It might happen any---- Why,

look there, George! Suppose it happened to-night!”

Lady Lexington’s air of pleasurable flutter was occasioned by a movement

in the next room. Miss Constantine was passing from the drawing-room

into the library beyond, Val holding the door for her. Kirby had not

moved, but now stood looking at her with a smile. Just as she passed

through the door she turned, looked at him, and made the slightest

little grimace. I read it as defiance--playful defiance. Whether I was

right in that or not, it was, beyond all doubt, a confidential

communication of some sort. If “it” were indeed going to be “settled,”

the moment seemed an odd one for the exchange of that secret signal with

Mr Kirby; for her grimace was in answer to his smile, his smile the

challenge that elicited her grimace. Yes, they were in communication.

What about? I got no further than an impression that it was about

Valentine Hare. I remembered the glances at dinner, and mentally

corrected the little misapprehension which I have already acknowledged.

But had the signals been going on all the evening? About Valentine Hare?

“I shall wait for news with great interest,” I said to Lady Lexington.

She made no direct answer. Looking at her, I perceived that she was

frowning; she appeared, indeed, decidedly put out.

“After all,” she said reflectively, “I’m not sure I do like Mr Kirby.

He’s rather familiar. I wonder why Frank brings him here so much.”

From which I could not help concluding that she, too, had perceived the

glances toward my end of the table, Kirby’s smile, and Katharine

Constantine’s answering grimace. From that moment, I believe, a horrible

doubt, an apprehension of almost incredible danger, began to stir in her

mind. This, confided to Jane, had inspired my sister’s gloomily

significant manner.

IV

A week passed by without my getting any news from Lady Lexington. My

next advices came, in fact, from Jane. One morning she burst into my

room when I was reading the paper after breakfast. I had been out late

the night before, and had not seen her since yesterday at lunch. Her

present state of excitement was obvious.

“She’s asked for time to consider!” she cried. “Imagine!”

“The dickens she has!” I exclaimed. Of course I guessed to whom she was

referring.

“Ah, I thought that would startle you!” Jane remarked, with much

gratification. “I was at the Lexingtons’ yesterday. She is queer.”

I saw that Jane wanted me to ask questions, but I always prefer having

gossip volunteered to me; it seems more dignified, and one very seldom

loses anything in the end. So I just nodded, and relighted my pipe. Jane

smiled scornfully.

“You’ll go there yourself to-day,” she said. “I know you.”

“I was going, anyhow--to pay my dinner call.”

“Of course!” She was satisfied with the effect of her sarcasm--I think I

had betrayed signs of confusion--and went on gravely: “You can imagine

how upset they all are.”

“But she only proposes to consider.”

“Well, it’s not very flattering to be _considered_, is it? ‘I’ll

consider’--that’s what one says to get out of the shop when a thing

costs too much.”

I had to ask one question. I did it as carelessly as possible. “Did you

happen to see Miss Constantine herself?”

“Oh yes; I saw Katharine. I _saw_ her, because she was in the room part

of the time, and I’m not blind,” said Jane crossly.

“I gather that she hardly took you into her full--her

inner--confidence?”

Jane’s reply was impolite in form, but answered my question

substantially in the affirmative. She added: “Lady Lexington told me

that she won’t say a word about her reasons. You won’t find it a

cheerful household.”

I did not. Jane was right there. I daresay my own cheerfulness was

artificial and spasmodic: the atmosphere of a family crisis is apt to

communicate itself to guests. It must not be understood that the

Lexingtons, or Miss Boots, or Mr Sharples, who was there again, were

other than perfectly kind to Katharine. On the contrary, they overdid

their kindness--overdid it portentously, in my opinion. They treated her

as though she were afflicted with a disease of the nerves, and must on

no account be worried or thwarted. If she had said that the moon was

made of green cheese they would have evaded a direct contradiction--they

might just have hinted at a shade of blue. She saw this; I can quite

understand that it annoyed her very much. For the rest, Lady Lexington’s

demeanour set the cue: “It must end all right; meanwhile we must bear

it.”

She and Mr Sharples and Miss Boots were all going to an afternoon

drawing-room meeting, but I was asked to stay and have tea. “You’ll give

him a cup of tea, won’t you, Katharine?” And did my ears deceive me, or

did Lady Lexington breathe into my ear, as she shook hands, the words,

“If you could say a word--tactfully!”? I believe she did; but Jane says

I dreamed it--or made it up, more likely. If she did say it, it argued

powerfully for her distress.

I had known Katharine Constantine pretty well for three or four years; I

had, indeed, some claim to call myself her friend. All the same, I did

not see my way to broach the engrossing subject to her, and I hardly

expected her to touch on it in talk with me. My idea was to prattle, to

distract her mind with gossip about other people. But she was, I think,

at the end of her patience both with herself and with her friends. Her

laugh was defiant as she said:

“Of course you know all about it? Jane has told you? And of course

you’re dying to tell me I’m a fool--as all the rest of them do! At any

rate, they let me see they think it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s talk of anything else. I’ve got no

right----”

“I give you the right. You’re interested?”

“Oh, I can’t deny that. I’m human.”

