CHAPTER XIV

"My river runs to thee:

Blue sea, wilt welcome me?"

--EMILY DICKINSON.

The winter, that dealt so sternly with Janet, smiled on Anne. She spent

Christmas in London, for the Duke was, or at least he said he was, in

too delicate a state of health to go to his ancestral halls in the

country, where the Duchess had repaired alone, believing herself to be

but the herald of the rest of her family; and where she was expending

her fearful energy on Christmas trees, magic-lanterns, ventriloquists,

entertainments of all kinds for children and adults, tenants, inmates of

workhouses, country neighbours, Sunday School teachers, Mothers' Unions,

Ladies' Working Guilds, Bands of Hope, etc., etc. She was in her

element.

Anne and her father were in theirs. The Duke did not shirk the constant

inevitable duties of his position, but by nature he was a recluse, and

at Christmas-time he yielded to his natural bias. Anne also lived too

much on the highway of life. She knew too many people, her sympathy had

drawn towards her too many insolvent natures. She was glad to be for a

time out of the pressure of the crowd. She and her father spent a

peaceful Christmas and New Year together, only momentarily disturbed by

the frantic telegrams of the Duchess, commanding Anne to despatch five

hundred presents at one shilling suitable for schoolgirls, or forty

ditto at half-a-crown for young catechists.

The New Year came in in snow and fog. But it was none the worse for

that. On this particular morning Anne stood a long time at the window of

her sitting-room, looking out at the impenetrable blanket of the fog.

The newsboys were crying something in the streets, but she could hear

nothing distinctive except the word "city."

Presently she took out of her pocket two letters, and read them slowly.

There was no need for her to read them. Not only did she know them by

heart, but she knew exactly where each word came on the paper. "Martial

law" was on the left-hand corner of the top line of the second sheet.

"Dependent on Kaffir labour" was in the middle of the third page. They

were dilapidated-looking letters, possibly owing to the fact that they

were read last thing every night and first thing every morning, and that

they were kept under Anne's pillow at night, so that if she waked she

could touch them. It is hardly necessary to add that they were in

Stephen's small, cramped, mercantile handwriting.

Stephen had been recalled to South Africa on urgent business early in

the autumn. He had been there for nearly three months. During that time,

after intense cogitation, he had written twice to Anne. I am under the

impression that he was under the impression that those two documents

were love letters. At any rate, they were the only two letters which

Stephen ever composed which could possibly be classed under that

heading. And their composition cost him much thought. In them he was so

good as to inform Anne of the population of the town he wrote from, its

principal industries, its present distress under martial law. He also

described the climate. His nearest approach to an impulsive outburst was

a polite expression of hope that she and her parents were well, and that

he expected to be in England again by Christmas. Anne kissed the

signature, and then laughed till she cried over the letter. Stephen did,

as a matter of fact, indite a third letter, but it was of so bold a

nature--it expressed a wish to see her again--that, after reading it

over about twenty times, he decided not to risk sending it.

When Anne was an old woman she still remembered the population of two

distracted little towns in South Africa, and their respective

industries.

Stephen was as good as his word. His large foot was once more planted on

English soil a day or two before Christmas. In spite of an overwhelming

pressure of business, he had found time to dine with Anne and her father

several times since he arrived. The Duke had met him at a directors'

meeting, and quite oblivious of Anne's refusal of him, had pressed him

to come back with him to dinner. The Duke asked him constantly to dine

after that. The old attraction between the two men renewed its hold.

These quiet evenings round the fire seemed to Stephen to contain the

pith of life. The Duke talked well, but on occasion Stephen talked

better. Anne listened. The kitchen cat, now alas! grown large and

vulgar, with an unmodulated purr, was allowed to make a fourth in these

peaceful gatherings, and had coffee out of Anne's saucer, sugared by

Stephen, every evening.

Then, for no apparent reason, Stephen ceased to come.

Anne, who had endured so much suspense about him, could surely endure a

little more. But it seemed she could not. For a week he did not come. In

that one week she aged perceptibly. The old pain took her again, the

old anger and resentment at being made to suffer, the old fierceness,

"which from tenderness is never far." She had thought that she had

conquered these enemies so often, that she had routed them so entirely,

that they could never confront her again. But they did. In the ranks of

her old foes a new one had enlisted--Hope; and Hope, if he forces his

way into the heart where he has been long a stranger, knows how to

reopen many a deep and barely healed wound, which will bleed long after

he is gone.

And where were Anne's patience, her old steadfastness and fortitude?

Could they be worn out?

As she stood by the window, trying to summon her faithless allies to her

aid, her father came in, with a newspaper in his hand.

"This is serious," he said, "about Vanbrunt."

She turned upon him like lightning.

The Duke tapped the paper.

"I knew Vanbrunt was in difficulties," he said. "A week ago, when he

was last here, he advised me sell out certain shares. It seems he would

not sell out himself. He said he would see it through, and now the smash

has come. I'm afraid he's ruined."

A beautiful colour rose to Anne's face. Her eyes shone. She felt a

sudden inrush of life. She became young, strong, alert.

Her father was too much preoccupied to notice her.

"Vanbrunt is a fine man," he said. "He had ample time to get out. But he

stuck to the ship, and he has gone down with it. I'm sorry. I liked

him."

"Are you sure he is really ruined?"

"The papers say so. They also say he can meet his liabilities." The Duke

read aloud a paragraph which Anne did not understand. "That spells ruin

even for him," he said.

He took several turns across the room.

"He has been working day and night for the last week," he said, "to

avoid this crash. It might have been avoided. He told me a little when

he was last here, but in confidence. He is straight, but others weren't.

He has not been backed. He has been let in by his partners."

The Duke sighed, and went back to his study on the ground floor.

Anne opened the window with a trembling hand, and peered out into the

fog.

* * * * *

Stephen was sitting in his inner room at his office in the City, biting

an already sufficiently bitten little finger. His face bore the mark of

the incessant toil of the last week. His eyes were fixed absently on the

electric light. His mind was concentrated with unabated strength on his

affairs, as a magnifying glass may focus its light into flame on a given

point. He had fought strenuously, and he had been beaten--not by fair

means. He could meet the claims upon him. He could, in his own language,

"stand the racket;" but in the eyes of the financial world he was

ruined. In his own eyes he was on the verge of ruin. But a man with an

iron nerve can find a foothold on precipices where another turns giddy

and loses his head. Stephen's courage rose to the occasion. He felt

equal to it. His strong, acute, alert mind worked indefatigably hour

after hour, while he sat apparently idle. He was not perturbed. He saw

his way through.

He heard the newsboys in the streets crying out his bankruptcy, and

smiled. At last he drew a sheet of paper towards him, and became

absorbed in figures.

He was never visible to anyone when he was in this inner chamber. His

head clerk knew that he must not on any pretext be disturbed. And those

who knew Stephen discovered that he was not to be disturbed with

impunity.

He looked up at last, and rose to his feet, shaking himself like a dog.

"I can carry through," he said. "They think I can't, but I can. But if

the worst comes to the worst--which it shall not--I doubt if I shall

have a shilling left."

He took a turn in the room.

"Wait a bit, you fools," he said half aloud; "if your cowardice does

ruin me, wait a bit. I have made money not once, nor twice,--and I can

make it again."

A tap came to the door.

He reddened with sudden anger. Did not Jones know that he was not to be

interrupted till two, when he must meet, and, if possible, pacify

certain half frantic, stampeding shareholders?

The door opened with decision, and Anne came in. For a moment Stephen

saw the aghast face of his head clerk behind her. Then Anne shut the

door and confronted him.

The image of Anne was so constantly with Stephen, her every little trick

of manner, from the way she turned her head, to the way she folded her

hands, was all so carefully registered in his memory, had become so

entirely a part of himself, that it was no surprise to him to see her.

Did he not see her always! Nevertheless, as he looked at her, all power

of going forward to meet her, of speaking to her, left him. The blood

seemed to ebb slowly from his heart, and his grim face blanched.

"How did you come here?" he stammered at last, his voice sounding harsh

and unfamiliar.

"On foot."

"In this fog?"

"Yes."

"Who came with you?"

"I came alone. I wished to speak to you. I hear you are ruined."

"I can meet my liabilities," he said proudly.

"Is it true that you have lost two millions?"

"It is--possibly more."

A moment of terror seemed to pass over Anne. The lovely colour in her

cheek faded suddenly. She supported herself against the table, with a

shaking gloved hand. Then she drew herself up, and said in a firm voice:

"Do you remember that night in Hamilton Gardens when you asked me to

marry you?"

Stephen bowed. He could not speak. Even his great strength was only just

enough.

"I refused you because I saw you were convinced that I did not care for

you. If I had told you I loved you then you would not have believed it."

Stephen's hand gripped the mantelpiece. He was trembling from head to

foot. His eyes never left her.

"But now the money is gone," she said, becoming paler than ever,

"perhaps, now the dreadful money is gone, you will believe me if I tell

you that I love you."

And so Stephen and Anne came home to each other at last--at last.

* * * * *

"My dear," said the Duke to Anne the following day, "this is a very

extraordinary proceeding of yours. You refuse Vanbrunt when he is rich,

and accept him when he is tottering on the verge of ruin. It seems a

reversal of the usual order of things. What will your mother say?"

"I have already had a letter from her, thanking Heaven that I was not

engaged to him. She says a good deal about how there is a Higher Power

which rules things for the best."

"I wish you would allow it freer scope," said the Duke. "All the same, I

should be thankful if she were here. It will be my horrid, vulgar duty

to ask Vanbrunt what he has got; what small remains there are of his

enormous fortune. I hear on good authority that he is almost penniless.

One is not a parent for nothing. I wish to goodness your mother were in

town. She always did this sort of thing herself with a dreadful relish

on previous occasions. You must push him into my study, my dear, after

his interview with you. I will endeavour to act the heavy father. That

is his bell. I will depart. I have letters to write."

The Duke left the room, and then put his head in again.

