"You will excuse me. It is possible. I have heard the name. But I

have long since ceased to concern myself with persons. In a great

struggle such as this individuals are submerged."

He walked on again, slip-slopping in his shapeless boots through the

slush, his head down to the rain.

"Christine," Robert said, "don't you remember Christine?"

(He himself had not thought of her for years, and now deliberately he

had conjured her up.)

Mr. Ricardo hunched his shoulders. He peered round at Stonehouse,

frowning suspiciously.

"You are very persistent, sir. Are you God?"

"No."

"It is better to be quite frank with one another. Not an emissary of

God?"

"No."

He seemed only half satisfied.

"You will excuse my asking. I have to be very careful. There have

been certain signs of late that the enemy is anxious to

negotiate--to--ah--reach some compromise. No direct offer, you

understand, but various feelers--hints--suggestions--terms of a most

unscrupulous and subtle nature--traps into which a man less--ah--wary

than myself might well fall. This Christine--yes--yes--I have to be on

my guard."

"I have nothing to do with God," Robert said gently. "I'm a friend--on

your side. I'd like to help. If I knew where you lived so that I

could learn more about your work----"

But Mr. Ricardo shrank away from him.

"I don't like the sound of that. I dare say I do you an injustice,

young man, but I can't afford to take risks. My headquarters are my

secret."

"Well"--he tried to speak in a matter-of-fact and reasonable way--"at

any rate, a general must have munition. I'd like to help financially.

You can't refuse me that."

They were almost through the labyrinth of Soho and on the brink of

Oxford Street. Mr. Ricardo stopped again with his hand spread out flat

upon his breast in a gesture not without power and dignity.

"You think I am a failure, sir, because I go poorly dressed. You are

mistaken. In the struggle that I am carrying on, outward and material

things are of no account. I might have all the wealth and all the

armies of the world, sir, and be further from victory than I am now.

The fight is here, sir, in the spirit of man, and the weaker and poorer

I become the nearer I am to the final effort. I am a fighter, sir,

stripping himself--presently I shall throw off the last hindrance, and

if the enemy will not show himself I shall seek him out--I shall force

him to stand answer----" He broke off. The chain of white-hot

coherency had snapped and left him peering about him vaguely, and a

little anxiously, as though he were afraid someone had overheard him.

"It has been very difficult--there were circumstances--so many

circumstances----" He sighed and finished on the toneless

parrot-note of the street orator: "My next meeting will be at Marble

Arch, 3 p.m., on Tuesday. Thank you for your attention, and

good-night."

He lifted his hat and bowed to left and right as though to an assembled

multitude. The lamp-light threw his shadow on to the grey, wet

pavements, and with the soap-box perched on his shoulders it was the

shadow of a huge hunchback. Then he shuffled off, and Stonehouse lost

sight of him almost at once in the dripping, uncertain darkness.

He walked on mechanically, aimlessly. He was tired out and dejected

beyond measure by this tragic encounter. It was not any immediate

affection for the old man, who had been no more to him than a strange

force driving him on for its own purposes; it was the others he had

evoked--and, above all, the sense of common misfortune which no man can

avert for ever. For the moment he lost faith in his own power to

maintain himself against a patient and faceless Nemesis.

It was morbid--the old terrifying signs of breakdown--the pointing

finger.

"Thus far and no further with your brain, Robert Stonehouse."

And then, suddenly, he found that he was in a familiar street, and,

stopping short, as though from old custom, to look up. There was the

finest house in Harley Street which they were to have decorated with

their brass plates. If it had risen straight out of the ground at the

behest of his fancy he could not have been more painfully disconcerted.

He had never known before that he had avoided it. He knew it now, and

the realization was like the opening of a door into a dark and

unexplored chamber of his mind. He stood there shivering with cold,

and wet, and weariness. Who lived there now, he wondered? The old

back-numbers whom they were to have ousted so ruthlessly? Well, he

could find out. Someone lived there, at any rate. He could see a

light in one of the upper rooms. He crossed over and went up the steps

cautiously, like a thief. All the brass plates but one had gone. That

one shone brightly in the lamp-light, giving the door a one-eyed,

impish look. He could read the letters distinctly, and yet he had to

spell them over twice. It was as though she herself had suddenly

opened the door and spoken to him.

"Frances Wilmot, M.D."

Then he turned and walked away. But at the next corner he stopped and

looked up again at the lighted window. What freakish fancy had

possessed her----? Perhaps she was there now. He could see her in

the room that had been his enemy. And he had brief vision of himself

standing there in the empty street as he had done when he had loved her

so desperately, gazing up at that signal of warmth and comfort out of

the depths of his own desolateness.

He said "Francey!" under his breath, ironically, as though he had

uttered a child's "open-sesame!" to prove that there had never been any

magic in the word. But the sound hurt him.

This time he did not look back.

Nor was there any reassurance to be found that night in the concrete

justification of his life. He set himself down to work in vain. One

ghost called up another. The room with its solemn, bloodless

impedimenta became--not a monument to his success, but a Moloch, to

whom everything had been sacrificed--the joy of life, its laughter, its

colour--and Christine. And not only Christine. He had been sacrificed

too.

But he saw Christine most clearly. She sat in the big arm-chair where

his patients waited for his verdict. She wore the big, floppy, black

hat that she had liked best, and the grey hair hung in the old untidy

wisps about her face. The chair was much too big for her. Her little

feet hardly touched the ground. Her hands in the darned gloves were

folded gravely over the shabby bag. He could see her looking about

dimly and hear the clear, small voice.

"How wonderful of you, Robert! How proud your dear father would have

been!"

He fidgeted with the papers on his table, rearranging, re-sorting,

desperately trying not to suffer. But he would have torn the whole

place down in ruins to have remembered that he had given her one day of

happiness.

Well, there had been that one day on Francey's hill--the picnic. She

had liked that. The wood at the bottom, like a silent, deep, green

pool--and Francey's arms about his shoulders, Francey's mouth on his,

giving him kiss for kiss.

Ghosts everywhere--and no living soul who cared now whether he failed

or won through, whether he suffered or was satisfied. Only Cosgrave

perhaps--poor, unlucky little Cosgrave--always hunting for

happiness--breaking himself against life--going to the dogs for the

sake of a rotten woman.

He fell forward with his face hidden in his arms and lay there shaken

by gusts of fever. They weakened gradually, and he fell asleep. And

in his sleep his father drew himself up suddenly, showing his terrible

white face, and clutched at little Robert Stonehouse, who skirted him

and ran screaming down the dark stairs.

"You can't--you can't--you're dead. I'm grown up--I'm free--I'm not

like you--you can't--you can't----"

But the next morning he was himself again, sure and cool-headed and

cool-hearted. He did not believe that he had suffered or in the

recurrence of that terror.

III

1

Probably she had expected him. It must have seemed to her, so

Stonehouse reflected as he followed the shrivelled old woman down a

passage dim and gorgeous with an expensive and impossible Orientalism,

a natural sequel to his enmity. Men did not hate her--or they did so

at their peril. Then she would be most dangerous. The luckless

Frederick, so the story ran, had snubbed her at a charity bazaar, and

had made fun of her dancing. And he had stolen and finally shot

himself for her sake. Perhaps she thought there was a sort of

inevitability in this programme.

He had to wonder at and even admire the mad splendour of the place.

Her taste was as crude and flamboyant as herself, but it too had

escaped vulgarity which at its worst is imitative of the best, a stupid

second-handness, an aggressive insolent self-distrust. She was not

ashamed of what she was. She was herself all through, and she trusted

herself absolutely. She wanted colour and there was colour. She

wanted Greek columns in a Chinese pagoda and they were there. The

house was like a temple built by a crazy architect to a crazy god, and

every stick and stone in it was a fanatic's offering.

The old woman jerked her head and stood aside. Her toil-worn face with

the melancholy monkey eyes was inscrutable, but Stonehouse guessed at

the swift analysis he was undergoing. In his iron temper he could

afford to be amused.

"Mademoiselle is within."

The room was a huge square. To make it, two floors at least of the

respectable Kensington house must have been sacrificed. The walls were

decorated with Egyptian frescoes and Chinese embroideries, and silk

divans which might have figured in a cinema producer's idea of a

Turkish harem were set haphazard on the mosaic floor. In the centre a

stone fountain of the modern-primitive school and banked with flowers

splashed noisily. Somehow it offered Kensington the final insult. But

she had wanted it, just as she had wanted the Greek columns. There was

even a certain magnificence about the room's absurdity. It was so

hopelessly wrong that it attained a kind of perfection.

She herself sat on the edge of the fountain and fed a gorgeous macaw

who, from his gilded perch, received her offerings with a lofty

friendliness. But as Stonehouse entered she sprang up and ran to him,

feeling through his pockets like an excited child.

"The poison--the poison!" she demanded.

He had to laugh.

"I forgot it," he said.

"_C'est dommage_. You 'ave not taken it yourself by any chance?"

"No--I wouldn't do that at any rate."

