"Please, Miss," she said, "I was thinking ... perhaps you would write

the letter for me."

"No, Susan," I replied promptly, "I can't do that. If talking it over

will help you, I'm willing. I don't mind even scribbling something out

in pencil. But I can't write it. Surely it's bad enough that he's had

one letter in my handwriting. I wouldn't have had it happen for the

world. Besides, you'll have to write the letters yourself before long,

so why not face it at once? We shall need to think out some way of

explaining to him why the other handwriting was different."

While I was speaking, Susan was becoming more and more agitated; and

when I ceased, she didn't answer.

"Come, Susan," I said kindly.

She began to weep.

"Oh, Miss!" she sobbed, "on Friday I told you a lie. I told you that I

didn't copy it out in my own writing because I didn't think----"

She stopped.

"Well?" I said, after I had waited long enough.

"I thought, Miss," sobbed Susan, "I thought ... I was afraid, if he saw

my writing, he might give me up. And what you'd wrote looked so

beautiful and ladylike, Miss, that----"

She couldn't go on.

"Susan," I said, "you've acted very wrongly. You've done wrong to me,

and you've deceived Lord Ruddington. Worse still, you've done wrong to

yourself. If he really cared for you, he wouldn't have been turned away

by bad writing. But he won't admire deceit. You've taken the first step

on the wrong path, and you don't know what will be the end."

I am getting to be a practised preacher. Since last Thursday, I've laid

down more of the moral law than in all the rest of my life. Susan heard

me in meekness.

"I know it was wicked," she said; "but oh, Miss, do please, _please_

write the letter to-day! It won't be many times more."

"If I do it one time more, I expect I shall have to do it fifty."

Susan looked mysterious.

"No, Miss," she said with assurance, "not fifty."

"Why not?" I asked. And, after some pressing, Susan confessed that she

has snatched five hours from sleep since Friday for the express purpose

of conforming her penmanship to the pattern of mine. She showed me some

specimens, and I was astonished at the advance she had made.

"Well, Susan," I said at last, "I don't like it at all, and I'm very

angry with you. But if there's any prospect of your going on improving

like this in your writing, perhaps it will be as well for me to write

your next two or three letters. Then I sha'n't need to be brought into

the affair, so far as Lord Ruddington is concerned, at all."

Susan's gratitude was touching.

"I'll never forget how good you've been to me, Miss," she said, choking

down a sob.

"Find Georgette," I said. "While she's clearing the table, bring down

my writing-case. We'll do it under the trees."

Susan danced off with a skittishness that surprised me. When she came

back, I asked her what she had decided to say.

"I was thinking, Miss," she said, "we might say how nice it would have

been if he'd galloped over the Heath to the station. And don't you

think, Miss, he would like to hear how we thought he was Mr. Lamb?"

"Never a word to him about Mr. Lamb as long as you live, Susan," I said

peremptorily. "As for the Heath, it would have been very wrong of him.

But how are you going to answer his postscript--this long bit at the

end, all about your leaving me at once?"

"Leaving _you_, Miss?" asked Susan, mystified.

"Yes," I said, looking at her. "Don't you see? Lord Ruddington wants

you to leave me at once."

Her face flushed with such genuine trouble that I forgave Susan

everything, and took her back to my heart.

"Oh, no, Miss!" she cried. "I didn't understand he meant that. I

wouldn't ever do that."

What Susan had taken the postscript to mean I have no notion. Nor do I

know yet whether, in the near future, I shall be expected to give Susan

and her spouse a suite of rooms at Traxelby, or whether she will offer

me a housekeeper's place at the Towers. It is plain that she does not

entertain the idea of our being parted.

I said:

"Lord Ruddington doesn't like to think that you are ... well, in any

sense a servant. To put it plainly, he wants to find you money, so that

you can begin to lead a lady's life at once. It does him credit. But,

Susan, of course you can't take money from him. Have you saved

anything?"

Susan says she has saved thirty pounds. And nothing could be sounder

than the quickness and firmness with which she decided that cash

transactions with Lord Ruddington just now are unthinkable. Nor can

anything be more indisputable than her unweakened devotion to myself.

"You can go upstairs and practise handwriting," I told her. "Come down

in about half an hour, and I shall have some sort of a letter ready."

But two half-hours passed in vain attempts to produce an epistle proper

to Susan's temperament and intellect. I've realized this afternoon that

I can never write a play. I tried hard to think and feel as Susan must

think and feel; but I could only think and feel on my own account. At

the end of an hour and a half, the best I had been able to achieve was

this:--

SAINTE VERONIQUE,

_Tuesday_.

Yes. You may call me "Dear Susan." But you must not say "My," until it

is true.

You say it was good of you not to ride over the Heath to the station.

If you had done it, I should have been grieved.

We had a smooth crossing from Newhaven, and we stayed till Monday

morning in Dieppe. I like Sainte Veronique, and do not want to spend my

month anywhere else.

I am not angry with you for saying what you do about setting me free.

How could I be anything but grateful for an offer that is so kindly

meant and so delicately made?

To ease you of your kind fears on my account, let me tell you that I

have always been happy with Miss Langley; and that, during this month, I

shall have little work and plenty of leisure.

I look forward to receiving another letter from you on Monday.

SUSAN BRIGGS.

"It's beautiful, Miss!" said Susan dejectedly, after she had perused my

effort. And she sat looking up into the sky, the picture of

disappointment and indecision. I went to the rescue.

"Say what's in your mind, Susan. There's a 'but,' isn't there? It's

beautiful, but ... what?"

"I was thinking," confessed Susan blushfully, "that it isn't..."

"Isn't what?"

"It isn't ... very loving."

"Loving?" I said. "What do you mean? Why, here you are, spending a

month deciding whether you can try to care for Lord Ruddington or not.

It isn't time yet to be 'loving.'"

"No," persisted Susan. "But I mean, Miss, won't he be disappointed?"

"You can't help that. You might as well say that he's disappointed

because you don't pack your box and go straight off to Ruddington

Towers."

Susan was unconvinced.

"What did you say yourself, Susan, last week? Didn't you say that it

wouldn't be good for him to throw yourself at his head?"

When Susan first used it, the expression had irritated me; but it came

in handily. Susan, however, thought otherwise. A spirit of revolt

entered her soul, and I perceived the beginnings of her new pout.

"Do as you like, Susan, of course," I said. "It's your affair, not mine.

But don't go and make another muddle as you did with Mr. John Lamb."

It went home. Indeed, I'm not sure that Mr. John Lamb wasn't, so to

speak, a wolf with a silver lining. The merest whisper of his soft and

innocent name is enough to scare Susan into the extreme of docility.

"Oh, no, Miss!" she said hurriedly. "The letter's beautiful. But don't

you think...?"

"What?"

"Don't you think, Miss, it would be nice to ask for his photograph and a

lock of his hair?"

While I was fighting down an impulse to laugh outright, it struck me

that the photograph was rather a happy thought. With his photograph to

study, I should at least be spared panicky announcements and "dreadful

feelings" whenever Susan saw a strange Englishman at Sainte Veronique.

Besides, I had no little curiosity to see what this mad Lord Ruddington

might be like.

"A lock of hair is ridiculous," I said. "You must have been reading

some trashy novelette. But a photograph's different. I'm glad you've

thought of it. After all, Susan, you mightn't care to marry even Lord

Ruddington if you found he was dreadfully ugly. Give me back the

letter, and I'll add a postscript."

I wrote:--

P.S.--I feel that I haven't written you much of a letter; but there is

so little to lay hold of. As I said before, you have seen me, but I

have never seen you.

Will you not send me your photograph? When it comes, perhaps I shall

remember that I have seen you, after all.

Where was it that you saw me?

Taking a little more liberty than was her wont, Susan peeped shyly over

my shoulder while I wrote. As I put down the pen, she heaved a deep

sigh of unaffected satisfaction.

"It's lovely, Miss!" she said fervently. "That's just what I must have

meant--that part about wondering where he saw me--only I couldn't

explain it. And it's put so short and ladylike."

"Don't say 'ladylike,' Susan," I said. "Give me an envelope."

I wrote out Lord Ruddington's name and address in the style of

handwriting I had used throughout the letter. It was my own writing;

but a little bigger, inkier, and slower than usual.

"You see, Susan," I explained, "I'm meeting you halfway. By the time

he's had a letter or two from me written like this, you ought to be able

to do something pretty near it yourself. Now go upstairs and bring down

those French stamps. They're in my green bag."

While Susan was upstairs I took the letter out of the envelope and

glanced through it once more. When I got as far as "I have always been

happy with Miss Langley," the oddity struck me irresistibly. It was

quite too comically reminiscent of the letters which girls used to

write, under the governess's eye and at the governess's dictation,

protesting their ideal happiness at school.

There was just time. I picked up the pen and wrote sideways along the

margin of the letter:--

I suppose you think my mistress calls me "Briggs."

When Susan arrived with the stamps, the letter was back in its envelope,

the flap was gummed down, and I was blinking peacefully at the sunlight

on the sea.

_Wednesday, noon_.

I suppose it's true that every country gets the Government it deserves.

But the maxim, like nearly all the maxims I've ever heard, is a

heartless one.

Without doubt, France just now has got the Government which France

deserves, as a whole. But the whole is made up of parts; and, unless my

travels have misled me, there must be thousands of parts of France like

Sainte Veronique. I have seen a dozen myself--rural communities,

working hard and living decently, with the slated spire of their hoary

parish church looking down upon them, as it looked down ages ago on

their direct ancestors who first drained the valleys and set vines upon

the hillsides. Here live and toil the men, and, more remarkable still,

here live and toil and suffer the women, whose hard earnings are the

war-chest of France when the professional politicians of Paris wantonly

thrust the nation into some vainglorious adventure. Here was made and

saved the treasure with which the invader was bought out when his armies

were everywhere masters of French soil. And here are bred the supplies

of sound human stuff--the healthy bodies, the healthy souls--to redress

the awful balance of the towns, and to save France from becoming a ruin

amid stinging weeds and insolent poppies.

Even an atheist statesman, if he's as truly a statesman as he's truly an

atheist, ought to know that, in striking at the village churches, he is

striking at the heart of French rural life; and that, in wounding French

rural life in a vital spot, he will be severing arteries where Bismarck

and Von Moltke only lanced small veins.

This morning has made me so sad. The sweet little white convent is shut

up, the garden is full of nettles, two of the chapel windows are broken,

the nuns are in England, and the lawyers have grown fat on the pickings.

At the church, the statue of St. Veronica, over the west door, has a

broken arm--snapped off on the day of the inventory. Meanwhile the

weeks are drifting by; and, for all the old cure knows, he will be

saying Mass in a barn before the winter is half over.

I mean to say, now and again, what France's million officials, from the

President of their so free Republic down to the Saint Veronique postman,

daren't say publicly and aloud in this land of liberty. I mean to say:

"God save France!"

_Thursday afternoon_.

I wish Master Ruddie's photograph would come.

This morning, about eleven, a young Englishman suddenly walked in with a

knapsack. The funny thing was that he didn't come by the road. He

marched here straight from the beach, as if he'd just been thrown up by

Jonah's whale.

He was a nice boy, and quite all right. Not another Mr. John Lamb. It

seems he's tramping a hundred miles along the coast by the cliff-paths

and the sands. He was dying to talk to me at lunch. Indeed, he looked

even hungrier and thirstier for human companionship than for his

omelette and roast chicken and cider, which is saying a very great deal.

