He found a couple of letters lying on the hall-table for his wife, and

putting them in his pocket to take back to her, he was just turning to

leave the house again, when the front-door bell rang. The man who had

let him in was still there, and Toby, half-way between unreasonable hope

and sickening apprehension, thinking that it might be some news from

Park Lane, advanced also towards the door, so that when it was opened he

was close to it. Outside, on the topmost of the four steps that led up

from the pavement, in the most well-cut of raiment, the glossiest of

patent-leather shoes, and the most faultless of hats, stood Ted Comber.

Toby gave one short gasp, licked his lips with the tip of his tongue,

took one step towards him, and knocked him backwards down the four

steps. A cry of passionate dismay escaped the falling body; the

faultless hat rolled under the hansom, the gold-crutched stick flew in a

wide parabola into the area, and Toby, smiling for the first time since

that morning, and not caring to improve or spoil the situation with

words, walked away. The only regret that lingered in his mind was that

there had not been a fuller gathering to observe the scene; however, the

cabman and his own footman had an uninterrupted view of what had taken

place.

So Toby's footsteps went briskly away along the wet pavement--there had

been a cool spring shower some half-hour ago--and the footman at the

front-door and the cabman on his exalted perch were left staring. The

horse had shied and swerved at this considerable commotion on the

pavement, and before the driver could stop it had taken a couple of

prancing steps forward, bringing the off wheel with devilish precision

over Ted's hat, crushing it lengthways. Its unenviable proprietor lay

fallen across the pavement, his chestnut curls within a few inches of

the curb, for the moment stunned. Returning consciousness reminded him

of a severe pain on the side of his head, a really acute anguish in his

right elbow, another hardly less distressing in his shoulder, and two

more in his leg. Then he picked himself up, and a being more sunk

beneath the zones of pity, take him body and mind together, could

scarcely have been found in all big London. His frock coat was a

fricassée of dirt, his face was vanished in a splash of mud, the elbow

of his right sleeve, whence came one of the most excruciating pains, was

torn through shirt, and as he got up he could feel the grating of his

broken watch-glass. A footman, discreetly but undisguisedly grinning,

watched him from the door of Toby's house, a cabman from his perch.

Dignity is scarcely compatible with dirt, and Ted knew it. He picked up

his hat, which looked as if a drunken man had been trying to fold an

opera hat the wrong way, and the battered remnants of what so lately had

been so fine climbed into the hansom again, and requested to be driven

home. It had not been a very successful visit.

His reflections were not the most enviable. That act of Toby's, for

which he was now but a sorry parcel of aches, meant the worst. And at

that thought all that was passably decent in the man came to the

surface. There was not enough to cover a large surface, but there was a

little. He pushed open the trap at the top of the hansom and changed his

destination to Park Lane. Aching and bleeding as he was, he would not

wait, wait, wait for tardy news. Nor was his anxiety wholly selfish; he

had--God knows what proportion this bore to the whole--a fear based on

affection. Then, having given the order, he devoted himself to patching

up a very sorry object.

His face was bleeding under the right eye, and his cheek was scratched

and raw; it seemed as if all the stray small objects in a London street

had been inlaid into it in layers by an unpractised hand. His elbow was

cut, his knee was cut, and both ached like toothache. But he mopped and

brushed and dabbed till the balance of dirt was on his handkerchief, and

when that was clear, realizing that to touch the breaches any more meant

the transference of the dirt back again, he leaned idly against the

cushions of the cab, in a state of mind compounded of anxiety and

unutterable depression. Little had he supposed that the mirrors in the

corners, often by him so satisfiedly and light-heartedly used, would

ever have reflected so battered a self.

There was a carriage at the door when he drove up, but it gave him

access, and after ringing the bell he huddled back into his cab again.

Even now, when, to do him justice, he was a prey to the most poignant

emotions that had ever touched his putty soul, the instinct of regard

for his own appearance, the desire to shield the shattering it had

undergone, asserted itself. He leaned forward in the hansom when the

front-door was opened, showing to the footman only his undamaged left.

"How is Lady Conybeare?" he asked.

"A great improvement, my lord," said the man.

"Thanks. Please tell the coachman to drive to 12, South Audley Street."

Kit was alive--better. His spirits, elastic as his complimented skin,

instantly began to recover themselves, and his thoughts straying out of

selfishness, absorbed for an hour in another, turned homewards again

like sheep to their fold. He had been afraid that he had dropped that

nice box of toys, the world, and that they would have been broken. But

it seemed that it was not so. He had dropped them, it is true, and some

of them, himself particularly, were rather scratched and muddy, but they

were not broken. He could play with them a long time yet.

Instinctively again he turned to the slip of looking-glass in the corner

of his hansom. His scratched face had stopped bleeding, and it did not

look so bad as he had feared. His hat, it is true, was a sorry sight,

but it is easy to get new hats, and the thought that Toby's barbarous

revenge had mainly spent itself on a Lincoln and Bennett was even a

little amusing. Much more important was the patch of whitening hair

above his ear, and he turned his face sideways to examine it. Even that

one application of the dark fluid he had made just before lunch had

already changed it; the white hairs seemed to have been blotted with

colour. How delightful!

He paid the cabman, let himself into the house, and went with a slight

limp up to his bedroom, where he rang for his valet. He had had a fall,

he explained, and must change his clothes and have a bath. Also, he

would dine by himself at home, and a telegram must go at once to the

Haslemeres to say that he had hurt himself and could not come. On the

whole, he was not sorry to absent himself. Lady Haslemere had really

become rather tiresome lately. She was always talking about bulls and

bears, and Ted did not care in the least for the menagerie of the City.

His warm bath with pine in it was soon ready, and he went to repair the

damages of the day.

As he dressed he reviewed the agitations of the hour that had passed. An

undignified part had been thrust on him by Toby, for the most complacent

cannot flatter themselves that they show a brave figure when they are

forcibly laid on pavements. But it was in the very nature of the case

that the reason of the blow prevented the story going abroad. It was

impossible that Toby should cause it to be known that he had knocked him

down, for people would ask why. Secrecy, at any rate, was desired on

both sides. As far, then, as that most unpleasant moment was to be

regarded, he had only to apply vaseline to his cuts, order some new

clothes, and live the occurrence down; not publicly--that would have

been trying--but privately. He had only to get over it himself. Anyhow,

Toby knew by this time how completely his bumble-bee diplomacy at

Stanborough had miscarried, and at that thought the smarting of his own

wounds grew appreciably less. Decidedly it had not been a pleasant

moment when he flew backwards on to the pavement, but it was over. He

smarted far more under the effect of the insult than under the insult

itself. It was very like Toby, he thought, to deal with him in that

manner. Anyhow, there was a smart in Toby's soul which no vaseline could

reach.

Against the violence that had been done him he could set the news of

Kit's ameliorated condition. He told himself with sublime _naïveté_ that

it was worth while being knocked down to learn that. His anxiety had

been terrible, really terrible, and he could not but balance that weight

removed against other unpleasantnesses. Things were not so bad as they

might have been. But it had been terrible, and he easily persuaded

himself that he was suffering horribly. What had happened he did not yet

exactly know; in any case it was horrible, and it would be wise not to

dwell on it. He would know to-morrow, and as he brushed his hair he saw

again with satisfaction the working of his pungent fluid.

He felt battered and tired, and, putting on a floss-silk dressing-gown,

lay down on the sofa in his bedroom, and rang the bell for tea. Really,

he had been through a life-time of suffering since he rang the bell for

tea an hour before at the Bachelors' Club, and he desired that

restorative agent most acutely. Most of all--and this was highly

characteristic--he desired to dismiss the experiences of the day from

his mind. It had all been extremely unpleasant, and there was a good

deal that was unpleasant still hanging about, like the sultriness of a

thundery day, low and imminent. But at the moment he could do nothing:

no step that he could take would make matters better, no effort of will

would disperse the thunder-clouds, and it was idle to brood over things,

and mar one's natural cheerfulness with morose and gloomy reflections.

His bright, shallow personality reflected like a wayside puddle whatever

was immediately above it, and held no darkling shadows or remote lights

of its own, and he was rightly very careful of the buoyancy of his

spirits, since that was the best of him, and undeniably of the greatest

use.

There was a small table by his hand, with the gold-topped scent-bottle,

the evening paper, and a few yellow-covered French books on it. He

sprinkled his forehead with the scent, threw the evening paper away, for

there was a little paragraph in it which he wanted to forget, and took

up Gautier's "Mademoiselle de la Maupin," and opened it at random. He

read a page or two, and became interested, absorbed. The magic of words,

a spell more potent than any wizard's incantation, took hold of him, and

the indoor hot-house atmosphere of infinitesimal intrigue was most

congenial. The low roar of London traffic outside grew dumb, the

agitations of harsh experience grew remoter, the events of the day

became to him as the remembrance of some book he had read, and the book

he was reading grew flushed with the realities of life.

Toby in the meantime, after his short and decisive interview without

words on the doorstep, had walked back to Park Lane, and got there not

very many minutes after his interviewer had made his call. He went

straight into Jack's room, and found Lily there alone. Question and

answer were alike needless; her face answered what he had not audibly

asked.

"She will get through," she said. "They think she will certainly get

through."

Toby threw his hat on to the sofa.

"Thank God! oh, thank God!" he cried. "Where is Jack?"

"Upstairs. They let him see her for a moment. He will be down again

immediately. But they could not save both Kit and the child, Toby."

Toby sat down by his wife.

"Oh, Lily, what a difference five hours can make!" he observed with that

grasp of the obvious which distinguished him. "By the way, I met someone

when I was out."

"Whom?"

"Him. I went home to see if there were any letters for either of us--oh,

there were two for you; catch hold--and as I came out I found him on the

doorstep."

"What had he come for?"

"I didn't ask him. But I know what he went for. Spread-eagle on the

pavement. All in his beautiful clothes. And the hansom went over his

hat; damned neat it was. Oh, Lily, that made me feel better, and I felt,

too, it was a good omen. I wish you had been there. You would have

roared."

"Toby, you are a barbarian! What good does that do?" she said with

severity.

"What that sort of a man wants is pain," remarked Toby.

"Was he much hurt?" asked Lily with extreme composure.

"I don't know. I hope so. I hope he was very much hurt."

"Do you mean you left him lying there?"

"Yes. He may be there now."

Lily's severity broke down.

"Then please have him taken away before I get back," she said. "Ah,

here's Jack!"

Jack could not speak, nor was there need, but he shook hands, first with

Lily, then with his brother, and nodded to them. Then suddenly his mouth

grew tremulous, and he sat down quickly by the table, and covered his

face with his hands.

Lily looked at Toby, and in answer to her look he went out of the room.

As she passed Jack, following her husband, she laid her hand for one

moment on his bowed shoulder, and went out also, closing the door behind

her softly.

CHAPTER VI

LILY'S DESIRE

Toby and his wife left London the day before Easter to spend a fortnight

at the cottage in Buckinghamshire, which Jack had lent them. Kit was

going on as well as possible, but she could not yet be moved; they

hoped, however, that both of them would come down to Goring before the

others left. Mrs. Murchison was also spending Easter there, before she

went back to America, where she purposed at present to be with her

husband for a fortnight at least.

She had arrived just before tea, the others having come down in the

morning, and was a torrent of amazing conversation.

"And then on Tuesday," she was saying, "I dined with dear Ethel Tarling

at the Criterion. We had a beautiful dinner, and most amusing; and all

during dinner some glee-club sang in the gallery those delicious English

what-do-you-call-thems, only I don't mean meringues."

"Madrigals?" suggested Lily, in the wild hope it might be so.

"Madrigals, yes! They sang madrigals in the gallery--'Celia's Arbour'

and 'Glorious Apollyon from on high beheld us.'"

Lily gave a little spurt of uncontrollable laughter.

"Always making fun of your poor old mother, you naughty child!" said

Mrs. Murchison, with great good-humour. "Toby, you should teach her

better. And then afterwards we went to the Palace Theatre to see the

Biography. Most interesting it was, and the one from the front of a

train made me feel quite sick and giddy--most pleasant. Oh! and I

remember that it was that evening we heard about poor Lady Conybeare.

How sad! I called there this morning, and they said she was much better,

which is something."

"Yes, we hope that Jack and Kit will both come down here in ten days or

so," said Toby.

"And Lord Comber, too," went on Mrs. Murchison guilelessly. "It was that

same day he had a fall, and bruised himself very badly. Misfortunes

never come singly. Did you not hear? He fell on his head, and I should

think it was lucky he did not get percussion of the brain."