"_C'est vrai_. I ask--you 'ave an air _un peu souffrant_. Well, never

mind. It's droll though--I think about you just when you ring up--I

'ave a damn pain--not ze tummy-ache this time--and I say: '_Le pauvre

jeune homme_, 'ere is a chance for 'im to pay me out for kissing 'im

when 'e don't want to be kissed.' You remember--I say I send for you

one day. But ze old pain--it 'as gone now. You--'ow do you say?--you

conjure it away."

"Your pains don't interest me," he said. "For one thing I don't

believe you ever had any. I suppose you think a pain is the best

entertainment to offer a doctor. It's thoughtful of you, but I didn't

come here to be amused."

"Then I wonder what you want of me," she remarked. She went back to

her place on the fountain's edge, sitting amidst the flowers and

crushing them under her hands. The pose appealed to him as

expressively callous, and yet it was innocent too, the pose of a child

or an animal who destroys without knowledge or ill-will.

"Do people usually want things from you?" he asked.

"Always--all ze time."

"And you give so much."

She eyed him seriously.

"I give what I 'ave to give."

"And take what you can get."

"Like you, _Monsieur le docteur_."

The absoluteness of his hatred made it possible for him to laugh with

her.

"My fees are fairly reasonable at any rate. I've helped some people

for nothing."

"Because you love them?"

"No."

"_C'est dommage aussi_. You should love someone. It is much

'ealthier. I love everyone. Per'aps I love too much. I make

experiments. You make experiments--and sometimes leetle mistakes.

_Comme nous autres_. 'Ze operation was a _grand succes_--but ze

patient die.' I know. Some of mine die too."

"Prince Frederick, for instance?"

She lifted the long chain of pearls about her neck and considered them

dispassionately.

"That _canard_! You think 'e give me these? _Ce pauvre_ Fredi! 'E

couldn't 'ave given me a chain of pink coral. I could 'ave bought 'im

and 'is funny little kingdom with my dress-money. 'E shoot 'imself.

Well, that was 'is _affaire_. 'E 'ave no doubt explain 'imself to ze

_bon Dieu_, who is particulaire about that sort of thing. As to ze old

pearls--my agent 'e set that story going--_pour encourager les autres_."

"Cosgrave among them?" he suggested.

"Monsieur Cosgrave? We won't talk about 'im just now, if you please.

'E make me ver' cross. I 'ate to be cross. It is ver' difficult to

'ave a good time with English people. They are so damn thorough. When

they want to go to ze devil they want to go ze whole way."

"Perhaps that's why I'm here," he said ironically.

"_Voyons--voyons, c'est ennuyeux_----" She broke off and gave a little

husky, good-natured laugh. "I remember. You think me a bad woman.

But I am not a bad woman at all. Ze leetle girls in ze chorus--they

are sometimes bad because they want things they 'ave no right to 'ave.

They are just leetle girls with nothing to give, and they want to live

ze big life and they tumble into ze gutter. They are ze ginger-beer

who pretend to be ze champagne. _Mais mot_--I am ze real champagne. I

make things seem jolly that are not jolly at all--ze woman who sit next

you at dinner--ze food--ze bills who wait for you at 'ome--life. If

you take too much of me you 'ave ze 'eadache. _Enfin, ce n'est pas ma

faute_. I 'ave so much to give. I 'ave so much life. One life--one

country--one 'usband is not enough. But I am not bad. If there was

any sense in things they would give me an order and a nice long

title--_Grande Maitresse de la Vie_--_Princesse de Joie_." She lifted

her eyebrows at him to see whether he appreciated the joke. "Ah

well--no. I talk too much about myself. Tell me instead what you

think of my leetle 'ome. _C'est joli, n'cest-ce-pas_?" She waved

towards the Chinese embroideries and added, with a child's absolute

content: "I like it."

"I suppose you do," he retorted. "It reminds me of a quaint old custom

I read about somewhere. When our early ancestors were building a

particularly important house they buried a few of the less important

citizens alive under the foundations. It seemed to have a beneficial

influence on the building process."

She offered him her cigarette-case. She seemed to be considering his

remark carefully. Suddenly she laughed out with an unfeigned enjoyment.

"I see. My victims, _hein_? You can make leetle jokes too. But why

so ver' serious? I'm not burying you, am I?"

"No. You couldn't. And you're not going to bury Cosgrave. Oh--I

don't want to waste my time and yours making accusations or appealing

to what doesn't exist. I only want to point out to your--your business

instinct that Cosgrave isn't worth burying. He's poor and he's

unlucky. He won't bring you luck or anything else. Much better to let

him go."

"Let 'im go? But I want 'im to go! Yesterday I would not see 'im. I

didn't want to see 'im."

"That was a good reason. It's all rather late in the day, though. Two

months ago Cosgrave came to England with about 3000 pounds. I know,

because he told me. And now that's gone. You know where."

"I make a guess, my friend."

"He bought you presents--outrageous for a man in his position."

"Someone 'ave to buy them," she explained good-humouredly. "I don't

ask about positions. It's not polite."

"Now he's at the end of his tether. He's got to go back to his job.

Last night he came to my rooms for the first time for weeks. He

was--was almost mad. When he first came to England he was very ill.

That does not concern you. But what may concern you is that he has

become dangerous. He threatened to shoot you."

"Well, before 'e know me 'e threaten to shoot 'imself. Decidedly, 'e

is getting better, that young man."

Her shameless, infectious laughter caught him by the throat. He wanted

to laugh too, and then thrust her empty, laughing face down into the

water of her comic fountain till she died. There were people who were

better dead. He had said so and it was true, in spite of Francey

Wilmot and her childish sentimentality. Suddenly the woman in the

hospital and this riotous houri were definitely merged into one

composite figure of a mindless greed and viciousness. He clenched his

hands behind his back, hiding them.

"If you would only sit down we should talk so much 'appier," she said

regretfully. "You seem so far off--so 'igh up. Please sit down."

"I don't want to."

"Because you're afraid we might get jolly together, _hein_? Well, you

stand up there then, and tell me something. Tell me. You don't love

nobody. You are a very big, 'ard young man, who 'ave made 'is way in

ze world and know 'ow rotten everybody else is. You 'ave 'ad 'ard

times and 'ard times is ver' bad for everyone, except per'aps Jesus

Christ, for either they go under and are broken, un'appy people, or

they come out on top, and then zey are 'arder than anyone else. Well,

you are ze big, 'ard young man. But you run after this leetle Monsieur

Rufus as though 'e was your baby brother. Well--'e is a nice leetle

fellow--but 'e is just a leetle fellow--with a soft 'eart and a soft

'ead. Not your sort. And, you're not 'is sort. 'E's frightened of

you. 'E want someone who pat 'is 'ead and let 'im cry on 'is shoulder.

You can't 'elp 'im--and you fuss over 'im--you come 'ere and try to put

'is 'eart _affaires_ in order and it's no use at all. _C'est ridicule,

enfin_."

He looked away from her, so that she should not see that this time she

had struck home. She had knocked the weapon out of his hand, and for

the moment, in his astonishment and pain, he could not even hate her.

It was true. He couldn't help Cosgrave any more. His strength and

ability were, as she said, of no use. That was what Cosgrave had meant

when he had laughed about the adenoids. He had failed Cosgrave from

the moment that Cosgrave had demanded love for himself and human

tenderness. He had no tenderness to give. He was a hard young man.

He said slowly, and with a curious humility:

"I used to back him up when he was a kid. He trusted me too--and it's

got to be a sort of habit. I want him to be happy."

"Because you are so un'appy yourself?"

"I'm all right," he said stubbornly. And then he added, still not

looking at her. "Please give him up--so--so that he won't break his

heart over it. I'm not a rich man either, but I'll make it worth your

while."

She sprang up with a gesture of amused exasperation.

"'Ow _stupide_ you are, my clever friend. You are like ze old father

in ze _Dame aux Camellias_. You make me quite cross. This Rufus--I

can't give 'im up. 'E don't belong to me. I never ask for 'im. 'E

come into my dressing-room and I like 'im for 'is cheek and I give 'im

a good time. Now he is _ennuyeux_. 'E want to marry me and make an

honest woman of me." She patted Stonehouse on the shoulder with so

droll a grimace that he bit his lip to avoid a gust of ribald,

incredible laughter. It was as though by some trick she changed the

whole aspect of things so that they became simply comic--scenes in a

jolly, improper French farce. "And now I 'ope you see 'ow funny that

is. And please take Monsieur Cosgrave away and keep 'im away. I don't

ask no better."

His anger revived against her. And it was a thing apart from Cosgrave

altogether--a bitter personal anger.

"It can't be done like that. You can't take drugs away from a

drug-fiend at one swoop. Let him down gently--treat him as a friend

until he has to go--get him to see reason."

"No," she said. "You don't understand. You 'ave not 'ad my

experience. If I let 'im 'ang on 'e get much worse. If I push 'im

off--poof!--an explosion! Then 'e find a nice leetle girl who is not

like me at all and marry--ver' respectable--and 'ave 'eaps of babies.

That is what 'e want. But it is not my _affaire_--and I won't be

bothered. I tell you 'e is too _ennuyeux_----"

He lashed out at her.

"--and too poor. My God, you're no better than a woman of the streets."

She assented with a certain gravity.