Now that it's too late, I'm sorry I didn't let him talk.

All the time he was here, Susan was nearly as silly as she was on the

boat. She got it into her head that, as Ruddington wrote here on

Saturday (thinking we were coming straight through), he must have been

upset when Tuesday morning came without a letter; and that therefore the

pretty boy with the knapsack was certainly he.

I was obliged to be very sharp with her. Heaven send the photograph

soon! Because I will admit to this diary, when Susan has "a feeling" I

can't help catching the complaint.

_Before dinner_.

It's just come. The photograph and a letter as well.

He says the photograph was only taken yesterday morning. It's a local

thing, not retouched: so I suppose we can depend on it as a faithful

likeness. If so, I must say I like him tremendously.

Susan is disappointed that he has no moustache. He looks like a young

and fresh version of some handsome and benevolent Judge or Cardinal. He

isn't the least bit flabby or silly-looking, as I expected. He has a

scholar's head, but he's evidently a man of energy as well as of

thought. I should say he has a tremendous will of his own. He doesn't

look the sort to have fallen over ears in love with a china shepherdess

like Susan at first sight. But there's the fact. And, although the

stupid girl can't see it, and "never thought he would be like that,

Miss," I don't know many women that wouldn't feel it a compliment to

have him in love with them, either at the first sight, or the second, or

the fiftieth. He looks handsome without being dandified, and brainy

without being dry.

His letter this time is less old-fashioned and more easy. He says:--

MA CHERE SUZANNE,--You have commanded me not to say "My dear Susan," and

behold! I obey.

I'm sorry to say it: but my dear Susan--I mean ma chere Suzanne--has a

hard heart. Her letter to tell me that she's landed safe in Normandy

without being shipwrecked or run over by a motor-car, only reached me

this (Wednesday) morning: and, if I hadn't ridden into Derlingham and

fished it up out of the post-office, I shouldn't have got it till

to-morrow. If Suzanne were kind, she would have sent one line on

Sunday.

It is an enormous relief to know that you are not hard-worked or

unhappy. When I saw Miss Langley with you (once outside Traxelby

Church, and twice in the street), I thought she seemed rather

nice--though, to tell the truth, I didn't waste time looking at Miss

Langley, when I could spend it looking at Suzanne.

Now about this horrible photograph. I've always hated photography and

always shall. But your commands must be obeyed. So I went into the

"studio" of the Derlingham "artist." The "artist" was a pasty-faced

youth in a velvet coat with Byronic curls that must take hours every

night. He wanted to do his worst, and to turn out something elaborate

that wouldn't be ready for a week: but I gave him a maximum of three

hours, and he has handed me the enclosed.

I expect a long answer to this, telling me all your doings, by return of

post. And I shall be the most injured man in all England if Suzanne's

own photograph is not enclosed with her long letter. More than ever, I

am your RUDDINGTON.

"I like this letter, Susan," I said, putting it down again on the table.

"Yes, Miss," said Susan, without enthusiasm. And, after a pause, she

added, "But don't you think, Miss, it begins rather funny?"

"No," I answered. "I think the beginning is rather neat. You've

forgotten. In our last letter we told him he might call you Dear Susan,

but he mustn't call you My. So, instead of calling you 'My,' he says

he's going to call you 'Ma.'"

"Is that it?" asked Susan, pouting. "Well, I don't think I like it.

That's what my uncle Bob used to call my aunt Martha."

"Your uncle Bob?" I echoed, stupefied.

"Yes, Miss. He called my aunt 'Ma,' and she called him 'Pa.' I don't

like it, Miss. It sounds common."

When I had recovered enough gravity, I tried, for the twentieth time, to

give Susan a rudimentary lesson in French. She endured my efforts with

deference; but, underneath, I could see that her rustic British

prejudice against France and all things French is unshaken. I honestly

believe that, in Susan's opinion, to have set foot in France at all is a

slight lapse from propriety, and a loss of the finest bloom from the

soft cheek of one's maiden virtue. In France, the silly creature won't

even touch beef, just because of some stupid tale of Gibson's about a

roast horse. She firmly believes that out-and-out Frenchmen eat

bullfrogs toasted whole on a fork; and that the French language is a

ludicrous disability imposed on the natives by a strictly Protestant

Deity as a just punishment for being papists and foreigners. Susan

doesn't intend to lower herself by learning French any more than by

learning to stammer, or to swear.

"What about your photograph, Susan?" I inquired, changing the subject.

"You see he wants one. Did you happen to bring one with you?"

"No, Miss. It's two years since I had it took."

"Taken. Not took. Then what are you going to do?"

"I don't know, Miss."

"You ought to oblige him," I said. "Don't be so limp. Look at the

trouble he took to get you his own portrait the very same day. I'm

almost sure there's a photographer at Grandpont. Madame will know.

It's only three miles. We'll go in the morning."

"Oh no, Miss!" gasped Susan, fluttering suddenly into liveliness. "Not

in France, Miss!"

"Why not in France?"

"I shouldn't like to be photographed in France, Miss," said Susan

decidedly. For a moment I almost felt as if I had proposed mixed

bathing to the rector's virgin aunt. To be photographed in France

sounded a degree or two worse than going to church _decolletee_. But a

moment later I felt impatient and annoyed.

"Very well, Susan," I said shortly. "You may be sure I don't want to

drag myself to Grandpont. Do whatever you please."

As usual, she became immediately and amply and sincerely penitent.

"It was very kind of you, Miss," she said humbly. "You're always too

good to me. But I feel I couldn't go and be photographed in France."

"Then don't go and be photographed in France," I said, still ruffled.

"So far as I'm concerned, it's settled and done with. Now I want to

read the newspaper."

I could see with half an eye that there were uncountable things which

Susan was yearning to talk over; but I was nearly at the end of my

good-nature. With the little that remained, I tried to let Susan down

gently. I picked up Lord Ruddington's photograph again and said:

"At any rate, you can't find much fault with his looks."

"No, Miss," responded Susan tepidly, "but I did think he would have a

moustache."

_Friday, sunrise_.

An apple-branch has tapped at my window, and a lark is singing eagerly

in the near sky.

This shall be a good day--as rosy as the apple's cheeks, as blithe as

the lark's song. I hereby register a vow against Ruddington and all his

words and works. We needn't send him his answer till to-morrow. So,

to-day, Susan sha'n't mention him and I won't even think of him.

Somebody's left a clean, new, cheap copy of _Les Chouans_ here. How I

shall love reading it again. Except while I'm bathing and eating and

sleeping, I mean to sit and read it on the cliffs all day.

_After breakfast_.

After all, Susan is awfully sweet. One can't stand aloof from her long.

While she was downstairs before breakfast allowing Georgette to practise

on her in broken English, I went into her room to find a pair of

scissors. As usual, it was as neat and nice as if it hadn't been slept

in. But the thing that struck me was a leather photograph-frame on the

mantelpiece.

I recognized the frame. It was a double one, which I had given Susan

because I hated the colour. In the left-hand compartment Susan had

placed the newly arrived photograph of Lord Ruddington. And facing him,

on the right hand, was----Me!

It was that thing I got done last Easter. Until this morning, I'd

forgotten that Susan had pleaded for a copy and that I had let her have

one for her album. Suddenly to catch sight of myself beaming

affectionately across the hinges of the frame at an equally

affectionate-looking Lord Ruddington, was certainly a shock. But that

Susan should have brought me all the way from England and have stuck me

on her mantelpiece was another proof, though none was needed, of her

genuine devotion.

I took the frame down and held it open in my hands. It was too comical.

Ruddington and I are placed in ovals, like the August Young Personages

in a Royal Wedding Supplement to an illustrated paper; and we are

looking at one another with the most absurd happy-couple air imaginable.

"Though I say it as shouldn't," we make an amazingly pretty pair. If

Alice could see it, she would begin to cry.

I think I sha'n't tell Susan that I've seen it.

_Noon_.

I haven't read much of the _Chouans_. After my bathe, I kept Susan with

me on the cliff. The grass was green, the sky was blue, and the sea was

both. It was lovely to loll on the flowers and to listen to the

sea--its deep speech at the cliff's foot, its soft murmurs in the sunlit

distance.

Susan thinks Ruddington ought to tell her more about himself, and his

conditions of life, both at the Towers and in town. I think she's

right. Now that she's getting used to her good fortune, her talk has

suddenly improved. She's dropping that raw and childish way of hers,

and some of the things she said were quite sensible. If she goes on

improving like this, she ought to be tolerably presentable at the

month's end. No doubt it will take years to fill the gaping breaches in

her knowledge; and her mind can never, from its very nature, expand

enough to make her an all-round companion for such a man as Ruddington

seems to be. But I take it that a grain or two of common-sense will be

found mixed with his infatuation; and, if so, he will be prepared for a

good deal of disenchantment. As for Susan, she'll always be pretty, and

restful, and docile, and sweet: which means that if he is losing some

things he is gaining others.

Alas, poor Gibson! I'm afraid his dreams are standing a poor chance of

coming true. It's selfish of me not to have sent him a prudent line.

I'll do it to-day. I'll tell him simply that all's well with Susan; and

perhaps he will guess that all's up with himself.

_Eight o'clock_.

I walked alone this afternoon to Berigny. The hamlet was deserted--or,

at least, it looked so. The thatched black-and-white barns stood out

sturdily in the bright, strong light, and Berigny wore all its old

prosperous air. But there wasn't a single body to be seen. I suppose

every one was in the fields, or gone to market.

The church was open. I sat in it a few minutes: it was so cool and

quiet. If I had felt suddenly tempted to steal an image, or to rob the

box of Peter's Pence, there was none to say me nay.

The Berigny churchyard looked sweeter than ever. I like it better than

any other I have seen in France, because it is full of natural shrubs

and flowers. There are hardly any of those frightful wire crosses and

tin immortelles and iron wreaths, as big as cart-wheels, such as you see

in dozens everywhere else. And the Berigny churchyard isn't _triste_.

As you sit on the warm stone platform of the Calvary, you look down over

the orchards to the facing uplands--pastures of green velvet, wildly

embroidered with, a million yellow flowers. Even the graves are not

melancholy. It doesn't seem any more dreadful that the men and women of

Berigny should be fast asleep, like children in the bosom of their

mother earth, than that last year's beech-leaves and pine-needles should

be lying quietly under the ceaseless murmurs of this year's cool and

shady green. Cheerful sounds arise from the valley as you sit and look

down. There is blue smoke curling from one or two of the chimneys.

Between the surges of light wind you can just hear the voice of the beck

as it sings on its way down to Sainte Veronique. No, Berigny churchyard

is not melancholy: for in the midst of death you are in life.

There is a strange thing about some of the gravestones which I didn't

notice when I was here before. Or, rather, I oughtn't to call them

stones. They are woods. Over the humbler tombs stand rude memorials,

each consisting of two short, slightly ornamented posts with a short

broad plank fastened between. The plank is painted white; and upon it,

in black letters, are displayed the name and age and birth-and-death

dates of the man or woman asleep below.

At the bottom of each inscription there is an abbreviated formula which

puzzled me sorely. It runs: "Un D. P. s. v. p." Not until I had almost

given up trying to guess what it might mean, was the riddle solved.

Behind the chancel I found a larger and newer grave on which the legend

was spelt out at large in full: "Un De Profundis, s'il vous plait."

It filled my eyes so full with sudden tears that the solid world seemed

to be wavering and dissolving as I beheld it. And, at the same time,

the dim mysterious world beyond seemed suddenly clear and near. It was

no longer the wind in the pines that I heard: it was a multitudinous

whispering of spirit-voices pleading close to my ear: "If you please!"