Toby did not glance at his wife.

"Very lucky," he said.

"Was it not? Then I spent Wednesday at Oxford, which I was determined to

see before I left England. Most beautiful and interesting it is. I

lunched with the Master of Magdalen College, whom I met in London

several times, and saw the statue they put up on the place where Shelley

died."

"I thought he was drowned," said Lily.

"Very likely, dear," said Mrs. Murchison; "and now I come to think of

it, the place is near the river, so I expect they put it up as near as

they could. You couldn't wish to see them put a recumbent statue, a very

recumbent statue indeed, so it is, in ten feet of water, dear," she

observed, with great justice.

Mrs. Murchison sipped her tea in a very ecstasy of content. It was

barely a year since she had first seen Toby, and marked him down as the

ideal husband for Lily; and there they were all three of them, drinking

tea, as she said to herself, in the stately homes of England, how

beautiful they stand! Her siege of London had been rapid and brilliantly

successful. The fortifications had fallen sudden and flat, like the

walls of Jericho; and she made no more of dining at the Criterion with

that marvellous Lady Tarling than of washing her hands or going to

America.

"Yes, the Master of Magdalen College was most kind," continued Mrs.

Murchison, "and said he remembered Toby well. Dear me, what a lot I

shall have to tell your father, Lily! And after lunch--really, a most

excellent lunch, I assure you, with quails in asps--we went down to the

Ibis."

"To the where?" asked Lily.

"To the river," said Mrs. Murchison, suspecting a difficulty, "and saw

where the college boats rowed their races--torpedoes, I think the Master

called them, and I remember wondering why. His own torpedo won the last

races."

Here Toby choked violently over his tea, and left the room with a rapid

uneven step.

"Perhaps it's not torpedoes, then," went on his mother-in-law, supposing

that he would have corrected her if he had been able to speak; "but it's

something very like. Dear me, what a terrible noise poor Toby makes! Had

we better go and pat him on the back? Then yesterday I went to the

'Messiah' at the Albert Hall, which made me cry."

Mrs. Murchison looked welcomingly at Toby, who here reappeared again,

rather red and feeble.

"Dear Toby," she said, "it's just lovely to think of you and Lily so

settled and titled and happy; and when I'm on the ocean, I shall often

go to my state-room, and count the days till I come back. I must be in

America at least a fortnight, if not ten days; and I shall try and

persuade Mr. Murchison to come across with me when I return. I'm very

lucky about ships: I go out in the Lucania, and come back in the

Campagna. And is there anyone else coming down here before I go on

Wednesday, or shall we have a nice little no-place-like-home all by

ourselves?"

"Oh, we are going to be simply domestic," said Lily, rising, "and we

shan't have a soul beside ourselves. You know both Toby and I are

naturally most domestic animals. We neither of us have any passion for

the world. We like being out of doors, and playing the fool, and having

high-tea--don't we, Toby?"

"I have no passion for high-tea," remarked Toby.

"Oh yes, you have. Don't be stupid! I don't mean literal high-tea, but

figurative high-tea."

"The less literalness there is about high-tea, the better I like it,"

said Toby.

Lily passed behind his chair and pulled his wiry hair gently.

"Lord Evelyn Ronald Anstruther D'Eyncourt Massingbird, M.P., is not such

a fool as a person might suppose," she remarked. "At times he shows

glimmerings of sense. His love for figurative high-teas as opposed to

figurative high-dinners is an instance. Don't blush, Toby. You've little

else to be proud of."

"I've got you to be proud of," remarked Toby, bending back his head to

look at her.

Mrs. Murchison rustled appreciatively. That was the sort of thing which

English people could say naturally without gush or affectation. A

Frenchman would have bowed, put his heels together, and kissed his

wife's hand. An Italian would have struck the region of his heart. An

American would have expressed it in four-syllable periphrasis. But Toby

did none of these things. He said it quite simply, lit a cigarette, and

growled:

"Leggo my hair, Lily!"

Lily "leggoed" his hair.

"He is trying to blow rings," she explained, "but he can only blow

ribands and streamers. Also, he looks like an owl when he tries. Rings

on his fingers and bells on his toes," she added with immense

thoughtfulness. "Toby, I'll buy you a peal of bells if you will promise

to wear them on your toes."

Toby got up from his chair.

"If anyone has anything else of a peculiarly personal nature to say

about me, now is their time," he remarked; "otherwise, we'll go out.

Dear me! the last time I was here we got snowed up at Pangbourne, and

slept in the Elephant Inn, and I remember I dreamed about boiled rabbit.

I seldom dream, but I remember it when I do."

Lily sighed.

"Yes, and poor Kit was waiting for us all here. She was quite alone,

mother, and had an awful _crise des nerves_ over it."

"I should have thought she was the last person in the world to be

nervous," said Mrs. Murchison.

"Oh, _crise des nerves_ is not nervousness," said Lily; "it is being

strung up, and run down, and excited."

"My mother," remarked Mrs. Murchison, "was of a very nervous

temperament. I have seen her on the coldest days suddenly empty a carafe

of water over the fire, for fear of the house catching. And evenings she

would sometimes blow out the candle for the same reason."

Toby giggled explosively.

"And the cruel part was," continued Mrs. Murchison, "that throughout

life she was afraid of the dark, in which the blowing out of the candles

naturally left her. So, between her dread of a conflagration and her

terror of the dark, it was out of the fireplace into the fire."

"Frying-pan, mother," said Lily.

"Maybe, dear; I thought it was fireplace. But it's six of one and half a

dozen of another. Poor Mommer! she had a very nervous and excitable

temperament, with sudden bursts of anger. At such times she would take

out her false teeth--she suffered from early decay--and dash them to the

ground, though it meant slops till they got repaired. Most excitable she

was."

"Very trying," said Toby rather tremulously.

"No, we didn't find her trying, Toby," said this excellent lady. "We

were very fond of her. Poor dear Mommer!"

She sighed heavily, with memory-dim eyes, and Toby's laughter died in

his mouth. Mrs. Murchison got up.

"Well, I shall put on my hat," she said, "and come out with you both. I

brought an evening paper down with me, but there is nothing in it,

except that there has been a terrible tomato in the West Indies,

destroying five villages--tornado, I should say--and great loss of

life."

She went out of the room to fetch her hat, and Lily and Toby were left

alone. Toby looked furtively up, wondering what he should meet in Lily's

eye. Her face, like his, was struggling for gravity, and both shook with

hardly-suppressed laughter. Neither could speak, and they turned feebly

away from each other, Toby leaning with trembling shoulder on the

mantelpiece, and Lily biting her lip as she looked helplessly out over

lawn and river. Now and then there would come from one or other a

sobbing breath, and neither dared look round. Once Lily half turned

towards her husband, to find him half turned towards her with a crimson

strangling face, and both looked hastily away again. The plight was

desperate, and after a moment Lily said, in a choking, baritone voice:

"Toby, stop laughing."

There was no answer, and she gave him another moment for recuperation.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw him wiping away the moisture of

laughter. Then with a violent effort he subdued the muscles round his

mouth.

"She's an old darling," he said; "but, Lily, I shouldn't have liked your

grandmother."

Lily heaved a long sigh, herself again.

"Toby, you behaved very well," she said, "and mother is an old darling.

Come, we'll go out."

Mrs. Murchison took her cheerful presence away after three days, as she

was sailing to America almost immediately, and the two were alone for

the next week. Spring had definitely come, and day after golden day ran

its course. Life, eternally renewed with the year, had burst from its

winter chrysalis, and stood poised a moment with quivering, expanding

wings before launching itself into the half-circle of summer months.

Everywhere, on field and tree, the effervescence of green and growing

things foamed like some exquisite froth. One morning they would rise to

see that the green buds on the limes had split, shedding their red

sheaths; on another, the elms were in sudden tiny leaf; on another, the

mesh of new foliage round the willows of the water's edge would make a

delighted wonder for them. The meadows were scarce starred with

pink-edged daisies when the buttercups sowed a sunshine on the fields,

and in cool, damp places yellow-eyed forget-me-nots reflected the pale

blue they gazed at so steadfastly. Toby and his wife would spend long,

lazy mornings in the punt or drive about the deep-banked, primrosed

lanes--he all tenderness and solicitude for her, she happier than she

had known it was given to mankind to be. They talked but little; to both

it seemed that their joy lay beyond the region of words.

On the evening of one such day they were strolling about the garden as

dusk fell. Birds called in the thickets and shrubs, now and then a

rising fish broke the mirror of the river, and each moment the smell of

the earth, as the dew fell, grew more fragrant.

"I wish we were going to stay here a long time," said Lily, her arm in

his; "but we must go up to London when Parliament meets after the Easter

holidays. The M.P.! Good gracious, Toby, to think that the welfare of

your country depends upon a handful of people of whom you are one!"

"Parliament may go hang," said Toby, "and Jack will be delighted to let

us stay here just as long as you like."

"I am sure of it, but I don't like. What do you suppose I wanted you to

get into Parliament for, if you were not going near the House?"

"Never could guess," said Toby. "It's much more important that you

should stop here if you want to."

"Don't be foolish--but, oh, Toby, when my time comes let me come down

here again. It was here we were engaged; let it be here you take your

first-born in your arms. I do want that."

She turned to him with the light of certain motherhood in her eyes, a

thing so wonderful that the souls of all men are incomplete until they

have seen it, and her beauty and her love for him made him bow his head

in awe. His wholesome humble soul was lost in an amazement of love and

worship.

"It shall be so, Toby?" she asked, with a woman's delight in learning

how unnecessary that question was. "Will my lord grant the request of

his handmaiden?"

"Ah, don't," he said suddenly. "Don't say that, even in jest."

"Then will you, Toby?" she asked.

"If my queen wills it," said he.

"Nor must you say that, even in jest," she said.

"I don't; I say it in earnest--in deadly earnest. It is the truest thing

in the world."

"In the world? Oh, Toby, a big place! Then that is settled."

She took his arm again, and they strolled slowly over the short velvet

of the grass.

"Toby, there is another thing I want," she said after a moment.

"It is yours--you know that."

"I'm glad of it, then, because I don't think you will like it. It is

this: I want you to see Lord Comber, and just shake hands with him."

Toby stopped.

"I can't," he said--"I simply can't."

"Think over it. You see, Toby, it is like this: you are part of me, and

before this wonderful thing that is coming comes, I want to be 'all

square' with everybody in the world. That's one of your silly golf

expressions, so you'll understand it. And I can't be while you are not.

Don't misunderstand me; it isn't that I don't feel as you do about him,

and if I had been you and knocked him down as you did, I think I should

have kicked him as he lay on the pavement. But now it is over."

"Lily, you don't know what you ask," said Toby. "If I had any reason to

believe the man was sorry, that he had even any idea what a vile worm he

is, it would be different. No doubt he had a bad time that day, for, as

I told you, his tie was no better tied than mine; but having a bad time

is not the same as being sorry, is it?"

"No," said Lily thoughtfully; "but whether he's sorry or not is not our

concern; it doesn't affect what we ought to feel. He was vile; if he had

not been, there would be nothing to forgive. Besides, you knocked him

down. People ought to shake hands after they have fought; and I want you

to."

"That is the best argument you have given me yet," said Toby.

"I don't want it to be an argument at all; I don't want my wish to be

any reason at all why you should do it. You must do it because you agree

with me."

"But I don't," said Toby.

"Well, tell me when you would shake hands with him," she said. "Would

you this day fifty years?"

"No," said Toby.

"Would you if he was dying, or if you were?"

"I think I should; yes, I should."

"Oh, but, Toby, it is far more important to live in charity with people

than to die in charity with them! Oh, indeed--indeed it is!" She

stopped, and turned round, facing him, and all her soul shone in her

eyes. "Indeed it is, Toby!" she said again.

Toby looked at her for a long moment, then drew her nearer him.

"Oh, my love!" he said, "what have I done to deserve any part of you? It

is as you wish; how can you doubt it? How can I do otherwise?"

She smiled at him.

"But why do you do as I wish, Toby?" she asked. "It must not be because

I want you to."

Toby was much moved; never before had the wonder and splendour of love

so held him.

"Oh, my beloved," he said, "it is because God has ordained that all you

wish is right; I can give you no other reason."

Dusk began to fall layer on layer over the sky. In the west the sunken

sun still illuminated a fleece of crimson cloud that hovered above it,

and round them the gray, long English twilight grew more solemn and

intense. The outlines of shadows melted and faded into the neutral tint

of night, and from the house behind, and from the cottages that

clustered together across the river, lights began to twinkle, and the

wheeling points of remotest heaven were lit overhead. The crimson in the

west died into the velvet blue of the sky, and in the east the horizon

was dove-coloured with the imminent moon-rise. And as the two walked

they spoke together, as they had not spoken before, of the dear event

which June should bring.