She was looking very attractive to-day; her perplexity and worry seemed

to soften her; an unwonted air of appeal mitigated her assurance of

manner; she was pleasanter when she was not so confident of herself.

“Well, I should rather like to put the case to a sensible man--and we’ll

suppose you to be one for the moment.” She laughed more gently as I

bowed my thanks. “On the one side is what’s expected of me----”

“Jane’s phrase!” I thought to myself.

“What all the world thinks, what I’ve thought for a long while myself,

what he thinks--in fact, everything. And, I tell you, it’s a good deal.

It is even with men, isn’t it?”

“What’s expected of us? Yes. Only unusual men can disregard that.”

“It’s worse with women--the weight of it is much heavier with women. And

am I to consider myself unusual? Besides, I do like him enormously.”

“I was wondering when you would touch on that point. It seems to me

important.”

“Enormously. Who wouldn’t? Everybody must. Not for his looks or his

charm only. He’s a real good sort too, Mr Wynne. A woman could trust her

heart with him.”

“I’ve always believed he was a good sort--and, of course, very

brilliant--a great career before him--and all that.” She said nothing

for a moment, and I repeated thoughtfully: “Astonishingly brilliant, to

be sure, isn’t he?”

She nodded at me, smiling. “Yes, that’s the word--brilliant.” She was

looking at me very intently. “What more have you to say?” she asked.

“A good heart--a great position--a brilliant intellect--well, what more

is there to say? Unless you permit me to say that ladies are

sometimes--as they have a perfect right to be--hard to please.”

“Yes, I’m hard to please.” Her smile came again, this time thoughtful,

reminiscent, amused, almost, I could fancy, tender. “I’ve been spoilt

lately,” she said. Then she stole a quick glance at me, flushing a

little.

I grew more interested in her; I think I may say more worthily

interested. I knew what she meant--whom she was thinking of. I passed

the narrow yet significant line that divides gossip about people from an

interest in one’s friends or a curiosity about the human mind. Or so I

liked to put it to myself.

“I must talk,” she said. “Is it very strange of me to talk?”

“Talk away. I hear, or I don’t hear, just as you wish. Anyhow, I don’t

repeat.”

“That is your point, you men! Well, if it were between a great man and a

nobody?”

“The great man I know--we all do. But the nobody? I don’t know him.”

“Don’t you? I think you do; or perhaps you know neither? If the world

and I meant just the opposite?”

She was standing now, very erect, proud, excited.

“It’s a bad thing to mean just the opposite from what the world means,”

I said.

“Bad? Or only hard?” she asked. “God knows it’s hard enough.”

“There’s the consolation of the--spoiling,” I suggested. “Who spoils

you, the great man or the nobody?”

She paid no visible heed to my question. Indeed she seemed for the

moment unconscious of me. It was October; a small bright fire burned on

the hearth. She turned to it, stretching out her hands to the warmth.

She spoke, and I listened. “It would be a fine thing,” she said, “to be

the first to believe--the first to give evidence of belief--perhaps the

finest thing to be the first and last--to be the only one to give

everything one had in evidence.” She faced round on me suddenly.

“Everything--if one dared!”

“If you were very sure----” I began.

“No!” she interrupted. “Say, if I had courage--courage to defy, courage

for a great venture!”

“Yes, it’s better put like that.”

“But people don’t realise--indeed they don’t--how much it needs.”

“I think I realise it a little better.” She made no comment on that, and

I held out my hand. “I should like to help, you know,” I said, “but I

expect you’ve got to fight it out alone.”

She pressed my hand in a very friendly way, saying, “Any single human

being’s sympathy helps.”

That was not, perhaps, a very flattering remark, but it seemed to me

pathetic, coming from the proud, the rich, the beautiful Miss

Constantine. To this she was reduced in her struggle against her mighty

foe. Any ally, however humble, was precious in her fight against what

was expected of her.

V

Miss Constantine’s suppression of names, and her studious use of the

hypothetical mood in putting her case, forbade me saying she had told me

that in her opinion Valentine Hare was a nobody and Oliver Kirby a great

man, although the world might be pleased to hold just the opposite view.

Still less had she told me that, in consequence of this opinion of hers,

she would let the nobody go and cling to the great man; she had merely

discerned and pictured that course of action as being a very splendid

and a very brave thing--more splendid and brave, just in proportion to

the world’s lack of understanding. Whether she would do it remained

exceedingly doubtful; there was that heavy weight of what was expected

of her. But what she had done, by the revelation of her feelings, was to

render the problem of whether she would embrace her great venture or

forgo it one of much interest to me. The question of her moral courage

remained open; but there was now no question as to her intellectual

courage. Her brain could see and dared to see--whether or not she would

dare to be guided by its eyes. Her achievement was really

considerable--to look so plainly, so clearly and straight, through all

externals; to pierce behind incomparable Val’s shop-window

accomplishments, his North Africa, his linguistic accomplishments, Duc

de Reichstadt, French plays, literary essays, even his supremely

plausible and persuasive “Religion of Primitive Man” (which did look so

solid on a first consideration)--to go right by all these, and ask what

was the real value of the stock in the recesses of the shop! And,

conversely, to pick up bullet-headed Kirby from the roadside, so to

speak, to find in him greatness, to be “spoilt” (she, the rich, courted

beauty) by being allowed to hear the thuds of his sledge-hammer mind, to

dream of giving “everything” to his plain form and face because of the

mind they clothed, to think that thing the great thing to do, if she

dared--yes, she herself stood revealed as a somewhat uncommon young

woman.