I am wondering to-night whether I ever really and truly believed until

to-day in the immortality of the soul. I am wondering whether I have

ever done more than assent to the doctrine mechanically as a part of my

childhood's creed, and as a postulate on which rest many familiar things

in our literature and civilization.

Yes and No. In a sense I have believed, in a sense I have not. Until

to-day, I have only thought of the disembodied soul in one or other of

three different ways. I have thought of the soul as a cold abstraction,

a philosopher's name for an antithesis to the body. Again, after I've

listened to ghost-tales, I've thought of it ignobly--as a horror, a

scary, frightful spook, a foul shape of night swooping horribly across

the short sunlit path of our little life to remind us of the

immeasurable cold and unending dark beyond. Last of all, after some

stately obsequies, I've thought of the soul as living some supernal,

Gothic life in a churchly heaven--a heaven where the sky is not a dome,

but a pointed roof resounding for ever and ever and ever with Gregorian

chants. That is to say, at the best I have imagined the soul clothed in

a mediaeval vestment, and living exaltedly, in an incalculable

remoteness from to-day's crowded world of living and breathing women and

men.

"A De Profundis ... if you please!" I suppose many people would find

the "if you please" either ludicrous or irreverent, or both. At one

time I might not have found anything in it myself, beyond a charming

rustic _naivete_. But this afternoon the truth rushed over me in a

flood. The souls of the faithful departed are not thirteenth-century

souls: they are not the shivering, pitiable ghosts such as engaged the

fancy of savage men ten thousand years ago, or the still weaker brains

of the Spiritualists of yesterday: they are not mere fictions of the

philosopher, invented for convenience of argument. They live and

rejoice and sorrow in an intensity of present being. To-night, I

believe in the Communion of Saints. They exist as truly as the little

black-haired child exists who stopped me outside Berigny and said "s'il

vous plait" when she asked me the time: as truly as Georgette when she

says "if you please" and lays the cloth: as truly as Susan when she says

"Please, do _please_, Miss," over a letter to Ruddington.

This afternoon, I couldn't say a "De Profundis" for the departed

faithful of Berigny because I'm too much of a heathen to have been

taught it. But, before Sunday, I mean to buy a _paroissien_ containing

all these things, in French and Latin.

When I say my "De Profundis," can it do them any good? I don't know.

Millions of people say it can't. But more millions of people say it

can. And if I make a mistake, I would rather make it in giving than in

withholding: just as it is better to say "Yes" to the beggar who may

waste your sixpence on beer, than to say "No" to the beggar who may lie

down and die for want of bread.

_Bedtime_.

What an irony!

This is the day when there was to be no Ruddington--the day that was to

be as rosy as apples and as blithe as a lark.

As for Ruddington, I have only just finished re-reading his letter,

which Susan has put by way of a hint in my writing-case.

As for rosiness and blitheness, I've spent my afternoon and evening like

Hervey--I wonder if anybody ever read any more of his book than the

title?--in Meditations Among the Tombs. My day has been ghost-wan,

tomb-silent.

No. It has been as full of colour and of sound as could be. But the

colours have been the grand and solemn hues of autumn, and the sounds

have been majestical as organs and trumpets. To-day I have not been

gay. But I have been happy. And I can't name any day at Sainte

Veronique that I repent of less than this.

_Saturday morning_.

This is the answer I have written for Susan to send by the early post:--

DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--I am so sorry that you were anxious about me.

But you must not forget the bargain. And the bargain does not allow of

long replies "by return." Indeed, in writing this morning, I am

breaking my own rule. When this is posted, I shall have received and

answered two letters in one week.

Do not think me grudging or cold-blooded in standing fast to our

arrangement. If letters are too frequent they will be short and

scrappy, and thus they will fail of their object. For example, nothing

could be more devoted and kind than your two notes this week; but they

tell me so little about yourself, and hardly anything at all about your

daily life, your thoughts, your work, your interests. At present I know

no more about you than all Traxelby knew before you came to the Towers.

It is true there is the photograph, which I like very much--though you

don't in the least resemble the picture my mind had formed! You were

good to take all that trouble in Derlingham so as to get it done so

quickly.

Unfortunately, I have no photograph of myself here, and there is no

artist, not even a pasty-faced one, in Sainte Veronique. But why should

you want my portrait if you have seen me three times?

I sha'n't expect an answer from you "by return;" but I _shall_ expect

your next week's letter to tell me more about yourself and your life.

Yours sincerely,

SUSAN BRIGGS.

Susan thinks my letter is beautiful, as usual. Or, if she doesn't think

so, she says she does. But to know that she needn't be photographed in

France has lifted such a weight off her spirits that she is prepared to

be delighted with everything. After the first shock and the second

explanation, she went up into heaven at finding that it was "proper" to

say "Dear Lord Ruddington." Perhaps she expected me to begin the letter

by calling him "Pa!"

It's all very amusing. But I must keep a watch on myself lest I take it

too prankishly. After the future Lady Ruddington had graciously

signified her approval of my reply to her noble owner, she went upstairs

for her hat, and, while she was away, a madcap impulse got the better of

me, just as it did on Tuesday. I picked up the pen and wrote along the

margin:--

I was amused about those Byronic curls. But what do _you_ know about

them taking hours to do at night?

Now that it's too late, and Susan is on her way to the post-office, I do

wish I hadn't said it. For half a dozen reasons, it was a mad thing to

do.

His portrait is still facing mine in the leather frame. I took a peep

at it just now when I came upstairs for this diary. And we've still got

the same sort of a "Good-morning, Dear," honeymoon expression. I

positively blushed, and put it down again as if it had been red hot.

I must see that Susan plods away at her handwriting--or, rather, at

mine! It's plain now that Ruddington is in love with Susan, and that he

means to marry her. Also, it's plain that Susan means to marry Lord

Ruddington, whether she succeeds in falling in love with him or not. Up

to the present no great harm is done, but I must wriggle out of the

affair somehow before his letters become intimate and affectionate.

Poor, poor Gibson! I've written him a line, and shall post it myself.

_Sunday, noon_.

For the sake of his peace of mind, let us hope that Ruddington is Low

Church. If he isn't, Susan will soon be on his nerves. There's

precious little kneeling down and standing up at the Sainte Veronique

parish Mass; but this morning I had to prod or pluck at Susan half a

dozen times. When we came out she made wistful comparisons with

Traxelby, and declared that she did so miss "a nice service."

Perhaps Ruddington is neither Low nor High. He says that one of the

times when he saw Susan was in church. But Traxelby isn't his parish:

so he must have been hunting Susan, not saving his soul.

I've given up wrestling with the _Chouans_. I'd forgotten the early part

was so dry. Besides, it's nicer to potter about, and think and dream,

not to mention that novel-reading is wicked on a Sunday.

_Monday morning_.

Susan has been difficult again. I'm sorry for her.

Last night she suddenly developed the liveliest interest in dress. In

the past she hasn't been a girl to care excessively about it. That's

why she has always looked so nice. But, last night, she said:

"I've been thinking, Miss, what ought I to wear the first time I go to

see him?"

"You mean, Susan," I answered, "what ought you to wear the first time he

comes to see _you_."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan absently. "I was thinking it would be nice if I

had one of those cherry-coloured zephyrs, with elbow sleeves and a white

sash."

I smiled.

"Do you think you can depend on yourself not to blush, Susan," I asked,

"when he looks at you and speaks to you?"

"Oh no, Miss, I can't," answered Susan in a panic. "I shall be sitting,

all the time, wanting the ground to open and swallow me."

"Then I don't think you should go in for anything cherry-coloured," I

suggested. And I tried to go on with _Les Chouans_.

"Perhaps blue alpaca would be better, Miss," broke out Susan again,

after long reflection. "Blue alpaca, made plain, with a little train. I

could wear that lace collar you gave me, Miss, and have my hair done

more on the top of my head."

"You'd look very nice, I'm sure, Susan," I replied. "But, if I were

you, I shouldn't do anything of the kind. I suppose it will be at the

Grange that you'll see him first. Some arrangement will have to be

made. If so, it ought to please him best to see you as he saw you at

Traxelby church."

I went on again with _Les Chouans_. Or, to be strictly truthful, I

fixed my eyes again on the page.

"I beg your pardon, Miss," Susan began humbly, after five minutes of

quiet; "but shall we be married in Traxelby church?"

"Most decidedly not," I answered, so emphatically that Susan positively

jumped. "I haven't the ghost of a notion where in the world you'll be

married. But it mustn't be Traxelby. Lord Ruddington will propose some

suitable arrangement, and I shall see that it is satisfactory. Besides,

all this can be talked over later on. It will be time enough to choose

where you'll be married to Lord Ruddington when you've made up your mind

whether you're going to marry him at all."

The bride began to pout.

I decided swiftly that it was high time to bring matters to a head.

Traxelby church, indeed!

As likely as not, Susan would expect me to be a bridesmaid, with Uncle

Bob giving her away, and Aunt Martha calling him "Pa." So I shut up the

_Chouans_ with a snap and put the question straight.

"Tell me, Susan. Have you made up your mind? If you've settled it that

you mean to marry Lord Ruddington, we shall know where we are."

The pout vanished, and she hung her head. At last she answered:

"Yes, Miss. I mean, I'm not sure yet, Miss. But I'm sure that I shall

be sure before long."

"Sure that you'll marry him?"

"Yes, Miss. I mean ... I think I shall."

I could get no more out of her, and in the end I turned surlier and

snappier than I care to remember. Susan went to bed looking miserable.

This morning my conscience woke up as early as I did. Earlier: for it

was wide awake while I was still half asleep, and I groped out into

consciousness with a sense of recent meanness and unkindness to Susan.

The more I woke, the clearlier I saw how natural it was of Susan, who

knows no French and can speak with nobody here save me, to want to talk

frocks.

When she came in at seven o'clock to open the curtains, I said in my

friendliest tone:

"Well, Susan, I suppose you've decided to be married in white, with

orange-blossoms and a veil?"

To my consternation she remained at the window, and did not turn round.

Then she plunged for the door into her own room, and as she seized the

handle, I heard a sob.

I jumped up and followed her to the threshold.

"Come, come, Susan!" I said. "You mustn't have such a thin skin. I

never meant to hurt your feelings."

"You haven't, Miss," sobbed Susan, standing near me, but not showing her

face. "It isn't you, Miss. But I can't bear it!"

"You can't bear what?"

"All of it, Miss. None of it. I woke up and thought about it in the

night. It's dreadful!"

I couldn't guess what Susan couldn't bear, or what it was that was

dreadful, and it didn't seem wise to press her. So I said nothing.

"You'll take cold, Miss," she cried, when she cast her first glance at

me. And she bundled me back into bed.

I told her that she needn't have her breakfast with Georgette, and that

she ought to drink chocolate instead of coffee.

"You'd better have a quiet day," I added. "This matter is getting on

your brain. Give it a rest. That was one reason why I wanted you to

wait a whole month. There's no need to brood over it day and night.

The month has still three weeks to run."

She dried her eyes and was ever so grateful. But I am puzzled. Last

night she seemed (as she has seemed all along) to take it as a matter of

course that she will marry Ruddington. Her attitude has been that of a

pretty, honest, modest, prosaic girl with an eye on the main chance. To

find her suddenly all sensibility is a surprise.