"_C'est bien vrai, ca--bien vrai_. I was born in ze gutter--I crawl

out of ze gutter by myself. I keep out of ze gutter--always. And I

don't cry and wring my 'ands when people try to kick me back again. I

kick them. I look after myself. Monsieur Cosgrave--and all those

others--they must look after themselves too. Do you think they bother

about me if I become _ennuyeuse_--like them--and cry because they don't

love me and like some leetle girl in ze chorus better? Not they. They

want fun and life from me--and I give them that. When they want more

they can--'ow you say?--get out?"

He stared at her in white-hot detestation.

"I see. I've just wasted my time. You're--you're as infamous as they

say. You're taking everything he has, and now he can go and hang

himself. You're worse than a woman of the streets because you're more

clever."

She kissed her fingers at him in good-humoured farewell. "I like you

ver' much--_quand meme_," she said. "Next time I come and call on you,

per'aps!"

2

That same night Cosgrave, frustrated at the theatre, tried to force an

entrance to the Kensington house, and the old woman, seconded by a

Japanese man-servant, flung him out again and into the arms of a

policeman who promptly arrested him. Stonehouse went bail for him, and

there was a strange, frantic scene in his own rooms.

For this was not the gentle young man who had met Connie Edwards'

infidelity with an apathetic resignation. He was violent and

indignant. His sense of outrage was a sort of intoxication which gave

an extraordinary forcefulness to his whole bearing. He stormed and

threatened--the misery that stared out of his haggard blue eyes

shrivelling in the heat of an almost animal fury. (And yet he

stammered too--which was comically what the other Rufus Cosgrave would

have done.)

"I--I love her. I've never loved anyone else. That Connie business--a

b-boy and girl affair--a silly flirtation--this--the real thing.

I--I'm a m-man now. N-no one's going to play fast and loose with me.

No, by God! I'll see her--she's got to have it out with me. I've a

right to an explanation at least--and by God I'll have one!"

"For what?" Stonehouse asked.

"She loved me," Cosgrave retorted.

"I don't believe it."

"You d-don't believe it? W-what do you know about it? Didn't she

behave as though she did? Didn't she go about with me? Didn't she

take things from me--no decent woman would have taken unless she loved

me?"

"She doesn't happen to be a decent woman," Stonehouse observed. "To do

her justice she doesn't pretend to be one."

Cosgrave advanced upon him as though he would have struck him across

the face. But he stopped in time, not from remorse, but as though

pulled up by a revelation of maddening absurdity.

"Oh, you--you! You don't understand. You aren't capable of

understanding. You're a block--a machine--you don't feel--you g-go

about--rolling over p-people and things like--like a damned

steam-roller. You're not a man at all. You don't love anyone--not

even yourself. What do you know about anything?"

He was grotesque in his scorn, and yet Stonehouse, leaning with an

apparent negligence against the mantel-shelf, felt himself go dead

white under the attack. He had lost Cosgrave. And he knew now that he

needed him desperately--more now than even in his desolate

childhood--that unconsciously he had hugged the knowledge of that

boyish affection and dependence to him with a secret pride as a

talisman against he hardly knew what--utter isolation, a terrifying

hardness. He made up his mind to have done now with reserve, to show

before it was too late at least some of that dwarfed and suffocated

feeling. But he faltered over his first sentence. He had trained

himself too long and too carefully to speak with that cold, ironic

inflexion. He sounded in his own ears formal--unconvincing.

"You're wrong. I do care. I care for you. You're my friend. I do

understand, in part, at any rate. I can prove it. When I saw how

unhappy you were I went to her--I tried to reason with her."

He broke off altogether under the amazed stare that greeted this

statement. The next instant Cosgrave had tossed his hands to heaven,

shouting with a ribald laughter:

"Oh, my Heaven--you poor fish! You think you can cure everything. I

can imagine what you said: 'I suggest, Mademoiselle, that you reduce

the doses gradually.'"

It was so nearly what he had said that Stonehouse flinched, and

suddenly Cosgrave seemed to feel an impatient compassion for him. "Oh,

I'm a beast. It was jolly decent of you. You meant well. But you

can't help."

And _that_ was what she had said. Stonehouse made no answer. He saw

himself as ridiculous and futile. He was sick with disgust at his own

pain. If he had lost Cosgrave he wanted to have done with the whole

business now--quickly and once and for all.

There was a sense of finality in the shabby room. The invisible bond

that had held them through eight years of separation and silence had

given way. It was almost a physical thing. It checked and damped down

Cosgrave's excitement so that he said almost calmly:

"Well, I shan't attempt to see her again. You'll have that

satisfaction. I'll get out of here--back to my jolly old swamp, where

there aren't any beastly women--decent or indecent--only mosquitoes."

He waited a moment, as though trying hard to finish on a warmer, more

generous note. Perhaps some faint flicker of recollection revived in

him. But it could only illuminate a horrifying indifference. He went

out without so much as a "good-night."

The morning papers gave the Kensington House incident due prominence.

It was one more feather in Mademoiselle Labelle's outrageous head-gear.

The Olympic had not so much as standing room for weeks after.

Cosgrave kept his word. He did not see her again, and within a week he

had sailed for West Africa--to die. But ten days later Stonehouse

received a wireless, and a month later a letter and a photograph of a

fair-haired, tender-eyed, slightly bovine-looking girl in evening

dress. It appeared that she was a Good Woman and the daughter of

wealthy and doting parents, and that in all probability West Africa

would see Rufus Cosgrave no more.

So that was the end of their boyhood. Cosgrave had saved himself--or

something outside Stonehouse's strength and wisdom had saved him. They

would meet again and appear to be old friends. But the chapter of

their real friendship, with all its inarticulate romance and

tenderness, was closed finally.

Stonehouse kept the photograph on the table of his consulting-room. He

believed that it amused him.

3

Still he could not work at night. He resumed his haunted prowlings

through the streets. But he took care that he did not pass Francey

Wilmot's house again. He knew now that he was afraid. He was ill,

too, with a secret, causeless malady that baffled him. There were

nights when he suffered the unspeakable torture of a man who feels that

the absolute control over all his faculties, which he has taken for

granted, is slipping from him, and that his whole personality stands on

the verge of disintegration as on the edge of a bottomless pit.

For some weeks he hunted for Mr. Ricardo in vain. He tried all the

favoured spots which a considerate country sets aside for its

detractors and its lunatics so that they may express themselves freely,

without success. Mr. Ricardo seemed to have taken fright and vanished.

But one afternoon, returning from the hospital, Stonehouse met him by

accident, and followed him. He made no attempt to speak. He meant,

this time, to find out where the old man lived, and, if possible, to

come to his assistance, and his experience taught him the danger and

futility of a direct approach. He followed therefore at a cautious

distance that it was not always possible to maintain. Although it was

early in the afternoon a dense but drifting fog wrapped the city in its

dank folds, and the figure in front of him sometimes loomed up like a

distorted shadow and then in a moment plunged into a yellow pocket of

obscurity, and was lost. Then Stonehouse could only listen for his

footfalls, quick and irregular, echoing with an uncanny loudness in the

low vault of the fog.

Mr. Ricardo had evidently been speaking, for he carried the soap-box

slung over his shoulder, and he was in a great hurry. It was

extraordinary how fast the lame, half-starved old man could walk.

They crossed the park and over to Grosvenor Place. There was no doubt

that Mr. Ricardo knew where he was going, but it flashed upon

Stonehouse that he was not going home. There was something pressed and

sternly in earnest about the way he hurried, as though he had some

important appointment to keep and knew that he was already late. Once

Stonehouse had to run to keep him within hearing.

They went the whole length of Victoria Street. Stonehouse had been

physically tired out when he had started. Now he was not aware of

being tired at all. A gradually rising excitement carried him on,

unconscious of himself. He had no idea what he expected, but he knew

definitely that something deeply significant was about to happen to

them both, that they were running into some crisis.

Outside the Abbey the fog became impenetrable. The traffic had

stopped, and the lights, patches of opaque rayless crimson, added to

the confusion. There were people moving, however, faceless ghosts with

loud footfalls, feeling their way hesitatingly, and among them Mr.

Ricardo vanished. Almost at once Stonehouse lost his own bearings. In

the complete paralysis of all sense of direction which only fog can

produce, he crossed the wide street twice without knowing it. Then he

came up suddenly under the spread statue of Boadicea and into little

knots of people. A policeman was trying to move them on without

success. They hung about hopefully like children who cannot be

convinced that a show is really over.

"It's no good messing round here. You aren't helping anyone. Better

be getting home."

Stonehouse knew what had happened. It was extraordinary how sure he

was. It was almost as though he had known all along. But he said

mechanically to one slouching shadow:

"What is it?"

A face, dripping and livid in the fog, like the face of a dead man,

gaped at him.

"Some old fellow gone over--no, he didn't tumble, I tell yer. You

cawn't tumble over a four-foot parapet. Chucked 'isself, and I don't

blame 'im. One of them police-launches 'as gone out to fish 'im out.

But they won't get 'im. Not now, anyway. Can't see two feet in front

of yer, and the tide running out fast."