Her appraisement of Val I was not inclined to dispute; it coincided with

certain suspicions which I myself had shamefacedly entertained, but had

never found courage to express openly. But was she right about Kirby?

Had we here the rare “great man”? Concede to her that we had, her case

was still a hard one. Kirby had no start; he was in a rut, if I may say

so with unfeigned respect to the distinguished service to which he

belonged--an honourable useful rut, but, so far as personal glory or the

prospects of it went, a rut, all the same. Unless some rare chance

came--they do come now and then, but it was ill to gamble on one

here--his main function would be to do the work, to supply the knowledge

secretly, perhaps to shape a policy some day in the future; but _tulit

alter honores_. Not to him would the public raise their cheers, and

posterity a statue. Her worship of him must be, in all likelihood,

solitary, despised, and without reward. Would it be appreciated as it

ought to be by her hero himself? But here, perhaps, I could not get

thoroughly into the skin of the devotee; the god is not expected to be

overwhelmed by his altars and his sacrifices--his divinityship is merely

satisfied.

“Mr Hare is behaving splendidly,” Jane reported to me. She had a

constant--apparently a daily--report of him from Lady Lexington, his

unremitting champion. Indeed the women were all on his side, and it was

surprising how many of them seemed to know his position; I cannot help

thinking that Val, in his turn, had succumbed to the temptations of

sympathy. They spoke of him as of a man patient under wrong, amiable

and forgiving through it all, puzzled, bewildered, inevitably hurt, yet

with his love unimpaired and his forgiveness ready.

“Do you suppose,” I asked Jane, “that he’s got any theory why she

hesitates?”

“Theory! Who wants a theory? We all know why.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” My “exclusive information” seemed a good deal

cheapened. “Has she told you, may I ask?”

“Not she; but she goes every afternoon, just after lunch, to Mrs

Something Simpson’s--that’s the man’s aunt. She lives in a flat in

Westminster, and he goes from his office to lunch at his aunt’s every

day, now.”

While I had been musing, Jane had been getting at the facts.

“Val knows that?”

“Of course Lady Lexington told him. Let’s have fair play, anyhow!” said

Jane rather hotly.

“What does he say about it?”

“He’s perfectly kind and sweet; but he can’t, of course, quite conceal

that he’s”--Jane paused, seeking a word. She flung her hands out in an

expressive gesture, and let me have it--“Stupefied!” A moment later she

added, “So are we all, if it comes to that.”

“If one dared!” Katharine Constantine’s words came back. They were all

stupefied at the idea. Would she dare to pile stupefaction on

stupefaction by confronting them with the fact?

In the course of the next few days the Powers That Be in the land took a

hand--doubtless an entirely unconscious one--in the game. A peer died;

his son, going up to the House of Lords, vacated the post of

Under-Secretary for the Colonies. Amid a chorus of applause and of

flattering prophecies Valentine Hare was appointed in his place. I met,

at one of my clubs, a young friend who had recently entered the

Colonial Office, and he told me that the new member of Administration’s

secretary would in all probability be Oliver Kirby. “And it’ll give him

a bit of a chance to show what’s he’s made of,” said my young friend,

with the kindly patronage of youth.

But, under present circumstances, it might create a slight awkwardness,

say, about lunch-time, mightn’t it? I doubted whether that appointment

would be made.

VI

Now I come to my share in this history. I confess that I approach it

with doubt and trembling; but it has to be told here. It will never be

told anywhere else--certainly not at the Lexingtons’, nor above all, for

my peace’ sake, to my sister Jane.

The following day was a Sunday, and, according to a not infrequent

practice of mine, I took a walk in Hyde Park in the morning--in the

early hours before the crowd turned out. The place was almost deserted,

for the weather was raw and chilly; but there, by some supernatural

interposition as I am convinced, whether benign or malignant only the

passage of years can show, in a chair at the corner of the Row sat

Oliver Kirby. I stopped before him and said “Hallo!”

I had forgotten how entirely formal our previous acquaintance had been,

perhaps because I had been thinking about him so much.

He greeted me cordially, indeed gladly, as I fancied, and, when I

objected to sitting in the chilly air, he proposed to share my walk. I

mentioned the secretaryship, remarking that I understood it was a good

thing for a man to get. He shrugged his shoulders, then turned to me,

and said, with a sudden twinkle lighting up his eyes, “One might be able

to keep our friend straight, perhaps.”

“You think he needs it?”

“It’s only a matter of time for that man to come a cropper. The first

big affair he gets to handle, look out! I’m not prejudiced. He’s a very

good fellow, and I like him--besides being amused at him. But what I say

is true.” He spoke with an uncanny certainty.

“What makes you say it?”