Probably it isn't sensibility. It's nerves. Too much coffee: not enough

sleep. Too much of her own thoughts: not enough human fellowship at a

time when she sorely needs it.

Yet I can't overlook that she was disappointed with his photograph. It

may well be that, in her better moments, my sweet Susan shrinks from

marrying when she cannot love. Or is it that she is cowed by the

difficulties of so huge a change in her rank and station? She shall

have an easy day.

_Tuesday_, 10.15 _a.m._

The Lord Ruddington would be speaking no more than the truth if he

always signed himself Susan's Most Obedient Servant. He has been as

prompt with his pen-and-ink _Selbstbildniss_ as he was with the

pasty-faced artist's photograph. He says:

MA SUZANNE,--It is Monday morning. When I have finished this, I shall

have written you once this week; once last week (the Wednesday), and

once the week before (on the Saturday). Yet I am scolded for breaking

the rules. You must send me an exceptionally kind letter to soothe my

wounded feelings.

It was unpardonably careless of me not to forward full particulars and

references when I first applied for the post of Protector to Suzanne.

But I have to-day filled up a form and am enclosing it with this.

References are kindly permitted to the Derlingham photographer and to

Mrs. Juggins, the housekeeper at Ruddington Towers.

I have taken conscientious pains to fill up the form correctly. For

instance, I squandered a whole penny this morning weighing myself on an

automatic machine at Derlingham station. To be precise, I have

squandered tuppence; because the first machine which I bribed refused to

weigh me, and insisted on presenting me with a bar of chocolate cream

instead.

The news that you can't send me your portrait is desolating. It is

another reason why you must be extra kind.

All your letters are precious. But I like the little bits you write up

the sides best. Why can't I have a letter made up of little side-bits

only?

RUDDINGTON.

The "enclosed form" is a formidable-looking sheet of blue foolscap

divided into columns for questions and answers. It reads:

S. B. No. 999.

1. Names (Christian Henry Reginald Westerton

and Surname), with Assheleigh, Ninth Baron

Title or Titles, if any. Ruddington.

2. Address or Addresses. Ruddington Towers,

Sussex; Assheleigh House,

St. Michael's Square, S.W.;

Ballymore Castle, County

Kerry.

3. Age. 23 171/365 years.

4. Has applicant He has heard so.

had whooping-cough?

5. Or Measles? One.

If so, how many?

6. Weight. 10 st. 8 lb. (Includes 2.1739

oz. of letters from Suzanne,

in left-side breast-pocket

at time of weighing.)

7. Can applicant read? No need to. Suzanne so

seldom writes.

8. Can applicant write? Yes. Once a week.

9. What are applicant's Not Tory. Conservative.

politics? More liberal than the

Liberals, less radical than

the Radicals.

10. What are applicant's Waiting for Suzanne's

pursuits? letters. Until last month,

spent leisure studying

Spanish history and

literature.

11. Personal appearance. Quite as bad as Derlingham

photograph. Probably worse.

12. Hair. Brownish-black; or blackish-brown.

13. Eyes. Blue.

14. Does applicant ride? Every day.

15. Does applicant swim? Yes.

16. Does applicant fish? Yes.

17. Does applicant hunt? Not much.

18. Does applicant swear? Now and then. Is prepared

to give it up.

19. Does applicant drink? Half a bottle of claret twice

a day.

20. Does applicant smoke? Not before 1.50 p.m. If

Suzanne objects, he

confesses that he objects to

her objecting.

21. Has applicant a Hates them. But will learn

motor-car? to love them if Suzanne does.

22. Additional remarks. Is bad-tempered, impatient,

obstinate, and self-opinionated.

Has no first-hand

knowledge of the time it

takes to prepare Byronic

(or other) curls o' nights.

Has not been in love

before. Hasn't a Past.

And hasn't a Future

either, unless it's to be

spent with Suzanne.

I don't know yet what Susan thinks of these documents. She has left

them on my table without remark.

At the first glance I didn't like them. They smacked too much of the

funny man labouring to be smart. But, after a second reading, I like

them. After all, the poor boy couldn't very well sit down with a

serious face and write out his own testimonial in cold ink. His wit

might be sprightlier: but I begin to discern the gravity underlying it.

His way of bringing it in that he has no Past, no entanglements, no old

flames, is skilful and considerate. Perhaps this is the very point

Susan has been worrying about. Who knows? Perhaps she has been fearing

that she isn't the first simple beauty that his lordship has taken by

storm. Perhaps she thinks he is an old-style lord, with a pretty taste

in milk-maids, and therefore not much better than a new-style lord with

a nasty appetite for ladies of the ballet.

Whatever am I to say if Susan asks me what he means by the little bits

written up the sides?

_Tuesday_, 3 _p.m._

My bathe made me tired. I sha'n't go out again to-day.

Susan is wooden-headed past belief. I was amused for a few moments at

the odd comments she made on Ruddington's letter; but her dulness grows

monotonous. She began:

"Don't you think, Miss, that ... that he writes rather strange?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean, Miss," whispered Susan mysteriously, "do you think he's ...

quite right in his head?"

"Well, Susan," I answered, "when one looks at the way he runs after a

girl whom he's never spoken to, I admit it does make one wonder if he

isn't a bit mad."

Susan pouted.

"I mean his letter, Miss," she said. "And this big blue paper."

"As for his letters, Susan," I replied, "I don't see much wrong with

them. Aren't they bright, and frank, and kind?"

"Why does he say, Miss, that he's named Henry?"

"Simply because Henry is his name."

"But lords don't have any names, Miss, do they? I mean they only have

surnames."

I asked for light.

"It was Mrs. Hobbs, the cook, that told me, Miss," Susan explained.

"Mrs. Hobbs said that a lord could only have a surname--as it might be

Ruddington--and the King could only have a Christian name--as it might

be Edward. That's the difference, Miss, between a king and a lord--one

can only have a Christian name, and the other can only have a surname.

So how can he be named Henry?"

When I had finished laughing, I said:

"Susan, you remember Mrs. Hobbs's dreadful mousseline sauce? Till

to-day, I would never have believed that there was any subject in the

heavens above or in the earth beneath, about which Mrs. Hobbs knew less

than she did about cooking. I was wrong."

"If he's proper Lord Ruddington, Miss, I don't see how he can be named

Henry," persisted Susan doggedly. "I wonder, Miss, ought we to write to

Mrs. Juggins?"

"Mrs. Juggins?"

"Yes, Miss. He says she's the housekeeper at the Towers."

Positively the stupid creature believed that Lord Ruddington had

seriously referred her to an actually existing dame of the name of

Juggins. Really, I haven't the patience to set down half the ridiculous

things she said. She is certain that her letters don't weigh "all those

ounces." She is aghast at the bad temper and obstinacy, which must

truly be traits in Ruddington's character, "because he admits it, Miss,

himself." She is surprised that he should be brooding so bitterly over

his wasted tuppence; "though they do say, Miss, that the richer people

are, the meaner they are in little things, and that's why they've got

rich." She is not romantically _exaltee_ at the news that he has never

loved another. But she is grateful that he has got safely over the

measles; because "Uncle Bob had them after he was grown up, and I did

think, Miss, it looked so silly." And so on, and so on, and so on.

At last I begged her to stop chattering and sent her away. I can't

understand her. Susan has always been unsophisticated, but it's

something fresh for her to be vulgarly stupid and thick-headed.

The outlook is disconcerting. My letter-writing on her behalf gives

Ruddington a false notion of her knowledge and her mental power. So long

as she retains her charming simplicity no great harm will be done; for,

after he is disillusionized about her brains, he can easily fall in love

afresh with her _naivete_. But this flat-footed, Hodge-like, charmless

stupidity is quite another story.

She's too stupid even to ask about the little side-bits.

_Waiting for tea_.

It may be that the fears which kept Susan awake last night have frozen

her wits. She has the air of dreading close quarters with this affair;

of wanting to thrust it off an arm's-length while she gets time to

think. I mustn't be too hard on her. The girl is passing through an

ordeal; and I am a poor substitute for a mother or even for a bosom

friend.

_Wednesday morning_.

I have taken a resolve.

There's been too much Ruddington. The inroads he makes on my Normandy

rest-cure are absurd. I get my sun-bath and sea-bath every day; and

that's all. It's time to put down my foot.

Fortunately, Susan agrees with me. She does not tell me why she has so

suddenly fallen out of love with the idea of being raised to the

peerage. It may be that she quails and shrinks from a destiny that is

altogether out of scale with her nature. More probably it is some

trifle, such as Ruddington's moustachelessness. But, although she gives

no reasons, she agrees with me that it will be best to take the thing

less busily for the next fortnight. I've pointed out to her that she

knows as much about him now as she needs to know. It isn't as though

she has to decide, here at Sainte Veronique, whether she will marry Lord

Ruddington. She has only to settle whether she will let him see her next

month face to face--whether she will let him press in person a suit

which she will still be free to refuse.

We have decided that I shall write him a letter to-day such as will keep

him quiet, and stop him bothering us. Then I shall be able to take a

deep draught of my Normandy, as I take deep draughts of the cider. I

have been here well over a week, and I hardly seem to have had one day

free of him.

_Later_.

Here is my letter to her Henry, and it's going to be posted whether

Susan likes it or not:

DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--Your letter and the big blue form amused me very

much. It is interesting to have such an assortment of fresh facts about

you--especially the obstinacy and the bad temper.

It is good news that you hate motor-cars. Nor should we become estranged

over tobacco. But these are trifles, aren't they?

I hope you will not think that I am taking myself too seriously, or that

I am unthankful for the trouble you take in writing such kind and open

and lively letters. But (now that I have your photograph and know so

much more about you) I am conscious of a desire for a week or so of

detachment from details. I feel that I would like to go about my

ordinary life until some light breaks on me suddenly and of its own

accord. The more I deliberately seek light, the more it mocks and

eludes me. I suppose the reason is that no amount of steadily "making

up" one's mind can suffice instead of a free involuntary motion of the

heart.

As you wrote to me on Monday, you would not in any case be writing again

till Monday next. I like to have your letters; but, if you postpone

your reply to this until rather late next week, I shall have the better

chance of deciding whether we ought to meet or not.

Yours sincerely,

SUSAN BRIGGS.

_After lunch_.

The letter's gone.

Susan says she likes it.

I liked it too, until it was dropped into the post-box. But, at this

moment, I am vainly asking myself what had become of my brains while I

was writing it. It's the un-Susanishest letter that even _my_

undramatic pen has compassed. Think of Susan being "conscious of a

desire for detachment from details!" I can as easily imagine her

ordering a grilled ichthyosaurus for breakfast.

Still, it's gone. And now I shall have a week's peace.

It seems the Belgian people who have had Dupoirier's Villa de la Mer for

the season left yesterday. Dupoirier is cleaning up the blue-and-white

bathing-hut on the beach. He's going to give me the key, and, if I

like, I can stay down by the sea all day, so long as the weather's fine.

_The Bathing-hut, Thursday afternoon_.

This is perfect.

The bright-faced sea is crooning to itself like a happy child. The day

is warm. Inland, it must be torrid.

I have had two dips, one snooze, and about three-quarters of a lunch.

It would have been a lunch and a half if Georgette hadn't tripped over a

stone on the way down and dropped the wing of a chicken into the beck.

But the prawns, and the cold veal, with sauce remoulade, and the great

big pear, were quite enough if I hadn't grown so disgustingly greedy.