Stonehouse felt his way to the parapet and peered over. Above the

water the fog was pitch-black and moving. It looked a solid mass. He

could almost hear it slapping softly against the pillars of the bridge

as it flowed seawards. By now Mr. Ricardo had travelled with it a long

way. His death did not seem to Stonehouse tragic, but only inevitable

and ironical. It was as though someone had played a grave and

significant, not unkindly, joke at Mr. Ricardo's expense. Nor did

Stonehouse feel remorse, for he knew that he could have done nothing.

As Mr. Ricardo had said, it was not material things that had mattered.

He had not killed himself because he was starving, but because the long

struggle of his spirit with the enigma of life had reached its crisis.

He had gone out to meet it with a superb gesture of defiance, which had

also been the signal of surrender and acknowledgment.

The crowd had moved on at last. In the muffled silence and darkness

Stonehouse's thoughts became shadowy and fantastic. Though he did not

grieve he knew that a stone had shifted under the foundations of his

mental security. Death took on a new aspect. It seemed unlikely that

it was so simply the end.

He found himself wondering how far Mr. Ricardo had travelled on his

journey, and whether he had met his enemy, and, face to face with him,

had become reconciled.

IV

1

He did not know why he had consented to receive her, unless it was

because he knew that they would meet inevitably sooner or later. He

felt very able to meet her--cool, and hard and clear-thinking. It was

early yet. A wintry sunlight rested on his neatly ordered table, and

he could smile at the idea that in a few hours he would begin to be

afraid again.

She had made no appointment. Urged by some caprice or other she had

driven up to his door and sent up her card with the pencilled

inscription "_Me voici_!" Standing at his window he could just see the

long graceful lines of her Rolls-Royce, painted an amazing blue--pale

blue was notoriously her colour--and the pale-blue clad figure of her

chauffeur. It occurred to him that she had chosen the uniform simply

to make the man ridiculous--to show that there were no limits to her

audacity and power. She was, he thought, stronger than the men who

thought they were ruling the destinies of nations. For she could ride

rough-shod over convention and prejudice and human dignity. She was

perhaps the last representative of an autocratic egotism in a world in

which the individual will had almost ceased to exist. She seemed to

him the survival of an eternal evil.

And yet when he saw her he laughed. She was so magnificently

impossible. It seemed that she had put on every jewel that she could

carry. She was painted more profusely than usual, and her dress was

one of those fantastic creations with which producers endeavour to

bluff through a peculiarly idiotic revue. But she carried it all

without self-consciousness. It was as natural to her as gay plumage to

a bird-of-paradise.

She gave him her hand to kiss, and then laughed and shook hands instead

with an exaggerated manliness.

"I forget," she said. "It is a bad 'abit. You see. I keep my

promise. I make ze return call. And 'ow kind of you to see me."

"It didn't occur to you that I might refuse," he told her.

"No, that's true. I never thought about it. You 'ave a leetle time

for me, _hein_?"

"About ten minutes," he said.

He assumed a very professional attitude on the other side of his table.

He wanted to nonplus and disconcert her, if such a thing were possible.

Now that his first involuntary amusement was over he felt a return of

the old malignant dislike. She had cost him Cosgrave's friendship, and

he wanted to hurt her--to get underneath that armour of soulless

good-humour. "I knew that you'd turn up one day or other," he said.

She looked at him with a rather wistful surprise.

"'Ow clever of you! You knew? Don't I look well, _hein_? I feel

well--quite all right. But I say to myself: '_Voyons_--'alf an hour

with nothing to do. I pay that cross doctor a visit.' I would 'ave

come before, but I 'ave been so busy. We re'earse 'Mademoiselle

Pantalonne,' ze first night to-morrow. You come? I send you a ticket."

"Thanks. That form of entertainment wouldn't entertain me--except

pathologically. And if I went to the theatre I'd rather leave my

profession outside."

"Path--pathologically," she echoed. "That sounds 'orrid--rather rude.

You don't like me still, _hein_, doctor?"

"Does that surprise you?"

"It surprise me ver' much," she admitted frankly. She picked up the

photograph on the table and examined it with an unconscious

impertinence. "You like 'er?" she asked. "That sort of woman?"

"I don't know," he said. "I've never met her."

"She is not your wife?"

"She is Cosgrave's wife."

It was evident that although the episode had been concluded less than

three months before she had already almost forgotten it.

"Cosgrave? _Ah oui, le cher petit Rufus_? There now--did I not tell

you? Didn't I 'ave reason? Tell me--'ow many babies 'ave 'e got?"

"They were married last month," Stonehouse observed.

"_Ah--la la_! But 'ow glad I am! I can see she is the right sort for

'im. A nice leetle girl. But first 'e 'ave to 'ave a good time--just

to give 'im confidence. Now 'e be a ver' good boy--a leetle dull

per'aps, but ver' good and 'appy. I would write and tell 'im 'ow glad

I am--but per'aps better not, _hein_?"

She winked, and there was an irresistible drollery in the grimace that

made his lips twitch. And yet she was shameless--abominable.

"The ten minutes are almost up," he said, "and I suppose you came here

to consult me."

He knew that she had not. She had come because he was a tantalizing

object, because she could not credit his invincibility, which was a

challenge to her. She laughed, shrugging her shoulders.

"You are an 'orrible fellow! You think of nothing but diseases and

wickedness. I wonder if you 'ave ever 'ad a good time yourself--ever

laughed, like I do, from ze 'eart?"

He looked away from her. He felt for a moment oddly uneasy and

distressed.

"No, I don't suppose I have."

"Ah, _c'est dommage, mon pauvre jeune homme_. But you don't like me.

What can I do?"

"I don't expect you to do anything."

"Not my business, _hein_? No one 'ave any business 'ere who 'ave not

got an illness. Ver' well. I will 'ave an illness--a ver' leetle one.

No, not ze tummy-ache. _C'est vieux jeu ca_. But a leetle sore

throat. You know about throats, _hein_?"

"My specialty," he said smiling back at her with hard eyes.

"Bien, I 'ave a leetle sore throat--_fatigue plutot_--'e come and 'e

go. I smoke too much. But I 'ave to smoke. It's no good what you

say."

"I'm sure of that," he said.

He made her sit down in the white iron chair behind the screen and,

adjusting his speculum, switched on the light. He was bitterly angry

because she had forced this farce upon him. He felt that she was

laughing all over. The pretty pinkness of her open mouth nauseated

him. He thought of all the men who had kissed her, and had been ruined

by her as though by the touch of a deadly plague. He pressed her

tongue down with a deliberate roughness.

"You 'urt," she muttered. But her eyes were still amused.

"A great many people get hurt here," he said contemptuously, "and don't

whine about it."

2

Ten minutes later they sat opposite each other by his table. She was

coughing and laughing and wiping her eyes.

"_C'est abominable_," she gasped, "_abominable_!"

He waited. He could afford to wait. He had the feeling of being

carried on the breast of a deep, quiet sea. He could take his time.

Her laughter and damnable light-heartedness no longer fretted and

exasperated him. Rather it was a kind of bitter spice--a tense

screwing up of his exquisite sense of calm power. She was like a

tigress sprawling in the sunshine, not knowing that its heart is

already covered by a rifle. He prolonged the moment deliberately,

savouring it. In that deliberation the woman in the hospital, Francey

Wilmot, Cosgrave, and a host of faceless men who had gone under this

woman's chariot wheels played their devious, sinister parts. They

goaded him on and justified him. He became in his own eyes the figure

of the Law, pronouncing sentence, weightily, without heat or passion or

pity.

"You do it on purpose," she said, "you make me cough."

He arranged his papers with precise hands.

"I'm sorry--I know you came here as a joke. It isn't--not for you.

It's serious." He saw her smile, and though he went on speaking in the

same quiet, methodical tone, he felt that he had suddenly lost control

of himself. "Medical science isn't an exact science. Doctors are

never sure of anything until it has happened. But speaking with that

reservation I have to tell you that your case is hopeless--that you

have three--at the most four months----"

She had interrupted with a laugh, but the laugh itself had broken in

half. She had read his face. After a long interval she asked a

question--one word--almost inaudibly--and he nodded.

"If you had come earlier one might have operated," he said. "But even

so, it would have been doubtful."

Already many men and women had received their final sentence here in

this room, and each had met it in his own way. The women were the

quietest. Perhaps their lives had taught them to endure the hideous

indignity of a well-ordered death-bed without that galling sense of

physical humiliation which tormented men. For the most part they

became immersed in practical issues--how the news was to be broken to

others, who would look after the house and the children, and how the

last scene might be acted with the least possible inconvenience and

distress for those who would have to witness it. Some men had raved

and stormed and pleaded, as though he had been a judge whose judgment

might be revoked: "Not me--others--not me--not to-day--years hence."

They had paced his private room for hours, trying to get a hold over

themselves, devastated with shame and horror at the breakdown of their

confident personalities. Some had risen to an impregnable dignity,

finer than their lives. One or two had laughed.

And this woman?