Kirby took my arm. “The man is constitutionally incapable of thinking in

the right order. It’s always the same with him, I don’t care whether

it’s an article about North Africa or that book of his about primitive

man. He always--not occasionally, but always--starts with his conclusion

and works backwards to the premises. North Africa ought to be that

shape--it is! Primitive man ought to have thought that--he did! You see?

The result is that the facts have to adapt themselves to these

conclusions of his. Now that habit of mind, Wynne, makes a man who has

to do with public affairs a dangerous and pernicious fool. He oughtn’t

to be allowed about. What, I should like to know, does he think the

Almighty made facts for! Not to be looked at, evidently!”

I was much refreshed by this lively indignation of the intellect. But,

“You’re quite sure you’re not prejudiced?” said I.

“I said it all in a review of his book before I ever met him, or came

into----”

“Conflict with him?” I ventured to interpose.

He looked at me gravely. I thought he was going to tell me to mind my

own business. I have so little that I never welcome that injunction.

Then he smiled.

“I forgot that I’d met you at the Lexingtons’,” he said.

“I don’t think you need have told me that you’d forgotten.”

“Well, I had,” said he, staring a little.

“But you needn’t have said so--needn’t have put it that way.”

“Oh!” He seemed to be considering quite a new point of view.

“Not that I’m offended. I only point it out for your good. You expect

people to be too much like you. The rest of us have feelings----”

“I’ve feelings, Wynne,” he interrupted quickly.

“Fancies----”

“Ah, well--perhaps those too, sometimes.”

“Fears----”

He squeezed my arm. “You’ve struck me the right morning,” he said.

“Think what you’re asking of--the person we mean.”

“She’s to give me her answer after lunch to-day.”

“I believe it will be ‘No’--unless you can do something.”

He looked at me searchingly, “What’s in your mind?” he asked. “Out with

it! This is a big thing to me, you know.”

“It’s a big thing to her. I know it is. Yes, she has said something to

me. But I think she’ll say ‘No,’ unless--well, unless you treat her as

you want Val Hare to treat North Africa and primitive man. Apply your

own rules, my friend. Reason in the right order!”

He smiled grimly. “Develop that a little,” he requested, or, rather,

ordered.

“It’s not your feelings, or your traditions, or your surroundings, that

count now. And it’s not what you think she ought to feel, nor what she

ought as a fact to feel, nor even what’s she’s telling herself she ought

to be brave enough and strong enough to feel. It’s what she must feel,

has been bred to feel, and in the end does feel. What she does feel will

beat you unless you find a way out.”

“What does she feel?”

“That it’s failure, and that all the other girls will say so--failure in

the one great opportunity of her life, in the one great thing that’s

expected of her; that it’s final; that she must live all her life a

failure among those who looked to her for a great success. And the

others will make successes! Would it be a small thing for a man? What is

it to a girl?”

“A failure, to marry me? You mean she feels that?”

“Facts, please! Again facts! Not what you think you are, or are sure you

are, or are convinced you could be; just what you are--Mr Kirby of the

Colonial Office, lately promoted--it is promotion, isn’t it?--to be

secretary to----”

“Stop! I just want to run over all that,” he said.

At, and from, this point I limit my liability. I had managed to point

out--it really was not easy to set up to tell him things--where I

thought he was wrong. Somehow, amid my trepidation, I was aware of a

pleasure in talking to a splendidly open and candid mind. He was

surprised that he had been wrong--that touch of a somewhat attractive

arrogance there was about him--but the mere suspicion of being wrong

made him attentive to the uttermost. Tell him he hadn’t observed his

facts, and he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, rest till he had substantiated, or

you had withdrawn, the imputation. But, as I say, to suggest the mistake

was all I did. I had no precise remedy ready; I believe I had only a

hazy idea of what might be done by a more sympathetic demeanour, a more

ample acknowledgment of Miss Constantine’s sacrifice--a notion that she

might do the big thing if he made her think it the enormous thing;

aren’t even girls like that sometimes? The sower of the seed is entitled

to some credit for the crop; after all, though, the ground does more. I

take none too much credit for my hint, nor desire to take too much

responsibility.

He caught me by the arm and pulled me down on to a bench--a free seat

just by the east end of the Serpentine.

“Yes, I see,” he said. “I’ve been an ass. Just since you spoke, it’s all

come before me--in a sort of way it grew up in my mind. I know how she

feels now--both ways. I only knew how she felt about my end of the

thing before. I was antagonistic to the other thing. I couldn’t see Val

as a sort of Westminster Abbey for the living--that’s the truth. Never

be antagonistic to facts--you’ve taught me that lesson once more,

Wynne.” He broke into a sudden amused smile. “I say, if your meddling is

generally as useful as it has been to me, I don’t see why you shouldn’t

go on meddling, old chap.”

I let that pass, though I should have preferred some such word as

“interpose” or “intervene,” or “act as an intermediary.” I still

consider that I had been in some sense invited--well, at any rate,

tempted--to--well, as I have suggested, intervene.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Settle it,” replied Mr Oliver Kirby, rising from the bench.

He might have been a little more communicative. It is possible to

suggest that. As a matter of fact, he was the best part of the way to

Hyde Park Corner before I realised that I was sitting alone on the

bench.