To Lily, the happiness which, please God, should be hers lay in depths

too abysmal for thought to plumb; and Toby for the first time fully

understood how compassion, and no other feeling, had whole possession of

her soul, when she had been with Kit and Jack all that terrible day,

hardly more than a week ago. For that which had been to Kit a thing to

dread was to the other the crown of her life, and that the experience to

herself so blessed could be anything different to another woman called

for pure pity. And other feelings--amazement, horror, shame--were

trivial and superficial compared to that; it swept them utterly out of

possibility of existence. The woman, the mother, had been between them a

bond insoluble.

And Kit, so Toby thought, had felt something of this. For the five days

that had followed, he himself had seen almost nothing of his wife; she

had been all day at the house in Park Lane, and had twice slept there.

Kit in the weakness and exhaustion of those days had held on, as if to a

rock, to the sweet strength and womanliness of the other; that was the

force that pulled her back to life.

That evening when they went in, Lily found waiting for her a letter from

Jack, saying that the doctor had sanctioned Kit's being moved in a

week's time, provided she went on as well as she was doing, and that

they proposed to come down to Goring. One condition, however, Jack made

himself, that Lily should telegraph quite candidly (he trusted her for

this) whether she and Toby would rather they did not come. She laughed

as she read the note, and sent her answer without even consulting Toby.

CHAPTER VII

THE SECOND DEAL

It was some eight weeks after Easter that Mr. Alington decided to make

the next move in the game of Carmel, a move which should be decisive and

momentous. He would have preferred for certain reasons to put it off a

little while yet, for he had much on his hands, but the balance on the

whole inclined to immediate action. During the last four or five months

he had done a considerable deal of business as a company-promoter, and

at the present moment had some half-million of pounds engaged in other

affairs than mines. Motor-cars in particular had much occupied him, and

he was the happy possessor of many patents for noiseless tires,

automatic brakes, simpler steering-apparatus, and what not. He was a man

of really large ideas where money was concerned, and a perfect godsend

to patentees, for his policy was to buy up any invention concerning

motors which possessed even the most modest merit, in the hopes that,

say, in two years' time every motor-car that was built must probably

carry one or more of the patents owned by him. He had, indeed, at the

present moment in England not more than twenty thousand pounds which he

could conveniently devote to the booming of Carmel, but there was lodged

with Mr. Richard Chavasse in Melbourne a sum of not less than fifty

thousand pounds, with which it was his purpose to supply the "strong

support in Australia," to the end that Carmel should rise rainbow-hued

above the ruck of all other mines. Altogether his position was a good

one, for the last six weeks had brought him from his manager the most

excellent private accounts of the mine, which for the most part he had

saved up till the booming began. Mr. Linkwood also advised very strongly

a fresh issue of shares. They had at present, for instance, only an

eighty-stamp mill, whereas at the rate at which they were now getting

gold out there was easily work for a mill of a hundred and fifty or two

hundred stamps.

It was on this "strong support in Australia" by the convenient Mr.

Chavasse that Mr. Alington chiefly relied; that at any rate should be

the final touch. He intended first of all to make a large purchase of

his own in England, ten thousand shares at least, and immediately

publish encouraging news from the mine. This he would preface, as he had

so often done before, by a wire to Mr. Richard Chavasse, which in a few

hours would bring forth the accustomed reply, "Strong support in

Australia."

But though he would have preferred having a somewhat larger sum at his

own disposal for the grand _coup_, he had reason for wishing to start

the boom at once. Speculators had recovered from the scare of Carmel

East and West, and already, before he had himself moved in the matter,

the quotation for Carmel had risen from its lowest price of ten to

eleven shillings up to sixteen. This was sufficient in his opinion to

show that the public was already nibbling, for professional operators,

he knew, were not entering this market, and this was the correct moment

to give the fresh impetus. There had been a nineteen days' account just

before Easter, which had made the market dull, but since then it had

begun to show more vitality.

Other reasons also were his. He was beginning, for instance, to be a

little nervous about the immediate success of his dealings in the motor

trade. His patents were floated into companies, but in few instances

only had the shares been well supported, and in more than one he had

incurred a loss--recoverable no doubt in time--which even to a man of

his means was serious. Worse than that, if this ill-success continued,

it would not be the best thing for his name, and he was most anxious to

get Carmel really a-booming while his prestige was still high. Again,

many fresh mines had been started in Western Australia since the

original flotation of the Carmel group, and his financial sense led him

to distrust the greater part of them. Several had been grossly

mismanaged from the first, some grossly misrepresented. Others he

suspected did not exist at all, and he wished to hit the psychological

moment when speculators were ready, as the improvement in Carmel shares

had shown, to invest, and before they had seen too much of West

Australian mines to make them shy. That moment he considered had come.

Accordingly he instructed his broker to make his own large purchase.

This was ten days before settling day, and he hoped to sell out again

before those ten days were passed. He had at first intended to purchase

only ten thousand shares, but going over his scheme step by step, and

being unable to see how it was possible, with this combination of

satisfactory news from the mine, his own purchase, and Mr. Chavasse's

strong support in Australia, that the shares could fail to rise, he

decided to purchase five thousand shares more than he could pay for. It

was humanly impossible that the shares should not rise. Consequently on

Thursday he telegraphed out to his manager to send a long cablegram

embodying all the private news he had himself been receiving for two

months back, to his broker, made his own purchase on Friday morning, and

the same afternoon sent a cipher telegram to Mr. Chavasse, telling him

to invest the whole of his capital then lying at Melbourne Bank in

Carmel, and another in cipher to the manager, bidding him wire "Strong

support in Australia." Thus in twenty-four hours his _coup_ was made,

and he went back to his Passion Music and his prints, to wait quietly

for the news of the strong support in Australia. Already in a few hours

after his own purchase, backed up as it was with the first of the

favourable reports from the mine, the shares had risen three-eighths;

the effect on the market, therefore, of the Australian support, he

considered, level-headed man of business as he was, to be inevitable.

He was dining out that evening with Lord Haslemere, and was disposed in

anticipation to enjoy himself. Lady Haslemere, it is true, was apt to be

tedious when she talked about her own transactions in the City, and

asked him whether the rise in some mine of which nobody had even heard

was likely to continue, and was it not clever of her to have bought the

shares at one and a half, for within a week they had risen to two and a

sixteenth. She got the tip out of Truth. Mr. Alington, however, had all

the indifference of the professional in money matters to the scrannel

operations of the amateur, and when in answer to a question of his it

appeared that Lady Haslemere had only twenty shares in this marvellous

mine, and had worked herself up into a perfect fever of indecision as to

whether they should take her certain eleven pounds profit, or be very

brave and fly at fourteen, he felt himself really powerless to

understand her agitations.

This evening directly after dinner she collared and cornered him, and

finance was in her eye.

"I want to have a serious financial talk with you," she said, "so we'll

go into the other drawing-room, where we shall be alone. Come, Mr.

Alington."

Good manners insisted on obedience, but it was an ill-content financier

who followed her. For Lady Devereux, who played Bach quite divinely, was

among Lady Haslemere's guests, and even as he left the room to talk over

his hostess's microscopic operations on the Stock Exchange, he saw her

go across to the piano. It is true that he preferred a very large round

sum of money of his own to half an hour of fugues and preludes, but he

infinitely preferred half an hour of fugues and preludes to about seven

and sixpence of Lady Haslemere's.

She lit a cigarette with a tremulous hand.

"I want to ask your advice very seriously," she said. "I put three

hundred pounds into Carmel a week ago, and since then the shares have

gone up a half. Now, what do you advise me to do, Mr. Alington? Shall I

sell out, or not? I don't want to make such a mess as poor dear Kit did.

She really was _too_ stupid! She took no one's advice, and lost most

frightfully. Poor thing! she has no head. All her little nest-egg, she

told me. But I mean to put myself completely into your hands. Do you

expect Carmel will go higher?"

Mr. Alington stroked the back of his head, and tried hard to look genial

yet serious. But it was difficult. Lady Haslemere had closed the door

between them and the next room, and he could hear faintly and

regretfully those divine melodies on the Steinway grand. And here was

this esteemed lady, who was quite as rich as anyone need be--certainly

so rich as to be normally unconscious of the presence or absence of a

fifty-pound note--consulting him gravely (she had let her cigarette go

out in her anxiety) about these infinitesimal affairs. If she had had a

fortune at stake, he would willingly have given her his very best

attention, regretting only that Lady Devereux had chosen this moment for

playing Bach; but to be shut off from that exquisite treat for a small

sum affecting a woman who was not affected by small sums was trying.

"I can't undertake to advise you, Lady Haslemere," he said; "but I can

tell you what I have done myself: I have bought twenty-five thousand

shares in Carmel to-day, and have not the faintest intention of selling

out to-morrow."

Lady Haslemere clasped her hands. This was a flash of lightning against

her night-light.

"Good gracious! aren't you nervous?" she cried. "I shouldn't be able to

eat or sleep. Twenty-five thousand--and they've gone up three-eighths

to-day. Why, you've scored over nine thousand pounds since this

morning!"

"About that--if I sold, that is to say, which I don't mean to do."

"And so you are going to chance the mine going still higher?"

"Certainly. I believe in it. I also believe the price will rise very

considerably yet."

Lady Haslemere bit her lip; she was clearly summoning up all her powers

of resolution, and Mr. Alington for the moment felt interested. He was,

as he might have told you, a bit of an observer. Whether or no Lady

Haslemere won eleven pounds or fourteen he did not care at all, but that

she should care so much was instructive. Then she struck her knee

lightly with her fan.

"I shall not touch my three hundred," she said, and she turned on Mr.

Alington a face portentous with purpose.

Mr. Alington sat equally grave for a moment, but the corners of his

mouth lost their sedateness, and at last they both broke out laughing.

"Oh, I know how ridiculous it must seem to you," said Lady Haslemere;

"but if you have never earned a penny all your life, you have no idea

how extraordinarily interesting it is to do so. You may think that it

can't matter to me whether I gain ten pounds or lose twenty. But to gain

it oneself--oh, that is the thing!"

Mr. Alington smiled with peculiar indulgence. "Well, frankly, it is

inexplicable to me," he said. "Now, if you were playing for a large

stake I could understand it, though I seldom get excited myself. Well,

that is what I am going to do; I am going to play for a very big stake

indeed, and I confidently expect to turn up a natural. Have you anything

more to ask me?--for if not, and you will allow me, I shall go and

listen to Lady Devereux. I have been so much looking forward to hearing

her play again."

Lady Haslemere rose. She had wanted to have a general financial talk as

well about Chaffers and Brownhills and Modder B, but the oracle had

spoken about her grand _coup_, which was the main point.

"Yes, she plays divinely, does she not?" she said. "I knew Lady Devereux

would be a magnet to draw you here. How busy you must have been lately,

Mr. Alington! One has not seen you anywhere."

"Very busy indeed. But I intend to take a holiday after the Carmel deal

is over."

"A deal? Do you call it a deal?" she asked. "I always thought a deal

meant something rather questionable?"

Mr. Alington paused quite as long as usual before replying.

"Oh no; one uses 'deal' as quite a general term for an operation," he

said.

They went back into the other drawing-room, and Mr. Alington, with an

elaborate softness, drew a chair up near the piano. Lady Devereux played

with exquisite delicacy and sobriety, in the true spirit in which to

interpret that sweet, formal music. She did not thunder and thump, she

did not cover swift, catchy runs with the loud pedal, but let each note

fill its own minute, inevitable place. She did not extemporize a

_rallentando_ where passages were difficult, and make up for this by

hurrying over minims, or give you a general idea of a bar. She played

the music exactly as it was written with extreme simplicity. There were

some twenty people in the room, some whispering together (for Lady

Devereux played so well that nobody talked very loud when she was at the

piano), some smoking, some playing cards, some passing under their

breath the most screaming scandals; and the music was like a breath of

fresh air let into a stuffy room. And by the piano, with his sleek face

reposeful, beatific, and wearing an expression of sensual piety about

it, sat the only listener--a man whose soul was steeped in money, whose

God was Mammon, who could roll on like some Juggernaut-car over the

bodies of those he had ruined without one thought of pity or remorse.