He looked up at last. He thought with a thrill that was not of pity,

of a bird hit in full flight and mortally hurt, panting out its life in

the heather, its gay plumage limp and dishevelled. The jewels and

outrageous dress had become a jest that had turned against her. A

shadow of the empty, good-humoured smile still lingered on a painted

mouth palsied with fear. She was swaying slightly, rhythmically,

backwards and forwards, and rubbing the palms of her hands on the

carved arms of her chair, and he could hear her breath, short and

broken like the shallow breathing of a sick animal. And yet he became

aware that she was thinking--thinking very rapidly--calling up

unexpected reserves.

"_Trois--mois--trois mois_. Well, but I don't feel so ill--I don't

feel ill at all--per'aps for a leetle month--just a leetle month."

He had no clue to her thought. She looked about her rather vaguely as

though everything had suddenly become unreal. There were tears on her

cheeks, but they were the tears of her recent laughter. She rubbed

them off on the back of her hand with the unconscious gesture of a

street child.

"I suffer much?"

"I'm afraid so. Though, of course, anyone who attends on you will do

his best."

"Death so ugly--so sad."

"Not always," he said.

It was true. She had been a beast of prey all her life. Now it was

her turn to be overtaken and torn down. Only sentimentalists like

Francey Wilmot could see in her a cause for pity or regret.

They sat opposite each other through a long silence. He gave her time.

He showed her consideration. He thought of the pale-blue chauffeur

waiting in the biting cold of a winter's afternoon. Well, he would be

alive after she had become a loathsome fragment of corruption. He was

revenged--they were all revenged on her now.

She fumbled with her gold and jewelled bag.

"What do I owe, _Monsieur le docteur_?"

"Three guineas."

She put the money on the table.

"That is ver' little for so much. I think--when I can't go on any

more--I come to your 'ospital. You take me in, _hein_? I 'ave a

fancy."

He made an unwilling movement. It revolted him--this obtuseness that

would not see that he hated her.

"I can't prevent your coming if you want to. You would be more in your

element in your own home. Even in their private rooms they don't allow

the kind of things you're accustomed to. There are regulations. Your

friends won't like them."

She looked up at him with a startled intentness.

"_Mes pauvres amis_--I 'ave so many. They won't understand. They say:

'That's one of Gyp's leetle jokes.' They won't believe it--they won't

dare."

She gave him her hand, and he touched it perfunctorily.

"It's as you like, of course. You have only to let me know."

"You are ver' kind."

He showed her to the door, and rang the bell for the servant. From his

vantage point he saw the pale-blue chauffeur hold open the door of the

pale-blue limousine. A few loiterers gaped. By an ironical chance a

barrel-organ in the next street began to grind out the riotous,

familiar gallop. It sounded far-off like a jeering echo:

"I'm Gyp Labelle;

If you dance with me

You dance to my tune. . ."

A danse macabre. He wondered if she had brains or heart enough to

appreciate the full bitterness of that chance. He could see her, in

his mind's eye, cowering back among the pale-blue cushions.

The next morning he received a note from her and a ticket for the first

night of "Mademoiselle Pantalonne"--"with her regards and thanks."

3

He went. In the morning he had tossed the ticket aside, scornful and

outraged by such a poor gesture of bravado. But the night brought the

old restlessness. He was driven by curiosity that he believed was

professional and impersonal. It was natural enough that he should want

to see how a woman of her stuff acted under sentence of death. But

once in the theatre h e became aware of a black and solitary pride

because he alone of all these people could taste the full flavour of

her performance. He had become omniscient. He saw behind the scenes.

Whilst the orchestra played its jaunty overture he watched her. He saw

her stare into her glass and dab on the paint, thicker and thicker,

knowing now why she needed so much more, shrinking from the skull that

was beginning to peer through the thin mask of flesh and blood. He

foresaw the moment, probably before the footlights, when the naked

horror of it all would leap out on her and tear her down. Even in that

she would no doubt seek the consolation of notoriety. It would be in

all the papers. If she had the nerve to carry on people would crowd to

see her, as in the Roman days they had crowded to the circus (gloating

and stroking themselves secretly, thinking: "It is not I who am

dying"). Or she would seek dramatic refuge in her absurd palace and

surround herself with tragic glamour, making use of her own death as

she had used the death of that infatuated and unhappy prince.

And yet he was sick at heart. In flashes he saw his own attitude as

something hideous and abnormal. Then again he justified it, as he had

always justified it. He found himself arguing the whole matter out

with Francey Wilmot--a cool and reasoned exposition such as he had been

incapable of at the crisis of their relationship. ("This woman is a

malignant growth. Nature destroys her. Do you pretend to feel regret

or pity?") But though he imagined the whole scene--saw himself as

authoritative and convincing--he could not re-create Francey Wilmot.

She remained herself. Her eyes, fixed on him with that remembered look

of candid and questioning tenderness, blazed up into an anger as

unexpectedly fierce and uncompromising. And he was not so strong. He

had overworked all his life. Starved too often. The ground slipped

from under his feet.

It was a poor, vulgar show--a pantomime jerry-built to accommodate her

particular talent. She walked through it--the dumb but irresistible

model of a French atelier, who made fools of all her lovers, cheated

them, sucked them dry and tossed them off with a merry cynicism. When

the mood took her she danced and her victims danced behind her, a

grotesque ballet, laughing and clapping their hands, as though their

cruel sufferings were, after all, a good joke. Neither they nor the

audience seemed to be aware that she could not dance at all, and that

she was not even beautiful.

It was an old stunt, disguised with an insolent carelessness. The

producers had surely grinned to themselves over it. "We know what the

public likes. Rubbish, and the older the better. Give it 'em." She

even made her familiar entry between the curtains at the back of the

stage, standing in the favourite attitude of simple, triumphant

expectation, and smiling with that rather foolish friendliness that

until now had never shaken her audiences from their frigidity. To them

she had always been a spectacle, a strange vital thing with a lurid

past and a dubious future, shocking and stimulating. They would never

have admitted that they liked her. But tonight they gave her a sort of

ashamed welcome. Perhaps it was the dress she wore--the exaggerated

peg-top trousers and bonnet of a conventional Quartier Latin which made

her look frank and boyish. Perhaps it was something more subtle.

Stonehouse himself felt it. But then, he knew. He saw her as God saw

her. If there was a God He certainly had His amusing moments.

But he found himself clapping her with the rest, and that made him

angry and afraid. It seemed that he could not control his actions any

more than his thoughts. The whole business had got an unnatural hold

over him. He half got up to go, and then realized that he was trying

to escape.

It was jolly music too. That at any rate her producers had toiled at

with some zeal. Incredibly stupid and artless and jolly. Anyone could

have danced to it. And she was a gutter-urchin, flinging herself about

in the sheer joy of life (with death capering at her heels). He

watched her, leaning forward, waiting for some sign, the faltering

gesture, a twitching grimace of realization. Or was it possible that

she was too empty-hearted to feel even her own tragedy, too shallow to

suffer, too stupid to foresee? At least he knew with certainty that in

that heated, exhausted atmosphere pain had set in.

He became aware that the sweat of it was on his own face--that he

himself was labouring under an intolerable physical burden. He knew

too much. (If God had His amusing moments he had also to suffer,

unless, as Mr. Ricardo had judged, he was a devil.) She was facing

what every man and woman in that theatre would have to face sooner or

later. How? She at any rate danced as though there were nothing in

the world but life. With each act her gestures, her very dress became

the clearer expression of an insatiable, uncurbed lust of living. At

the end, the orchestra, as though it could not help itself, broke into

the old doggerel tune that had helped to make her famous:

"I'm Gyp Labelle."

She waltzed and somersaulted round the stage, and as the curtain fell

she stood before the footlights, panting, her thin arms raised

triumphantly. He could see the tortured pulse leaping in her throat.

He thought he read her lips as they moved in a voiceless exclamation:

"_Quand meme--quand meme_."

The audience melted away indifferently. They, at any rate, did not

know what they had seen.

And the next day he had another little note from her, written in a

great sprawling hand. She had made all her arrangements, and she

thought she had better reserve rooms in his hospital in about six

weeks' time for about a month. After that, no doubt, she would require

less accommodation.

A silly, fatuous effort, in execrable taste.

V

1

Robert Stonehouse took a second leave that he could not afford and went

back to the grey cottage on the moors, and tramped the hills in haunted

solitude. The spring ran beside him, a crude, bitter, young spring,

gazing into the future with an earnest, passionate face, full of

arrogance and hope, and self-distrust. His own frustrated youth rose

in him like a painful sap. He was much younger than the Robert

Stonehouse who, proud in his mature strength, had dragged an exhausted,

secretively smiling Cosgrave on his relentless pursuit--young and

insecure, with odd nameless rushes of emotion and desire and grief that

had had no part in his ordered life.

The hills had changed too. They had been the background to his

exploits. They had become brooding, mysterious partners whose purpose

with him he had not fathomed. The things that ran across his path, the

quaint furry hares and scurrying pheasants had ceased to be objects on

which he could vent his strength and cunning. They were live things,

deeply, secretly related to him and to a dying, very infamous woman,

and his levelled gun sank time after time under the pressure of an

inexplicable pity. He had stood resolutely aloof from life, and now it

was dragging him down into its warmth with invisible, resistless hands.