VII

Had Kirby been at my elbow, his bullet head almost audibly pricing my

actions, relentlessly assessing them, even while he admitted that they

had done him good, I imagine that I should not have gone. His epithet

rankled. I a meddler! I can only say that it is a fortunate circumstance

that he never knew Jane.

However, I did call on Lady Lexington that afternoon, and found just a

snug family party--that was what my hostess called it. In fact, besides

myself, the only outsider was Valentine Hare; and could he be called an

outsider? His precise appellation hung in suspense. Talk was intimate

and bright.

In view of Val’s appointment, it was natural that it should turn on the

Colonies. Val himself hinted that the Foreign Office would have given

more scope for his specialty (he meant North Africa, not the “Religion

of Primitive Man”); but Miss Constantine was hot on the Colonies, going

so far, indeed, as to get out an atlas and discuss thousands of square

miles, and wheat belts, and things like that. Once or twice I fancied

that the new Under-Secretary would have been glad not to be quite so

new; a few days of coaching from, say, Kirby (Had she had--? At lunch?

No; it was hardly thinkable; he couldn’t have taken that moment to

instruct her) would have equipped him better for her excellently

informed conversation. As for poor Lexington, he broke down entirely

when she got out to Assiniboia and Saskatchewan, and said frankly that

in his opinion there was more of Canada than any man could be expected

to know about. That did not seem to be at all Miss Constantine’s view.

She was stopped only by the ocean. I am not sure that a vaulting

ambition did not confederate Japan.

Val was delighted. Miss Constantine was so cordial, so interested, so

congratulatory on his appointment. There was, as it seemed to me, a

serenity in her manner which had recently been lacking--a return of her

old assurance, softened still, but not now by the air of appeal; it was

rather by an extreme friendliness. Val must have felt the friendliness

too, I think, for he expanded wonderfully, discoursing with marvellous

fecundity, and with a knowledge as extensive as it was indefinite, of

the British possessions beyond the seas. All said and done, he knew a

lot more than I did; but, then, I was not his competitor.

So we got on splendidly together. Lady Lexington beamed, her lord warmed

himself happily, Miss Constantine was graciousness itself, Val basked

and blossomed--and I wondered what the deuce had happened at Mrs

Something Simpson’s flat in Westminster. (Her real name was Whitaker

Simpson, and I believe Jane knew it quite well.)

Yes, she was monstrously friendly--distrust that in your mistress

whether wooed or won. She would do everything for Val that afternoon,

except be left alone with him. The Lexingtons went--you can hardly stop

people going in their own house; Miss Boots and Mr Sharpies, who were

both there, went--to church. I tried to go, but she wouldn’t let me. Her

refusal was quite obvious: Val--he was impeccable in manners--saw it.

After precisely the right interval he rose and took his leave. I had the

atlas on my knees then (we had got back to Assiniboia), and I studied it

hard; but, honestly, I couldn’t help hearing. The tones of her voice, at

least, hinted at no desire for privacy.

“Once more a thousand congratulations--a thousand hopes for your

success,” she said, giving him her hand, as I suppose--my eyes were on

the atlas.

“After that, I shall feel I’m working for you,” he replied gallantly. No

doubt his very fine eyes pointed the remark.

“Shall you?” she said, and laughed a little. “Oh, you’ll--I’ll write you

a note quite soon--to-morrow or Tuesday. I won’t forget. And--good-bye!”

“To-morrow or Tuesday? That’s certain?” His voice had an eagerness in it

now.

“Yes, certain. I won’t forget. And--good-bye!”

“Good-bye!” he said, and I heard the door open.

“A thousand hopes!” she said again.

I suppose he made some response, but in words he made none. The door

closed behind him.

I put the atlas on the sofa by me, got up, and went to her.

“I suppose I may go now, too?” I said.

“How clever you’re growing, Mr Wynne! But just let him get out of the

house. We mustn’t give it away.”

A moment or two we stood in silence. Then she said: “You understand

things. You shall have a note too--and a thousand hopes. And--good-bye!”

Not a suspicion of the meaning of this afternoon’s scene crossed my

mind, which fact proved me, I daresay, to be very stupid. But Val was

hardly likely to see more clearly, and I can’t altogether justify the

play she made with the atlas and Assiniboia. As an exercise in irony,

however, it had its point.

VIII

I do not know what was in Val’s note: more of good-bye, and more than a

thousand hopes, I imagine. Is it fanciful to mark that she had always

said “hope” and never “confidence”? Mine bade me be at a certain corner

of a certain street at eleven-thirty. “Where you will find me. Say

nothing about it.” It was a little hard to say nothing whatever to Jane.

I went and met them at the corner--Mrs Something Simpson, Kirby, and

Miss Constantine. Thence we repaired to a registry office, and they (I

do not include Mrs Simpson) were married. They were to sail from

Liverpool that afternoon, and we went straight from the office to

Euston. I think it was only when the question of luggage arose that I

gasped out, “Where are you going?”

“To Canada,” said Kirby briskly.

“For your trip?”

“For good and all,” he answered. “I’ve got leave--and sent in my

resignation.”