Off and on, I've read several square yards of French newspapers since

ten o'clock. There seems to be a curse resting on all newspapers that

are sold for a ha'penny, never mind what country they belong to. I feel

as Susan felt when she missed "a nice service" after the parish Mass at

Sainte Veronique church.

The best part of everything is to lie full back in the deck-chair and to

look up at the larks in the sky. It's nice, too, to gaze over the

blue-green water and to know there's a hundred miles of it between us

and that worry of a Ruddington. I'm afraid he'll write a dozen pages on

Monday. But, until the poor little fellow begins kicking and screaming

for his Susan to be given to him at once, I can sit here while the wind

and the sun mend my nerves and smooth the past fortnight's wrinkles out

of my offended brow.

_Friday night_.

Henry Reginald has written. The sight of his envelope made me so angry

that I nearly tore it open without waiting for Susan. After reading his

outpouring I can't altogether blame him; but I am being badly treated by

Fate. Things are worse muddled than ever.

He says:

MY DEAR SUSAN,--Seeing my handwriting again so soon, you will think that

I am flouting your wishes. Not so. After I have finished this, I

promise not to write you another line till you expressly give me leave.

From my own selfish point of view, I have known all along that I was

foolish in pleading my cause by post instead of with the living voice.

But to write seemed fairer to yourself; though I confess I could not

have been easily content with letters had I known you were going to

France.

In asking for a week of detachment, you are right. Indeed, I feel you

have been most exquisitely right at every turn of my rude assault upon

your peace. Therefore I agree, much as I shall miss your letters.

You think your letters have disappointed me; and I can discern that it

is a pain to you to write them till they can flow from you more freely.

But let me tell you why I prize them far more than I expected.

The day I first saw you with Miss Langley was a Saturday. You simply

swept me off my feet. I had no more choice as to whether I should love

you all my life or not than a cork has a choice between floating and

sinking. It was the Derlingham banker who told me who you were. All

that evening I sat alone in the dark, thinking. Or, rather, I didn't

think. I just sat and looked, like a man in a trance, at the new world

which had unrolled itself suddenly, solidly, splendidly right across the

whole field of my vision.

I had always believed that love at first sight was out of my line.

Indeed, I had believed that, nowadays, it was out of everybody's line;

and I had suspected that, outside the romances, there had never been any

such thing in the world. I had even begun to indulge a certain pride in

my fastidiousness and self-control as regards women.

Don't be hurt, most dear lady, at the next step in my confession. If I

must seem to disparage you for half a moment on paper, it is only that I

may show why I shall revere and honour and cherish you for ever.

When I came out of that Saturday night dream or trance, I sank swiftly

down, down, down into a pit of humiliation. I had always believed

myself free from pride of rank or pride of wealth; but it was with an

immense chagrin that I remembered how the banker had answered my

off-hand question with the words "Miss Langley's maid." A blinding

flash lit up all the opposition, and scorn, and ridicule I should have

to undergo.

Not that it entered my mind, even at the zero of my humiliation, that I

could ever give you up. The fact that you were my Destiny rose clear of

my tumultuous emotions, as radiant and immutable as a virgin peak above

the mean rage of a thunderstorm. But I fretted and fumed. You were the

rose that I must needs gather; but why had Fate set you behind so huge

and sharp and black a thorn? I asked bitterly why Fate could not have

contrived that Miss Langley should have been Susan, and that you should

have been Miss Langley, so that I could have come to the Grange a-wooing

without a thousand maddening lets and hindrances.

Later on, and in a lesser degree, I also felt humiliated because I, who

had been so proud of my cool head, suddenly found myself bowled over by

mere beauty and grace, like a solitary corn-stalk before an autumn gale.

The next morning I slipped circumspectly into Traxelby church, just

before the sermon. If you hold religion sacred and dear (as I feel sure

you do), it may shock you to know that I looked at you through the

pillars of the Langley monument for a quarter of an hour. But my

thoughts were not sacrilegious. Although I thanked God for your beauty

(and how beautiful you were that morning!), I worshipped God most

because He had created your soul, your very self. As I watched you, I

knew that you alone in all the world could charm away my spirit's

restlessness and hunger--the hunger and the restlessness which I had

hidden even from my own self. I recalled my loveless life; my boyhood

spent among tutors and schoolmasters; my youth and early manhood at two

schools and at three universities in three different countries; my last

year--the year before I came back to the Towers--spent on cosmopolitan

steamships and in unhomely hotels. I thought of the only women I have

ever known well--my hard and shallow cousins, who are handsome and

elegant only with the sort of handsomeness and elegance that ten

thousand other hard and shallow women share with them. Then I looked at

you again, and wanted to come home to you as a bird flies home to his

nest.

As I walked back from church, I knew that my ignoble chagrin had melted

and vanished at the second vision of you. Instead of exclaiming against

Fate for placing you, as the word goes, "below me," I rejoiced that

there was a sacrifice to be made--a way of proving to you that I was

moved by Love alone. I laughed at myself for having wished you had been

Miss Langley!

Perhaps I am supersensitive, ultradelicate. But I felt, on that Sunday

morning, that if you had been Miss Langley, I might have shrunk from the

wooing. The obviousness, the hard-headed, practical common sense of

such a match would have put me off it. When every consideration of

worldly suitability pointed to a joining of her name and lands and

interests with mine, how could I have gone to Miss Langley on a simple

errand of Love? I know of one gossip who had already linked her with

me. How I should have cursed this rank of mine, which I never wanted,

and this wealth of mine, which I never earned, if they had robbed me of

the power to convince a woman of my love, and to woo her for herself

alone!

I wrote to you on the Tuesday; and you kept me waiting four days. But I

knew you would reply; even as I know that, when this month is over,

Heaven will not suffer you to wrench your life away from mine. But,

while I waited, I kept on schooling myself against every possible turn

of events. And one thing for which I prepared my mind (forgive me

again, dear lady!) was this. I expected your letter would be ... how

shall I say it? Well, I expected a diamond--but a rough one! To be

blunt, I knew that Oxford and Heidelberg and Salamanca had made me too

punctilious; and I nerved myself for a letter from a sweet Susan, an

adorable Susan, a wise Susan ... but a Susan who couldn't spell!

But what has happened? Of course, mere spelling and grammar are less

than the dust in the balance; and if you sinned against them unto

seventy times seven it would be nothing. But not only are Susan's

letters better expressed than my own; they outstrip the utmost I ever

dreamed of in the exquisite reverence with which they approach the

sacred mystery of Love. Where I was merely superfine and sentimental,

you are exalted, mystical. I honour your month of absence and your

coming week of silence as I honour the retreats and meditations of a

saint. Wealth and ease and rank cannot tempt you. They cannot even

hurry you into doing what is right till you are persuaded that it is the

right with your whole soul. The Susan I saw that Saturday morning swept

me off my feet, robbed me of my free will. But the Susan who has

written me four letters is so noble, so deep, so rich of spirit, that

even if the spell of her beauty were broken, I should still devote my

whole life to winning her, though the obstacles were a thousand times as

great.

Why have I written all this? I will tell you. Because you are entering,

so to speak, on a week's retreat; and upon your week's retreat hangs my

fate. If I did not write this, the most recent letter of mine in your

hands would be that schoolboyish blue paper with its long-drawn string

of poor jokes. I did not mean it flippantly; but it is hard for a man

to write about himself.

In a word, I write to ask that it shall be this present letter and not

the other that you will call to mind when you are so good as to think of

me.

No. I don't imagine you "take yourself too seriously." I have guessed

that, like my own, your mind is more often gay than grave. But there is

a time for everything; and I perceive that badinage is not the

accompaniment I ought to be playing while you are making the momentous

choice which I have so strangely laid upon you.

And now I steal out of your presence on tip-toe, and softly close the

door. If you call, I shall be waiting. And if you do not call ... I

shall be waiting still.

R.

Susan has been in to know what I think of the letter. I have told her I

am busy, and have sent her away.

It's no use blinking the fact that I'm involved, up to the ears, in a

very, very serious affair.

_Midnight_.

I can't sleep.

This is altogether too frightful.

Fortunately Susan was perfectly stolid. If she'd been awkward, goodness

knows what I might have said or done. I simply told her that we must

have a thorough talk, once for all, in the morning; and she went to bed

without a murmur.

Susan a mystic! Susan approaching with exquisite reverence the sacred

mystery of Love! Susan in retreat, like a saintly nun!

If I could only laugh and laugh and laugh till I woke up the whole

hotel, it wouldn't so much matter. But I can't even smile. Ruddington

is too terribly in earnest. And it's my fault.

Some parts of his letter I hate. I would never have believed that he

could make so outrageously free with my name. So long as Susan is my

maid, I call it abominable taste to drag me in like that. Indeed, I

hardly see how I can do otherwise than wash my hands of the entire

business forthwith.

But if I do ... what then? If Susan is left to concoct a reply, and to

use a teaspoonful of ink to every page, it will be such a shattering

bombshell in the golden midst of his dreams. And the man, on the whole,

is too likeable for me to wound him deeply if I can help it.

Perhaps what I ought to do is to write by the same post as Susan, and

with her full knowledge, a frank confession of my part in the affair.

He will be astonished and disappointed and a bit hurt in his dignity,

but he can't fairly resent my having helped Susan. After all, it's his

fault, not mine, that he's perused my few short and insignificant

letters through such rose-coloured glasses that they have seemed like

the utterances of a divinity. It's his infatuation, far more than my

bungling, which has magnified and idealized Susan into a goddess.

Whether he can turn the telescope round, so to speak, and look at Susan

through the other end till he sees her in all the tininess of her actual

spiritual and mental stature; and whether, when he has seen her as she

is, he can still go on worshipping her--all this is more his affair than

mine. I'll write the letter now.

_A quarter past one_.

It's no good.

If I had written before his letter came to-night, I could have managed

it. But now that he's brought me in by name, and has even discussed how

he would have felt if he had been moved to make love to me...

No. I can't write. And if I could, I wouldn't. And I'm cold, and

tired, and insulted, and distracted, and wretched. I'll back to bed.

_Saturday_, 2 _p.m._

On second (or twenty-second) thoughts, I did not choose to have a

detailed conference with Susan. I have not so much as told her how

vastly it offends me to be discussed with her as Ruddington has done.

If I betray annoyance, how can I expect a simple mind like Susan's to

interpret my vexation otherwise than as the acidity of an unsuccessful

rival for Lord Ruddington's hand? Lord Ruddington has cheapened me

enough, and I will not make myself any cheaper.

Although she was stolid over it last night, the letter has warmed Susan

into a remarkable state of expansion this morning, and she was sadly

crestfallen when I showed no sign of going through the document chapter

and verse. I took care that she should find me deep in my own

correspondence, so that my inattention was less pointed.

I simply told her that it would be a good thing if she were able to take

over the Ruddington correspondence herself immediately, as Lord

Ruddington had already been seriously misled. Failing this, I gave her

the following note, and told her to post it or not as she pleased:--

DEAR LORD RUDDINGTON,--I am grateful for your letter. And I am grateful

to you for consenting to what you call my "retreat." When the retreat

is over I shall not forget that I have a long letter of yours to answer.

Meanwhile I will only beg, both for your sake and my own, that you will

not form too high an opinion of--Yours very sincerely,

SUSAN BRIGGS.

Susan did not read the note in my presence. I have no idea what she will

do.

_Sunday: before church_.

Half my month is gone. This makes the fifteenth morning since I landed

in France, yet I don't remember waking up once with a completely easy

mind. From Mr. John Lamb onwards, I have dwelt in the midst of alarms.