"It may interest you to know, Anne," he said, "that I've seen handsomer

men, and I've seen better dressed men, and I've even seen men of rather

lighter build, but I've not seen any man I like better than your

ex-millionaire."

Two hours later, after Stephen's departure, the Duke returned to his

daughter's sitting-room, and sank exhausted into a chair.

"Really I can't do this sort of thing twice in a lifetime," he said

faintly. "Have you any salts handy? No--you--need not fetch them. I'm

not seriously indisposed. How heartlessly blooming you are looking,

Anne, while your parent is suffering. Now remember, if ever you want to

marry again, don't send your second husband to interview me, for I won't

have it."

"Come, come, father. Didn't you tell me to push him into your study? And

I thought you looked so impressive and dignified when I brought him in.

Quite a model father."

"I took a firm attitude with him," continued the Duke. "I saw he was

nervous. That made it easier for me. Vanbrunt is a shy man. I was in the

superior position. Hateful thing to ask a man for his daughter. I said,

'Now look here, Vanbrunt, I understand you wish to marry my daughter. I

don't wish it myself, but----'"

"Oh! father, you never said that?"

"Well, not exactly. I owned to him that I could put up with him better

than with most, but that I could not let you marry to poverty. He asked

me what I considered poverty. That rather stumped me. In fact, I did not

know what to say. It was not his place to ask questions."

"Father, you did promise me you would let me marry him on eight hundred

a year."

"Well, yes, I did. I don't like it, but I did say so. In short, I told

him you had worked me up to that point."

"And what did he say?"

"He said he did not think in that case that any real difficulty about

money need arise; that at one moment he had stood to lose all he had,

and he had lost two millions, but that his affairs had taken an

unexpected turn during the last twenty-four hours, and he believed he

could count on an odd million or so, certainly on half a million. I

collapsed, Anne. My attitude fell to pieces. It was Vanbrunt who scored.

He had had a perfectly grave face till then. Then he smiled grimly, and

we shook hands. He did not say much, but what he did say was to the

point. I think, my dear, that while Vanbrunt lasts, his love for you

will last. He has got it very firmly screwed into him. But these

interviews annihilate me."

The Duke raised the kitchen cat to his knee, and rubbed it behind the

ears.

"I made the match, Anne," he said; "you owe it all to me. I asked him to

dinner when I met him at that first directors' meeting a fortnight ago.

I had it in my mind then."

"Father! You _know_ you had not."

"Well, no. I had not. I did not think of it! I can't say I did. But

still, I was a sort of bulwark to the whole thing. You had my moral

support. I shall tell your mother so."

CONCLUSION

"So passes, all confusedly

As lights that hurry, shapes that flee

About some brink we dimly see,

The trivial, great,

Squalid, majestic tragedy

Of human fate."

--WILLIAM WATSON

I wish life were more like the stories one reads, the beautiful stories,

which, whether they are grave or gay, still have picturesque endings.

The hero marries the heroine, after insuperable difficulties, which in

real life he would never have overcome: or the heroine creeps down into

a romantic grave, watered by our scalding tears. At any rate, the story

is gracefully wound up. There is an ornamental conclusion to it. But

life, for some inexplicable reason, does not lend itself with docility

to the requirements of the lending libraries, and only too frequently

fails to grasp the dramatic moment for an impressive close. None of us

reach middle age without having watched several violent melodramas,

whose main interest lies further apart from their moral than we were

led, in our tender youth, to anticipate. We have seen better plays off

the stage than even Shakespeare ever put on. But Shakespeare finished

his, and pulled down the curtain on them; while, with those we watch in

life, we have time to grow grey between the acts; and we only know the

end has come, when at last it does come, because the lights have been

going out all the time, one by one, and we find ourselves at last alone

in the dark.

Janet's sweet melancholy face rises up before me as I think of these

things, and I could almost feel impatient with her, when I remember how

the one dramatic incident in her uneventful life never seemed to get

itself wound up. The consequences went on, and on, and on, till all

novelty and interest dropped inevitably from them and from her.

Some of us come to turning-points in life, and don't turn. We become

warped instead. It was so with Janet.

Is there any turning-point in life like our first real encounter with

anguish, loneliness, despair?

I do not pity those who meet open-eyed these stern angels of God, and

wrestle with them through the night, until the day breaks, extorting

from them the blessings that they waylaid us to bestow. But is it

possible to withhold awed compassion for those who, like Janet, go down

blind into Hades, and struggle impotently with God's angels as with

enemies? Janet endured with dumb, uncomplaining dignity she knew not

what, she knew not why; and came up out of her agony, as she had gone

down into it--with clenched empty hands. The greater hope, the deeper

love, the wider faith, the tenderer sympathy--these she brought not back

with her. She returned gradually to her normal life with her

conventional ideas crystallised, her small crude beliefs in love and her

fellow-creatures withered.

That was all George did for her.

The virtues of narrow natures such as George's seem of no use to anyone

except possibly to their owner. They are as great a stumbling-block to

their weaker brethren, they cause as much pain, they choke the spiritual

life as mercilessly, they engender as much scepticism in unreasoning

minds, as certain gross vices. If we are unjust, it matters little to

our victim what makes us so, or whether we have prayed to see aright, if

for long years we have closed our eyes to unpalatable truths.

George's disbelief in Janet's rectitude, which grew out of a deep sense

of rectitude, had the same effect on her mind as if he had deliberately

seduced and deserted her. The executioner reached the gallows of his

victim by a clean path. That was the only difference. So much the better

for him. The running noose for her was the same. Unreasoning belief in

love and her fellow-creatures was followed by an equally unreasoning

disbelief in both.

Janet kept her promise. She held firm. Amid all the promises of the

world, made only to be broken, kept only till the temptation to break

them punctually arrived, amid all that débris one foolish promise

remained intact, Janet's promise to Cuckoo.

George married. Then, shortly afterwards, Fred married the eldest Miss

Ford, and found great happiness. His bliss was at first painfully

streaked with total abstinence, but he gradually eradicated this

depressing element from his new home life. And in time his slight

insolvent nature reached a kind of stability, through the love of the

virtuous female prig, the "perfect lady," to whom he was all in all.

Fred changed greatly for the better after his marriage, and in the end

he actually repaid Stephen part of the money the latter had advanced to

Monkey Brand, for Janet's sake.

Janet lived with the young couple at first, but Mrs Fred did not like

her. She knew vaguely, as did half the neighbourhood, that Janet had

been mixed up in something discreditable, and that her engagement had

been broken off on that account. Mrs Fred was, as we know, a person of

the highest principles; and high principles naturally shrink from

contact with any less exalted. Several months after the situation

between the two women had become untenable, Janet decided to leave home.

She had nowhere to go, and no money; so, like thousands of other women

in a similar predicament, she decided to support herself by education.

She had received no education herself, but that was not in her mind any

bar to imparting it. Anne, who had kept in touch with her, interfered

peremptorily at this point, and when Janet did finally leave home, it

was to go to Anne's house in London, till "something turned up."

It was a sunny day in June when Janet arrived in London, for the first

time since her ill-fated visit there a year ago. She looked up at

Lowndes Mansions, as her four-wheeler plodded past them, towards Anne's

house in Park Lane. Even now, a year after the great fire, scaffoldings

were still pricking up against the central tower of the larger block of

building. The damage caused by the fire was not even yet quite

repaired. Perhaps some of it would never be repaired.

Mrs Trefusis was sitting with Anne on this particular afternoon,

confiding to her some discomfortable characteristics of her new

daughter-in-law, the wife whom she had herself chosen for her son.

"I am an old woman," said Mrs Trefusis, "and of course I don't march

with the times, the world is for the young, I know that very well; but I

must own, Anne, I had imagined that affection still counted for

something in marriage."

"I wonder what makes you think that."

"Well, not the marriages I see around me, my dear, that is just what I

say, though what has made you so cynical all at once, I don't know. But

I ask you--look at Gertrude. She does not know what the word 'love'

means."

"I'm not so sure of that."

"I am. She has been married to George three months, and it might be

thirty years by the way they behave. And she seemed such a particularly

nice girl, and exceedingly sensible, and well brought up. I should have

thought she would at any rate _try_ to make my boy happy, after all the

sorrow he has gone through. But they don't seem to have any real link to

each other. It isn't that they don't get on. They do in a way. She is

sharp enough for that. She does her duty by him. She is nice to him, but

all her interests, and she has interests, seem to lie apart from

anything to do with him."

"Does he mind?"

"I never really know what George minds or doesn't mind," said Mrs

Trefusis. "It has been the heaviest cross of the many crosses I have had

to bear in life, that he never confides in me. George has always been

extremely reticent. Thoughtful natures often are. He will sit for hours

without saying a word, looking----"

"_Glum_ is the word she wants," said Anne to herself, as Mrs Trefusis

hesitated.

"Reserved," said Mrs Trefusis. "He does not seem to care to be with

Gertrude. And yet you know Gertrude is very taking, and there is no

doubt she is good-looking. And she sings charmingly. Unfortunately

George does not care for music."

"She is really musical."

"They make a very handsome couple," said Mrs Trefusis plaintively. "When

I saw them come down the aisle together I felt happier about him than I

had done for years. It seemed as if I had been rewarded at last. And I

never saw a bride smile and look as bright as she did. But somehow it

all seems to have fallen flat. She didn't even care to see the

photographs of George when he was a child, when I got them out the other

day. She said she would like to see them, and then forgot to look at

them."

Anne was silent.

"Well," said Mrs Trefusis, rising slowly, "I suppose the truth is that

in these days young people don't fall in love as they did in my time. I

must own Gertrude has disappointed me."

"I daresay she will make him a good wife."

"Oh! my dear, she does. She is an extremely practical woman, but one

wants more for one's son than a person who will make him a good wife. If

she were a less good wife, and cared a little more about him, I should

feel less miserable about the whole affair."

Mrs Trefusis sighed heavily.

"I must go," she said, in the voice of one who might be persuaded to

remain.