“And I’ve sent in my resignation too,” she said. “Mr Wynne, try to think

of me as only half a coward.”

“I--I don’t understand,” I stammered.

“But it’s your own doing,” he said. “Over there she won’t be a failure

all her life!”

“Not because I’ve married him, at any rate,” Katharine said, looking

very happy.

“I told you I should settle it--and so I did,” Kirby added. “And I’m

grateful to you. I’m always grateful to a fellow who makes me

understand.”

“Good heavens!” I cried. “You’re not making me responsible?”

“For all that follows!” she answered, with a merry laugh. “Yes!”

That’s all very well, but suppose he gets to the top of the tree, as the

fellow will, and issues a Declaration of Independence? At least he’ll be

Premier, and come over to a conference some day. Val will be Secretary

for the Colonies, probably (unless he has come that cropper). There’s a

situation for you! Well, I shall just leave town. I daresay I sha’n’t be

missed.

Lady Lexington carried it off well. She said that, from a strain of

romance she had observed in the girl, the marriage was just what was to

be expected of Katharine Constantine.

SLIM-FINGERED JIM

I

“What did he get? “I asked. I had been working in my own room all the

morning and had not seen the papers--they arrived from London about

half-past eleven.

“Seven years’ penal servitude,” said our host the Major with grim

satisfaction.

“Stiff!” I commented.

“Not a bit too much,” asserted the Major, helping himself to game pie

again--he is a good luncher. “He’s a thoroughly bad lot--a professional

thief, and a deuced clever one. It’s his first conviction, but it ought

to have been his tenth, I should say.”

“He was certainly in that big American bond robbery,” said Crookes,

“though he got off that time. Oxford man, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. In fact, I believe I was up one term with him,” said Millington.

“I must have seen him, I think, but I can’t remember him.”

“Dear, dear!” our hostess observed, shocked apparently at this close

proximity to the criminal classes.

“Rather good what the chap said when he’d been sentenced,” drawled

Charlie Pryce. “See it? Well, he bowed to the judge, and then he bowed

to the jury, and smiled, and shrugged his shoulders, and said: ‘The

risks of the profession, gentlemen! _Au revoir!_’ Jolly good cheek!”

Charlie’s round red face--he is very well nourished, as they say at

inquests--beamed almost sympathetically.

“I suppose he owes his nickname to his professional dexterity?” said I.

“Suppose so,” agreed Charlie.

“No,” said Mrs Pryce, who was at the other end of the table. “His name

is James----”

“Yes, James Painter Walsh,” interposed the Major, accurate always.

“But he was called ‘Slim-Fingered’ because he had beautiful hands with

very slender tapering fingers.”

“Hallo, Minnie!” cried Pryce. “How do you know that?”

“He told me himself,” she answered with a smile and the hint of a blush.

“I crossed from America with him the time he was arrested at Queenstown

for the bond robbery, and--well, we got acquainted. Of course, nobody

knew who he was.”

A torrent of questions overwhelmed Mrs Pryce. She had achieved fame--she

had known the hero of the last great jewel robbery. She spoke of him

from first-hand knowledge. The unrivalled attraction of crime--crime in

the grand manner--fascinates us all. But she wouldn’t say much.

“He was just an acquaintance for the voyage,” she told us; “though, of

course, it was rather a shock when he was arrested at Queenstown.”

“Oh, what a surprise!” exclaimed Charlie Pryce jovially.

“A surprise?” She seemed to me to start ever so little. “Oh yes, of

course--terrible!” she went on the next instant.

“Was he nice?” asked our hostess.

“Yes, he was very--very attractive,” she answered. And somehow I fancy

her glance rested for a moment on her husband--indeed on a particular

portion of him. Charlie was just lighting the after-lunch cigarette.

Charlie’s hands--he is a very good fellow and well off--are decidedly

red and particularly podgy.

II

I liked Mrs Pryce very much. She was pretty, dainty, bright, and--well,

bachelors are so apt to think that pretty married women have a dull time

at home that I will lay no stress on my own private opinion as to her

domestic lot. Enough that I was always glad to talk with her, and that

it was pleasant to walk with her in the Major’s quiet old garden on a

fine night when the wind stirred the boughs and the moon shone. Inside

they had taken to pool--and whisky-and-soda. I play the former badly,

and take the latter when the evening is more advanced.

“Beautiful moon!” I observed, enjoying Nature, my company, and my cigar.

She was silent a moment. Then she said: “It shone just like that the

third night out from New York.”

“Your last trip?” She crosses pretty often, as Charlie has business

connections on the other side.

“No. The one when--the one we were talking about at lunch.”

“Ah! When our friend of the slim fingers----?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s sit down,” I suggested. We were just passing a garden seat.

She smiled at me half sadly, half mockingly. She saw through me; she

knew I wanted to hear more about it. By some sort of sympathy I knew

that she wanted to talk about it. It was queer, too, to consider through

what window that moon was shining on Slim-Fingered Jim. Did it--and his

other surroundings--remind him of the broad Atlantic? “The risks of the

profession, gentlemen!”

“Yes, he had beautiful hands,” she murmured.