To-day shall prove whether I have any will-power or not. Sunday is a

day of rest, and I am determined to have twenty-four hours' rest from

Ruddington.

Susan is very commendably docile. She sees I have had enough of it, and

she hasn't even told me whether she posted my note or not. Fortunately

she is making much more of a pal of Georgette. Georgette progresses

with her English marvellously. She adores Susan because Susan never

tries to utter a single syllable of French.

I mean to hear Mass this morning at Berigny. Georgette is taking Susan

to bewail once more the lack of "a nice service" at Sainte Veronique.

_Sunday afternoon_.

I like the Berigny papists better than the papists at Sainte Veronique.

Barely sixty people assisted at the Mass; but the faith of these few

twentieth-century men and women was as solid as the fifteenth-century

piers and vaults that rose above our heads.

Being English, I ought to exclaim against the Berigny mass-house, and to

call its pictures and images and altars gaudy. But I understood this

morning that the place was first and foremost a refuge for the simple

and the poor. Of course, the austerity of our own church at Traxelby

suits my personal ideas of reverence better. But I'm afraid that, in

England, there may be some selfishness in our always conforming the

insides of our churches to the taste of the Hall or to the taste of the

rector's ladies. No doubt it helps the fortunate few to feel religious

when they exchange the cosy richness wherein they have snuggled all the

week for the big, bare sternness of cold, undissembled stone, and the

uncompromising whiteness of twenty surplices. An hour and a half of it

once a week corrects luxury and tones up fibres that are becoming

enervated through all-day-long indulgence. One even finds a subtle

pleasure in the slight discomfort and restraint; just as the man who has

dined well and wined well for eleven months enjoys the fashionable

hardships of a month's "cure" at a German spa. But I wondered this

morning if our church interiors are equally helpful to the poor. If a

contrast between the home and the church stimulates devotion, where do

the poor come in? The only contrast they get is the contrast between a

small bleakness and a big one; the contrast between grey and white;

between ashes and snow.

Berigny church is a spacious, warm, brightly coloured drawing-room for

all Berigny. Not even the drawing-room at Alice's, with its absurd

excess of water-colours and prints and screens and embroideries and

statuettes and curios, holds such a store of things to look at as the

drawing-room at Berigny. Over and above all the regulation sights of a

typical French church, Berigny has Our Lady of Berigny, in queenly

silver-tissue and with a golden crown on her sorrowful brow. From the

bosses of the vaults in the aisles hang five or six fully rigged little

ships--votive offerings of mariners snatched from shipwreck. High up on

the south wall there are coloured wooden images, carved in the sixteenth

century, such as St. Nicolas with a tubful of red-cheeked, chubby, naked

babies, and St. Antony with his pig. Berigny has both the Antonys. Not

far from him of the pig, stands a modern statue of St. Antony of Padua,

with a face like an angel's, and with the Holy Child seated on St.

Antony's open book and nestling against St. Antony's breast.

It would have driven him stark mad if our Traxelby choir-master, with

his petty efficiency and trivial thoroughness, could have heard the

Berigny organ pounding and blaring, and the Berigny faithful bawling

"Credo" through their noses. An untuneful but hearty lad on my left

sang the whole creed through in Latin without a book. I wonder, would

our Traxelby youths be a shade less loutish, a shade nearer to these

courteous villagers of Berigny, if they too were taught to dip a cup in

the main stream of human culture, and to quaff ever so small a draught?

I imagine it must be the beginning of a revolution, even in the humblest

mind, when it makes room for fifty words of a language other than its

own.

_Sunday night_.

Yes, I have some traces of will-power. I have wanted to ask Susan

whether she posted my note; but I haven't asked her. And I have wanted

to think about Ruddington's letter--not so much its galling references

to myself, as the disclosure it makes of an uncommon personality in the

midst of an uncommon situation. I have wanted to think about it all

day--even in church. But I haven't yielded. Or, at most, I have

yielded only a very little.

_Monday morning_.

Susan posted the letter.

I asked her after breakfast, in a casual sort of way, what she had done

with it; and she answered, almost as casually, that she and Georgette

posted it on Saturday afternoon. I could see that, for some reason,

Susan didn't want to be cross-questioned.

"Susan," I said, when she came into the room again, "how many people

know anything about this affair of Lord Ruddington?"

Susan started.

"Whom have you told?" I asked again. "Did you talk about it at

Traxelby?"

"Oh, no, Miss!" said Susan, almost reproachfully. Then, after an awkward

pause, she added: "Unless..."

"Unless...?"

"Well, Miss, I _did_ say to Gibson that ... that there was _somebody_.

But I didn't mention names, Miss, and he could never guess."

"Have you said anything to Georgette?"

Susan hung her head and studied the toe of her shoe a long time before

she confessed:

"Georgette asked me, Miss."

"Asked you what?"

"Georgette said: 'Have you got an Ammee?' And when I told her I didn't

know what an Ammee was, she said..."

Susan blushed and stopped.

"Go on," I said. "An _ami_. What did Georgette say an _ami_ was?"

"It is French for Mister," faltered Susan. "Georgette says it is a

Mister with whom one is in love."

"What did you tell her?"

"Nothing, Miss."

"You were very sensible, Susan," I said. "You oughtn't to talk about it

to any one."

I picked up a book; but Susan still loitered.

"Well?" I asked at length. "What is it?"

"Please, Miss," began Susan uncomfortably, "I didn't tell Georgette

anything."

"So you said before."

"Yes, Miss. But Georgette ... wanted to look at the envelope. I mean

the letter to his lordship, Miss."

"But you didn't let her do it?"

"Oh, no, Miss."

"Then what is there to worry about?"

Susan scraped the floor with the point of her shoe, and shifted about.

By and by she blurted:

"Georgette wanted to know if the letter was to my Ammee or ... or to

yours, Miss."

I shut the book. Susan hurried on.

"So, of course, I said he was mine, Miss."

Ruddington is right. Susan is a wonder, a gem, and five times out of

six a born lady. After I had praised her discreetly and had deplored the

impertinent pryings of Georgette, I took up the book again and told

Susan she might go away.

She went, but within five minutes she was back.

"I thought I'd best tell you, Miss," she said when I looked up.

"Yes?"

"I didn't show Georgette the address, Miss. But ... she noticed the

envelope wasn't gummed down."

"Yes, yes. Get on."

"I oughtn't to have done it, Miss. But Georgette went into the garden

and plucked a flower, and lifted up the flap of the envelope, and

laughed, and tucked the flower inside."

"It's a great pity, Susan," I said, "that you didn't take it out again.

If you'd make up your mind to marry Lord Ruddington it wouldn't matter.

But can't you see how foolish it will look? It simply contradicts the

letter asking for a week's grace."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan, going redder than ever. But she showed no sign

of departing.

"Is that all, Susan?" I asked, with a sudden fear that there was worse

to follow.

"No, Miss," she answered faintly. "After we'd posted the letter,

Georgette laughed again and said that the flower had a meaning."

"A meaning?"

"Yes, Miss. The Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette said the flower

meant 'Vang.'"

"Vang?"

"Yes, Miss. That's the French Language of Flowers, Miss. Georgette

says that, in English, it means 'Come'!"

Before I could speak, she burst out crying.

"Please, Miss," she wept, "I didn't see any harm on Saturday. But last

night, when I went to bed, and thought about it ... oh, Miss Gertrude,

I'm _so_ miserable!" And she cried harder than ever.

In the end I sent her away consoled to the extent of my assurance that I

didn't blame her in the least, and that the sole offender was Georgette.

Also, I promised her that I wouldn't get Georgette into trouble.

At first I felt determined to give Georgette some very plain speaking in

private. Yet how can I? How was Georgette to know that Susan hadn't

been writing a common country love-letter to some common country

sweetheart? What divination could teach Georgette that we had been

writing a superfine letter to a milord? Georgette simply indulged her

rural playfulness. And if the envelope was open for Georgette to put

the flower in, it was also open for Susan to take it out.

That's the devil (I can't help saying it!) of this endless affair.

Everybody keeps on giving me shocks and jumps, and yet nobody is ever to

blame.

Not that much harm is done this time. I suppose Ruddington will go

silly over the flower. He'll kiss it, and wear it next his heart by day,

and lay it under his pillow by night, and worship it as a symbol of

fresh mysticalities and exquisitenesses in his divine Susan. But he

won't ring for the kitchen-maids and request the kind loan of a Language

of Flowers. He won't so much as think of it that way. Even if he does,

he will know that it is the letter and not the flower that he must obey.

I wonder what flower it is that means "Viens?"

_Monday night_.

I have been reading Ruddington's last letter over again. And although I

began it with prejudice (being still nettled by Georgette's prank), it

has affected me strangely.

Seen whole, I know the situation is farcical. It is a farce that may end

in a tragedy. But as Ruddington sees it, with the wrong notion of Susan

that I have helped to give him, it is a most high and sweet romance, all

rose and gold.

Life can be most hideously cruel. Better no beautiful dreams at all

when there must be such an awakening. And that poor lad Gibson is to be

soured for ever in order that Ruddington may go through life with a

millstone of disenchantment round his neck. Something is here for

tears.

_Tuesday, three o'clock_.

Ruddington remains quiet, like a good boy; so the flower has done no

harm. Susan has been quite brightened up by suddenly remembering that

the flower was only a French one.

This morning there was a wedding at Sainte Veronique. I have seen

country weddings in France before, but this is the first one that hasn't

offended me. The bride was a pink-and-white, almost English looking

girl, and the bridegroom was a tanned, honest, handsome young fisherman.

When Susan and I saw them, it was after the wedding. They were standing

side by side, hand in hand at a door, while the guests were bustling for

places at an open-air breakfast-table. You could not say that they were

not taking in the scene. Indeed, they laughed more than once at the

horse-play of the youths. Yet it was plain that while their eyes

recognized friends, and while their minds were lightly engaged with the

outer world, their spirits had built a little hidden shrine of peace.

Never before have I seen on human faces such a serene yet delicate

fulness of perfect happiness. Below the rattle of plates and the shouts

and the laughter, my ear caught a rich undersong of love.

In the past I have learned almost to loathe lovers. When Hugh came to

see Alice, I used to wonder how she could endure him. I suppose he

enjoyed his courtship, just as a budding barrister enjoys his obligatory

course of dinners; but he used to turn up more like a man who had come

to tune the piano than like a man in love. And I don't think I detest

any one in this world more than poor Maude Slaney's Bob. Heaven only

knows how many millions of times he has mispronounced the word "fiancee"

these last two years; and the way they go on in public is simply horrid.

I'd almost rather have the boorishly amorous couples who slouch on

Sunday nights along Church Lane, gaping up at the Grange.

But, this month, I've begun to see lovers in a less garish light. The

fisherman reminded me of Gibson. I shall be the better all my life long

for having stood in the glow of Gibson's splendid manliness when he

thought Susan was in danger. Ruddington, poor man, is quite an endurable

lover, too. As for Susan, although she's so simple, I haven't

definitely made her out. But, allowing amply for her shyness and for

her deference to my guidance, it's rather fine to see how she hangs back

from Ruddington's money and rank until she feels sure she can care for

him. If the bulk of human love is anything like these samples, I don't

wonder that the world goes right round in a night and a day.

_Tuesday, bedtime_.

Another earthquake.

This afternoon, Madame Dupoirier went to Grandpont station in the hotel

omnibus. She has just come back.

Madame says that when the 'bus drew up at the station "a compatriot" of

mine stepped alongside and attentively perused the words "Hotel du

Dauphin, Sainte Veronique-sur-mer," painted on the 'bus sides.

Apparently he mistook Madame for a guest who was going away; and he

asked her (very politely, Madame says) if she knew whether "Mees Langley

and Mees Breeggs" were still at the hotel. Madame said "Yes;" and she

is quite pleasantly fluttered at the thought of an extra guest fairly on

his way hither.

I was too much stunned to do more than thank her for telling me. I

didn't even ask her what the man was like, and whether he spoke to her

in French or in English. But I've no doubt it is Ruddington.

I call it abominable. If Susan were travelling in France with her

parents, or even with some married woman for a mistress, it would be

different. But this is outrageous.

I ought to have known that he would hunt up the meaning of Georgette's

flower. A man who can read such super-exquisite meanings into the

half-dozen notes I have scribbled for Susan, isn't the sort to leave any

stone unturned. I can't help despising him. When a full-grown,

educated man has such sickly rubbish as the Language of Flowers at his

finger ends, a lady's-maid is as much as he deserves.

What will he do? I hardly think he'll descend upon Sainte Veronique

till his mystical Susan's sacrosanct week of retreat has expired. I

suppose he'll hover ridiculously in the neighbourhood, like a knight

keeping vigil outside a woodland oratory where his milk-white ladye

kneels at prayer. Probably there will be a mysterious succession of

leaves and petals in otherwise empty envelopes--a scarlet-runner to mean

"I have come post-haste," a convolvulus to mean "I am still hanging on,"

a thorny bramble to mean "I suffer."

Even the ardours of a lover ought not to burn out the instincts of a

gentleman. I gave Ruddington credit for more decency and restraint.

When the week is over, he will want to come here. It is an intolerable

position. I am about to be made a fool of. Everybody will get to hear

of it some day.

Ought I to wire for Alice? No, I can't. If it were anybody but

Ruddington, I could. I'm like a poor hunted beast in a trap, with no

way to turn.

I have more than half a mind to pack up at daybreak and to slip

stealthily back to Dieppe for my promised week at the Cheval d'Or.

_Wednesday, very early_.

I forgot to wind up my watch.

I have decided not to run away.

Three things have become clear as I have turned them over in the night.

First, I'm as good a man as Ruddington. If I stood up to Mr. John Lamb,

I can stand up to his successors. He shall either treat me with respect

or be taught a lesson. I'm not going to run away from any one.

Certainly not from a youth sick with calf-love who babbles the Language

of Flowers.

Second, I might as well face the fact that the gods never intended me to

have a peaceful September this year. How true it is that the unexpected

happens! When I came to Sainte Veronique twelve months ago, I expected

to have a lively time. But everybody failed me, and it was the

quietest, peacefullest month of my life. This year I came expecting

four weeks of vegetable existence; and instead, I am kept running and

leaping and turning like a trick-horse in a circus. Wherefore, I do

hereby decide not to kick against Destiny a minute longer. Instead of

staving off all this comedy, and instead of hating it because it

distracts me, I hereby decide that it is well worth looking at, and that

it would be foolishness to brush aside such a human drama as I am never

likely to see performed again. Norman villages, and carafes of cider,

and plunges in the sea, and lobster salads under apple-trees, can be

bought for nine or ten francs a day, year after year, as often as I want

them. But a handsome, virtuous, learned, stark-mad young lord in love

with a pretty, honest, lovable, stupid lady's-maid isn't a sight to be

seen at close quarters every week. It shall be the principal pleasure

as well as the principal business of my remaining fortnight to see this

play played right out.

Third--how do I know that Master Ruddington isn't lying peacefully at

this very moment in his little white cot at Ruddington Towers, dreaming

of his Susan as good as gold? How do I know that the Grandpont person

isn't somebody else? It struck me in the night that it is probably Mr.

John Lamb. At the Customs, he looked at the Sainte Veronique labels on

my boxes as well as at the Cheval d'Or labels on our bags. I know he

tumbled down the steps of the Astor still believing that he had

conquered Susan's maiden heart, and that if he could only have seen her

all would have been well. Perhaps he has got together a fresh supply of

francs and is proposing to wait on us with some preposterous apologies

and explanations. It may be that he wants me to promise that next time

I am in Amelia Road, Shepherd's Bush, I won't give him away to Phipps

Brothers--and, above all, that I won't give him away to Ma. This

morning I shall ask Madame Dupoirier to describe him. If it be indeed

Mr. John Lamb, he will find me ready with the mint sauce.

_Ten a.m._

It's a good thing that I have decisively renounced all hope of peace and

quietness. The postman has brought Susan no flowers from Grandpont, but

he has brought me just the sort of letter from Alice that I don't want.

Ruddington, Ruddington, Ruddington--that's Alice's letter from beginning

to end.

Alice has "found out all about him." He's richer than Alice thought.

And prettier. And nicer. And I am the wickedest, foolishest, proudest

young woman in the world for clinging on at Sainte Veronique.

It seems that Ruddington and I "were made for each other." He has just

my tastes! Alice even adds, with splendid candour, that he "isn't the

least little bit like Hugh."

I had hardly smoothed my poor fur after Alice's ruffling when Susan

chose to begin stroking me backwards again. She said:

"I'm thinking, Miss, about this letter that came on Friday night."

"Yes?" I said.

"Please, Miss, you never told me what you thought of it."

"What did you think yourself, Susan?"

Susan fidgeted about. At last she answered:

"I can't feel that it's right, Miss."

"What isn't right?"

"Him speaking that way, Miss, to a girl ... like me. It doesn't seem

right."

"I don't understand, Susan."

She fidgeted again. Then she said:

"I'm afraid you'd be vexed, Miss. It isn't my place to say it."

"To say what?"

"Well, Miss," Susan explained in instalments, "it doesn't seem right, it

doesn't seem natural for him to be courting ... _me_. It's what my Aunt

Martha used to say, Miss. She used to say, 'More unhappiness comes to

them as marries above 'em than to them as marries below 'em.'"

"You mean, Susan," I suggested, "that you're uneasy at the thought of

such a great change in your position? So you ought to be. That's why

I've always wanted you to look well before you leap. There's a great

deal in what your Aunt says."

"Yes, Miss," answered Susan abstractedly. And for a few moments she

tried to hold her peace. But it was no use. A sudden torrent of warm

words gushed forth and swept all restraint away.

"Oh, Miss Gertrude!" she cried, "I can't help saying it! I can't! It

isn't me, Miss, Lord Ruddington ought to be coming after. It's you,

Miss Gertrude, it's you!"

I was struck dumb.

"Yes, it's you, Miss, it ought to be," Susan went on. "When I think of

what he says in his letter, Miss--how he couldn't go making love to Miss

Langley--I could die for shame. I ought to have cut off my hand before I

showed you such a thing, Miss."

"Susan," I said, "you mustn't talk to me like this. You did quite right

to show me his letter. It isn't your fault that Lord Ruddington wrote

things in his letter which it would have been better taste to leave

out."

"No, Miss, I know," broke in Susan. "But oh, Miss Gertrude, I'm so

miserable! I do so wish he hadn't never seen me. If I don't get

married to him, I shall be miserable because I've thrown away all that

money, and living in a grand house, and being Your Ladyship. And if I

do get married to him, I shall be miserable because ... because it isn't

natural, Miss! Oh, Miss Gertrude, how lovely it would have been if he'd

liked you instead of me! Then you would have got married and gone to

live at the Towers, and we would have come with you, Miss, and we'd have

been so happy!"

I noticed Susan's "we." But it was not a time for re-catechizing her

about Gibson. I cut her short peremptorily.

"Susan," I said, "be so good as to stop. You are taking a great liberty.

If Lord Ruddington has so far forgotten himself as to drag my name into

his affairs, that's no excuse for you doing the same. I dislike it most

strongly."

"Yes, Miss," said obedient Susan. "But," she added wistfully, speaking

more to herself than to me, "it would have been lovely!"

"Am I to take it, Susan," I demanded abruptly, "that you've finally

decided not to accept Lord Ruddington?"

She blushed; paled; blushed again. But she did not answer.

"Because," I added, "if you are still thinking it over, you'd better not

talk of it, even to me. Lord Ruddington won't expect you to write

before Saturday. I've given you all the help and advice I can, but I

don't want to influence you either one way or the other. Work it out in

your own mind."

Susan promised to try.

As she was going out, something else occurred to me, and I called her

back.

"Susan," I said kindly, "I don't wish to refer to it again, but what you

have said about myself and Lord Ruddington reminds me of one little

point."

"Yes, Miss," said Susan.

"His portrait. One day I went into your room for the scissors. I saw

you had put Lord Ruddington's portrait in the same frame as mine."

"Yes, Miss. They went together beautiful."

"I shall be much obliged, Susan, if they don't go together any longer."

Susan shed a tear. But she is going to obey.

Now I've had enough ruffling for one morning. Before I interrogate

Madame about the creature at Grandpont, I mean to run down to the

bathing-hut and enjoy an hour's basking in the sun.

_Before lunch_.

I have seen the man from Grandpont. Has the event proved worse than my

fears, or better? I can't say. All I know is that the event was

different.

Susan didn't go down with me to the bathing-hut. I unlocked it myself,

and carried out the deck-chair on to a sunny patch of clean white

pebbles. But I had hardly drunk in two draughts of the salt air when I

sat up with a start.

A man was watching me.

He had been sprawling on the stones at the foot of the cliff about a

quarter of a mile away. At such a distance it was impossible to make out

his features, but, as he stood up, I saw it was not Mr. John Lamb. I

saw the figure of a man well drilled, a man accustomed to an outdoor

life. The man wore a dark blue lounge suit and a straw boater of

unmistakably English lines.

For a moment I thought with disgust that he was one of those provincial

English tourists (we have had two or three of them off and on at Sainte

Veronique) who find some sort of pleasure in lurking about the beaches

furtively watching "the ladies" while they bathe. I wished I hadn't

left Susan behind. But, as soon as he saw me sit up, the man began to

walk towards me in a perfectly open manner.

I couldn't feel sure that it wasn't Ruddington. It flashed across my

brain that he was scheming an interview with me as a flank movement upon

Susan. Besides, I remembered that a rather fine-tempered man like

Ruddington must perceive the unpleasantness of the position in which

Susan's acceptance of him would place Susan's mistress, and, in his

unconventional ingenuousness, he was just the sort of man to come

forward betimes with boyishly candid explanations, and adjustments, and

appeals. As he sped towards me over the blinding chalk-stones, there

was something in his stride that recalled the eager, masterful

love-making of his present Majesty of Spain.

I got up, relocked the hut door, left the chair outstretched on the

shingle, and swung off for home as swiftly as was possible without

seeming to run away. I did not choose to grant an audience to Lord

Ruddington whenever and wherever it might suit him to claim it.

But his legs were longer than mine and in better training. I had an

instinct to run, an instinct to look back, but I mastered them both.

Very soon I could hear the stones crunching or slipping or rolling under

his boots. Surely, I told myself angrily, any man who wasn't a bounder

or a madman could see that I resented the pursuit. But he came ever

quicklier on. And, as I gained the path up the beck, he positively broke

into a run.

I turned round.

It was Gibson.

"Gibson!" I cried; "Gibson! Is it you?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he answered firmly, pulling off his hat and standing, six

feet away, bare-headed in the sun.

"What has brought you here?" I demanded as sternly as I could. But I

was too greatly relieved to make a convincing display of indignation.