But Anne did not try to detain her, for she was expecting Janet every

moment, though she did not warn Mrs Trefusis of the fact, for the name

of Janet was never mentioned between Anne and Mrs Trefusis. Mrs Trefusis

had once diffidently endeavoured to reopen the subject with Anne, but

found it instantly and decisively closed. If Janet had existed in a

novel, she would certainly have been coming up Anne's wide white

staircase at the exact moment that Mrs Trefusis was going down them,

but, as a matter of fact, Mrs Trefusis was packed into her carriage, and

drove away, quite half a minute before Janet's four-wheeler came round

the corner.

Anne's heart ached for Janet when she appeared in the doorway. She

almost wished that Mrs Trefusis had been confronted with the worn white

face of the only woman who had loved her son.

Janet and Anne kissed each other.

Then Janet looked at the wedding ring on Anne's finger, and smiled at

her in silence.

Anne looked down tremulously, for fear lest the joy in her eyes should

make Janet's heart ache, as her own heart had ached one little year ago,

when she had seen Janet and George together in the rose garden.

"I am so glad," said Janet. "I did so wish that time at Easthope--do you

remember?--that you could be happy too. It's just a year ago."

"Just a year," said Anne.

"I suppose you cared for him then," said Janet. "But I expect it was in

a more sensible way than I did. You were always so much wiser than me.

One lives and learns."

"I cared for him then," said Anne, busying herself making tea for her

friend. When she had made it she went to a side table, and took from it

a splendid satin tea cosy, which she placed over the teapot. It had been

Janet's wedding present to her.

Janet's eyes lighted on it with pleasure.

"I am glad you use it every day," she said. "I was so afraid you would

only use it when you had company."

Anne stroked it with her slender white hand. There was a kind of tender

radiance about her which Janet had never observed in her before.

"It makes me happy that you are happy," said Janet. "I only hope it will

last. I felt last year that you were in trouble. Since then it has been

my turn."

"I wish happiness could have come to both of us," said Anne.

"Do you remember our talk together," said Janet, spreading out a clean

pocket-handkerchief on her knee, and stirring her tea, "and how

sentimental I was? I daresay you thought at the time how silly I was

about George. I see now what a fool I was."

Anne did not answer. She was looking earnestly at Janet, and there was

no need for her now to veil the still gladness in her eyes. They held

only pained love and surprise.

"And do you remember how the clergyman preached about not laying up our

treasure on earth?"

"I remember everything."

"I've often thought of that since," said Janet, with a quiver in her

voice, which brought back once more to Anne the childlike innocent

creature of a year ago, whom she now almost failed to recognise, in her

new ill-fitting array of cheap cynicism.

"I did lay up my treasure upon earth," continued Janet, drawn

momentarily back into her old simplicity by the presence of Anne. "I

didn't seem able to help it. George was my treasure. I mustn't think of

him any more because he's married. But I cared too much. That was where

I was wrong."

"One cannot love too much," said Anne, her fingers closing over her

wedding ring.

"Perhaps not," said Janet, "but then the other person must love too.

George did not love me enough to carry through. When the other person

cares, but doesn't care strong enough, I think that's the worst. It's

like what the Bible says. The moth and rust corrupting. George did care,

but not enough. Men are like that."

"Some one else cares," said Anne diffidently--"poor Mr de Rivaz. He

cares enough."

"Yes," said Janet apathetically. "I daresay he does. We've all got to

fall in love some time or other. But I don't care for him. I told him so

months ago. I don't mean to care for any one again. I've thought a great

deal about things this winter, Anne. It's all very well for you to

believe in love. I did once, but I don't now."

Janet got up, and, as she turned, her eyes fixed suddenly.

"Why, that's the cabinet," she said below her breath. "Cuckoo's

cabinet!" Her face quivered. She saw again the scorched room, the pile

of smoking papers on the hearth, the flame which had burnt up her

happiness with them.

Anne did not understand.

"Stephen gave me that cabinet a few days ago," she said.

"It was Cuckoo's. It used to stand under her picture."

"Don't you think it may be a replica?"

"No, it is the same," said Janet, passing her hand over the mermaid and

her whale. "There is the little chip out of the dolphin's tail."

Then she shrank suddenly away from it, as if its touch scorched her.

* * * * *

"Where did you get the Italian cabinet?" said Anne to Stephen that

evening, as he and De Rivaz joined her and Janet after dinner in her

sitting-room.

"At Brand's sale. He sold some of his things when he gave up his flat in

Lowndes Mansions. He has gone to South Africa for his boy's health."

Stephen opened it. Janet drew near.

"I had to have a new key made for it," he said, letting the front fall

forward on his careful hand. "Look, Anne! how beautifully the drawers

are inlaid."

He pulled out one or two of them.

Janet slowly put out her hand, and pulled out the lowest drawer on the

left-hand side. It stuck, and then came out. It was empty like all the

rest.

Stephen closed it, and then drew it forward again.

"Why does it stick?" he said.

He got the drawer entirely out, and looked into the aperture. Then he

put in his hand, and pulled out something wedged against the slip of

wood which supported the upper drawer, without reaching quite to the

back of the cabinet. It was a crumpled, dirty sheet of paper. He tore it

as he forced it out.

"It must have been in the lowest drawer but one," he said, "and fallen

between the drawer and its support."

Janet was the first to see her brother's signature, and she pointed to

it with a cry.

It was the missing I O U.

"I always said it would turn up," said Stephen gently.

"But it's too late," said Janet hoarsely, "too late! too late! Oh! why

didn't George believe in me!"

"He will believe now."

"It doesn't matter what he believes now. Why didn't he _know_ I had not

burnt it?"

"I believed in you," said De Rivaz, his voice shaking. "I knew you had

not burnt it, though I saw you burning papers. Though I saw you with my

own eyes, I did not believe."

There was a moment's pause. Her three faithful friends looked at Janet.

"I burnt nothing," she said.

* * * * *

Janet married De Rivaz at last, but not until she had nearly worn him

out. It was after their marriage that he painted his marvellous portrait

of her, a picture that was the outcome of a deep love, wed with genius.

She made him a good wife, as wives go, and bore him beautiful children,

but she never cared for him as she had done for George. Later on her

daughters carried their love affairs, not to their mother, but--to

Anne.

* * * * *

GEOFFREY'S WIFE

"Oh, how this spring of love resembleth

Th' uncertain glory of an April day."

Every one felt an interest in them. The mob-capped servants hung over

the banisters to watch them go downstairs. Alphonse reserved for them

the little round table in the window, which commanded the best view of

the court, with its dusty flower-pots grouped round an intermittent

squirt of water. Even the landlord, Monsieur Leroux, found himself often

in the gateway when they passed in or out, in order to bow and receive a

merry word and glance.

Even the _concierge_, who dwelt retired, aloof from the contact of the

outer world in his narrow, key-adorned shrine, even he unbent to them

and smiled back when they smiled. It was a queer little old-fashioned

hotel, rather out of the way. Nevertheless, young married couples _had_

stayed there before. Their name, indeed, at certain periods of the year

was Legion. There were other young married couples staying there at that

very moment, but everybody felt that a peculiar interest attached to

this young married couple. For one thing, they were so absurdly, so

overwhelmingly happy. People, Monsieur Leroux himself, and others, had

been happy in an early portion of their married lives, but not like this

couple. People had had honeymoons before, but never one like this

couple. Although they were English, they were so handsome and so sunny.

And he was so well made and devoted, the chambermaids whispered. And,

ah! how she was _piquante_, the waiters agreed.

They had a little sitting-room. It was not the best sitting-room,

because they were not very rich; but Geoffrey (she considered Geoffrey

such a lovely name, and so uncommon) thought it the most delightful

little sitting-room in the world when she was in it. And Mrs Geoffrey

also liked it very much; oh! very much indeed.

He had had hard work to win her. Sometimes, when he watched her tangling

many-coloured wools over the mahogany back of one of the tight horsehair

chairs, he could hardly believe that she was really his wife, that they

were actually on that honeymoon for which he had toiled and waited so

long. Beneath the gaiety and the elastic spirit of youth there was a

depth of earnestness in Geoffrey which his little wife vaguely wondered

at and valued as something beyond her ken, but infinitely heroic. He

looked upon her with reverence and thanked God for her. He had never had

much to do with womankind, and he felt a respectful tenderness for

everything of hers, from her prim maid to her foolish little shoelace,

which was never tired of coming undone, and which he was never tired of

doing up. The awful responsibility of guarding such a treasure, and an

overpowering sense of its fragility, were ever before his mind. He

laughed and was gay with her, but in his heart of hearts there was an

acute joy nigh to pain--a wonder that he should have been singled out

from among the sons of men to have the one pearl of great price bestowed

upon him.

They had come to Paris, and to Paris only, partly because it was the

year of the Exhibition, and partly because she was not very strong, and

was not to be dragged through snow and shaken in _diligences_ like other

ordinary brides. The bare idea of Eva in a _diligence_, or tramping in

Switzerland, was not to be thought of. No; Geoffrey knew better than

that. A quiet fortnight in Paris, the Opera, the Exhibition, Versailles,

St Cloud, Notre Dame--these were dissipations calculated not to disturb

the exquisite poise of a health of such inestimable value. He knew Paris

well. He had seen it all in those foolish bachelor days, when he had

rushed across the water with men companions, knowing no better, and

enjoying himself in a way even then.

And so he took her to St Cloud, and showed her the wrecked palace; and

they wandered by the fountains and bought _gaufre_ cake, which he told

her was called "_plaisir_," only he was wrong--but what did that matter?

And they went down to Versailles, and saw everything that every one else

had seen, only they saw it glorified--at least he did. And they sat very

quietly in Notre Dame, and listened to a half divine organ and a wholly

divine choir, and Geoffrey looked at the sweet, awed face beside him,

and wondered whether he could ever in all his life prove himself worthy

of her. And though of course, being a Protestant, he did not like to

pray in a Roman Catholic Church, still he came very near it, and was

perhaps none the worse.