Yet the melody enchained him; while it lasted he was a child--a child,

it is true, with respectable gray whiskers and an expansive baldness on

the head, but happy, heedless of anything else in the world except the

one exquisite tune, the one delicious moment.

Before long a baccarat table was made up, but he did not move from his

place by the piano. Lady Devereux, a pretty, good-natured woman, who got

on capitally with everybody except her husband, who, in turn, got on

admirably with or without her, was delighted to go on playing to him,

for she saw how real and how cultivated his enjoyment of her music was,

and though she lost charmingly at baccarat, she really preferred playing

even to one appreciative listener. She had an excellent memory, her

taste was his, and the two wandered long in the enchanted land of early

melody.

At last she rose, and with her Mr. Alington.

"I need not even thank you," he said; "for you know, I believe, what it

has been to me. You are going to play? Baccarat for Bach! Dear lady, how

shocking! I think I shall go home. I do not want to disturb the

exquisite memories. I shall remember this evening."

He stood for a moment with her hand in his. His face looked like the

representation of some realistic saint in bad stained glass.

"Good-night," he said. "And I, too, go and daub myself in actualities.

But at soul I am no realist."

It was a fine summer evening, fresh and caressing to the diner-out, and

he walked back from Berkeley Street slowly, with the musician ascendant

over the financier.

Of late he had been very much absorbed in business, and had heard hardly

any music, and thus this evening had been really an immense treat. After

all, there was nothing so essentially delightful to the bones and blood

of the man as this: he was still conscious that the passion for

money-making which was his, was, as he expressed it, with more fervour

than it was his wont to throw into his daily conversation, a daubing in

actualities; and to-night it was with a sense of distaste, rising almost

to repugnance, that he contemplated an hour at his desk. The work, he

knew, would bring its own consolations and rewards, but as he started

back he wished neither to be consoled nor rewarded. Of late, also, his

delight in the polished artifices of money-making had been on the wane;

for months now he had entertained, even in his hours of triumphant

finance, the idea of retiring altogether from business when once he had

brought to its inevitable climax this affair of the Carmel mines.

To-night this desire to concern himself no more in the jostle of the

Tokenhouse land was more than usually potent, taking almost the form of

resolve. Had an angel or devil, it mattered not which, offered him

success such as he anticipated in these mines upon the signing of a bond

that he would mine and motor no more, he would have signed. What

allurements had that peaceful picture! He would sell out (so he figured

to himself) his interest in all other businesses, invest his whole

fortune in something safe and reliable, perhaps even consols; he would

drop the Financial Times and take in the Musical Observer, and lead the

life that in sober earnest he at the moment utterly believed himself to

prefer. He had long been building a charming and palatially-simple

house in Sussex, where in his declining years he proposed to spend the

greater part of his time. There, with his prints, his music, and his

gardening, he would pass slow, charming, uneventful days. The "long dark

autumn evenings" would wean him from his garden-beds to his priceless

portfolios, the turning year entice him to his garden-beds again. He

would watch the jostle and the race for money with fatherly, Lucretian

unconcern. He was tired, he felt sure he was tired, of the eternal

struggle for what he held in sufficiency. How gross a parody of

existence was the present for a man of truly artistic tastes and

sensibilities! In ten days, if things went even passably well, he would

have made enough to enable him to gratify these tastes to the full, and,

soberly, he wanted no more than that. His beautiful home would be

habitable within the year. He would have enough to marry on, for he

fully intended to marry, since matrimony was a distinct factor in the

social world, and he could say, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for

many years." He was not given to excess of eating, drinking, or

merriment--all that was foreign to him--but he would certainly have a

string quartette belonging to his very complete establishment.

Mr. Alington had all the coolness in action which ensures success in

most human pursuits, from the art of war to the art of making money, and

the absence of which postulates a corresponding inefficiency in all

practical undertakings. He never lost his head, nor got either

frightened or _exalté_ when he was at his work; but the intervals, after

he had committed himself to some course of action, and before that

action had produced its fruits, were sometimes tense periods to him. He

went, no doubt, at forced draught when the great _coups_ were being

made, and after he had taken his headlong excursions Nature demanded a

readjustment, and his fibres were relaxed. These periods of relaxation

he usually tided over by the indulgence of his artistic tastes, which he

used as a man of less fine sensibilities might use morphia or alcohol.

But to-night the fugues and preludes so deftly exhibited by Lady

Devereux seemed only temporarily efficacious. For a while they moved

him, but he had not been home an hour when the effect wore off and left

him, financially speaking, staring wide-awake.

Again and again he reviewed the natural effect of what he had done, the

normal behaviour of the market towards the events which should be

developed next day. Already the prices of Carmel were rising; to-morrow

would come the announcement of strong support from Australia, and later

in the day the more specific news that Mr. Richard Chavasse--that

hard-headed operator--had bought to the extent of fifty thousand pounds.

Logically, for the money-market is as subject to logical conclusions as

any set of syllogisms, its prices must leap. News of the most

satisfactory description would continue to arrive from the mine; in a

day or two, in a week at the outside, the shares should stand at not

less than four to five--no feverish price, but well warranted, so

thought Mr. Alington, by its inherent excellence. There was no doubt

there would be some slight fall owing to realizations, but that, so he

imagined, would be only a temporary reaction. By settling-day, ten days

from now, his twenty-five thousand shares bought in England should be

worth more than four times their present value; his fifty thousand

pounds invested by Mr. Richard Chavasse something over two hundred

thousand. After that a firm good-bye to clamorous gold-getting.

He strolled backwards and forwards in his room, now stopping to look for

a moment at one of his beloved prints, now lighting a cigarette or

sipping a little mild whisky-and-soda. How admirably, he reflected, had

his Carmel group hitherto turned out! How alluring had been his board of

directors, how convincing to the public mind of the security of a scheme

to which hereditary legislators lent their honoured names! Already more

than one new board had copied his example, but it had been a great thing

to be first in the field; the novelty of the idea was half its success.

But now his noble colleagues might go hang, for all he cared; they had

served their turn and been his bell-wethers to the public. Jack

Conybeare, he knew, had followed him in this last Carmel speculation,

investing largely; he was a shrewd fellow, so thought Alington, and

would have made a good business man had not the onus of hereditary

obligations borne him elsewhere; and if he himself had been intending to

start new companies, he would not have been sorry to have him again on

his board--no mere name this time, but a man likely to be of practical

use.

Yes; indeed he had struck a vein! Though he believed that ninety per

cent. of success is due to effort and wisdom, he had got, like most

speculators, a secret faith in that "tide in the affairs of men." It was

impossible not to believe in strokes of luck; if things showed a general

tendency to prosper, it was well to put many things in hand at once. The

stars or some occult influence happened to be favourable just then; in

the remote, conjectured heavens there was a conjunction of planets of

notable benignity to you; it was your chance; the line was clear; hurry,

hurry, while it lasted! In the same way one had at other times to work

with sobbing steps through a mire of ill-luck. Perversity for the moment

characterized the universe; inanimate objects were malign; sheathed,

hooded presences waited to clutch you. Nothing went right; the images of

the gods were set awry; ominous mutterings were heard (not fancied) from

the shrine. Then was the time to venture little, not to ride

unmanageable horses, not to use new silk umbrellas, to go gently,

neither praising nor complaining, for fear of further provoking the

blind forces that strike; above all, not to think to repair ill-luck by

wild strokes. In the nature of this world things would come round; a

calm, dewy dawn would break on the low-roofed night. Wait!

For a year his good luck had held. People whom he wished to know had

been glad to know him; he was already much at home in London. Carmel

East and West had behaved with filial piety to their founder, and the

greater Carmel seemed likely to turn out a son as dutiful, but more

magnificent. His name would almost certainly be included in the list of

Birthday honours, for he had made himself most useful to the

Conservative party, and was contesting an impossible seat, for which it

had been really difficult to find a candidate, and he had given in a

princely manner to the party's funds. Recognition, he had reason to

believe, was almost certain, and he would be delighted to be a baronet.

Again that discreet rogue Mr. Richard Chavasse had played his part

admirably in the pleasant _rôle_ allotted to him. Like a person of

sense, he had accepted the soft inevitable, and had preferred to live

very comfortably at Melbourne rather than attempt to get away with the

large balance which stood to his name. He had not probably realized that

it would have been almost impossible for Mr. Alington to bring him to

justice, for the exposure of the "strong support in Australia" would

have been inevitable. Or perhaps some feeling of gratitude to his

benefactor had touched the accomplice of thieves; the criminal class had

been diminished by one--a pleasant thought. The arrangement, however,

had been a scheme of mutual advantage, and the man, at any rate, had

been sensible enough to see that. It would almost immediately be

necessary to think what must be done with that great operator, for

to-morrow's purchase would be his last. Mr. Alington, in a gentle glow

of charity, was determined to act most kindly to him; his confession

should be destroyed, and perhaps he should have a couple of hundred

pounds as well, and certainly some pious exhortations. Indeed, the only

eclipse of the lucky star had been the motor business. There were ugly

losses in his ledger over that--uglier than he had quite realized; but

Carmel should gently heal the sore places with a golden lotion.

Next morning came a very favourable report from the mine, and about

mid-day the news of the strong support in Australia. The price had been

opened at a little over thirty shillings, the mine was eagerly inquired

for, and for a couple of hours it rose steadily, and as it rose seemed

to get more and more in demand. Then one of those strange periodical

madnesses which sometimes affect that shrewd body the Stock Exchange

took possession. Everything else was neglected; it seemed that the whole

world contained only one thing worth buying, and that shares in Carmel.

Men bought and sold, and bought and sold again; now for half an hour

would come a run of realizations, and the price would sink like a

back-drawing wave in a swiftly advancing tide; but in another hour that

was forgotten; the tide had risen again, covering the lost ground, and

those who had realized were cursing their premature prudence, and bought

again. Steady-going, unemotional operators lost their heads and joined

in the wild skying of Carmel without a shred of justification, only

hoping that they would find everyone else a shade madder than they, and

that they would clear out on the top. Men sold at three and a half,

bought again at four, sold at four and a half, and were not yet content.

Nobody quite knew what was happening, except that they feverishly

desired shares in Carmel, and that those shares were getting every

moment more expensive. Bears who had sold ten minutes before came

tumbling over each other to secure their shares before they had gone up

out of sight, and having got them, as likely as not turned bulls and

bought again, on the chance of Carmel going higher, though half an hour

ago they had sold in the hope of its going lower. All day this went on,

and about an hour before the closing of the market Alington, reading the

tape record at his club, saw that the shares stood at five and a

half--higher than he had ever hoped they would go in a week.

For a moment he hesitated. If he chose, there was now within his grasp

all that he had been playing for. A hansom to the City; two careful

words to his broker, for the unloading must be done very swiftly; then

to his music and his baronetcy. In an hour the market would close till

Monday, for Saturday was a holiday; but before Monday, on the other

hand, would come fresh news from the mine. He debated with himself

intently for a moment, and as he waited the tape ticked under his hand.

"Carmel," it spelled out, "five and five-eighths, five and

three-quarters."

That was enough. For to-day nothing could stop the rise. There would be

time to sell on Monday morning.

He called for a hansom; he was going to spend from Friday till Monday in

the country, and not having more than enough time to catch the train,

drove straight to Waterloo, where his valet would meet him with his

luggage.

CHAPTER VIII

MR. ALINGTON LEAVES LONDON

Mr. Alington had never felt more at peace with himself, or in more

complete harmony with his environment (a crucial test of happiness),

than when he drove off to Waterloo from the doors of the Beaconsfield

Club, of which he had lately become a member, after reading the last

quotation of Carmel. All his life he had been working towards the

consummation which was now practically his. His desire was satisfied, he

had enough. A few forms only still remained to be put through, and he

would be finally quit of all markets. On Monday morning his broker would

sell for him every share he held in Carmel. On Monday morning, too,

would that shrewd operator, Mr. Richard Chavasse, follow, as if by

telepathic sympathy, the workings of Mr. Alington's mind, arriving at

the same just conclusions, and a close with the offer made him by the

Varalet Company in Paris for all the patents he owned in the motor

business _en bloc_--at a considerable sacrifice, it is true--completed

his financial career. Keen, active, and full of the most flattering

triumphs as had been his progress towards this acme of his fortunes, yet

he had never thought of it as anything but a progress, a road leading to

a goal. Never had he let the edge of his artistic sensibilities get

blunt or rusty from want of use, and he found, now that his more

material work was over, that he himself, the vital and essential man,

who dwelt in the financier, looked forward, like an eager youth on the

threshold of manhood, to the real and full life which he was about to

enter.