Its values, which he had learnt to judge coldly and dispassionately,

weighing one against another, were shifting like sand. He seemed to

stand, naked and alone, in a changing, terrifying world.

In those days the papers in their frivolous columns, were full of Gyp

Labelle. Her press-agent was working frenziedly. It seemed that she

had quarrelled with her manager, torn her contract into shreds, and

slapped his face. There were gay doings nightly at the Kensington

house--orgies. One paper hinted at a certain South African millionaire.

A last fling--the reckless gesture of a worthless panic-stricken soul,

without dignity.

Or perhaps she had found that his diagnosis had been a mistake. Or she

would not believe the truth. Or she was drugging herself into

forgetfulness. Perhaps she might even have the courage to make an end

before the time came when forgetfulness would be impossible.

He returned to town, drawn by an obsession of uncertainty. He found

that she had arrived at her rooms in the hospital with the shrivelled

old woman and the macaw and a gramophone.

She had signed the register as Marie Dubois.

"It is my real name," she explained, "but you couldn't have a good time

with a name like that--_voyons_! Only one 'usband and 'eaps of babies."

She was much nearer the end than he had supposed possible. The last

month had to be paid for. She lay very still under the gorgeous quilt

which she had brought with her, and her hand, which she had stretched

out to him in friendly welcome, was like the claw of a bird. "Everyone

'ere promise not to tell," she said. "I'm just Marie Dubois. Even ze

undertaker--'e must not know. You put on ze stone: 'Marie Dubois, ze

beloved daughter of Georges and Marianne Dubois, rag-pickers of Paris.'

That will be a last leetle joke, hein?"

"It's as you wish," he said coldly.

He forced back the natural questions that came to him. He had a

disordered conviction that he was fighting her for his sanity, for the

very ground on which he had built his life, and that he dared not yield

by so much as a kindly word. He did what lay in his power for her with

a heart shut and barred.

She brought a little of her world and her whole outlook with her. On

the last day that she was able to be up she dressed herself in a gay

mandarin's coat with a Chinese woman's trousers, and tried to do her

dance for the benefit of a shocked and fascinated matron. Every

morning she wore a new cap to set off the deepening shadow of

dissolution.

By the open fire the old woman embroidered ceaselessly.

"She is making--'ow you call it?--my shroud. You see--with ze blue

ribbons. Blue--that's my colour--my lucky colour. As soon as I could

speak I ask for blue ribbons in my pinafore."

"I should have thought your mind might be better occupied now," he

retorted with brutal commonplaceness.

She winked at him.

"Oh, but I 'ave 'ad my leetle talk with _Monsieur le Cure_. 'E and I

are ze best of friends, though I never met 'im before. 'E understand

about ze blue ribbons. But Monsieur Robert is too clever."

"It seems so," he said scornfully.

She questioned him from out of the thickening cloud of morphia. "You

don't believe in God?" And then as he shook his head she smiled

sleepily. "Well, it is still possible 'e exist, _Monsieur_--_Monsieur

le docteur_."

She lay quiet so that he thought she had fallen asleep, but the next

moment her eyes had opened, widening on him with a startling

wakefulness. It was as though her whole personality had leapt to arms,

and bursting through the narcotic, stood free with a gay and laughing

gesture. "As to God--I don't know about 'im, but I exist--I go on.

You bet your 'at on that, my friend. I don't know where I go--but I go

somewhere. And I dance. And if St. Peter sit at ze golden gates, like

they say in ze fairybook, I say to 'im: ''Ave you ever seen ze Gyp

Galop?' And then I dance for 'im and ze angels play for me"--she nodded

wickedly--"not 'ymn tunes."

She was serious. She meant it. If she survived she survived as what

she was or not at all. And looking down on her wasted, tortured body,

Stonehouse had a momentary but extraordinarily vivid conviction that

what she had said was true. She would persist. Whatever else

happened, Gyp Labelle would go on having a good time. She could not be

extinguished. There was in her some virtue altogether apart from the

body--a blazing vitality, an unquenchable, burning spirit.

He felt his hatred of her wither before it.

"And 'e say: 'You dance ver' bad, Gyp, but you make me laugh. You go

on and dance to ze others.' For 'e know who I am. My poor parents

they make ze mistake. They think: ''Ere is such a ver' nice, good

little _bebe_, and so they call me after my _Maman_, who is ver' nice

and good too, and who love me ver' much--Marie--Marie Dubois."

She turned her head towards the old woman bending lower and lower over

her fine work, and, smiling at her, fell asleep.

He returned, one night, to the hospital in the hope of being able to

work in the laboratory, and instead, coming to her room, he went in.

The action was so unpremeditated and unmotivated that he had closed the

door before he knew what he had done. But the excuse he framed in his

confusion was never uttered, for he had the right to appear

dumbfounded. She sat, propped up like a painted wraith against a pile

of gorgeous cushions, and all about her was scattered a barbarous loot

of rings and bracelets, of strings of pearls, of unset stones, diamonds

and emeralds, heaped carelessly on the table at her side, and twinkling

like little malevolent eyes out of the creases of her coverlet.

The old woman wrote toilingly on a slip of paper. "Sh! This is ver'

solemn. I could not sleep, and so I make my testament." She put her

finger to her lips as though her whisper were only a part of a playful

mystery and beckoned him, and he went towards her, reluctant, yet

unresisting like a man hypnotized. He had a childish longing to touch

all that colour, to take up great handfuls of it and feel its warmth

and let it drip through his fingers. The death that stared out of her

painted face, the silence and grim austerity of her surroundings made

that display of magnificence a fantastic parable. The stones were the

life that was going from her. She picked up each one in turn and

caressed it, and held it to the light, remembering who knew what

escapade, what splendid, reckless days, what tragedy. And yet there

was no regret and surely no remorse in her farewell of them.

"_Ma Vieille_--she make a list of all. They will be sold--for ze

children of Paris--ze _gamins_--as I was--for a good time." She held

out her hand: "_C'est joli, n'est ce pas_?"

He looked unwillingly. It was a black opal, and as she moved it it

seemed to come to life, and a distant resentful fire gleamed out of its

sullen depths.

"Yes. But you oughtn't to have all--all this stuff about. No one

could be held responsible----"

"What does it matter? If someone take it--someone 'ave it. It won't

worry me. 'Ere, I tell you something--a story, _hein_, to amuse you?

You remember our leetle dinner and 'ow I would not tell about ze Grand

Duke and ze black opal? Well, I tell you now. It don't matter any

more."

"No. You're doing yourself harm. You ought to sleep."

"I don't want to--I can't. It is 'orrible to lie awake in ze dark

and---- And you, too, Monsieur Robert, you don't feel you sleep much

to-night, _hein_?"

"No."

"_Alors_--'ere we are--two poor fellows shipwrecked--we make a leetle

feast together--a feast of good stories. You say you don't like me

ver' much. But that is _ridicule_ now. One only 'ates when one is

afraid, and you aren't afraid any more of poor Gyp."

"Was I ever?" he demanded.

"A leetle--per'aps? You think to yourself: 'If I love 'er----!'

Bah, that is all finished. Come, I tell you my funny story."

He had laughed. He was incredulous of himself. He sat on the edge of

her bed listening to her whisper, a tortured whisper which she made

supremely funny--a mock-conspirator's whisper which drew them close to

one another in an outrageous intimacy.

"At any rate you had made a good enemy that time," he said.

She panted.

"Ah no--no. 'E 'ave a fine sense of humour, Monsieur ze Grand Duke.

'E laugh too. 'E say--'Gyp--you are ze ver' devil 'erself!' 'Ere, but

this ruby--I don't care much for rubies--but this one 'ave a real fine

story."

And so one by one the stones were taken up and held a moment, some to

be discarded with a name or a forgetful shrug, and some to linger a

while longer whilst she recalled their little ribald histories. And it

seemed to Robert Stonehouse that gradually the room filled with

invisible personages who, as the jewels dropped from her waxen fingers

into the gaping box, bowed to her and took their leave. And at last

they were all gone but one. He seemed to hear them, their footsteps

receding faintly along the corridors.

She held an unset pearl in her hand.

"This one 'ave a ver' nice leetle story. A brigand give it me when 'e

'old up ze train between Mexico City and ze coast. A fine fellow--with

a sombrero and a manner!" (She looked past Stonehouse, smiling, as

though she too saw the shadow twirling its black moustache and staring

back at her with gallant admiration.) "And brave too, _nombre de

Dios_! And 'e bow and say: 'One does not take ransom from Mademoiselle

Labelle. One pays tribute.' And 'e give me this to remember 'im

by--as I give it you, Monsieur Robert."

He stood up sharply.

"No--I--I don't care for that kind of thing."

"For your wife, then!"

"I am not married."

"But one day per'aps? You love someone, _hein_?" (Had she wilfully

forgotten? She studied his face with a wicked curiosity. He could not

answer her.) "Give it 'er then--Monsieur Robert--_pour me faire

plaisir_."

"There is no one to give it to."

"But there was----"

He tried desperately to regain the old sarcastic inflection.

"No doubt it seems inevitable to you."