And now the fortnight was nearly over. Geoffrey reflected with pride

that Eva was still quite well. Her mother, of whom he stood in great

awe--her mother, who had an avowed disbelief in the moral qualities of

second sons--even her mother would not be able to find any fault. Why,

James himself, his eldest brother, whom she had always openly preferred,

could not have done better than he had done. He who had so longed to

take her away was now almost longing to take her back home, just for

five minutes, to show her family how blooming she was, how trustworthy

he had proved himself to be.

The fortnight was over on Saturday, but at the last moment they decided

to stay till Monday. Was it not Sunday, the night of the great

illuminations? suggested Alphonse reproachfully. Were not the Champs

Elysées to present a spectacle? Were not fires of joy and artifice to

mount from the Bois de Boulogne? Surely Monsieur and Madame would stay

for the illuminations! Was not the stranger coming from unknown

distances to witness the illuminations? Were not the illuminations in

honour of the Exhibition? It could not be that Monsieur would suffer

Madame to miss the illuminations.

Eva was all eagerness to stay. Two more nights in Paris. To go out in

the summer evening, and see Paris _en fête_! Delightful! Geoffrey was

not to say a single word! He did not want to! Well, never mind, he was

not to say one; and she was going instantly, that very moment, to stop

Grabham packing up, and he was to go instantly, that very moment, to let

Monsieur Leroux know they intended to stay on.

And they both went instantly, that very moment, and they stayed on. And

he was very severe in consequence, and refused to allow her to tire

herself on Saturday, and insisted on her resting all Sunday afternoon,

as a preparation for the dissipation of the evening. They had met some

English friends on Sunday morning, who had invited them to their house

in the Champ Elysées in the course of the evening to see the

illuminations from their balcony. And then towards night Geoffrey

became more autocratic than ever, and insisted on a woollen gown instead

of a muslin, because he felt certain that it would not be so hot towards

the middle of the night as it then was. She said a great many very

unkind things to him, and they sallied forth together at nine o'clock as

happy as two pleasure-seeking children.

"You will not be of return till the early morning. I see it well," said

Monsieur Leroux, bowing to them. "Monsieur does well to take the little

_châle_ for Madame for fear later she should feel herself fresh. But as

for rain, will not Madame leave her umbrella with the _concierge_? No?

Monsieur prefers? _Eh bien! Bon soir!_"

It was a perfect night. It had been fiercely hot all day, but it was

cooler now. The streets were already full of people, all bearing the

same way toward the Champ Elysées. With some difficulty Geoffrey

procured a little carriage, and in a few minutes they were swept into

the chattering, idle, busy throng, and slowly making their way toward

the Langtons' house. Every building was gay with coloured lanterns. The

Place de la Concorde shone afar like a belt of jewelled light. The great

stone lions glowed upon their pedestals. Clear as in noonday sunshine,

the rocking sea of merry faces met Eva's delighted gaze; she beaming

with the rest.

And now they were driving down the Champs Elysées. The fountains leaped

in coloured flame. The Palais de l'Industrie gleamed from roof to

basement, built in fire. The Arc de Triomphe, crowned with light, stood

out against the dark of the moonless sky, flecked by its insignificant

stars.

"Beautiful! Beautiful!" and Eva clapped her hands and laughed.

And now it was the painful, the desolating duty of the driver to tell

them he could take them no further. Carriages were not allowed beyond a

certain hour, and either he must take them back or put them down.

Geoffrey demurred. Not so Mrs Geoffrey. In a moment she had sprung out

of the carriage, and was laughing at the novel idea of walking in a

crowd. Geoffrey paid his man and followed. There was plenty of room to

walk in comfort, and Eva, on her husband's arm, wished the Langtons'

house miles away, instead of a few hundred yards. She said she must and

would walk home. Geoffrey must relent a little, or she on her side might

not be so agreeable as she had hitherto shown herself. She was quite

certain that she should catch a cold if she drove home in the night air

in an open carriage. What was that he was mumbling? That if he had known

_that_ he would not have brought her? But she was equally certain that

it would not hurt her to walk home. Walking was a very different thing

from driving in open carriages late at night. An ignorant creature like

him might not think so, but her mother would not have allowed her to do

such a thing for an instant. Geoffrey quailed, and gave utterance to

that sure forerunner of masculine defeat, that "he would see."

It was very delightful on the Langtons' balcony, with its constellation

of swinging Chinese lanterns. Eva leaned over and watched the people,

and chatted to her friends, and was altogether enchanting--at least

Geoffrey thought so.

The night is darkening now. The streets blaze bright and brighter. The

crowd below rocks and thickens and shifts without ceasing. Long lines of

flame burn red along the Seine, and mark its windings as with a hand of

fire. The great electric light from the Trocadéro casts heavy shadows

against the sky. Jets of fire and wild vagaries of leaping stars rush up

out of the Bois de Boulogne.

And now there is a contrary motion in the crowd, and a low murmur

swells, and echoes, and dies, and rises again. The torchlight procession

is coming. That square of fire, moving slowly down from the Arc de

Triomphe through the heart of the crowd, is a troop of mounted soldiers

carrying torches. Hark! Listen to the low, sullen growl of the

multitude, like a wild beast half aroused.

The army is very unpopular in Paris just now. See, as the soldiers come

nearer, how the crowd sweeps and presses round them, tossing like an

angry sea. Look how the soldiers rear their horses against the people to

keep them back. Hark again to that fierce roar that rises to the balcony

and makes little Eva tremble; the inarticulate voice of a great

multitude raised in anger.

They have passed now, and the crowd moves with them. Look down the

Champs Elysées, right down to the cobweb of light which is the Place de

la Concorde. One moving mass of heads! Look up toward the Arc de

Triomphe. They are pouring down from it on their way back from the Bois

in one continuous black stream, good-humoured and light-hearted again as

ever, now the soldiers have passed.

It is long past midnight. Ices and lemonade and sugared cakes have

played their part. It is time to go home. The summer night is soft and

warm, without a touch of chill. The other guests on the Langtons'

balcony are beginning to disperse. The Langtons look as if they would

like to go to bed. The crowd below is melting away every moment. The

play is over.

Eva is charmed when she hears that a carriage is not to be had in all

Paris for love or money. To walk home through the lighted streets with

Geoffrey! Delightful! A few cheerful leave-takings, and they are in the

street again, with another English couple who are going part of the way

with them.

"Come, wife, arm-in-arm," says the elder man; adding to Geoffrey, "I

advise you to do the same. The crowd is as harmless as an infant, but it

will probably have a little animal spirits to get rid of, and it won't

do to be separated."

So arm-in-arm they went, walking with the multitude, which was not dense

enough to hamper them. From time to time little groups of _gamins_ would

wave their hats in front of magisterial buildings and sing the

prohibited Marseillaise, while other bands of _gamins_, equally

good-humoured, but more hot-headed, would charge through the crowd with

Chinese lanterns and drums and whistles.

"Not tired?" asked Geoffrey regularly every five minutes, drawing the

little hand further through his arm.

Not a bit tired, and Geoffrey was a foolish, tiresome creature to be

always thinking of such things. She should say she _was_ tired next time

if he did not take care. In fact, now she came to think of it, she was

_rather_ tired by having to walk in such a heavy woollen gown.

"Don't say that, for Heaven's sake, if it is not true!" said the

long-suffering husband, "for we have a mile in front of us yet."

The other couple wished them good-night and turned off down a side

street. Everywhere the houses were putting out their lights. Night was

gaining the upper hand at last. As they entered the Place de la

Concorde, Geoffrey saw a small body of mounted soldiers crossing the

Place. Instantly there was a hastening and pushing in the crowd, and the

low, deep growl arose again, more ominous than ever. Geoffrey caught a

glimpse of a sudden upraised arm, he heard a cry of defiance, and

then--in a moment there was a roar and shout from a thousand tongues,

and an infuriated mob was pressing in from every quarter, was elbowing

past, was struggling to the front. In another second the whole Place de

la Concorde was one seething mass of excited people, one hoarse jangle

of tongues, one frantic effort to push in the direction the soldiers had

taken.

Geoffrey, a tall, athletic Englishman, looked over the surging sea of

French heads, and looked in vain for a quarter to which he could beat a

retreat. He had not room to put his arm round his wife. She had given a

little laugh, but she was frightened, he knew, for she trembled in the

grasp he tightened on her arm. One rapid glance showed him there was no

escape. The very lions at the corners were covered with human figures.

They were in the heart of the crowd. Its faint, sickening smell was in

their nostrils.

"No, Eva," he said, answering her imploring glance, "we can't get out of

this yet. We must just move quietly, with the rest, and wait till we get

a chance of edging off. Lean on me as much as you can."

She was frightened and silent, and nestled close to him, being very

small and slight of stature, and by nature timid.

Another deep roar, and a sudden rush from behind, which sent them all

forward. How the people pushed and elbowed! Bah! The smell of a crowd!

Who that has been in one has ever forgotten it?

This was a dreadful ordeal for his hothouse flower.

"How are you getting on?" he asked with a sharp anxiety, which he vainly

imagined did not betray itself in his voice.

She was getting on very well, only--only could not they get out?

Geoffrey looked round yet again in despair. Would it be possible to edge

a little to the left, to the right, anywhere? He looked in vain. A

vague, undefined fear took hold on him. "We must have patience, little

one," he said. "Lean on me, and be brave."

His voice was cheerful, but he felt a sudden horrible sinking of the

heart. How should he ever get her out of this jostling, angry crowd

before she was quite tired out? What mad folly it had been to think of

walking home! Poor Geoffrey forgot that there had been no other way of

getting home, and that even his mother-in-law could not hold him

responsible for a disagreement between the soldiers and the citizens.

Another ten minutes! Geoffrey cursed within himself the illumination and

the soldiers and his own folly, and the rough men and rougher women,

whom, do what he would, he could not prevent pressing upon her.

She did not speak again for some time, only held fast by his arm.

Suddenly her little hands tightened convulsively on it, and a face pale

to the lips was raised to his.

"Geoffrey, I'm very sorry," with a half sob, "but I'm afraid I'm going

to faint."