“What’ll they look like when----?”

She caught my hand sharply in hers. “Hush, hush!” she whispered. I felt

ashamed of myself, but of course I couldn’t have known that--well, that

she’d feel it like that.

“I was quite a girl,” she went on presently. “Yes, it’s six years

ago--and the first two days of that voyage were like days in heaven. You

know what it can be when it’s fine? You seem never to have known what

space was before--and bigness--and blueness. Do you know what I mean?”

“It’s very exhilarating.”

“Oh, don’t be silly! Of course nobody was ill--anyhow only the people

who meant to be before they started--and we had an awfully jolly table.”

“Mr Walsh one of your party?”

“Yes, he was at our table. I--sat next to him.”

I turned half round and looked at her. The moon was strong, I could see

her eyes.

“Look here, do you want to go on with this story?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so--I’ve never told it before. But perhaps I’ll skip a

little of it.”

“At the beginning?”

“Yes. Will you imagine the sun shining by day and the moon by night?”

“Yes. And a sparkling sea? And nothing to do?”

“Yes. And a young girl--quite a young girl.”

“Yes. And beautiful hands--and the rest to match?”

“Yes--including a voice.”

“Yes. Let’s skip to the second evening, shall we, Mrs Pryce?”

“Will you be a little more imaginative and skip to the third afternoon?”

“The third afternoon be it. What’s happening when we begin the story

again?”

“I’m in my mother’s state-room, getting a tremendous lecture. I’m not

sure you ought to hear it.”

“Oh, I know all about it. You meant no harm, probably, but really it was

time you learnt to be more careful. Attractive girls couldn’t be too

careful. Men were so ready to think this and that--and say this and

that--and then go and boast about it in the smoking-room. And what did

you or your mother know about him? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! No doubt

he was a gentleman, and very pleasant and amusing--but really you knew

nothing. He was probably an adventurer. And anyhow--well, really it

wasn’t quite--not _quite_--ladylike to--to----”

“Yes, that’s not a bad imagination,” interrupted Mrs Pryce. “Add mamma’s

pince-nez, and it’s quite life-like.”

“And the result?”

“Great constraint in my manner towards Mr Walsh at dinner that evening.”

“And--further result--a melancholy walk by you on the deck after

dinner--a walk at first solitary--subsequently shared by a puzzled and

humble Mr Walsh?”

“I begin to think you have more experience than you always admit,” said

Mrs Pryce. “But I think you’ll go wrong if you try to guess any more.”

“Then I won’t guess any more. Take up the thread. It’s now the third

night out, and the moon is shining like that.” I pointed to the orb

which was illuminating the Major’s garden--among other places where

sundry of that liner’s former passengers might chance to be.

“I’ll go on,” she said, “and don’t interrupt me for a little while.

There was a very light wind--you hardly felt it aft--and I was standing

looking over the sea. He came up to me and began to talk about some

trifle--I forget what it was, but it doesn’t matter. But I was afraid

mamma would come up and look for me, so I said I was going down to read.

But I waited for just a minute more--I suppose I expected him to ask me

not to go. He said nothing, but took one big pull at his cigar, gave one

big big puff of smoke out of his mouth and nose, and then threw the

cigar overboard. ‘Good-night, Mr Walsh,’ I said. He looked at me--it

was as light as it is now--and said: ‘Will you give me one minute, Miss

Cochrane?’ ‘Well, only a minute,’ I said, smiling. I was really afraid

about mamma. ‘I want to tell you something,’ he said. I wonder if I

blushed--and whether he could see if I did. I expect I did, and that he

saw, because he went on very quickly: ‘Something that doesn’t matter

much to you, but matters a bit to me.’ ‘Go on,’ I said. I was quite calm

again now, because--well, because I saw he was going to say something

serious--I mean, not of the sort I--I had thought he might be going to

say before.”

“You saw he wasn’t making love to you, you mean?”

“I told you not to interrupt--but I daresay that’s putting it as nearly

right as you can understand.”

I murmured thanks for this rather contemptuous forgiveness.

“Then he told me,” Mrs Pryce went on, “just simply told me--and said he

was going to make some excuse for asking the purser to put him at

another table.”

“But you can’t leave it like that!” I expostulated. “You’re throwing

away all your dramatic effect. What did he say? His words, his words,

Mrs Pryce!”

“He didn’t use any--not in the sense you mean. He just told me. He

didn’t even put me on my honour not to tell anybody else. He said he

didn’t care a hang about anybody else on board, but that he wanted to

spare me any possible shock, and that he’d been concerned in the bond

robbery and would probably be arrested at Queenstown, but that he

expected to get off this time. I think I repeated ‘This time!’ because I

remember he said then that he was a thief by profession, and couldn’t

expect good luck every time. That was like what he said yesterday,

wasn’t it?”

“And what did you say? It must have been a bad quarter of an hour for

you. Because you’d liked him a good deal, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, a lot. But”--she turned to me, smiling now--“it wasn’t bad at all,

really.”

She gave a little laugh--a laugh with pleasant reminiscence in it.

“You were a cool hand for your age,” I ventured to observe.