"Tell me about 'er. _Voyons_, if you can't keep me alive, _Monsieur

mon docteur_, you might at least amuse me."

"There is nothing to tell. I will give you something that will make

you sleep."

"I do not want to sleep. That is bad, ugly sleep that you give me. So

you quarrel. What you quarrel about, Monsieur Robert? Another woman?"

The sheer, grotesque truth of it drove him to an ironical assent.

"As you say, another woman----"

"_Oh, la la_! So there was once upon a time a ver' serious young man

who forget to be quite serious. _Voyons_--you 'ave to tell me all

now--just as I tell you."

He turned on her then. In five brief, savage sentences he had told her

of Frances and the woman in the hospital. And when he had done he read

her face with its tolerant good-humour, and the full enormity of it all

burst over him like a flood of crude light. He turned away from her

stammering:

"I've no business here--I've no business to be your doctor--or anyone's

doctor. I think I must be going mad."

She shook her head.

"No--no--only too serious, _mon pauvre jeune homme_. But I like

your--your Francey. I think she and I be good friends some'ow. She

would see things 'ow I see them."

(He thought crazily:

"Yes, she would sit by you and look over your shoulder at your rotten

life, and say: 'So that's the way it seems to you? And you're right.

It's been a splendid joke.'")

"One of these days you be friends again too. And then you give 'er my

leetle pearl. Say it's from Gyp, who is sorry she made so much

trouble. Why not? You think it make her sad? It is not for that I

give it you. It is to give you pleasure too."

He was labouring under an almost physical distress. She was poking fun

at him, at herself, at death. She was making him a partner of thieves

and loose women. And yet:

"It must not make you sad at all. When you see it you laugh--just as

you laugh when I dance because I dance so ver' bad. Look 'ere, I 'ave

something that you give me too." She dived back into the box and

brought out a shilling lying side by side with the pearl in the palm of

her open hand. "You tell 'er--that was all poor Gyp was worth to you,

Monsieur Robert."

He had taken it. She tried to laugh out loud, triumphantly, the famous

laugh. And then grey agony had her by the throat. She turned her face

from him to the wall.

He felt that the old woman had risen. She was moving towards them. He

said quietly:

"At least I can relieve you."

She made a passionate, absolute gesture of refusal. An astonished

nurse had entered. He gave brief instructions. He said good-night,

not looking at the limp, quiet figure on the bed, and went out.

He knew that he had seemed competent, unhurried and unmoved as befitted

a man to whom death was the most salient feature of life.

But he knew also that he had fled from her.

In the crowd that went with him that night were Francey Wilmot and

Connie Edwards and Cosgrave and all the people who had made up his

youth. There were little old women who were Christines, and even James

Stonehouse was there, tragically and hopefully in search of something

that he had never found. Any moment he might turn his face towards his

son, and it would not be hideous, only perplexed and pitiful.

It was as though an ugly, monstrous mass had been smashed to fragments

whose facets shone with extraordinary, undreamed-of colours.

Not only the bodies of the people drifted with him, but their lives

touched his on every side. It became a sort of secret pressure. They

were neither great nor beautiful. They were identical with the people

he had always seen on the streets and in the hospitals, sickly or

grossly commonplace, but he could no longer judge them as from a great

distance. He was down in the thick of them. They concerned him--or he

had no other concern. He was part of their strangely wandering

procession. He looked into their separate faces and thought: "This man

says 'I' to himself. And one day he will say: 'I am dying' (as Marie

Dubois said it)." And he recognized for the first time something

common to them all that was not commonplace--an heroic quality. At

least that stark fact remained that at their birth sentence of death

had been passed upon them all. Before each one of them lay a black

adventure, and they went towards it, questioning or inarticulate, not

knowing why they should endure so much, but facing the utter loneliness

of that final passage with patience and great courage.

It was not ridiculous that they should demand their immortality, the

least and worst of them. Whether it was granted them or not, it was a

just demand, and the answer to it more vital than any other form of

knowledge. For it was conceivable that one day they would be too

strong and too proud to play the part of tragic buffoons in a senseless

farce.

In the meantime men might well be pitiful with one another.

"What was it she had said?"

"Nothing that you've gone through is of any use if it hasn't taught you

pity."

("Oh, Francey, Francey, if I had told you that Christine was dead would

it have helped? Would you have had more patience with me?")

The quiet and emptiness of his own street restored him in some measure

to his aloof scepticism. But even then he knew there was a disruptive

force secretly at work in him, tearing down stone by stone his

confidence and courage. He was afraid of shadows. A bowed figure

crouched against the railings of his house checked him as though a

ghost had lain in wait for him. He passed it hurriedly, running up the

stone steps. The sound of a thin, clear voice calling him made him

turn again, his head thrown up in a sort of defiance.

"Monsieur--excuse--excuse--I wait 'ere so long. They tell me you come

back 'ere perhaps. But they don't know I 'ave come. I creep out----

Monsieur she cannot sleep--she cannot sleep. They don't do nothing.

It is not right. I cannot 'ave it--that she suffer so."

He came back down the steps. He was conscious of having sighed deeply.

He looked into the shrivelled, up-turned face, and saw the tears that

filled the furrows with a slow moving stream. He had hardly noticed

her before. Now she hurt him. A very little old woman. He said

briefly, hiding a shaken voice:

"They do all they can. I can do no more."

She reiterated with a peasant's obstinacy.

"I will not 'ave it--I will not--not 'ave it--I cannot bear it."

"Dr. Rutherford is there. I tell you he can do all that can be done.

I offered her an injection--she would not have it."

"She pretend--all ze time she pretend. Even before me, 'er mother, she

pretend. But I know."

"Her mother!"

He stepped back against the railings, freeing himself fretfully from

the hand that clutched his arm.

"If you are her mother she treats you strangely. She treats you like a

servant."

"Before others, Monsieur. She is different--of different stuff. We

'ave always understood. If I am to be with 'er it must be as 'er

servant. That is our affair. But you are not kind. You let 'er

suffer too much. I will not 'ave it."

She drew herself up. She almost menaced him. He saw that she knew.

As a physician he had done what lay in his power, but as a human being

he had failed utterly and deliberately. Had always failed. And he was

aware of an incredible fear of her.

"I will come now," he stammered.

He gave her such sleep that night that it seemed unlikely that she

would ever wake again. He knew that he had exceeded the limits of

mercy set down by his profession and that the nurse had looked

strangely at him. But he was indifferent. It was as though he, too,

had been momentarily released.

Nor did he leave her again until the morning, but watched over her,

whilst on the other side of the bed the old woman knelt, her face

pressed against a still hand, a battered, sullen effigy of grief.

3

From the beginning she had defied the regulations of the hospital, as

she had defied the rules of life, with an absolute success. The

inelastic, military system bent and stretched itself beneath her

good-humoured inability to believe that there could be any wilful

opposition, to her desires. The macaw had been a case in point, the

gramophone another. After tea the old woman set the instrument going

for her, and when the authorities protested, ostensibly on behalf of

neighbouring patients, it transpired that the patients rather liked it

than otherwise, and there were regular concerts, with the macaw

shrieking its occasional appreciation.

She inquired interestedly into her neighbours. She seemed less

concerned with their complaints than with their ages, their appearance,

and the time when they would return to the outside world. With a young

man on her right hand she became intimate. It began with an exchange

of compliments and progressed through little folded notes which caused

her infinite amusement to a system of code-tapping on the intervening

wall, sufficiently scandalous in import, if her expression were

significant.

The nurses became her allies in this last grim flirtation, unaware

apparently of its grimness.

"Don't you let 'im know I am so bad," she adjured them. "I tell 'im I

'ave a leetle nothing at all, and that I am going 'ome next week to my

dear 'usband. I think that make 'im laugh ver' much. 'E is ver'

bored, that young man. 'E say if I 'ave supper with 'im, the first

night 'e come out 'e won't--'ow you say?--grouse so much. I say my

'usband ver' jealous, but that I fix it some'ow. 'E like that.

Promise you won't tell?"

They promised.

She was almost voiceless now. That she suffered hideously, Stonehouse

knew, but not from her. He believed--in the turmoil of his mind he

almost hoped--that when she was alone she broke down, but before them

all she bore herself with an unflagging gallantry. It was that

gallantry of hers that dogged him, that would not let him rest or

forget. It demanded of him something that he could not, and dared not,

yield.

And she was pitifully alone. The woman in the hospital had not been

more forsaken by her world. As to Gyp Labelle she went her way, and

the gossip columns cautiously recorded the more startling items of that

progress. It was as though some clever hand were building up a

fantastic figure that should pass at last into the mists of legend.

Men laughed together over her.

"What poor devil of a millionaire has the woman hobbled now?"

It was the matron who showed Stonehouse an illustrated paper which

produced her full-length portrait. She sat on the edge of her absurd

fountain and her hand was raised in a laughing gesture of farewell.

Over the top was written: "Gyp off to Pastures new," and underneath a

message which all the daily papers were to reproduce.

"I want this way to thank all the friends who have been so very kind to

me. We have had good times together. I miss you very much. I am

going to find new friends now, but one day, I think, I dance for you

again. I love you all. I kiss my hands to you. _Au revoir_, Gyp."

It was her vanity, that insatiable desire to figure impudently and

triumphantly in the public eye. He brought the paper to her. But at

the moment she was busy tapping feebly on the wall. She winked at him.

"Sh! I tell 'im I go to-day. I make an appointment--next week--ze

Carlton Grill--seven o'clock--'e 'ave to wait a long time, ze poor

young man. There, it is finished."

He showed her the picture without comment. He had to hold it for

her--hold it very close--for she had exhausted herself with that last

gesture of bravado. And then, as she smiled, a protest born of

gathering distress and doubt burst from him.

"Why do you allow--this--hideous, impossible pretence?"

He could feel the old woman turn towards him like a wild beast

preparing to spring. But she herself lay still, with closed eyes. He

had to bend down to catch the remote suffering whisper.

"_C'est vrai_. We 'ave--such good times. And they come 'ere--all

those kind people--who 'ave laughed so much--and bring flowers--and

pretend it is not true. And they won't believe--and when they see it

they won't believe--they won't dare----" She tried to speak more

clearly, clinging to his hand for the first time, whilst a sweat of

agony broke out upon her face and made ghastly channels through its

paint and powder. "_Vous voyez_--for them--I am--ze good times. They

come to me--for good times. When they are too sad--when things too

'ard for them and they cannot believe any more--that ze good times come

again--they think of me. '_Voyons, la_ Gyp, she 'ave a good time

always--she dance at 'er own funeral!' But if they see me 'ere--like

this--they go away--and think in their 'earts: '_Grand Dieu, c'est

comme ca avec nous tous_--_avec nous tous_,' and they not laugh with

me--any more."

Her hand let go its hold--suddenly.

They sent for him that night. Haemorrhage had set in. There was a

light burning by her bedside, for she had complained of the darkness.

She wore a lace cap trimmed with blue ribbons, but she had not had

strength to paint her lips and cheeks again, and the old woman's

efforts had ended pitifully. She had grown very small in the last few

hours, and with her thin, daubed face and blood-stained lips, she

looked like a sorrowful travesty of the little circus clown who had

ridden the fat pony and shouted "_Oh la--la_!" and blown kisses to the

people.

She smiled vaguely in Stonehouse's direction, but she was only half

conscious. Her hand strayed over the gorgeous quilt, stroking it with

a kind of simple pleasure.

(She was like that, too, he thought--a dash of gay, unashamed colour in

the sad scheme of things.)

Towards midnight she motioned to him and whispered something that he

could not understand. But the old woman rose heavily from her knees

and went over to the gramophone, thrusting aside with savage resolution

the nurse who tried to intercept her. Stonehouse himself made an

involuntary gesture.

"Why not?" he said. "Let her alone."

He stood close to her and waited. He felt that some part of him was

dying with her, that he stood with her before a black partition which

was thinning slowly, and that presently they would both know whatever

lay beyond.

The macaw fidgeted on its golden perch, craning towards the light and

blinking uneasily as though a strange thing had come into the room.

The needle scratched under a shaking hand.

"I'm Gyp Labelle;

Come dance with me. . ."

He bent over her so that his face almost touched hers.

"I'm sorry--I'm sorry, Gyp."

She turned her head a little, her lips moving. It was evident that she

had not really heard. But he knew that she had never borne him malice.

And then suddenly it was over. He had broken through. Beyond were

understanding and peace and strange and difficult tears. He loved her,

as beneath the fret and heat of passion Cosgrave and all those others

had loved her, for what she sincerely was and for the brave, gay thing

she had to give. He loved her more simply still as in rare moments of

their lives men love one another, saying: "This is my brother--this is

my sister." From his lonely arrogance his spirit flung itself down,

grieving, beside her mysterious, incalculable good.

He could hear the jolly bang-bang of the drum and the whoop of a

trumpet. He could see her catherine-wheeling round the stage, and the

man with the bloated face and tragic, intelligent eyes.

"Life itself, my dear fellow, life itself."

And she was dead.

EPILOGUE

For a moment they stared at one another. He did not at once recognize

Connie Edwards, in the puritanical serge frock and with her air of

rather conscious sobriety, and he himself stood in the shadow. He

thought:

"She's wondering if I'm a tramp." He felt like one, broken and shabby.

"Dr. Wilmot?" he muttered.

She leant closer.

"Oh, hallo--Robert." She corrected herself severely, and held the door

wide open. "Dr. Stonehouse--to be sure. Francey's upstairs."

She led the way. It was almost as though she had been expecting him.

At any rate, she was not surprised at all. But half-way up the stairs

she glanced back over her shoulder.

"I don't usually open the door. I'm her secretary. And a damn good

one too. Rather a jest, eh, what?"

"Rather," he said.

And it was really the same room--a fire burning and the faun dancing in

the midst of its moving shadows. There was a faint, warm scent of

cigarette smoke and a solemn pile of books beside her deep chair. It

wouldn't be like Francey to rest under her laurels.

She held both his hands in hers. She wore a loose, golden-brown

wrapper such as she had always worn when she had been working hard.

She had changed very little and a great deal. If something of the

whimsical mysteriousness of her youth had faded she had broadened and

deepened into a woman warm and generous as the earth. Her thick hair

swept back from her face with the old wind-blown look, and her eyes

were candid and steadfast as they had ever been. But some sort of mist

had been brushed away from them so that they saw more clearly and

profoundly. He thought: "She has seen a great many people suffer. She

doesn't go away so often into herself."

He had tried hard, over and over again, to imagine their meeting, but

he had never imagined that it would be so simple or that she would say

to him, as though the eight years had not happened:

"Why didn't you tell me about Christine, Robert?"

He said:

"It wouldn't have made any difference."

"I've been waiting for you to tell me."

He tried to smile.

"You don't know how difficult it has been to come. I've been prowling

past--night after night--trying to think what you'd say to me, if I

turned up."

"You might have known."

"I didn't--I don't know even now."

She had made him sit down by the fire and she sat opposite him, bending

towards him, with her slim, beautiful hands to the blaze. He felt that

she knew, for all the outward signs of his prosperity, that he was

destitute. He felt that his real self with which she had always been

so much concerned had been stripped naked, and that she was trying to

warm and console him. She was wrapping him round with that unchanged

tenderness.

"It's--it's the old room!" he said.

But his enmity was dead. He was at peace with it. He had been

initiated. He had heard, very faintly it is true, but loud enough to

understand, the music to which the faun danced. He was not the

outsider any more.

"I wanted it to be the same."

"And the house----"

"I took it as soon as I could get it. I made up my mind to live here,

whatever it cost. You see, I was quite sure that you would go past one

of these days to have a look at it, and that you would say to yourself:

'Why, there's Francey, after all! I'll go in----'"

But they both drew back instinctively. He blundered into a hurried

question. The Gang? What had happened to them all? It seemed that

Gertie still lived, defying medical opinion and apparently feeding her

starved spirit on the treasures of the Vatican. Howard, who had become

a very bad artist and lived on selling copies of the masterpieces to

tourists, looked after her.

"But they're not married," Francey said. "Just friends."

He said humbly:

"Well, he's been awfully decent to her."

As to the rest, no one knew what had become of them.

"And you've done splendidly, Robert, better than any of us."

"I've been a failure," he answered, "a rotten failure!"

She accepted the statement gravely, without protest, and that sincerity

was like a skilled hand on a wound. It brought comfort where a

fumbling kindness would have been unendurable. It made him strangely,

deeply happy to know that she would see too that he had failed. "I've

never had pity on anyone--not even myself--I've learnt nothing that

matters."

For a while they sat silent, looking into the fire, like people who are

waiting and preparing themselves for some great event. And presently,

without moving, in an undertone he began to tell her about the Marie

Dubois who had died, and how he had seen her long ago at the Circus,

his first and only circus. He told her about the Circus itself. He

did not choose his words, but stammered and fumbled and jumped from one

thing to another. He opened his heart and took out whatever he found

there, and showed it to her very humbly, just as it was. It seemed

certain and imperative that after a little while they should both see

the pattern of it all. He told her about his love for his dead mother,

and how his father had died and had come back, haunting him in his

sleep.

Then he remembered something he had never thought of before--how he had

looked up at the window of the room where his father was lying dead,

and had wanted to run--run fast.

"But I think I've lived in that dark house all my life," he said, "and

I've gone about in it, blustering and swaggering and being hard and

strong because I was so desperately afraid--of life, of caring too

much, of failing. And now--I've come out."

And then he began to tremble all over and suddenly he was crying

helplessly.

She knelt beside him. She drew him into her arms. It was their moment

in the green forest over again, but now there was no antagonism in

their love. She was the warm, good spirit of the life to which he had

become reconciled. They had belonged to one another from the

beginning. His fear had stood between them. But she had gone on

loving him, steadfastly, because nothing else was possible to her.

"Francey--do you remember--that time we fought one another--over an

idiotic stick? I was such a young rotter--I wouldn't own up--that you

were stronger than I was."

She took his wet hands and kissed them. It was as though she had said

aloud, smiling to herself:

"It's all right now, anyhow, you odd, sad little boy."