The words came like a blow, and drove the blood from his face. The vague

undefined fear had suddenly become a hideous reality. He steadied his

voice and spoke quietly, almost sternly.

"Listen to me, Eva," he said. "Make an effort and attend, and do as I

tell you. The crowd will move again in a moment. I see a movement in

front already. Directly the move comes the press will loosen for an

instant. I shall push in front of you and stoop down. You will instantly

get on my back. I insist upon it. I will do my best to help you up, but

I can't get hold of you in any other way. The faintness will pass off

directly you are higher up and can get a breath of air. Now do you

understand?"

She did not answer, but nodded.

There was a moment's pause, and the movement came. Geoffrey flung down

his stick, drew his wife firmly behind him, and pressing suddenly with

all his might upon those in front, made room to stoop down. Two nervous

hands were laid on his coat. Good God! she hesitated. A moment more, and

the crowd behind would force him down, and they would both be lost.

"Quick! Quick!" he shouted; but before the words had left his lips the

trembling arms were clasped convulsively round his neck, and with a

supreme effort he was on his legs again, shaking like a leaf with the

long horror of that moment's suspense.

But the tight clasp of the hands round his neck, the burden on his

strong shoulders, nerved him afresh. He felt all his vitality and

resolution return tenfold. He could endure anything which he had to

endure alone, now that horrible anxiety for her was over. He could no

longer tell where he was. He was bent too much to endeavour to do

anything except keep on his feet. A long wait! Would the crowd never

disperse? Moving, stopping, pushing, pressing, stopping again. Another

pause, which seemed as if it would never end. A contrary motion now, and

he had not room to turn! No. Thank Heaven! A tremor through the crowd,

and then a fierce snarl and a rush. A violent push from behind. A

plunge. Down on one knee. Good God! A blow on the mouth from some one's

elbow. A wild struggle. A foot on his hand. Another blow. Up again. Up,

only to strike his foot against a curbstone, and to throw all his weight

away from a sudden pool of water on his left, into which he is being

edged.

The great drops are on his brow, and his breath comes short and thick.

He staggers again. The weight on him and his fall are beginning to tell.

But as his strength wanes a dogged determination takes its place. He

steels his nerves and pulls himself together. It is only a question of

time. He will and must hold out. His whole soul is centred on one thing,

to keep his feet. Once down--and--he clenches his teeth. He will not

suffer himself to think. He is bruised and aching in every limb with the

friction of the crowd. Drums begin to beat in his temples, and his mouth

is bleeding. There is a mist of blood and dust before his eyes. But he

holds on with the fierce energy of despair. Another push. God in Heaven!

almost down again! He can see nothing. A frantic struggle in the dark.

The arms round his neck tremble, and he hears a sharp-drawn gasp of

terror. Hands from out of the darkness clutch him up, and he regains his

footing once more. "Courage, Monsieur," says a kind voice, and the hands

are swept out of his. He tries to move his lips in thanks, but no words

come. There is a noise in the crowd, but it is as a feeble murmur to the

roar and sweep and tumult of many waters that is sounding in his ears.

He cannot last much longer now. He is spent. But the crowd is thinning.

If he can only keep his feet a few minutes more! The crowd is thinning.

He catches a glimpse of ground in front of him. But it sways before him

like the waves of the sea. One moment more. He stumbles aside where he

feels there is space about him.

There is a sudden hush and absence of pressure. _He is out of the

crowd._ He is faintly conscious that the tramp of many feet is passing

but not following him. The pavement suddenly rises up and strikes him

down upon it. He cannot rise again. But it matters little, it matters

little. It is all over. The fight is won, and she is safe. He tries to

lift his leaden hand to unloose the locked fingers that hurt his neck.

At his touch they unclasp, trembling. She has not fainted then. He

almost thought she had. He raises himself on his elbow, and tries to

wipe the red mist from his eyes that he may see her the more clearly.

She slips to the ground, and he draws her to him with his nerveless

arms. The street lamps gleam dull and yellow in the first wan light of

dawn, and as his haggard eyes look into hers, her face becomes clear

even to his darkening vision--and--_it is another woman!_ Another woman!

A poor creature with a tawdry hat and paint upon her cheek, who tries to

laugh, and then, dimly conscious of the sudden agony of the gray,

blood-stained face, whimpers for mercy, and limps away into a doorway,

to shiver and hide her worn face from the growing light.

* * * * *

It was one of the English acquaintances of the night before who found

him later in the day, still seeking, still wandering from street to

street.

His old friend Langton came to him and took him away from the hotel to

his own house. Alphonse wept and the _concierge_ could not restrain a

tear.

"And have they found _her_ yet?" asked Mrs Langton that night of her

husband when he came in late.

His face was very white.

"Yes," he said, and turned his head away. "I've been to--I've seen--no

one could have told--you would not have known who it was. And all her

little things, her watch and rings--they were all gone. But the maid

knew by the dress. And--and I wanted to save a lock of hair, but"--his

voice broke down.--"So I got one of the little gloves for him. It was

the only thing I could."

He pulled out a half-worn tan glove, cut and dusty with the tramp of

many feet, which the new wedding ring had worn ever so slightly on the

third finger. He laid it reverently on the table and hid his face in his

hands.

"If he could only break down," he said at last. "He sits and sits, and

never speaks or looks up."

"Take him the little glove," said his wife softly. And Langton took it.

The sharpness of death had cut too deep for tears, but Geoffrey kept the

little glove, and--he has it still.

* * * * *

THE PITFALL

PART I

"Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin

Beset the Road I was to wander in."

--OMAR KHAYYÁM.

Lady Mary Carden sat near the open window of her blue and white boudoir

looking out intently, fixedly across Park Lane at the shimmer of the

trees in Hyde Park. It was June. It was sunny. The false gaiety of the

season was all around her; flickering swiftly past her in the crush of

carriages below her window; dawdling past her in the walking and riding

crowds in the park. She looked at it without seeing it. Perhaps she had

had enough of it, this strange conglomeration of alien elements and

foreign bodies, this _bouille-à-baisse_ which is called "The Season."

She had seen it all year after year for twelve years, varying as little

as the bedding out of the flowers behind the railings. Perhaps she was

as weary of society as most people become who take it seriously. She

certainly often said that it was rotten to the core.

She hardly moved. She sat with an open letter in her hand, thinking,

thinking.

The house was very still. Her aunt, with whom she lived, had gone early

into the country for the day. The only sound, the monotonous whirr of

the great machine of London, came from without.

Mary was thirty, an age at which many women are still young, an age at

which some who have heads under their hair are still rising towards the

zenith of their charm. But Mary was not one of these. Her youth was

clearly on the wane. She bore the imprint of that which ages--because if

unduly prolonged it enfeebles--the sheltered life, a life centred in

conventional ideas, dwarfed by a conventional religious code, a life

feebly nourished on cut and dried charities sandwiched between petty

interests and pettier pleasures. She showed the mark of her twelve

seasons, and of what she had made of life, in the slight fading of her

delicate complexion, the fatigued discontent of her blue eyes, the faint

dignified dejection of her manner, which was the reflection of an

unconscious veiled surprise that she of all women--she the gentle, the

good, the religious, the pretty Mary Carden was still--in short was

still Mary Carden.

The onlooker would perhaps have shared that surprise. She was

indubitably pretty, indubitably well bred, graceful, slender, with a

delicate manicured hand, and fair waved hair. Her fringe, which seemed

inclined to grow somewhat larger with the years, was nearly all her own.

She possessed the art of dress to perfection. You could catalogue her

good points. But somehow she remained without attraction. She lacked

vitality, and those who lack vitality seldom seem to get or keep what

they want, at any rate in this world.

She was the kind of woman whom a man marries to please his mother, or

because she is an heiress, or because he has been jilted and wishes to

show how little he feels it. She was not a first choice.

She was one of that legion of perfectly appointed women who at seventeen

deplore the rapacity of the older girls in ruthlessly clutching up all

the attention of the simpler sex; and who at thirty acidly remark that

men care only for a pink cheek and a baby face.

Poor Mary was thinking of a man now, of a certain light-hearted

simpleton of a soldier with a slashed scar across his hand, which a

Dervish had given him at Omdurman, the man as commonplace as herself, on

whom for no particular reason she had glued her demure, obstinate,

adhesive affections twelve years ago.

Our touching faithfulness to an early love is often only owing to the

fact that we have never had an adequate temptation to be unfaithful.

Certainly with Mary it was so. The temptations had been pitiably

inadequate. She had never swerved from that long-ago mild flirtation of

a boy and girl in their teens, studiously thrown together by their

parents. She had taken an unwearying interest in him. She had petitioned

Heaven that he might pass for the Army, and he did just squeeze in. By

the aid of fervent prayer she had drawn him safely through the Egyptian

campaign, while other women's husbands and lovers fell right and left.

He had not said anything definite before he went out, but Mary had found

ample reasons for his silence. He could not bear to overshadow her life

in case, etc., etc. But now he had been safely back a year, two years,

and still he had said nothing. This was more difficult to account for.

He was fond of her. There was no doubt about that. They had always been

fond of each other. Every one had expected them to marry. His parents

had wished it. Her aunt had favoured the idea with heavy-footed zeal.

Her brother, Lord Rollington, when he had a moment to spare from his

training-stable, had jovially opined that "Maimie" would be wise to

book Jos Carstairs while she could, as if she was not careful she might

outstand her market.

Mary, who had for many years dreamed of gracefully yielding to Jos's

repeated and urgent entreaties, had even begun to wonder whether it

would not be advisable if one of her men relations were to "speak to

Jos." Such things were done. As she had said to her aunt with dignity,

"This sort of thing can't go on for ever," when her aunt--who yearned

for the rest which, according to their own account, seems to elude stout

persons--pleaded that difficulties clustered round such a course.

The course was not taken, for Jos suddenly engaged himself to a girl of

seventeen, a new girl whom London knew not, the only child of one of

those ruinous unions which had been swallowed up in a flame of scandal

seventeen years ago, which had been forgotten for seventeen years all

but nine days.