“It was the way he did it,” she said. “Somehow I felt he was paying me a

very high compliment.”

“Oh, I agree!” I laughed.

“And one I was glad to have. It must have been the way he did it. There

are some people who abolish one’s moral scruples, aren’t there? He was

very quiet generally, but he had a way of just moving those hands of his

with a little waving gesture. And when he said that of course it wasn’t

right----”

“Oh, he admitted that?”

“Yes, but that little wave of those hands seemed to wave right and wrong

right out of the way.”

“Overboard?”

“Absolutely overboard. Then he looked at me a moment and said: ‘That’s

all I had to say. Thanks for listening to me, Miss Cochrane.

Good-night.’”

“And what did you say?”

She rested her chin in her hand, looking sideways at me.

“I said: ‘Good-night, Mr Walsh. We meet at breakfast to-morrow as

usual?’”

“The deuce you did!”

“‘At our table?’ he asked. And I said ‘Yes.’ He gave a little laugh, and

so did I, and I held out my hand. He shook hands and left me, and I went

down and read with mamma.”

“Nothing else said?”

“He said nothing else. I believe I whispered: ‘It’ll be rather

fun--because you _will_ get off!’ But I know I didn’t say anything more

than that.”

There was a pause. I lit another cigarette, snatching a mean advantage

by stealing a look at my friend in the light of the match. She was not

looking at me, but straight ahead of her: there was a pensive smile on

her lips.

“And what happened afterwards?” I asked.

“I suppose you’ll be shocked?”

“Being shocked is an emotion hostile to art--I never have it.”

“Well, then, I never had such fun. Of course we were careful, because of

mamma (mamma’s idea became funny too!), and because we knew what was

going to happen. But we managed to get no end of talks in quiet

places--the library’s very good in fine weather--and he told me all

sorts of wonderful things. It was like reading the very best detective

stories, only ever so much better--so much more vivid, you know.”

“More personal interest?”

“A thousand times! And it was fun, too, at meals, and when there was a

concert, and so on. I used to find him looking at me, with his eyes all

full of laughter; and I looked back at him, enjoying the secret and the

way he was making fools of all the rest. We were just like two children

with some game that the grown-up people know nothing about.”

“He had waved your morality overboard with a vengeance,” said I.

“It was the jolliest time I ever had in my life,” said Mrs Pryce. “He

recited beautifully at the concert--‘The Ballad of Beau Brocade.’”

“Well done him!” I said approvingly. I began rather to like the fellow

myself.

“And at the end he made a little speech, thanking the captain, and

saying how sorry we should all be when the voyage ended. ‘And nobody

sorrier than myself,’ he said, with one of his looks at me--such a

twinkling look--and a tiny wave of those hands.”

“He must have been the most popular man on board?”

“Well, the men thought him rather standoffish; he snubbed some of them,

I think. Well, you do meet some queer men on a liner, don’t you? And Mr

Walsh said that out of business hours he claimed to choose his

acquaintance. But the women all worshipped him--not that he ran after

them, but his manner was always just right to them.”

“It’s really a pity his manner of life was so--well, so unconventional.”

“Yes, wasn’t it?” she said, welcoming my sympathy. “Because, of course,

it meant that our acquaintance had to end with the voyage.”

I had, perhaps, been thinking of somewhat broader considerations, but I

refrained from advancing them. In fact, we had somehow got away from

ordinary standards and restraints; the memory of Slim-Fingered Jim had

waved them away. We fell into silence for a moment or two, until I

asked--

“And the manner of the end? Tell me that.”

“I didn’t believe in the end. I had got not to believe in it at all. I

thought we might go on sailing for ever over that beautiful sea and

having the most splendid fun. He could make you feel that everything was

just splendid fun--that there was nothing else in the world. He made me

feel that--I suppose he knew he could, or he’d never have told me his

secret at all. But, of course, the end had to come.” She sighed and gave

a little shiver--not that it was cold in the Major’s garden. Then she

turned to me again. “I’ve told you a good deal,” she said, “and you’re

not a chicken, are you?”

I ruefully admitted that I was no chicken.

“Then I needn’t say anything more about myself,” said she.

“And what about him?”

“I think he liked me tremendously; but he wasn’t in love.”

“Not at all?”

“I don’t think so. He was just the most perfect of good comrades to

me--and in that way the finest gentleman I’ve ever met. Because, you

know, I can see now that I gave him opportunities of being something

else. Well, I was only nineteen, and----”

“Quite so. The hands, of course!”

“It seems possible to be good and bad in--in compartments, doesn’t it?

That’s rather curious!”

“If true!”

“Oh, you know it’s true!”

“Perhaps I do; but I never contradict the preacher.”

She laughed again, but now a trifle fretfully.

“In his own business I believe he’s thoroughly bad.”

“Not even the chivalrous highwayman?”

“No. Just bad--bad--bad.”

“Ah, well, business is one thing and charity another, as somebody once

observed. And now for the end, please--because ends do come, even though

we don’t believe in them.”

“Yes, they do; and this one came,” she said. But for an instant or two

she did not begin to tell me about it; and in the silence I heard

Charlie Pryce assert loudly that he had made a good shot.