"I haven't been near the hotel, Ma'am," said Gibson, meeting my eyes.

"Of course you haven't. The idea! But, if you had, you'd have startled

me less than by running after me on the beach like this."

"It's about Susan, Ma'am," said Gibson. Gibson is not a man of words,

and I could see that he was determined not to be scolded or flurried out

of the speech he had been rehearsing.

"Susan's all right," I said; "I told you so in my letter."

"I thank you, Ma'am," said Gibson, less aggressively. "I sha'n't never

forget how kind you wrote."

"What's the matter, then? You don't seem to realize, Gibson, that I'm

very much annoyed. Didn't I tell you not to come to Sainte Veronique

unless I sent for you?"

"You did, Ma'am, you did," answered Gibson, losing his self-control and

speaking more and more excitedly; "and I give you my word, Ma'am, I

won't come nearer Sinn Verrynick than this bit of ground I'm standing

on. Oh, yes, Ma'am! You've wrote right enough, and I thank you. But

it's Susan. She hasn't wrote not one line, Ma'am--not so much as a card

with a photygraph of the pier on it!"

"You've forgotten the bargain, Gibson. I'm ever so sorry for you; but

what did you say at Traxelby? You said you could bear Susan marrying

some one else so long as everything was honourable and above-board. You

were not to come here unless I found that"--I nearly let slip Lord

Ruddington's name--"that Susan's admirer was not going to play the

game."

"So I did, Ma'am," broke out Gibson hotly. "That's what I said. That's

what I promised. And I've cursed myself every day, every minute of every

day, since I said it. It was a lie, Ma'am. Whether Susan's took away

from me honest or took away from me dishonest, I can't stand it, and I

won't. Susan's mine! I was a dirty hound, Ma'am, ever to say as I

would give her up, even if it's the Emperor of France that comes begging

for her with a sack of gold and dymonds. Susan's mine! She's the only

girl in the world I ever cared about. Yes, Ma'am," he cried proudly,

raising his voice and taking a step forward, "and Susan's never cared a

straw about any man in the world 'cept me, and she never shall."

"Susan is a free woman, Gibson," I said. "Ever since we left Traxelby

she hasn't mentioned your name. I know nothing about it. But how do you

know that Susan ever cared for you? Perhaps she only led you on, as

girls do. And, supposing she did care for you, how do you know she

hasn't changed her mind?"

"That's just the trouble, Ma'am," said Gibson bitterly. "I don't deny

they may have changed her mind. If they've dangled a lot o' money

before her eyes, and fine clothes and joolry, and motor-cars and going

to Egypt, and all that, I don't deny they may have managed to change her

mind. They may have been too strong for a poor girl. Oh, yes, Ma'am,

they may have changed Susan's mind! But ... but they can't never change

her heart, Ma'am. Her heart'll go on beating true all the same, all the

time; and when she's got tired of the fine things..."

He clenched his fist and finished off the sentence with a gesture

between rage and despair. I was forced to turn away from the white heat

of his rough eloquence and superb sincerity.

"What is it you want, Gibson?" I asked, as soon as I was able.

"I want to know first, Ma'am, has Susan got herself engaged?"

"No, she has not."

"Is she going to be, Ma'am?"

"I don't know. It isn't my affair. I think she hasn't made up her mind

one way or the other."

I met Gibson's eyes. But, this time, it was he who looked away.

Apologetically, clumsily, he asked:

"If I may make so bold, Ma'am ... is the party at Sinn Verrynick?"

"The party?"

"I mean, Ma'am, the rich party that's took a fancy to Susan?"

"No, he is not. I have never so much as seen him. Neither has Susan.

But what did I promise? Didn't I give you my word that, if he came

here, I would let you know? That's why I'm so vexed, Gibson, at your

coming like this."

He accepted the rebuke without a word.

"What are you going to do now?" I asked.

"I suppose, Ma'am," he said slowly and painfully, "I'd better go back to

Granpong."

I asked him a few questions. It turns out that he came over on

Saturday, _via_ Southampton and "Lee Harver." He held a letter from a

chauffeur he had met in Derlingham to a Havre motor-accessories firm.

The Havre people, hearing he wanted to be near Sainte Veronique, gave

him a letter to a small cycle and motor jobber in Grandpont who speaks a

little English. He boards and lodges Gibson, and teaches him the

driving and mending of cars, in return for English conversation,

Gibson's labour, and thirty francs a week.

"Of course, if you object to me staying on at Granpong, Ma'am..." said

Gibson.

"If I'd known beforehand I should have objected very much, Gibson," I

said. "But you've been so lucky in your arrangements, I hardly like to

disturb them. Give me your Grandpont address."

Gibson gave me a printed card. He is staying "A la Descente des

Automobilistes." The "Descente" announces, on a card adorned with

crossed billiard-cues over a foaming bock, that it speaks Englisch, and

that it is equal to billiards, coffee, repairs, and beefsteacks _a toute

heure_.

"Are you comfortable, Gibson?" I asked.

"Very," he answered. "I never could abide cider, and the beer is

shocking, Ma'am. But I'm quite comfortable."

"I'm glad, Gibson," I said. "I won't lose the address. Good-morning."

I record it to my shame that I was heartless enough to begin moving

away. Indeed, I had advanced twenty or thirty paces up the beck before

Gibson decided on a second pursuit.

"About Susan, Ma'am!" he said, with red cheeks. "Shall you tell Susan,

Ma'am, that I'm in these parts?"

"That reminds me, Gibson," I retorted, "you've forgotten so much of the

bargain we made at Traxelby that I can't be certain of anything. You

promised not to tell Susan that I had ever let you discuss her with me."

"I sha'n't forget, Ma'am. But ... can't I see Susan for a minute?"

"How? Where?"

"I might hang about, Ma'am."

"And frighten her out of her life. No thank you, Gibson! If there's to

be any meeting, you'd better write about it from Grandpont."

"It'd take time, Ma'am."

"Surely you can wait a day or two, Gibson?"

He lost his self-command once more.

"No!" he cried, "I can't wait. And if I could wait, I won't. I must

see Susan before another sun goes down."

"Don't shout, Gibson," I said; "people will hear you. Even if it isn't

against your interest to force yourself on Susan, how do you know she

will see you? Perhaps she won't."

He started. Then he turned aside in such sharp trouble, that my hard

heart melted.

"The most I can do," I said, "is this. I will tell Susan how you met me

on the beach, and that I was very angry. I will say nothing about our

talk that night in the garden at Traxelby, and you must not mention it

either. All I'm supposed to know is, that you're very keen about Susan,

and that you think she encouraged you, and that you're worrying because

she doesn't write. In short, if you and Susan meet, you must keep to

your own affairs, and not bring me in at all. Above all, never say that

I wrote to you. I will tell Susan that you will be on the beach at

half-past two. She must please herself whether she meets you or not.

But remember, to-day is exceptional. No secret meetings. You can get

something to eat in the village at the Cafe de la Marine. I must go."

I found Susan sitting under an apple-tree with Georgette. Georgette was

jabbering over a fearful and wonderful plum-coloured blouse which the

two were slashing and altering. It may have been my fancy, but

Georgette looked a bit sheepish as she went away. "Mees Breegs"

advanced to meet me.

"Susan," I said, "some one whom you know is in the neighbourhood."

Susan's colour fled.

"Is he, Miss?" she asked fearfully.

"At Grandpont," I went on. "Madame Dupoirier told me about it last

night. She was at Grandpont station in the 'bus yesterday. He read the

name of the hotel, and asked Madame if you were here."

As usual, Susan's colour rushed back, with reinforcements. She began to

tremble.

"It's that flower, Miss!" she gasped, "Georgette's flower! Oh, Miss

Gertrude, I can't face him yet! I can't, I can't!"

"You don't need to, Susan," I said. "It isn't Lord Ruddington."

Susan moaned a little moan of thankfulness. But her face clouded again

as I added:

"It is somebody else."

She searched my eyes. Then she asked, in an agonized whisper:

"Not ... It isn't ... Not Gibson, Miss?"

"Yes," I answered, "Gibson."

Susan turned half round and gazed over the sea. Her pretty

country-girl's figure shook with hardly pent feeling. For the first

time I saw Susan bitter and angry.

"I'm ashamed of him, Miss," she burst out. "I could never have believed

it of him."

Not knowing what to say, I refrained from saying it. Susan's wrath

waxed stronger. She turned upon me with something dangerously like

active resentment.

"You ... you knew last night, Miss?" she said, almost fiercely.

"Certainly not, Susan," I replied. "Madame told me that an Englishman

had asked her questions at Grandpont. But she didn't know who he was,

and I never asked her to describe him."

"Then how do you know it is Gibson?" asked Susan, a very little less

pugnaciously.

"Because I've just seen him."

Susan collapsed.

"Where, Miss? where, Miss? ... Oh!" gasped Susan.

"Come, come," I said, "I was quite as much annoyed as you are. I told

Gibson very plainly what I thought about it. But, Susan, I must admit

that there is some little excuse for him. Of course he hasn't repeated

to me a single word that he ever said to you, or that you ever said to

him. But it is plain that he's very fond of you. And he thinks you

encouraged him. He says you haven't sent him even so little as a

postcard for a fortnight."

Susan's Amazonian ire had died down to a village beauty's pout.

"I can never forgive him, Miss," she said. "I wouldn't have believed it

of Gibson. Not to mention the disrespect to you, Miss Gertrude."

"Never mind the disrespect to me," I answered, "I can look after that

myself. No doubt it's very silly and weak of him; but the point is,

that Gibson is so badly in love that he's madly jealous."

"Please, Miss, you didn't tell him about ... Lord Ruddington?" asked

Mees Breegs in a fright.

"Susan," I said, "I'm surprised. What are you thinking of? Unless

you've told him yourself, he can't have the faintest notion that there's

a Lord Ruddington in the case. But I can see he suspects there is

somebody. That's why he couldn't sit quiet in England while his rival

cuts him out in France."

"I shall never forgive him, Miss," snapped Susan more conclusively than

ever.

"Don't say that, Susan," I said; "or, if you say it, take care you don't

mean it."

"But I do, Miss."

"Then it's nothing to be proud of. Don't hate a man for merely loving

you."

"He ought to have stopped at home, Miss."

"He ought. But he hasn't. You see, Susan, I don't know how it is, but

you seem to have a way of making people do mad things. Gibson cares for

you quite as much as Lord Ruddington does. But he hasn't done anything

madder than Lord Ruddington's first letter, has he?"

"No, Miss," said Susan, mollified and visibly flattered. And, after a

minute's pleasant meditation on the unsuspected range and power of her

charms, she added prettily: "But Lord Ruddington does stop at home when

I tell him to, Miss."

"That's true," I granted; "but Lord Ruddington has all the advantages.

Poor Gibson is so frightfully handicapped. I suppose he thinks that

all's fair in love and war. I'm annoyed with him for coming here, but I

admire his spirit. Gibson isn't a muff, Susan."

"Oh, no, Miss," she answered promptly and heartily.

"In fact, this morning I felt quite vexed with Lord Ruddington for

stepping between you. But I mustn't say more about that. I will come

to the point. I have brought a message."

Susan's agitation began afresh.

"I've told Gibson he mustn't come here. He is lodging at Grandpont. At

this minute he's getting something to eat in the village. But he will be

on the beach at half-past two."

"To-day, Miss?" she asked faintly.

"Yes, to-day. You can please yourself whether you see him or not. But

understand, Susan, I've told him it must be only this once. No meetings

on the sly."