It was sedulously raked up again now. People whispered that Elsa Grey

came of a bad stock; that Jos Carstairs was a bold man to marry a woman

with such antecedents; a woman whose mother had slipped away out of her

intolerable home years ago for another where apparently life had not

been more tolerable.

Jos brought his Elsa to see Mary, for he was only fit to wave his sword

and say, "Come on, boys." He did not understand anything about anything.

He only remembered that Mary was a tender, loving soul. Had she not

shown herself so to him for years? So he actually besought Mary to be a

friend to the beautiful young sombre creature whom he had elected to

marry.

Mary behaved admirably according to her code, touched Elsa's hand,

civilly offered the address of a good dressmaker (not her best one), and

hoped they should meet frequently. The girl looked at her once,

wistfully, intently, with unfathomable lustrous eyes, as of some

untamed, prisoned, woodland creature, and then took no further notice of

her.

That was a fortnight ago. They were to be married in three weeks.

Mary sighed, and looked once again for the twentieth time at the letter

in her hand. It was a long epistle from her bosom friend, Lady Francis

Bethune, the electric tramways heiress, joylessly married to the

handsomest man in London, the notorious Lord Francis Bethune.

"My dear," said the letter, "men are always like that. They are brutes,

and it is no good thinking otherwise. They will throw over the woman

they have loved for years for a flower-girl. You are too good for him. I

have always thought so. (So had Mary.) But the game is not up yet. I

could tell him things about his Elsa that would surprise him, not that

he ought to be surprised at anything in her mother's daughter. He is

coming to me this afternoon to tea. He said he was busy; but I told him

he must come as it was on urgent business, and so it is. He is my

trustee, you know, and there really is something wrong. Francis has been

at it again. After the business is over I shall tell him a few things

very nicely about that girl. Now, my advice to you is--chuck the

Lestrange's water-party this afternoon, and come in as if casually to

see me. I shall leave you alone together, and you must do the rest

yourself. You may pull it off yet, after what I shall say about Elsa,

for Jos has a great idea of you. Wire your reply by code before midday."

Mary got up slowly, and walked to the writing-table. Should she go and

meet him? Should she not? She would go. She wrote a telegram quickly in

code form. She knew the code so well that she did not stop to refer to

it. She and Jos had played at code telegrams when he was cramming for

the Army. She rang for the servant and sent out the telegram. Then she

sat down and took up a book. It was nearly midday, and too hot to go

out.

But after a few minutes she cast it suddenly aside, and began to move

restlessly about the room. What was the use of going, after all? What

could she say to Jos if she did see him? How could she touch his heart?

Like many another woman when she thinks of a man, Mary stopped before a

small mirror, and looked fixedly at herself. Was she not pretty? Had she

not gentle, appealing eyes? See her little hand raised to put back a

strand of fair hair. Was not everything about her pretty, and refined,

and good? The vision of Elsa rose suddenly before her, with her dark,

mysterious beauty and her formidable youth. Mary's heart contracted

painfully. "I love him, and she doesn't," she said to herself, with

bitterness. But Jos would never give up Elsa. She would make him

miserable, but--he would marry her. Oh! what was the use of going to

waylay him to-day? Why had she lent herself to Lady Francis's idiotic

plan? Why had she accepted from her help that was no help? She would

telegraph again to say she would not come after all. No. She would

follow up her own telegram, and tell her friend that on second thoughts

she did not care to see Jos.

She ran upstairs, put on her hat, and in a few minutes was driving in a

hansom to Bruton Street. The Bethunes' footman knew her and admitted

her, though Lady Francis was technically "not at home."

Yes, her ladyship was in, but she was engaged with the doctor at the

moment in the drawing-room. The footman hesitated. "They were a-tuning

of the piano in her ladyship's boudoir," he said, and he tentatively

opened the door of a room on the ground floor. It was Lord Francis'

sitting-room.

"Was his lordship in?"

"No, his lordship had gone out early."

"Then I will wait here," said Mary, "if you will let her ladyship know

that I am here."

The man withdrew.

Mary's face reddened with annoyance. She disliked the idea of telling

Lady Francis she had changed her mind, and the discussion of the

subject. Oh! why had she ever spoken of the subject at all? Why had she

telegraphed that she would come?

The painful, reiterated stammering of the piano came to her from above.

It seemed of a piece with her own indecision, her own monotonous

jealousy.

Suddenly the front door bell rang, and an instant later the footman came

in with a telegram, put it on the writing-table, and went out again.

Her telegram! Then she was not too late to stop it. She need not explain

after all.

The drawing-room door opened, and Lady Francis' high metallic voice

sounded on the landing.

Mary seized up the pink envelope and crushed it in her hand! What? The

drawing-room door closed again. The conference with the doctor was not

quite over after all. She tore open the telegram and looked again at her

foolish words before destroying them.

Then her colour faded, and the room went round with her. Who had changed

what she had said? Why was it signed "Elsa"?

She looked at the envelope. It was plainly addressed--"Lord Francis

Bethune." She had never glanced at the address till this moment. The

contents were in code as hers had been, but it was the same code, and

before she knew she had done so, she had read it.

What did it mean? What _could_ it mean? Why should Elsa promise to meet

him after the Speaker's Stairs--to-day--at Waterloo main entrance?

Mary was not quick-witted, but after a few dazed moments she suddenly

understood. Elsa was about to go away with Lord Francis. But what Elsa?

Her heart beat so hard that she could hardly breathe. Could it be Elsa

Grey?

As we piece together all at once a puzzle that has been too simple for

us, so Mary remembered in a flash Elsa's enigmatical face, and a certain

ball where she had seen--only for a moment as she passed--- Lord Francis

and Elsa sitting out together. Elsa had looked quite different then. It

_was_ Elsa Grey. She knew it. Degraded creature, not fit to be an honest

man's wife.

Mary shook from head to foot under a climbing, devastating emotion,

which seemed to rend her whole being. The rival was gone from her path.

Jos would come back to her.

As she stood stunned, half blind, trembling, a hansom dashed up to the

door, and in a moment Lord Francis' voice was in the hall speaking to

the footman.

"Any letters or telegrams?"

"One telegram on your writing-table, my lord."

The servant went on to explain something, Lady Mary Carden, etc., but

his master did not hear him. He was in the room in a second, and had

closed the door behind him. Lord Francis' beautiful, thin, reckless face

was pinched and haggard. He seemed possessed by some fierce passion

which had hold of him and drove him before it as a storm holds and spins

a leaf.

Mary was frightened, paralysed. She had not known that men could be so

moved. He did not even see her. He rushed to the writing-table, and

swept his eye over it. Then he gave a sharp, low, hardly human cry of

rage and anguish, and turned to ring the bell. As he turned he saw her.

"I beg your pardon. I don't understand," he said hoarsely. "Why did my

fool of a servant bring you in here?"

Then he saw the open telegram in her hand, and his face changed. It

became alert, cold, implacable. There was a deadly pause. From the room

above came the acute, persistent stammer of the piano.

He took the telegram from her nerveless hand, read it, and put it in his

pocket. He picked up the envelope from the floor, and threw it into the

waste-paper basket. Then he came close up to her, and looked her in the

eyes. There was murder in his.

"It was in cypher," he said.

She was incapable of speech.

"But you understood it? Answer me. By--did you understand it, or did you

not?"

"I did not." She got the words out.

"You are lying. You did, you paid spy. Now listen to me. If you dare to

say one word of this to any living soul I'll----"

The door suddenly opened, and Lady Francis hurried in.

"Sorry to keep you, my dear," said the high, unmodulated voice. "Old

Carr was such a time. What! You here, Francis? I thought you had gone

out."

"I have been doing my best to entertain Lady Mary till you appeared," he

said.

"I came to say I'm engaged this afternoon," said Mary. "I can't go with

you to your concert."

The footman appeared with another telegram.

Lord Francis opened it before it could reach his wife, and then tossed

it to her.

"For you," he said, and left the room.

"Well, my dear," said Lady Francis, "in this you say you _will_ come,

and now you say you _won't_, or am I reading it wrong? I don't

understand."

"I have changed my mind," said Mary feebly. "I mean I can't throw over

the Lestranges. I only ran in to explain. I must be going back now."

Lord Francis, who was in the hall, put her into her hansom and closed

the doors. As he did so he leaned forward and said:

"If you dare to interfere with me you will pay for it."

PART II

"Ah! woe that youth should love to be

Like this swift Thames that speeds so fast,

And is so fain to find the sea,--

That leaves this maze of shadow and sleep,

These creeks down which blown blossoms creep,

For breakers of the homeless deep."

--EDMUND GOSSE.

The little river steamer, with its gay awning, was hitched up to the

Speaker's Stairs. The Lestranges were standing at the gangway welcoming

their guests. There was a crowd watching along the parapet of

Westminster Bridge just above.

"Are we all here? It is past four," said Captain Lestrange to his wife.

Mrs Lestrange looked round. "Eighteen, twenty, twenty-four. Ah! Here is

Lady Mary Carden, late as usual. She is the last. No. There is one more

to come. Miss Grey."

"Which Miss Grey?"

"Why, the one Jos Carstairs is to marry. She is coming under my wing.

And now she isn't here. What on earth am I to do? We can't wait for

ever."

A tall white figure was advancing slowly, as if dragged step by step,

through the shadow of the great grey building.

"She does not hurry herself," said Mrs Lestrange indignantly, and she

did not welcome Elsa very cordially as she came on board. The youngest

of the party had made all the rest of that distinguished gathering wait

for her.

Mary, in a gown of immaculate white serge stitched with black, was

sitting under the awning when Elsa passed her on her way towards a

vacant seat lower down. The two women looked fixedly at each other for

a moment, and in that moment Mary saw that Elsa knew that she knew. Even

in that short time Lord Francis had evidently warned the girl against

her.