Humble thankfulness and grateful contentment with the dealings of

Providence with him was his also. He had fifty years behind him;

pleasant years and wholesome with hard work, during which he had used to

great advantage many excellent gifts. The business of his life hitherto

had been to make money; in that he had shown himself to be on the large

scale. But more essential to him throughout all these years had been his

growing artistic perceptions, his increasing love of beauty; that he

felt to be the reason and the spring of his happiness. In this regard he

had ever cultivated, with the assiduous patience born of love, his

natural taste. That keen appreciation of Palestrina and the early

melodists was no original birthright of his; it was a cultivated

pleasure; a pleasure, no doubt, of which the germ was inborn, but

cultivated to a high degree and with effort, because, simply, he

believed it to be his duty to make the most of a gift.

In this matter of duty he had often suffered much wrong. The charitable

impulse which had led him, one day in the spring, to draw so large a

cheque to Mr. Metcalfe, had been an unjust derision in Jack's mouth.

Alington really believed (and the most transcendent honesty cannot get

below a genuine belief) that part of that notable cheque should be

entered as a business transaction, part on the page devoted to charity.

He may have deceived himself, but he was not aware of it; he acted, as

far as he knew, with the most judicial fairness in the partition of its

entry.

But now for weeks past he had looked forward to the day when he should

pass out of the money-making world to a fairer and more melodious one.

He had no insane ambition to make inordinate wealth, nor to add a

million to his million; his wealth he had steadily regarded as a means

to an end, that end being the power to gratify his artistic tastes to

the full. He did not forget to pray at his _prie-dieu_ morning and

evening, nor had he forgotten it on the most feverish days of finance,

and he was at peace, imperfectly, no doubt, but, as far as his

capabilities went, perfectly, with regard to death and what lay beyond.

Meantime this life held for him much that was beautiful, much that was

wonderful. He desired to realize its wonder and beauty as completely as

possible. All his life he had been a getter of money, or so the world

held him. But now no more. On Monday morning all his connection with the

market would be severed, the real man should lead his real life.

These thoughts passed through his brain in a gentle glow of intimate

pleasure, as his hansom went briskly towards Waterloo. He was going to

spend this Friday till Monday with Mrs. Murchison, in her charming house

on the Winchester downs, where the invigorating unused air would make

more temperate this really tropical weather. A terrific heat-wave, from

a positively scalding sea, had drowned London these last few days; the

city had been a burning fiery furnace, and the consolation of being cast

there, of having got there unwillingly, was denied him, for the flames

had been of his own self-seeking. He might, indeed, as soon as he had

made the _grand coup_, three days ago, have left London, and waited for

the inevitable result in cool retirement, but this retreat from the

scene of action had been morally impossible to him. Never before, as far

as he remembered, had an operation so taken hold of him; never before

had the tickings of the tape, or the call-whistle of his telephone, been

of so breathless an urgency. Exciting as had often been the satisfaction

with which he had watched the climbing of a quotation from twos into

threes, or threes into fours, he could not recollect a restlessness so

feverish as that with which he had watched the rise of Carmel. For this

had been the _comble_ of all: the rise of the price meant to him a

perfect freedom from all future rises. To see Carmel quoted above five

had been equivalent to his emancipation from all that should hereafter

touch the nerves. Yet here was one weak spot. He had seen the quotation

of over five and a half ticked out by the tape, yet he had not instantly

sold. The old Adam in his case, as in so many others, had inconveniently

and inconsistently survived. He had not been able to resist the

temptation of wanting to be richer than he truly wanted to be. But in

order to cut himself off from any such weakness in the future, he

immediately pushed open the trap-door, and told his driver to stop at

the nearest telegraph office, and ten minutes after he had taken his

final step, wiring both to his broker in London, and in cipher to Mr.

Chavasse, at Melbourne, to sell out on Monday morning.

But this weakness was but inconsiderable. He had attained success all

down the line; the only wavering had been between completeness and more

than completeness. Here, as was natural, the instinct of years stepped

in. The habit of making ten pounds in complete safety was more potent

than the certainty of making nine. His own large purchase had heralded

the rise, the good news from the mine had shouted an endorsement, the

"strong support in Australia," the news of which had reached the market

with the infallible result so long foreseen by him, had put the seal on

certainty. The deal was beyond doubt.

At last and at last! This crippling of his life was over; he was free

from the necessity of money-making, free also, thank God! from the

desire. He no longer wanted more than he certainly had. How much can be

said of how few!

His inward happiness seemed reflected in all sorts of small external

ways. His horse was fast, his driver nimble at picking an unsuspected

way, and the porters at Waterloo, miraculously recovered from the

paralysis of the brain induced by Ascot week, not only were in accord as

to the platform from which his train would start, but, a thing far more

rare and precious, were one and all perfectly correct in their

information.

To Mr. Alington, though his nature was far removed from the cynical,

this seemed almost too good to be true, till, in his benignant strolls

up and down the line of carriages, he met his hostess, Mrs. Murchison.

She was feeling the heat acutely, but was inclined to be talkative.

"So you've come by the early train," she said. "Well, I call that just

friendly, and it's the early bird that catches the train, Mr. Alington,

and here we are. But the heat is such that if I was wicked and died this

moment, I fancy I should send for a thicker mantle, and that's a

chestnut. Lady Haslemere comes down by the four something, which slips a

carriage at Winchester--or is it five?--which I think perilous. They

cast you adrift, the Lord knows where, for I inquired about it, without

engine, and if you haven't got an engine, where are you? A straw

hat--that's just what we are going to be; a straw-hat party like Lady

Conybeare and the tea-gowns, and dinner in the garden."

"That will be delicious," said Mr. Alington after his usual pause.

"Dinner out of door is the only possible way of feeding without the

impression of being fed. I always----"

"Well, that's just beautifully put," interrupted Mrs. Murchison. "You

get so much all-fresco out of doors. And that's what I missed so much in

my last visit to America, where I stopped a fortnight nearly. The

set-banquet, with all the ceremonial of the Barmecides, like what Mr.

Murchison rejoices in, and the colour he turns over his dinner, seems to

me an utter nihilism of the flow of soul. Why, there's Lady Haslemere!

So she's caught the early bird too."

Lady Haslemere, according to her invariable habit, only arrived at the

station one minute before the starting of the train, in a great

condition of fuss, but she pressed Mr. Alington's hand warmly.

"You were quite right," she said: "I didn't sell out two days ago, and,

oh! the difference to me. I have just this moment sold at five and

three-quarters. Only think!"

"I congratulate you heartily," said Mr. Alington, with a smile of kind

indulgence; "I too am going to sell on Monday morning."

A shade of vexation crossed Lady Haslemere's face.

"Do you think it will go higher again?" she asked.

"A shade, very likely. But possibly it may react a little. I was in two

minds myself as to whether I should sell to-day."

Lady Haslemere's brow cleared.

"Oh, well, one can't always sell out at the very top," she said; "but it

will be annoying to me if it goes to six. Two hundred and forty times

five shillings. Ye-s."

"I think you have done very well," said Mr. Alington, with just a shade

of reproof in his voice.

The financier travelled in a smoking compartment, the two ladies in a

carriage to themselves, and as the train slid out towards Vauxhall high

among the house-roofs, Mr. Alington felt that in more than this literal

sense he was leaving London, that busy brain of the world, behind and

below him. And though his parting glances were certainly not regretful,

they were very kindly. He had been well treated by this inn at which he

had passed so many years, laboriously building his house and the

fortunes of his house. That was done; he needed hired chambers no

longer. The newsboys, who at this very station had looked on him as a

regular purchaser of the more financial of the evening papers, found him

to-day quite indifferent to their wares, and even the placard

"Extraordinary Scenes on the Stock Exchange" met an uninterested eye.

One boy, indeed, had been so accustomed to give him the Evening Standard

that, seeing his large profile against the carriage window before the

train started, had without request handed him in the paper. But Mr.

Alington pushed it gently aside.

"Not to-day, my lad--not to-day," he had said; "but here's your penny

for you."

The carriage was empty and, as London fell back behind the train, Mr.

Alington's spirits, usually so equable and so seldom falling below the

temperate figures of content, or rising into feverish altitudes, became

strangely light and buoyant. He had often wondered in anticipation how

this moment--the moment of casting off from him the chains of

fortune-building--would affect him. Exciting and exhilarating hours had

often been his; numerous had been the triumphs which his clear-sighted

scrutiny of the financial heavens had brought him. He had felt a real

passion for his pursuit; but the joy of the pursuit had never blinded

him to the fact that it was an object he was pursuing. He wanted a

certain amount of money, and he had now got it, and already the joy of

having attained had swallowed up the lesser joy of attaining. He had

often asked himself whether the habit and the desire of obtaining were

not becoming too integral a part of him; whether, when his purpose was

achieved, he would not feel suddenly let down--put out of employment. If

that should prove to be so, he felt that his life would largely be a

failure: he would have elevated the means into the end.

But the moment had come; it was his now, and he knew within himself that

he had kept clear of so deplorable an error. He felt like a boy leaving

school after a successful term, having won, and having deserved to win,

some arduously-reached distinction. The thought gave gaiety to his

glance: his eye sparkled unwontedly, he had a mind to dance. But the

mood deepened; the surface gaiety became transformed into a thankfulness

of a far more vital kind, and as the train devoured the miles between

Clapham Junction and Waterloo, he knelt down on the dusty carpet of his

carriage, and, with bared head and closed eyes, he thanked God for

having given him the brain and the will to succeed, and, during that

pursuit of the transient stuff, for not having let his heart be hardened

at the daily touch of gold. Money-making, in the moment of this success,

he still saw to be not an end in itself. The danger of that insidious

delusion he had escaped. And before he rose he registered a vow to use

the fortune of which he had thus been made steward temperately and

wisely.

A large party was going to gather at Mrs. Murchison's next day, but till

then there would only be the three who had come down by this train, and

four or five more who had proposed to embark on the danger of the

slip-carriage train, which would, if it ever came to port, land them in

Winchester in time for dinner.

Mr. Alington had eagerly accepted the earlier invitation, in order that

he might spend the Saturday in examining the monuments and antiquities

of the old town. He had brought with him a compendious green guide to

the city, and having mastered its principal contents in the train, he

was able to point out to the ladies the buildings of interest which they

passed in their drive out. The college, above all, attracted his

benevolent gaze, and his pale-blue eyes grew dim as they rolled by those

lines of gray wall, the dimpling river which crossed beneath the road,

the mellow brick of the Warden's house, and the delicate grace of the

chapel tower, which dominated and blessed the whole.

"A priceless heritage! A priceless heritage!" he murmured. "Nothing can

make up to me for not having been to one of the great public schools.

The boys seem careless enough, heedless enough, God bless them!" he

said, as a laughing mob of them streamed out of the college gate; "but

the gracious influences are entering and working in them every day,

every hour, forming an unsuspected foundation for the after-years. The

peace and the coolness of this sweet corner of the world is becoming a

part of them. All that I have missed--all that I have missed!"

He sighed softly, while Lady Haslemere yawned elaborately behind her

hand. But the elaborate yawn ended in a perfectly natural laugh.

"Dear Mr. Alington," she said, "you are quite deliciously unexpected and

appropriate. For you to be discontented with your lot is a splendid

absurdity. I would have lived in a suburb all my life if to-day I could

have sold your number of Carmel shares at the price I got."

Mr. Alington looked at her a moment, pained but forbearing.

"So would I," he said. Then, leading the talk away from anything so

intimate to him, "Ah, that delicious stretch of water-meadow!" he said.

"There is no green so vivid and delicate as that of English fields. And

hark to the cool thunder of the weir."

A far-away rapture illumined his stout face, and Mrs. Murchison, who had

made a speciality of Nature, struck in:

"There is a solidarity about English landscape which I do not find in

our country," she said. "Like Mr. Alington, I could listen to that weir

till I became an octogeranium. 'Peace with plenty,' as Lord Beaconsfield

used to say. I was down at Goring yesterday with dear Lily, and we sat

on the lawn till midnight, or it might have been later, and I had a long

discussion with Jack Conybeare about the duties of the London County

Council. Most rural and refreshing it was! Ah, dear me!"

Mrs. Murchison sighed, not because she was sad, but because her feelings

outstripped her power of expression.

"So green and beautiful!" she murmured, as a sort of summary.

Lady Haslemere put up her parasol, extinguishing the view for miles

round.

"Mr. Alington, do give me a hint as to what to go for next week. Will

there be a rise in South Africans, do you think?"

The rapture died from Mr. Alington's face, but it gave place to a purely

benignant expression. He shook his head gently.

"I cannot say," he answered. "I have followed nothing during these last

weeks except the fortunes of Carmel. But any broker will advise you,

Lady Haslemere."

Mrs. Murchison's house stood high on the broad-backed down, to the south

of the town, and up at this height there was a wonderful freshness in

the air, and the heat was without the oppressiveness of London. A vast

stretch of rolling country spread out on every side, and line upon line

of hills followed each other like great waves into the big distance.

Though the drought had been so severe, the reservoirs of the sub-lying

chalk had kept the short, flower-starred grass still green, and the

long-continued heat had not filched from it its exquisite and restful

colour.

Alington took off his hat and let the wind lift his rather scanty hair.

It was an extreme pleasure to him to get out from the overheated

stagnation of London streets into this unvitiated air, and he wondered

at the keenness of his enjoyment. He had never been a great lover of

the country, but it seemed to him to-day as if a heavy accumulation of

years had been lifted off him, disclosing capacities for enjoyment which

none, himself perhaps least of all, had suspected could be his. He

gently censured himself in this regard. He had made a mistake in thus

stifling and shutting up so pure and proper a source of pleasure. He

would certainly take himself to task for this, and put himself under the

tuition of country sights and sounds.

They had tea under the twinkling shade of a pine copse at the end of the

lawn, and presently after Mr. Alington again took his straw hat, with

the design of a stroll in the fresh cool of the approaching evening. The

other two ladies preferred to enjoy it in inaction, waiting for the

arrival of the adventurous slip-carriage guests, about whose fate Mrs.

Murchison reiterated her anxiety.

So Mr. Alington, secretly not ill-pleased, started alone. He was about

half-way down the drive, when he met a telegraph-boy going towards the

house, and, in his expansive, kindly manner, detained him a moment with

a few simple questions as to his name and age. Finally, just as he

turned to walk on, he asked him for whom he was delivering a telegram,

and the boy, drawing it out of his pouch, showed him the address.

Mr. Alington opened it slowly, wondering, as he had often wondered

before, why the envelope was orange and the paper pink. It was from his

brokers, and very short; but he looked for some considerable time at the

eight words it contained:

"Terrible panic in Carmels. Shares unnegotiable.

Wire instructions."

At first he read it quite blankly; it seemed to him that the words,

though they were simple and plain enough, conveyed nothing to his mind.

Then suddenly a huge intense light, hot and dazzling beyond description,

appeared to have been uncovered somewhere in his brain, and the words

burned and blinded him. He let the pink paper fall, bowing and sidling

on the gravel of the drive, then stooped down with a curious groping

manner and picked it up again. He put it neatly back inside the

envelope, and asked the boy for a form, on which he scribbled a few

words.

"Do nothing," he wrote. "I will come up immediately."

He gave the boy a shilling, waving away the change, and then, going to

the grassy bank that bounded the drive, he sat down. Except for that

moment, when his brain, no doubt instantaneously stunned, refused to

tell him the meaning of the words, it had been absolutely composed and

alert. The telegram gave no hint as to the cause of this panic, but

without casting about for other possibilities, he put it down at once to

his one weak point, Mr. Chavasse. That determined, he gave it no further

thought, but wondered idly and without much interest what he felt. But

this was beyond him. He had no idea what he felt, except that he was

conscious of a slight qualm of sickness, so slight and so purely

physical, to all seeming, that he would naturally have put it down, had

it not appeared simultaneously with this news, to some small error of

diet. Otherwise his brain, though perfectly clear and capable of

receiving accurate impressions, was blank. There was a whisper of

fir-trees round him, and little points of sunlight flickered on the

yellow gravel of the drive as the branches stirred in the wind. Lady

Haslemere's voice sounded thin and high from the lawn near--he had

always remarked the unpleasant shrillness of her tones--and his straw

hat had fallen off. He was conscious of no dismay, no agony of regret

that he had not sold out two hours ago, no sense of disaster.

He sat there five minutes at the outside, and then went back to the

lawn. The ladies looked up in surprise at the quickness of his return,

but neither marked any change in his sleek features nor uncertainty in

his step. His voice, too, when he spoke, was neither hurried, unsteady,

nor differently modulated.

"Mrs. Murchison," he said, "I have just received the worst news

about--about a venture of mine, which is of some importance. In fact,

there has been, I fear, a great panic on the Stock Exchange over Carmel.

May I be driven back to the station at once? It is necessary I should

return to London. It is a great regret to me to miss my visit. Lady

Haslemere, I congratulate you on your promptitude in selling."

He stood there bland and respectable for a moment, while Mrs. Murchison

murmured incoherent sympathy, surprised at the extraordinary ease with

which polite commonplace rose to his lips. The courteous necessary words

seemed to speak themselves, without any direction from him. The blow

that had fallen upon him must, he thought, have descended internally,

for his surface behaviour seemed as equable as ever. He was conscious

only of the continuance of the qualm of sickness, and of a little

uncertainty in movement and action.

He had intended, for instance, as far as he intended anything, to go

away as soon as he had said good-bye, and wait for the carriage alone.

But he found himself lingering; his feet did not take him away, and he

wondered why. His straw hat was in his hand, and he fanned himself with

it, though he did not feel hot. Perceiving this, yet still holding it,

he stopped fanning, and bit the rim gently; then, aware that he was

doing that, he put it on again.

"So good-bye," he said for the second time. "Ah, Lady Haslemere, you

asked me for a tip. Well, if this panic is really serious--and I have no

doubt it is--buy Carmels at the lower price, for all you are worth, if

you have the nerve. I assure you that you cannot find a better

investment. Good-bye, good-bye again. Perhaps--oh no, it doesn't

signify. May I order the carriage, then, Mrs. Murchison? Thank you so

much!" He lifted his hat, turned, and went to the house.

CHAPTER IX

THE SLUMP

The London evening papers that day were full of the extraordinary scenes

that had taken place on the Stock Exchange. Before the opening of the

market that morning Carmel had been eagerly inquired for, owing to the

activity produced by the very extensive purchases on the day before, and

an hour before mid-day news had been cabled from Australia that there

was very strong support in the market there for the same, Mr. Richard

Chavasse alone having purchased fifty thousand pounds' worth of the

shares. Closely following on this came news from the mine itself: the

last crushing had yielded five ounces to the ton, and a new, unsuspected

reef had been struck. The combination of these causes led to one of the

most remarkable rises in price ever known. The market (so said one

correspondent) completely lost its head, and practically no business was

done except by the mining brokers. The shares that day had started a

little above thirty shillings, and by four o'clock they had reached the

astounding figure of £5 12s. 6d. A well-known broker who had been

interviewed on the subject said that never in the course of a long

experience had he known anything like it. Sober, steady dealers, in his

own words, went screaming, raving mad. A boom in Westralian gold, it is

true, had long been expected, but nothing could account for this

extraordinary demand. No doubt the fact that Mr. Alington had purchased

largely the day before had prepared the way for it, for he was

considered among mining operators the one certain man to follow.

But the sequel to this unparalleled rise was even more remarkable.

Buying, as had been stated, was much stimulated by the news of strong

support in Australia (indeed, it was this that had been the signal for

the rush); but about four o'clock, when the shares were at their

highest, and some considerable realizations were being made, though the

buying still went on, a sudden uneasiness was manifested. This was due

to the fact that the telegram announcing the strong support in Australia

was contradicted by another and later one, saying that the market in

Carmel was absolutely inactive. Upon this, first a general distrust of

the telegrams from the mine itself was manifested, and then literally in

a few minutes a panic set in, as unaccountable as the previous rise;

business came to a standstill, for in half an hour everyone was wanting

to sell Carmel, and buyers could not be found. A few of the heaviest

plungers cleared out, with thousands to their credit, but the majority

of holders were caught. The shares became simply unnegotiable. The

market closed on a scene of the wildest confusion, and when the Exchange

was shut the street became impassable. To a late hour a mob of excited

jobbers continued trying to sell, and just before going to press came a

report that Mr. Alington, who had left town that day, but suddenly

returned, was picking up all the shares he could lay hands on at a

purely nominal figure. Settling-day, it would be remembered, occurred

next week. A committee of the Stock Exchange was going to investigate

the matter of the false telegram.

Kit and Jack had come down to Goring that day to join Toby and his wife

there. Kit was steadily gaining strength, but this evening, being a

little tired, she had gone to bed before dinner, and now, dinner being

just over, Lily had left the others to see how she was. Neither Jack nor

Toby was given to sitting over wine, and as soon as Lily went upstairs,

they removed into the hall to smoke. The evening paper had just come in,

and Jack took it up with some eagerness, for his stake in Carmel was a

large one. He read through the account of what had taken place quite

quietly, and leaned back in his chair thinking. Unlike Lady Haslemere, a

few nights ago, he did not let his cigarette go out. At length he spoke.

"I expect I have gone smash, Toby," he said. He threw him over the

paper. "Read the account of what happened to-day on the Stock Exchange,"

he added.

Toby did not reply, but took the paper.

"The only thing to be thankful for is that I didn't sell out just before

the panic," remarked Jack.

Toby read on in silence till he had finished it.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because it would look as if I had known that the first telegram was

false. What extraordinary nerve Alington must have! Do you see that he

has been buying every share he can lay hands on?"

"I don't understand about the first telegram," said Toby.

"Nor do I, thank God!"

"Supposing it is a real smash, will you have lost much, Jack?"

"Eight thousand pounds--more than that, indeed, unless the price goes up

again before settling-day, for I've only paid for about half my shares."

Toby was silent a moment, wondering how Jack had ever had eight thousand

pounds to invest of late years. The latter understood the silence, and

acknowledged the justice of his difficulty.

"I made three thousand over Carmel East and West," he explained. "That

with my year's salary as director, makes eight. I invested it all, and

bought more."

Toby looked up.

"Did that fellow give you five thousand a year as director?" he asked.

"That fellow did."

Toby whistled.

"A committee of the Stock Exchange is going to investigate the whole

affair, it appears," he said. "Won't that be rather unpleasant if they

get into salaries?"

"Exceedingly. Mind you don't let Kit know, Toby, until one has more

certain news."

He took a turn up and down the room in silence.

"Extremely annoying," he said, with laudable moderation; "and I can't

imagine what has happened, or who is responsible for the first telegram.

Alington cannot have caused it to be sent merely to make the market

active, for it was certain to be contradicted."

A man came into the room with a telegram on a salver, and handed it to

Jack.

"Reply paid, my lord," he said.

Jack turned it over in his hand without opening it, unable to make the

effort. Then he suddenly tore it open, and unfolded the thin pink

sheet. It was from Alington.

"Can you meet me to-morrow morning at my rooms, St. James's

Street?" it ran.

He scribbled an affirmative, and gave it back to the man.

"I shall have to go up to-morrow," he said to Toby; "Alington wants me

to meet him in London; I shall go, of course. What a blessing one is a

gentleman, and doesn't scream and sweat! Now, not a word to anyone; it

may not be as bad as it looks."

Jack started off early next morning, and drove straight to Alington's

rooms. Sounds of piano-playing came from upstairs, and this somehow gave

him a sense of relief. "People _in extremis_ do not play pianos," he

said to himself, as he mounted the stairs. Alington got up as soon as he

came in.

"I am glad you were able to come," he said; "it was expedient--necessary

almost--that I should see you."

"What has happened?" asked Jack.

Mr. Alington took a telegram from his pocket, and handed it to him.

"The unexpected--it always does: this, in fact."

Jack took it and read:

"Chavasse left for England by P. and O. yesterday."

"You don't understand, my dear Conybeare, do you?" he said. "It is a

very short story, and quite a little romance in its way."

And, in a few words, he told Jack the story of the burglary, Chavasse's

confession, and his idea of using him as an independent operator in

Australia.

"I make no doubt what has occurred," he said. "The man has drawn out the

somewhat considerable balance I left at Melbourne for him to invest when

ordered, and has taken it off with him. He has also, I expect, got hold

of his own confession--a clever rogue."

"But the telegram?" asked Jack. "Who sent the telegram about the strong

support in Australia?"

Mr. Alington opened his mild eyes to their widest.

"I, my dear fellow!" he said; "at least, of course I caused it to be

sent. As usual, two days ago, I despatched one cipher telegram to this

valet of mine, telling him to invest, and another to my manager telling

him to wire, 'Strong support in Australia.' He did as I told him;

Chavasse did not. That is all."

Jack was silent a moment, but it did not take him long to grasp the

whole situation, for it was very simple.

"And what next?" he said.

Alington shrugged his shoulders.

"Unless the shares go up again before next settling-day, I shall almost

certainly be bankrupt," he said.

"Then why, if the papers were correctly informed, did you go on buying

last night?"

"Because I could get Carmel dirt cheap," he said. "If they go up, I am

so much the richer; if they do not, I am done in any case. This

unfortunate _contretemps_ about my foolish valet does not affect the

value of the mine. The gold is there just the same."

"But nobody will believe that," put in Jack.

"For the present, as you say--for the immediate present--they will not

realize it. They will think themselves lucky to part with their shares

enormously below their value. My fortune depends on how soon they

realize it."

"There will be an inquiry into the matter?"

"Undoubtedly. Bogus telegrams are not officially recognised by the Stock

Exchange."

Alington was certainly at his best, so thought Jack, when things

happened. His sleek, unhurried respectability, a little trying and

conventional at ordinary times, though unaltered in itself, became

admirable, a rare manifestation of self-control. No flurried quickening

marked his precise, unhurried sentences; they remained just as leisurely

as ever. As in the days when Carmel East and West was behaving in so

mercurial a manner, though so consonantly with his wishes, so now, when

the greater _coup_ had struck so back-handedly against himself, he did

not cease to be imperturbably calm and lucid. Though without breeding in

the ordinary sense of the word, he had to a notable extent that most

characteristic mark of breeding, utter absence of exaltation in

unexpected prosperity and complete composure in disaster. There was

nothing affected about him; he was, as always, unimpulsive master of

himself, and this, which in the social mill seemed a lack of animation,

in the mill of adversity became a thing to respect.

"You take it very quietly," said Jack.

"It is mere habit," said Alington. "By the way, I hope, my dear fellow,

that your wife is better?"

"Much better, thanks. We went to Goring yesterday."

"So I saw in the papers. How much had you in Carmel?"

"Eight thousand pounds cash. And half of my shares I have bought only,

not paid for."

"Ah! will that be a difficulty?"

"More like an impossibility, unless they go up before settling-day."

"I am sorry for that," said Alington, "for I should have recommended

your buying even more. I am going to bluff the thing out. I am going to

buy and buy. Chavasse may go hang. I shall make no attempt to get him or

his--my--fifty thousand pounds."

"Fifty thousand!" exclaimed Jack involuntarily.

"Fifty thousand! Indeed, I could not before the ship touches at the

Cape. But if I buy, and am known to be buying, it is still conceivable

that confidence may be restored, that the damage done by that absurd,

unreasonable panic yesterday may be repaired. I don't say that the rush

for shares was not insane, but the panic was not less so. And now, my

dear fellow, I congratulate you on the way you have taken it. You would

make a financier. _Æquam memento rebus in arduis!_ How Horace has the

trick of stating simple things inspiritingly! A divine gift."

"But what do you suppose they will find out at the inquiry?" asked Jack.

"Ah, you need not fear the inquiry in the least. That will not touch

your salary as director, which is the sort of thing which I see you have

on your mind. No. What would perhaps be serious for you is, if I became

bankrupt. Then, it is true, my private accounts where your salary

figures would be made public. The surest means of avoiding that is that

shares should go up again before settling-day. It is with this view I am

buying now; with this view I should recommend you to desperate

measures! Desperate? Oh, certainly! But I must remind you that the case

is fairly so. I see it is lunch time. You will lunch here, of course?"

Kit had not yet risen when Jack went up to London that morning, and she

found Lily alone in the garden when she came down. Her illness had left

her very weak and frail, and though she was getting on rapidly, she felt

very different from the Kit who, a few weeks ago, would dress twenty

times a day for twenty engagements, and sit up half the night with

baccarat. Physically and mentally, she had been much jarred by a very

sudden and startling pull-up. All her life she had been content to go

drifting giddily along, asking only of the moment that it should amuse

her; and in those days when she lay in the darkened room it seemed as if

somebody, not herself, had asked her some serious and frightening

questions. At any rate, she had a scare, if no worse, and she felt

disposed to go cautiously. Out of she knew not where had leaped the

forces that strike, that pay the wages of all action, of sin, of virtue,

of justice and injustice, and to her had wages been given. She had heard

of such things before; cant phrases of childhood reminded her that one

reaped as one had sown, that causes lead to effects, but until now she

had not any more certain news of them. But during those three days of

semi-consciousness, in which she had clung instinctively to Lily, it was

as if some piece of herself, dormant and overlaid for the most part by

the entertainment of ordinary every-day living, had, in the disablement

of that, reasserted itself, and now that she was winning her way back to

normal conditions this new consciousness had not been stilled again.

Lily, whom she had hitherto regarded as enviably rich, rather proper and

_guindée_, had touched some chord in her which did not cease to vibrate.

Of all people in the world, Kit would, _à priori_, have considered her

the one who would naturally have shunned her. Hitherto she had regarded

her, viewed by any intimate standard, with all the complete indifference

with which people who do not consider themselves good look upon those

whom they regard as being so, and the sinner is always sublimely

incurious of the attitudes and actions of the saint. But Lily had come

to her in her need; _guindée_ as she might be, she had yet been a

comfort and an encouragement to her in the hopelessness of her

desolation, just as if she was not, as Kit supposed she must be, shocked

at her. Afterwards, during her convalescence, for days a secret fear had

beset Kit that the moment would come when Lily would talk to her

seriously, "jaw her," as she put it to herself--very sweetly and gently,

no doubt, but still "jaw" her. That would spoil it all. But day had

added itself to day, and the "jaw" was still unspoken. Lily was only

more patient with her than anyone, and more comfortable. She was not

amusing, but Kit for once did not want to be amused. Her presence was

pleasant; it was what Kit wanted, and this gave her food for thought.

More than once, again, during those darkened days Kit had broken down,

cried herself nearly hysterical, and it was Lily who had soothed her

back from the borders of insanity. She had not asked after the state of

Kit's soul, or urged repentance on her; she had not been improving, or

told her that pain was sent her for a good reason. Once, indeed, as we

have seen, she had prayed with her, and Kit, who would naturally have

screamed at such an idea, or told all her friends what liberties a quite

nice sister-in-law sometimes took, did neither. She found--it may have

been imagination--that it did her good. All these things she had

revolved secretly, but often, while they were staying at Goring, and

they seemed to her significant. Her mind, indeed, used them as its

ordinary provender, going to graze on them habitually.

Lily and Toby were off next day, and when Kit came down on the Sunday

morning following Jack's departure to London, she had determined to talk

to Lily. It struck her as odd that three weeks ago she should have been

so nervous that Lily was going to talk to her, whereas now she herself

was about to give her an intentional opportunity of doing so. Also

to-morrow she would be left alone with Jack, who would return then, and

sooner or later she and he would have to talk. Hitherto both of them had

avoided the one subject which filled their minds: while in London it was

an ever-present dread to each that some day this must come, each

continually apprehensive that the other would begin, yet half longing to

get it over. Both knew that the thing had to be talked out, there was no

getting over that; nor was it any use waiting till the narcotic

accumulation of time should dim the memories of that scene when Kit had

told him all, and been answered by a blow. There are certain things

which no lapse of time will ever cover: this was one. Words had to pass

between them, and what those words should be neither could guess. Here

was another reason why Kit wanted to be talked to by Lily.

They walked up and down the lawn for a few minutes, speaking of

indifferent things, and Lily made some reference to her leaving on the

next day.

"And I shall be alone with Jack," said Kit simply, but with purpose.

"Yes," said the other. Then, after a pause: "You must have things to say

to each other, Kit. Jack told Toby yesterday he had hardly had a word

with you since you were ill."

Kit stopped.

"I dread it," she said, "and I know it must come. But, Lily, what is to

be said on either side? what can be said?"

"Ah, it's no use thinking over what you are going to say," said Lily.

"You will say what you must, what you feel."

"I don't know what I feel," said Kit. "Let us sit down; it is warm. And

I want to talk to you."

They sat down on a garden-seat, shaded by the fan-branched cedar and

looking out over the haze of summer sunshine and the slow, strong river.

"I don't know what I feel," said Kit again.

"Try to tell me as best you can," said Lily quietly.

"Well, I won't be dishonest with myself, I am sure of that," said Kit.

"Just now I have a horror of what--of what is past. But how can I know

from what it springs? It may be only because the terrible consequences

are still vivid to me. I have been wicked all my life--it is no use

pretending otherwise. I have never tried to do good or to be good. Well,

I get paid out for a bad thing I have done. Is it not most probable that

I have a horror of it only because the punishment is very fresh to me?"

"That is something," said Lily. "If punishment makes you detest what you

did, it is doing its work."

"Ah, but the burglar who is caught doesn't detest burglary, really. He

may not commit it again, but that is a very different matter. You beat a

dog for chasing a cat; when it sees a cat next time, it probably will

put its tail down, but you have not eradicated its tendencies, or

changed its nature."

Kit paused. She was groping about helplessly in her dim-lit soul.

"You are a good woman, Lily," she said. "You don't and you can't

understand a person like me. Oh, my dear, I should never have got

through it but for you! I want to be good--before God, I believe I want

to be good, but I don't know what it means. I can only say that I will

not do certain things again. But how feeble is that! I want to see Ted

again--oh, how I want to!--but I believe that I want not to. Is that any

good? I want to love Jack again. I did once, indeed I did, and I want

him to love me. That is hopeless: he never will."

Lily was puzzled. Kit's difficulties seemed, somehow, so elementary that

explanation was impossible. But she knew that it was only through the

acknowledgment and the facing of them that her salvation lay. Kit was a

child in matters of morals, and perfectly undeveloped; but, luckily,

plain simplicity is the one means by which to approach children. Tact,

finesse, all the qualities which Kit had and she had not were unneeded

here.

"Kit, dear, it doesn't matter, so to speak, whether Jack loves you or

not," she said. "Anyhow, it doesn't concern what you must do. Oh, you

will not find things easy, and I never heard that one was intended to.

You will find a thousand things you want to do, and must not, a thousand

things you must do which are hard--harder than the old bazaar-opening,

Kit. I am assuming, of course, that, on the whole, you want to be good.

There is the great thing, broadly stated."

Kit nodded her head.

"I don't know. I suppose I do," she said.

"Well, there is no master key to it," said Lily. "Separately and simply

you have to take each thing, and do it or avoid it. You will need

endless patience. I don't want to preach to you, and I don't know how;

but you have asked me to help you. Your life has been passed in a

certain way: you have told me certain things about it. On the whole, you

wish the future to be different. Forget the past, then--try to forget

it. Do not dwell on it: it is a bad companion. It will only paralyze

you, and you need all your power for what lies in front of you."

"Do you mean I must renounce the world, and all that?" asked Kit.

"No, nor go into a nunnery. You have a duty towards Jack. Do it; above

all, keep on doing it, every day and always. Consider whether there are

not many things, harmless in themselves, which lead to things not

harmless. Avoid them."

"Don't flirt, you mean?" said Kit quite sincerely.

Lily paused a moment. There was a certain coarse simplicity about Kit

which was at once embarrassing and helpful. Never were appearances more

misleading; for Kit, with her pallor and exquisite face, looked the very

image of a refined woman of the world, one who lived aloof from the

grossness of life, yet of fine and complicated fibre. Instead, as far as

present purposes were concerned, she was as ignorant as a child, but

without innocence. She had lost the latter without remedying the

former.

"Certainly don't flirt," she said; "but don't do a great deal more than

that. Remember that you are a certain power in the world--many people

take their tone from such as you--and let that power be on the right

side. One knows dimly enough what goodness is, but one knows it

sufficiently. I don't want you to be a raving reformer: that is not in

your line. Set your face steadily against a great many things which are

commonly done by the people among whom you move."

"The things I have done all my life," said Kit.

"Yes, the things you have done all your life."

Kit sat silent, and the gentleness of her face to this straight speech

was touching. At last she looked up.

"And will you help me?" she asked. "Oh, Lily! I have been down into

hell. And I didn't believe in it till I went there. But so it is--an

outer darkness."

She said it quite simply and earnestly, without bitterness, or the

egotism which want of reticence so often carries with it. Round them

early summer was bright with a thousand blossoms and melodies; the

mellow jangle of church bells was in the air; the time of the

singing-bird had come.

"But I can't feel--I am numb. I don't know where to go, or where I am

going," she went on, her voice rising. "I only know that I don't want to

go back to the life I have hitherto led; but there is nothing else. The

great truths--God, religion, goodness--which mean so much, so everything

to you, are nothing to me. I feel no real desire to be good, and yet I

want to be not wicked. One suffers for being wicked. I can get no higher

than that."

"Stick to that, dear Kit," said Lily. "I can tell you no more. Only I

know--I know that, if one goes on doing the thing one believes to be

best, even quite blindly, the time comes that one's eyes are slowly

opened. Out of the darkness comes day. One sees from where one has come.

Then one look, and on again."

"But for ever, till the end of one's life?" asked Kit.

"Till the end of one's life. And the effort to behave decently has a

great reward, which is decent behaviour."

"And Jack--what am I to say to Jack?"

"All you feel."

"Jack will think it so queer," said Kit.

"You did not see Jack when you were at your worst that afternoon. Oh,

Kit! it is an awful thing to see the helpless anguish of a man. He will

not have forgotten that."

"Jack in anguish?" asked Kit.

"Yes; just remember that it was so. Here's Toby. I thought he was at

church. What a heathen my husband is!"

Toby strolled up, with his pipe in his mouth.

"I meant to go to church," he said; "but eventually I decided to

take--to take my spiritual consolation at home."

"I, too, Toby," said Kit.

CHAPTER X

TOBY DRAWS THE MORAL

Toby was sitting in the smoking-room of the Bachelors' Club some weeks

later on a hot evening in July. The window was open, and the hum of

London came booming in soft and large. It was nearly midnight, and the

tide of carriages had set westward from the theatres, and was flowing

fast. The pavements were full, the roadway was roaring, the season was

gathered up for its final effort. Now and then the door opened, and a

man in evening dress would lounge in, ring for a whisky-and-soda, and

turn listlessly over the leaves of an evening paper, or exchange a few

remarks with a friend. As often as the door opened Toby looked up, as if

expecting someone.

It had already struck midnight half an hour ago when Jack entered. He

looked worried and tired, and by the light of a match for his cigarette,

which he lit as he crossed the room to where Toby was sitting, the lines

round his eyes, noticed and kindly commiserated a few months before by

Ted Comber, seemed deeper and more harshly cut. He threw himself into a

chair by Toby.

"Drink?" asked the other.

"No, thanks."

Toby was silent a moment.

"I'm devilish sorry for you, Jack," he said at length. "But I see by the

paper that it is all over."

"Yes; they finished with me this afternoon. Alington will have another

week of it. Jove! Toby, for all his sleekness and hymn-singing, he is an

iron fellow! He's got some fresh scheme on hand, and he's going about it

with all his old quiet energy, and asked me to join him; but I told him

I'd had enough of directorships. But there's a strong man for you! He is

knocked flat, he picks himself up and goes straight on."

He picked up the paper, and turned to the money-market.

"And here's the cruel part of it all," he said, "for both of us: Carmel

is up to four pounds again. If they had only given him another month, he

would have been as rich as ever, instead of having to declare

bankruptcy; and I--well, I should have had a pound or two more. Lord! on

what small things life depends!"

Toby was silent.

"About the Park Lane house," he said, after a pause. "I talked it over

with Lily, and if you'll let us have it at that price, we shall be

delighted to take it. We only have our present house on a yearly lease,

which expires in July."

"You're a good fellow, Toby."

"Oh, that's all rot!" said Toby. "Lily and I both want your house. It

isn't as if we were doing you a kindness--it isn't really, Jack. But

it's such rough luck on you having to turn out. Of course, you and Kit

will always come there whenever you like."

Jack lit another cigarette, flicking the end of the old one out of the

window.

"I think I will have a drink, Toby," he said; "my throat is as dry as

dust answering so many pertinent and impertinent questions, as to what I

received as director, and what I made over Carmel East and West. They

let me off nothing, and the Radical papers will be beautiful for the

next week or two. They'll be enough to make one turn Radical."

"Poor old Jack! Whisky? Whisky-and-soda, waiter--two. Well, it's all

over."

"Ted Comber was in court to-day," continued Jack, "all curled, and dyed,

and brushed, and manicured. He watched me all the time, Toby. Upon my

word, I think that was the worst part of the whole show."

Toby showed his teeth for a moment.

"I've made it up with him, I'm sorry to say," he remarked. "Lily

insisted on it. We shook hands, and I was afraid he was going to kiss

me."

"By the way, how is Lily?"

"Happy as a queen when I left her this morning, and the boy, oh! Jack, a

beauty. He was shouting fit to knock the house down: you could have

heard him in Goring. I left early, but Kit got up and breakfasted with

me. Knowing how she hates getting up early, I put that down at its

proper value. But she didn't attend to me much: she has no thoughts

except for Lily and the boy."

"Kit has behaved like a real trump all through this," said Jack. "Never

a word or a look of reproach to me. She's just been cheery, and simple,

and splendid. You know, Toby, she is utterly changed since--since that

time before Easter. We had a long talk the day after you and Lily left

us there two months ago. I was never so surprised in my life."

"At what?"

"At what she said, and at what I said--perhaps most of what I said. She

told me she was going to try not to be such a brute. And, upon my soul,

I thought it was an excellent plan. I said I would try too."

Toby laughed.

"There's your whisky," he said. "Hang it all! I haven't got any money.

You'll have to pay for it yourself, Jack--and mine, too. So you and Kit

made a bargain?"

Jack glanced round the room, which had emptied of all its well-dressed,

weary occupants. He and Toby were alone.

"Yes, we made a bargain. The worst of it was that neither of us know how

to try, so we consulted Lily. Did it ever occur to you, Toby, that you

have married the nicest girl that ever breathed?"

"I _had_ an idea of it. It was Kit's doing, too. Funny, that."

"Well, Lily told us. She said some damned clever things. She said that

turning over a new leaf meant not even looking back once to the old one.

You know, Toby, that's devilish good. I thought she'd tell us to think

what brutes we had been, and repent. Not a bit of it. We've just got to

go straight on. Don't grin; I'm perfectly serious."

"I'm sure you are. I was only grinning at the notion of Lily telling you

to repent. You know, if there are two things that girl is not, Jack,

they are a preacher and a prig."

"You're quite right, and I always thought that to be good you had to be

either one or the other, and probably both. She tells me it is not

necessarily so, and so Kit and I are going to set to work. We are not

going to run up any more huge bills which we can't pay; we are not going

to invent or to listen to scandalous stories about other people; and we

are going to flirt. We suggested that, and Lily thought it would do to

begin upon. Also I was to tell the truth about Alington's bankruptcy. I

did that. Really, Toby, it's very easy to tell the truth: it requires no

effort of the imagination. But the truth is a brute when it comes out."

Toby looked up smiling, but Jack was perfectly grave and serious.

"Yes, you may think I don't mean it," he said, "but I do. We mean to

reform, in fact; God knows it is high time. Kit and I have lived in what

I suppose you would call rather a careless manner all these years, and

we have come to an almighty, all-round smash. We had a very serious

talk--we had never talked seriously before, as far as I can

remember--and we are going to try to do better."

Jack got up and went to the window, and leaned out for a moment into the

warm summer night. Then he turned into the room again.

"We are indeed," he said. "Good-night, Toby;" and he walked off.

Ted Comber had been to the opera that night, and was going on to a

dance. They had been doing the "Meistersingers," and it was consequently

after twelve when he got out. The dance was in Park Lane, and he turned

into the Bachelors' Club to freshen himself before going on. He had

spent a really delightful day; for he had lunched with amusing people,

had sat an hour listening to Jack Conybeare's examination in the

Alington bankruptcy case, and had had the opportunity of telling a very

exalted personage about it afterwards, making him laugh for ten

minutes, and Ted, who had a fine loyal regard for exalted

personages--some people called him a snob--was proportionately

gratified. Of course it was too terrible for poor Jack, but it was

absurd not to see the light side of it when properly considered.

"I was really so sorry for him I didn't know what to do," he had said to

Lady Coniston at dinner. "Isn't it too terrible?" and they had both

burst into shrieks of laughter, and discussed the question from every

point and wondered how dear Kit took it.

The freshening up in the lavatory of the Bachelors' Club meant some

little time and delicacy of touch. He had to be careful how he washed

his face, for he had taken pains with it. Certainly the effect was

admirable; for the least touch of rouge on the cheek-bone, and

positively only the shadow of an antimony pencil below his eyes had

given his face the freshness of a boy's. He looked at himself quite

candidly in the glass, and said, "Not a day more than twenty-five." For

he was no friend of false modesty, and any modesty he might have assumed

about himself would have been undeniably false.

All this care for one's appearance, it is true, made a terrible hole in

one's time; but if it lengthened one's youth, it was an excellent

investment of hours. There was nothing that could weigh against that

paramount consideration. He dried his hands, still looking at himself,

and put on his rings. A touch of the hairbrush was necessary, and for

his hands the file of the nail-scissors. Then he put on his coat again

and went into the hall. Jack Conybeare was in the act of coming out of

the smoking-room.

Ted had only a short moment for reflection, and almost without a pause

he went on, meeting Jack.

"Good-evening, Jack," he said; "are you coming to the Tauntons'? Kit is

in the country still, is she not?"

Jack had stopped on seeing him, and looked him over slowly from head to

heel; then he walked by him without speaking, and went out.

Ted was only a little amused, and more than a little annoyed. Just now

it did not matter much what Jack did, but, being wise in his generation,

he did not care about being cut by anybody. The Conybeares would

probably pick up again in a year or two, and to be cut by the master of

quite one of the nicest houses in London was a bore. Besides, he was in

an acme of good-fellowship after his amusing day.

He went on into the smoking-room to look round before proceeding to his

dance. Toby was still sitting in the window where Jack had left him.

Since their reconciliation a day or two before, Ted had felt most

friendly towards him, and he went delicately across the room to him,

looking charming.

"I just met Jack in the hall," he said; "he looks terribly tired and

old."

Toby bristled like a large collie dog.

"Naturally," he said.

"In fact, he was rather short with me," said Ted plaintively.

This was too much. Toby got up.

"Naturally," he said again.

The poor little butterfly felt quite bruised. Really, the Conybeares had

not any manners. It serves so little purpose to be rude to anyone, and

it was so easy and repaying to be pleasant. He knew this well, for the

whole of his nasty little life was spent in reaping the fruits of being

constantly pleasant to people. They asked you to dinner, they asked you

to stay at their country houses, and having asked you once they asked

you again, because you took the trouble to talk and amuse people. What

more can a butterfly want than a sunny garden with flowers always open?

Such a simple need! so easy to satisfy!

Well, there was a delicious flower open in Park Lane, and he went on to

his dance. He must really give up the Conybeares, he thought; they were

becoming too prickly. He had written twice to Kit, and had received no

answer. Jack had given him a dead cut; Toby was a bear. And he sighed

gently, thinking how stupid it was of the flowers to shut themselves up.

As soon as he had gone, Toby resumed his seat by the window. During the

last few months he had touched life in a way he had never done before.

To him this business of living had hitherto been a cheery, comfortable

affair; the question of taking it seriously, even of taking it at all,

had never formally presented itself to him. Then quite suddenly, as it

were, as he paddled pleasantly along, he had got out of his depth. The

great irresistible forces of life had swept him away, the swift current

of love had borne him far out into the great ocean of human experience.

Then, still encircled by that, he had seen storm-clouds gather, grim

tempests had burst in hail and howling wind, the sea had grown black and

foam-flecked. He had seen the tragedy of his brother's home--sin and its

wages ruthlessly paid. There were such things as realities. And after

that what? Into what new forms would the wreckage be fashioned, these

riven planks of a pleasure-boat? But underneath the lightness of Jack's

words to-night there had lain, Toby felt, a seriousness which was new.

And the change in Kit was more marked still.

Outside, the world rolled on its way, and each unit in the crowd moved

to his appointed goal, some of set purpose, others unconscious of it,

but none the less on an inevitable way. In the brains of men stirred the

thoughts which, for good or ill, should be the heritage of the next

generation, part of their instinctive equipment. The vast design was

being worked out, unerringly, unceasingly, unhurried and undelayed,

through the sin of one, the virtue of another. To fall itself and to

fail was but a step towards the ultimate perfection; behind all worked

the Master-hand. By strange pathways and chance meetings, by the death

of the scarcely born and the innocent, by the unscathed life and health

of the guiltiest, by love and beautiful things and terrible things, had

all reached the spot where they stood to-day. Devious might be the paths

they should hereafter follow, but He who had led them thus far knew.

And as Toby thought on these things, moved beyond his wont, he looked

out, and saw with a strange quickening of the blood that in the east

already there were signs that out of night was shortly to be born

another day.

THE END