Do what she would, Mary could not help watching Elsa. This was the less

difficult, as no one ever talked for long together to Mary. The seat

next her was never resolutely occupied. Her gentle voice was one of

those which swell the time-honoured complaint, that in society you hear

nothing but the same vapid small talk, the same trivial remarks over and

over again. She was not neglected, but she awakened no interest. Her

china blue eyes turned more and more frequently towards that tall figure

with its lithe, panther-like grace sitting in the sun, regardless of the

glare. Mary, whose care for her own soul came second only to her care

for her complexion, wondered at her recklessness.

Mrs Lestrange introduced one or two men to Elsa, but they seemed to find

but little to say to her. She was _distraite_, indifferent to what was

going on round her. After a time she was left alone, except when Mrs

Lestrange came to sit by her for a few minutes. Yet she was a marked

feature of the party. Wherever Elsa might be she could not be

overlooked. Mysterious involuntary power which some women possess, not

necessarily young and beautiful like Elsa, of becoming wherever they go

a centre, a focus of attention whether they will or no.

Married men looked furtively at her, and whispered to their approving

wives that Carstairs was a bold man, that nothing would have induced

_them_ to marry a woman of that stamp. The unmarried men looked at her

too, but said nothing.

At seventeen Elsa's beauty was mature. It was not the thin wild-flower

beauty of the young English girl who emerges but slowly from her

chrysalis. It was the splendid pale perfection of the magnolia which

opens in a night. The body had outstripped the embryo spirit. Out of the

exquisite face, with its mysterious foreshadowing of latent emotion,

looked the grave inscrutable eyes of a child.

Elsa appeared quite unconscious of the interest she excited. She looked

fixedly at the gliding dwindling buildings, at the little alert

brown-sailed eel-boats, and the solemn low-swimming hay barges, burning

yellow in the afternoon sun, and dropping gold into the grey water as

they went. Sometimes she looked up at the overhanging bridges, and past

them to the sky. Presently a white butterfly came twinkling on toddling,

unsteady wings across the water, and settled on the awning. Elsa's eyes

followed it. "It is coming with us," she said to Captain Lestrange, who

was standing near her. The butterfly left the awning. It settled for a

moment on the white rose on Elsa's breast. Now it was off again, a

dancing baby fairy between the sunny sky and sunny river. Then all in a

moment some gust of air caught its tiny spread sails, and flung it with

wings outstretched upon the swift water.

Elsa gave a cry, and tearing the rose out of her breast, leaned far

over the railing and flung it towards the butterfly. It fell short. The

current engulfed butterfly and rose together.

Captain Lestrange caught her by the arm as she leaned too far, and held

her firmly till she recovered her balance.

"That was rather dangerous," he said, releasing her gently.

"I could not stand by and see it drown," said Elsa, shivering, and she

turned her eyes back across the river, to where in the distance the

white buildings of Greenwich stood almost in the water in the pearl

haze.

Who shall say what Elsa's thoughts were as she leaned against the

railing, white hand against white rose cheek, and watched the tide which

was sweeping them towards the sea? Did she realise that another current

was bearing her whither she knew not, was hurrying her little barque,

afloat for the first time, towards a surging line of breakers where

white sails of maiden innocence and faith and purity might perchance go

under? Did she with those wonderful melancholy eyes look across her

youth and dimly foresee, what all those who have missed love learn in

middle life, how chill is the deepening shadow in which a loveless life

stands? Did she dimly see this, and shrink from the loveless marriage

before her, which would close the door against love for ever? Did she in

her great ignorance mistake the jewelled earthen cup of passion for the

wine of love which should have brimmed it? Did she think to allay the

thirst of the soul at the dazzling empty cup which was so urgently

proffered to her? Who shall say what Elsa's thoughts were as the river

widened to the sea.

* * * * *

They were coming back at last, beating up slowly, slowly against the

tide towards London, lying low and dim against an agony of sunset. To

Mary it had been an afternoon of slow torture. Ought she to speak to

Elsa? "After the Speaker's Stairs" the telegram had said. Then Elsa

meant to join Lord Francis on her return _this evening_. Ought not she,

Mary, to go to Elsa now, where she sat apart watching the sunset, and

implore her to go home? Ought she not to tell her that Lord Francis was

an evil man, who would bring great misery upon her? Ought she not to

show her that she was steeping her young soul in sin, ruining herself

upon the threshold of life? Something whispered urgently to Mary that

she ought at least to try to hold Elsa back from the precipice,

whispered urgently that perhaps Elsa, friendless as she was, might

listen to her even at the eleventh hour. And Elsa knew she knew.

Was it Mary's soul--dwarfed and starved in the suffocating bandages of

her straitened life and narrow religion--which was feebly stirring in

its shroud, was striving to speak?

Mary clenched her little blue-veined hands.

No, no. Elsa would never listen to her. Elsa knew very well what she was

doing. Any girl younger even than she knew that it was wicked to allow a

married man to make love to her. Elsa was a bad woman by temperament and

heredity, not fit to be a good man's wife. Even if Mary could persuade

her to give up her lover, still Elsa was guilty in thought, and that was

as bad as the sin itself. Did not our Saviour say so? _Elsa was lost

already._

"No, no," whispered the inner voice. "She does not know what she is

doing."

She did know very well what she was doing--Mary flushed with anger--she

was always doing things for effect, in order to attract attention. Look

how she had made eyes at Captain Lestrange about that butterfly. If

there is one thing more than another which exasperates a conventional

person it is an impulsive action. The episode of the butterfly rankled

in Mary's mind. Several silly men had been taken in by it. No. She,

Mary, would certainly speak to Elsa; she would be only too glad to save

a fellow-creature from deadly sin if it was any use speaking--but it was

not. And she did not care to mix herself up with odious, disgraceful

subjects unless she could be of use. She had always had a high standard

of refinement. She had always kept herself apart from "that sort of

thing." Perhaps, in her meagre life, she had also kept herself apart

from all that makes our fellow-creatures turn to us.

Lord Francis' last threat, spoken low and distinct across the hansom

doors, came back to her ears--"If you dare to interfere with me you will

pay for it."

The river was narrowing. The buildings and wharves pushed up close and

closer. The fretted outlines and towers of Westminster were detaching

themselves in palest violet from the glow in the west.

A river steamer passed them with a band on board. A faint music, tender

and gay, came to them across the water, bringing with it the promise of

an abiding love, making all things possible, illuminating with sudden

distinctness the vague meaning of this mysterious world of sunset sky

and sunset water, and ethereal city of amethyst and pearl; and then--as

suddenly as it came--passing away down stream, and taking all its

promises with it, leaving the twilight empty and desolate.

The sunset burned dim like a spent furnace. The day lost heart and waned

all at once. It seemed as if everything had come to an end.

And as, when evening falls, jasmine grows white and whiter in the

falling light, so Elsa's face grew pale and paler yet in the dusk.

Once she looked across at Mary, and a faint smile, tremulous, wistful,

stole across her lips. Tears shone in her eyes. "Is there any help

anywhere?" the sweet troubled eyes seemed to say. But apparently they

found none, for they wandered away again to the great buildings of

Westminster rising up within a stone's throw over the black arch of

Westminster Bridge.

The steamer slowed and stopped once more against the Speaker's Stairs.

The Lestranges put Elsa into a hansom before they hurried away in

another themselves. All the guests were in a fever to depart, for there

was barely time to dress for dinner--and they disappeared as if by

magic. Mary, whose victoria was a moment late, followed hard on the

rest. As she was delayed in the traffic she saw the hansom in front of

her turn slowly round. She saw Elsa's face inside as it turned. Then the

hansom went gaily jingling its bell over Westminster Bridge, and was

lost in the crowd.

PART III

"Thou wilt not with Predestination round

Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?"

--OMAR KHAYYÁM.

The scandal smouldered for a day or two, and then raged across London

like a fire. Mary stayed at home. She could not face the glare of it.

She said she was ill. Her hand shook. She started at the slightest

sound. She felt shattered in mind and body.

"I could not have stopped her," she said stubbornly to herself a hundred

times, lying wide-eyed through the long, terrifying nights. She

besieged Heaven with prayers for Elsa.

On the fourth day Jos came to her.

She went down to her little sitting-room, and found him standing at the

open window with his back to her. She came in softly, trembling a

little. She would be very gentle and sympathetic with him. She would

imply no reproach. As she entered he turned slowly and faced her. The

first moment she did not recognise him. Then she saw it was he.

Jos' face was sunk and pinched, and the grey eyes were red with tears

fiercely suppressed by day, red with hard crying by night. Now as they

met hers they were fixed, unflinching in their tearless, enduring agony,

like those of a man under the surgeon's knife.

"Oh! Jos, don't take it so hard," said Mary, laying her hand on his arm.

She had never dreamed he would feel it like this. She had thought that

he would see at once he had had a great escape.

He did not appear to hear her. He looked vacantly at her, and then

recollected himself, and sat down by her.

"You saw her last," he said, biting his lips.

Mary's heart turned sick within her.

"The Lestranges saw her last," she said hastily. He made an impatient

movement. He knew all that.

"You were with her all the afternoon on the boat?"

"Yes. But, of course, there were numbers of others. I had many friends

whom I had to----"

"Did you notice anything? Did you have any talk with her? Was she

different to usual?"

"She does not generally talk much. She was rather silent."

"You did not think she looked as if she had anything on her mind."

"I couldn't say. I know her so very slightly." Mary's voice was cold.

"She did not care for me," said Jos. "I knew that all along," and he put

his scarred hand over his mouth.

"She was not worthy of you."

He did not hear her. He took away his hand and clenched it heavily on

the other.

"I knew she didn't care," he said in a level, passionless voice. "But I

loved her. From the first go-off I saw she was different to other women.

And I thought--I know I'm only a rough fellow--but I thought perhaps in

time ... I'm not up to much, but I would have made her a good

husband--and at any rate, I would have taken her away from--her father.

He said she was willing. I--I tried to believe him. He wanted to get rid

of her--and--I wanted to have her. That was the long and the short of

it. We settled it between us.... She hadn't a chance in that house. I

thought I'd give her another--a home--where she was safe. She had never

had a mother to tell her things. She had never had any upbringing at

that French school. She had no women friends. She had never known a good

woman, except her old nurse, till I brought her to you, Mary. I told her

you were good and gentle and loving, and would be a friend to her; and

that I had known you all my life, and she might trust you."

"She never liked me," said Mary. It seemed to her that she must defend

herself. Against what? Against whom?

"If she had only confided in you," he said. "I knew she was in trouble,

but I could not make out what it was. She was such a child, and I seemed

a long way off her. I took her to plays and things after I had seen them

first, to be sure they were all right; and she would cheer up for a

little bit--she liked the performing dogs. I had thought of taking her

there again; but she always sank back into low spirits. And I knew that

sometimes young girls do feel shy about being married--it's a great

step--a lottery--that is what it is, a lottery--so I thought it would

all come right in time. I never thought. I never guessed." Jos' voice

broke. "I see now I helped to push her into it--but--I didn't know....

If only you had known that last afternoon, and could have pleaded with

her ... if only you had known, and could have held her back--my white

lamb, my little Elsa."

He ground his heel against the polished floor. There was a long silence.

Then he got up and went away.

* * * * *

It was not until the end of July that Mary saw him again. She heard

nothing of him. She only knew that he had left London. He came in one

evening late, and Mary's aunt discreetly disappeared after a few

minutes' desultory conversation.

He looked worn and aged, but he spoke calmly, and this time he noticed

Mary's existence. "You look pulled down," he said kindly. "Has the

season been too much for you?"

"It is not that," she said. "I have been distressed because an old

friend of mine is in trouble."

He looked at her and saw that she had suffered. A great compunction

seized him. He took her hand and kissed it.

"You are the best woman in the world," he said. "Don't worry your kind

heart about me. I'm not worth it." Then he moved restlessly away from

her, and began turning over the knick-knacks on the silver table.

"Bethune has been tackled," he said suddenly. "The Duke of ---- did it,

and he has promised to marry her--if--if----"

"If what?"

"If his wife will divorce him. The Duke has got his promise in black and

white."

"I don't think Lady Francis will divorce him."

"N-no. I've been with her to-day for an hour, but I couldn't move her.

She doesn't seem to see that it's--life or death--for Elsa."

"You would not expect her under the circumstances to consider Elsa."

"Yes, I should," said the simpleton. "Why should not she help her? There

are no children, and she does not care for Bethune. She never did. She

ought to release him for the sake of--others."

"I don't think she will."

"I want you to persuade her, Mary." Mary's heart swelled. This then was

what he had come about.

"Aren't you her greatest friend? Do put it before her plainly. I'm a

blundering idiot, and she seemed to think I had no right to speak to her

on the subject. Perhaps I had not. I never thought of that. I only

thought of----. But do you go to her, and bring her to a better mind."

"I will try," said Mary.

"I wish there were more women like you, Maimie," he said, using for the

first time for years the pet name which he had called her by when they

were boy and girl together.

Mary went to Lady Francis next day, but she did not make a superhuman

effort to persuade her friend. She considered that it was not desirable

that Elsa should be reinstated. If there were no punishment for such

misdemeanours, what would society come to? For the sake of others, as a

warning, it was necessary that Elsa should suffer.

All she said to Lady Francis was: "Are you going to divorce Lord

Francis?"

"No, my dear," said that lady with a harsh little laugh. "I am not. Not

that I could not get a divorce. He has been quite brute enough, but if I

did it would be forgotten in about a quarter of an hour, whether I had

divorced him or he had divorced me. I have a right to his name, and I

mean to stick to it. It's about all I've got out of my marriage. I don't

intend to go about as a divorced woman under my maiden name of Huggins.

The idea does not smile on me. Besides, I know Francis. He will come

back to me. He did--before. He has not a shilling, and he is in debt. He

can't get on without me. I was a goose to marry him; but still I am the

goose that lays the golden eggs."

Jos' parents sent Mary a pressing invitation to stay with them after the

season. Mary went, and perhaps she tasted something more like happiness

in that quiet old country house than she had known for many years. Jos'

father and mother were devoted to her, with that devotion, artificial

in its origin, but genuine in its later stages, of parents who have made

up their minds that she was "the one woman" for their son. Mary played

old Irish melodies in the evenings by the hour, and sang sweetly at

prayers. She was always ready to listen to General Carstairs' history of

the _fauna_ of Dampshire, and to take an interest in Mrs Carstairs'

Sunday School. She had a succession of the simplest white muslin gowns

(she could still wear white) and wide-brimmed garden hats. Mary in the

country was more rural than those who abide in it all the year round.

Jos was often there. There was no doubt about it. Jos was coming back to

his early allegiance. Perhaps his parents, horrified by his single

unaided attempt at matrimony, were tenderly pushing him back. Perhaps,

in the entire exhaustion and numbness that had succeeded the shock of

Elsa's defection, he hardly realised what others were planning round

him. Perhaps when a man has been heartlessly slighted he turns

unconsciously to the woman of whose undoubted love he is vaguely aware.

Jos sat at Mary's feet, not metaphorically but literally, for hours

together by the sundial in the rose-garden; hardly speaking, like a man

stunned. Still he sat there, and she did her embroidery, and looked

softly down at him now and then. The doors of the narrow, airless prison

of her love were open to receive him. They would be married presently,

and she should make him give up the Army, and become a magistrate

instead. She would never let him out of her sight. A wife's place is

beside her husband. She knew, for how many wives compact of experience

had assured her during the evening hour of feminine confidence when the

back hair is let down, that the perpetual presence of the wife was the

only safeguard for the well-being of that mysterious creature of low

instincts, that half-tamed wild animal, always liable to break away

unless held in by feminine bit and bridle, that irresponsible babe,

that slave of impulse--man. She would give him perfect freedom of

course. She should encourage him to go into the Yeomanry, and she should

certainly allow him to go out without her for the annual training. He

would be quite safe in a tent, surrounded by his own tenantry; but, on

other occasions, she, his wife, would be ever by his side. That was the

only way to keep a man good and happy.

* * * * *

Early in September Jos went away for a few days' shooting. Mary, who

generally paid rounds of visits after the season at dull country houses

(she was not greatly in request at the amusing ones), still remained

with the Carstairs, who implored her to stay on whenever she suggested

that she was paying them "a visitation."

Jos was to return that afternoon, for General Carstairs was depending on

him to help to shoot his own partridges on the morrow. But the afternoon

passed, and Jos did not come. The next day passed, and still no Jos.

And no letter or telegram. His father and mother were silently uneasy.

They said, no doubt he had been persuaded to stay on where he was, and

had forgotten the shoot at home. Mary said, "No doubt," but a reasonless

fear gathered like thin mist across her heart. Where was he? The letters

that had been forwarded to his last address all came back. A week

passed, and still no Jos, and no answers to autocratic telegrams.

Then suddenly Jos telegraphed from London saying he should return early

that afternoon, and asking to be met at the station.

When the time drew near, Mary established herself with a book in the

rose-garden. He would come to her there, as he had so often done before.

The roses were well-nigh over, but in their place the sweet white faces

of the Japanese anemones were crowding up round the old grey sundial.

The sunny windless air was full of the cawing of rooks. It was the time

and the place where a desultory love might come by chance, and linger

awhile, not where a desperate love, brought to bay, would wage one of

his pitched battles. Peace and rest were close at hand. Why had she been

fearful? Surely all was well, and he was coming back. He was coming

back.

She waited as it seemed to her for hours before she heard the faint

sound of his dog-cart. She should see him in a moment. He would speak to

his parents, and then ask where she was, and come out to her. Oh! how

she loved him; but she must appear calm, and not too glad to see him.

She heard his step--strong, light, alert, as it used to be of old, not

the slow, dragging, aimless step of the last two months.

He came quickly round the yew hedge and stood before her. She raised her

eyes slowly from her book to meet his, a smile parting her lips.

He was looking hard at her with burning scorn and contempt in his

lightning grey eyes.

The smile froze on her lips.

"I have seen Elsa," he said. "I only came back here for half-an-hour

to--speak to you."

A cold hand seemed to be pressed against Mary's heart.

"I found by chance, the merest chance, where she was," he continued. "I

went at once. She was alone, for Bethune has gone back to his wife. I

suppose you knew he had gone back. I did not. I found her----" He

stopped as if the remembrance were too acute, and then went on firmly.

"We had a long talk. She was in great trouble. She told me everything,

and how he, that devil, had made love to her from the first day she came

back from school, and how her father knew of it, and had obliged her to

accept me. And she said she knew it was wrong to run away with him, but

she thought it was more wrong to marry without love, and that the nearer

the day came the more she felt she must escape, and she seemed hemmed

in on every side, and she did love Bethune, and he had sworn to her that

he would marry her directly he got his divorce, and that his wife did

not care for him, and would be glad to be free, and that all that was

necessary was a little courage on her part. So she tried to be

brave--and--she said she did not think at the time it could be so very

wicked to marry the person she really loved, for _you_ knew, and you

never said a word to stop her. She said you had many opportunities of

speaking to her on the boat, and she knew you were so good, you would

certainly have told her if it was really so very wicked."

"I knew it was no use speaking," said Mary, hoarsely.

"You might have tried to save my wife for my sake," said Jos. "You

might have tried to save her for her own. But you didn't. I don't

care to know your reasons. I only know that--you did not do it. You

deliberately--let--her--drown." His eyes flashed. The whole quiet,

commonplace man seemed transfigured by some overmastering, ennobling

emotion. "And I have come to tell you that I think the bad women are

better than the good ones, and that I am going back to Elsa; to

Elsa--betrayed, deserted, outcast, my Elsa, who, but for you, might

still be like one of these." He touched one of the white anemones with

his scarred hand. "I am going back to her--and if--in time she can

forget the past and feel kindly towards me--I will marry her."

And he did.

THE END

* * * * *

Mr MURRAY'S SIX SHILLING NOVELS

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=LESLIE FARQUHAR.= By ROSALINE MASSON, Author of "In Our Town."

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LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

* * * * *

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9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET.