CHAPTER VIII

In the course of that night Roger Barnes's fate was decided, while he

lay, happily sleeping, beside his wife. Daphne, as soon as she heard his

regular breathing, opened the eyes she had only pretended to close, and

lay staring into the shadows of the room, in which a nightlight was

burning. Presently she got up softly, put on a dressing-gown, and went

to the fire, which she noiselessly replenished; drawing up a chair, she

sank back into it, her arms folded. The strengthening firelight showed

her small white face, amid the masses of her dark hair.

Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought. It

was as though with violent straining and wrenching the familiar links

and bulwarks of life were breaking down, and as if amid the wreck of

them she found herself looking at goblin faces beyond, growing gradually

used to them, ceasing to be startled by them, finding in them even a

wild attraction and invitation.

[Illustration: "Her whole being was seething with passionate and

revengeful thought."]

So Roger had lied to her. Instead of a casual ride, involving a meeting

with a few old acquaintances, as he had represented to her, he had been

engaged that day in an assignation with Mrs. Fairmile, arranged

beforehand, and carefully concealed from his wife. Miss Farmer had seen

them coming out of a wood together hand in hand! In the public road,

this!--not even so much respect for appearances as might have dictated

the most elementary reticence and decency. The case was so clear that it

sickened her; she shivered with cold and nausea as she lay there by the

now glowing fire which yet gave her no physical comfort. Probably in the

past their relation had gone much farther than Roger had ever confessed

to his wife. Mrs. Fairmile was a woman who would stick at nothing. And

if Daphne were not already betrayed, she could no longer protect

herself. The issue was certain. Such women as Chloe Fairmile are not to

be baulked of what they desire. Good women cannot fight them on equal

terms. And as to any attempt to keep the affections of a husband who

could behave in such a way to the wife who had given him her youth,

herself, and all the resources and facilities of life, Daphne's whole

being stiffened into mingled anguish and scorn as she renounced the

contest. Knowing himself the traitor that he was, he could yet hold her,

kiss her, murmur tender things to her, allow her to cry upon his breast,

to stammer repentance and humbleness. Cowardly! False! Treacherous! She

flung out her hands, rigid, before her in the darkness, as though for

ever putting him away.

Anguish? Yes!--but not of such torturing quality as she could have felt

a year, six months even, before this date. She was astonished that she

could bear her life, that he could sit there in the night stillness,

motionless, holding her breath even, while Roger slept there in the

shadowed bed. Had this thing happened to her before their arrival at

Heston, she must have fallen upon Roger in mad grief and passion, ready

to kill him or herself; must at least have poured out torrents of

useless words and tears. She could not have sat dumb like this; in

misery, but quite able to think things out, to envisage all the dark

possibilities of the future. And not only the future. By a perfectly

logical diversion her thoughts presently went racing to the past. There

was, so to speak, a suspension of the immediate crisis, while she

listened to her own mind--while she watched her own years go by.

It was but rarely that Daphne let her mind run on her own origins. But

on this winter night, as she sat motionless by the fire, she became

conscious of a sudden detachment from her most recent self and life--a

sudden violent turning against both--which naturally threw her back on

the past, on some reflection upon what she had made of herself, by way

of guide to what she might still make of herself, if she struck boldly,

now, while there was yet time, for her own freedom and development.

As to her parents, she never confessed, even to herself, that she owed

them anything, except, of course, the mere crude wealth that her father

had left her. Otherwise she was vaguely ashamed of them both. And

yet!--in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her

scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her

increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the

boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part

of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty years

Daniel Floyd had leased and exploited, had ravaged and destroyed, great

tracts of primæval forest in the northern regions of his adopted state,

leaving behind him a ruined earth and an impoverished community, but

building up the while a colossal fortune. He had learnt the arts of

municipal "bossing" in one of the minor towns of Illinois, and had then

migrated to Chicago, where for years he was the life and soul of all the

bolder and more adventurous corruption of the city. A jovial, handsome

fellow!--with an actor's face, a bright eye, and a slippery hand. Daphne

had a vivid, and, on the whole, affectionate, remembrance of her father,

of whom, however, she seldom spoke. The thought of her mother, on the

other hand, was always unwelcome. It brought back recollections of storm

and tempest; of wild laughter, and still wilder tears; of gorgeous

dresses, small feet, and jewelled fingers.

No; her parents had but small place in that dramatic autobiography that

Daphne was now constructing for herself. She was not their daughter in

any but the physical sense; she was the daughter of her own works and

efforts.

She leant forward to the fire, her face propped in her hands, going back

in thought to her father's death, when she was fifteen; to her three

years of cloying convent life, and her escape from it, as well as from

the intriguing relations who would have kept her there; to the clever

lawyer who had helped to put her in possession of her fortune, and the

huge sums she had paid him for his services; to her search for

education, her hungry determination to rise in the world, the friends

she had made at college, in New York, Philadelphia, Washington. She had

been influenced by one _milieu_ after another; she had worked hard, now

at music, now at philosophy; had dabbled in girls' clubs, and gone to

Socialist meetings, and had been all through driven on by the gadfly of

an ever-increasing ambition.

Ambition for what! She looked back on this early life with a bitter

contempt. What had it all come to? Marriage with Roger Barnes!--a hasty

passion of which she was already ashamed, for a man who was already

false to her.

What had made her marry him? She did not mince matters with herself in

her reply. She had married him, influenced by a sudden, gust of physical

inclination--by that glamour, too, under which she had seen him in

Washington, a glamour of youth and novelty. If she had seen him first in

his natural environment she would have been on her guard; she would have

realized what it meant to marry a man who could help her own ideals and

ambitions so little. And what, really, had their married life brought

her? Had she ever been _sure_ of Roger?--had she ever been able to feel

proud of him, in the company of really distinguished men?--had she not

been conscious, again and again, when in London, or Paris, or Berlin,

that he was her inferior, that he spoiled her social and intellectual

chances? And his tone toward women had always been a low one; no great

harm in it, perhaps; but it had often wounded and disgusted her.

And then--for climax!--his concealment of the early love affair with

Chloe Fairmile; his weakness and folly in letting her regain her hold

upon him; his behaviour at the Brendon ball, the gossip which, as Agnes

Farmer declared, was all over the neighbourhood, ending in the last

baseness--the assignation, the lies, the hypocrisy of the afternoon!

Enough!--more than enough! What did she care what the English world

thought of her? She would free and right herself in her own way, and

they might hold up what hands they pleased. A passion of wounded vanity,

of disappointed self-love swept through her. She had looked forward to

the English country life; she had meant to play a great part in it. But

three months had been enough to show her the kind of thing--the hopeless

narrowness and Philistinism of these English back-waters. What did these

small squires and country clergy know of the real world, the world that

mattered to _her_, where people had free minds and progressive ideas?

Her resentment of the _milieu_ in which Roger expected her to live

subtly swelled and strengthened her wrath against himself; it made the

soil from which sprang a sudden growth of angry will--violent and

destructive. There was in her little or none of that affinity with a

traditional, a parent England, which is present in so many Americans,

which emerges in them like buried land from the waters. On the contrary,

the pressure of race and blood in her was not towards, but against; not

friendly, but hostile. The nearer she came to the English life, the more

certain forces in her, deeply infused, rose up and made their protest.

The Celtic and Latin strains that were mingled in her, their natural

sympathies and repulsions, which had been indistinct in the girl,

overlaid by the deposits of the current American world, were becoming

dominant in the woman.

* * * * *

Well, thank goodness, modern life is not as the old! There are ways out.

Midnight had just struck. The night was gusty, the north-west wind made

fierce attacks on the square, comfortable house. Daphne rose slowly; she

moved noiselessly across the floor; she stood with her arms behind her

looking down at the sleeping Roger. Then a thought struck her; she

reached out a hand to the new number of an American Quarterly which lay,

with the paper knife in it, on a table beside the bed. She had ordered

it in a mood of jealous annoyance because of a few pages of art

criticism in it by Mrs. Fairmile, which impertinently professed to know

more about the Vitali Signorelli than its present owner did; but she

remembered also an article on "The Future for Women," which had seemed

to her a fine, progressive thing. She turned the pages noiselessly--her

eyes now on the unconscious Roger--now on the book.

"All forms of contract--in business, education, religion, or

law--suffer from the weakness and blindness of the persons making

them--the marriage contract as much as any other. The dictates of

humanity and common-sense alike show that the latter and most

important contract should no more be perpetual than any of the

others."

Again:--

"Any covenant between human beings that fails to produce or promote

human happiness, cannot in the nature of things be of any force or

authority; it is not only a right but a duty to abolish it."

And a little further:--

"Womanhood is the great fact of woman's life. Wifehood and

motherhood are but incidental relations."

Daphne put down the book. In the dim light, the tension of her slender

figure, her frowning brow, her locked arms and hands, made of her a

threatening Fate hovering darkly above the man in his deep, defenceless

sleep.

She was miserable, consumed with jealous anger. But the temptation of a

new licence--a lawless law--was in her veins. Have women been trampled

on, insulted, enslaved?--in America, at least, they may now stand on

their feet. No need to cringe any more to the insolence and cruelty of

men. A woman's life may be soiled and broken; but in the great human

workshop of America it can be repaired. She remembered that in the

majority of American divorces it is the woman who applies for relief.

And why not? The average woman, when she marries, knows much less of

life and the world than the average man. She is more likely--poor

soul!--to make mistakes.

She drew closer to the bed. All round her glimmered the furniture and

appointments of a costly room--the silver and tortoise-shell on the

dressing-table, the long mirrors lining the farther wall, the silk

hangings of the bed. Luxury, as light and soft as skill and money could

make it--the room breathed it; and in the midst stood the young creature

who had designed it, the will within her hardening rapidly to an

irrevocable purpose.

Yes, she had made a mistake! But she would retrieve it. She would free

herself. She would no longer put up with Roger, with his neglect and

deceit--his disagreeable and ungrateful mother--his immoral friends--and

this dull, soul-deadening English life.

Roger moved and murmured. She retreated a little, still looking at him

fixedly. Was it the child's name? Perhaps. He dreamed interminably, and

very often of Beatty. But it did not move her. Beatty, of course, was

_her_ child. Every child belongs to the mother in a far profounder sense

than to the father. And he, too, would be free; he would naturally marry

again.

Case after case of divorce ran through her mind as she stood there; the

persons and circumstances all well known to her. Other stories also, not

personally within her ken; the famous scandals of the time, much

discussed throughout American society. Her wits cleared and steeled. She

began to see the course that she must follow.

It would all depend upon the lawyers; and a good deal--she faced

it--upon money. All sorts of technical phrases, vaguely remembered, ran

through her mind. She would have to recover her American

citizenship--she and the child. A domicile of six months in South

Dakota, or in Wyoming--a year in Philadelphia--she began to recall

information derived of old from Madeleine Verrier, who had, of course,

been forced to consider all these things, and to weigh alternatives.

Advice, of course, must be asked of her at once--and sympathy.

Suddenly, on her brooding, there broke a wave of excitement. Life,

instead of being closed, as in a sense it is, for every married woman,

was in a moment open and vague again; the doors flung wide to flaming

heavens. An intoxication of recovered youth and freedom possessed her.

The sleeping Roger represented things intolerable and outworn. Why

should a woman of her gifts, of her opportunities, be chained for life

to this commonplace man, now that her passion was over?--now that she

knew him for what he was, weak, feather-brained, and vicious? She looked

at him with a kind of exaltation, spurning him from her path.

But the immediate future!--the practical steps! What kind of evidence

would she want?--what kind of witnesses? Something more, no doubt, of

both than she had already. She must wait--temporize--do nothing rashly.

If it was for Roger's good as well as her own that they should be free

of each other--and she was fast persuading herself of this--she must,

for both their sakes, manage the hateful operation without bungling.

What was the alternative? She seemed to ask it of Roger, as she stood

looking down upon him. Patience?--with a man who could never sympathize

with her intellectually or artistically?--the relations of married life

with a husband who made assignations with an old love, under the eyes of

the whole neighbourhood?--the narrowing, cramping influences of English

provincial society? No! she was born for other and greater things, and

she would grasp them. "My first duty is to myself--to my own

development. We have absolutely no _right_ to sacrifice ourselves--as

women have been taught to do for thousands of years."

Bewildered by the rhetoric of her own thoughts, Daphne returned to her

seat by the fire, and sat there wildly dreaming, till once more recalled

to practical possibilities by the passage of the hours on the clock

above her.

Miss Farmer? Everything, it seemed, depended on her. But Daphne had no

doubts of her. Poor girl!--with her poverty-stricken home, her drunken

father lately dismissed from his post, and her evident inclination

towards this clever young fellow now employed in the house--Daphne

rejoiced to think of what money could do, in this case at least; of the

reward that should be waiting for the girl's devotion when the moment

came; of the gifts already made, and the gratitude already evoked. No;

she could be trusted; she had every reason to be true.

Some fitful sleep came to her at last in the morning hours. But when

Roger awoke, she was half-way through her dressing; and when he first

saw her, he noticed nothing except that she was paler than usual, and

confessed to a broken night.

* * * * *

But as the day wore on it became plain to everybody at Heston--to Roger

first and foremost--that something was much amiss. Daphne would not

leave her sitting-room and her sofa; she complained of headache and

over-fatigue; would have nothing to say to the men at work on the new

decoration of the east wing of the house, who were clamouring for

directions; and would admit nobody but Miss Farmer and her maid. Roger

forced his way in once, only to be vanquished by the traditional weapons

of weakness, pallor, and silence. Her face contracted and quivered as

his step approached her; it was as though he trampled upon her; and he

left her, awkwardly, on tiptoe, feeling himself as intrusively brutal as

she clearly meant him to feel.

What on earth was the matter? Some new grievance against him, he

supposed. After the softening, the quasi-reconciliation of the day

before, his chagrin and disappointment were great. Impossible she should

know anything of his ride with Chloe! There was not a soul in that wood;

and the place was twenty miles from Heston. Again he felt the impulse to

blurt it all out to her; but was simply repelled and intimidated by this

porcupine mood in which she had wrapped herself. Better wait at least

till she was a little more normal again. He went off disconsolately to a

day's shooting.

Meanwhile, his own particular worry was sharp enough. Chloe had taken

advantage of their casual _tête-à-tête_, as she had done before on

several occasions, to claim something of the old relation, instead of

accepting the new, like a decent woman; and in the face of the

temptation offered him he had shown a weakness of which not only his

conscience but his pride was ashamed. He realized perfectly that she had

been trying during the whole autumn to recover her former hold on him,

and he also saw clearly and bitterly that he was not strong enough to

resist her, should he continue to be thrown with her; and not clever

enough to baffle her, if her will were really set on recapturing him. He

was afraid of her, and afraid of himself.

What, then, must he do? As he tramped about the wet fields and

plantations with a keeper and a few beaters after some scattered

pheasants, he was really, poor fellow! arguing out the riddle of his

life. What would Herbert French advise him to do?--supposing he could

put the question plainly to him, which of course was not possible. He

meant honestly and sincerely to keep straight; to do his duty by Daphne

and the child. But he was no plaster saint, and he could not afford to

give Chloe Fairmile too many opportunities. To break at once, to carry

off Daphne and leave Heston, at least for a time--that was the obviously

prudent and reasonable course. But in her present mood it was of no use

for him to propose it, tired as she seemed to be of Heston, and

disappointed in the neighbours: any plan brought forward by him was

doomed beforehand. Well then, let him go himself; he had been so unhappy

during the preceding weeks it would be a jolly relief to turn his back

on Heston for a time.

But as soon as he had taken his departure, Chloe perhaps would take

hers; and if so, Daphne's jealousy would be worse than ever. Whatever

deserts he might place between himself and Mrs. Fairmile, Daphne would

imagine them together.

Meanwhile, there was that Lilliput bond, that small, chafing

entanglement, which Chloe had flung round him in her persistence about

the letters. There was, no doubt, a horrid scandal brewing about Mrs.

Weightman, Chloe's old friend--a friend of his own, too, in former days.

Through Chloe's unpardonable indiscretions he knew a great deal more

about this lady's affairs than he had ever wished to know. And he well

remembered the letter in question: a letter on which the political life

or death of one of England's most famous men might easily turn,

supposing it got out. But the letter was safe enough; not the least

likely to come into dangerous hands, in spite of Chloe's absurd

hypotheses. It was somewhere, no doubt, among the boxes in the locked

room; and who could possibly get hold of it? At the same time he

realized that as long as he had not found and returned it she would

still have a certain claim upon him, a certain right to harass him with

inquiries and confidential interviews, which, as a man of honour, he

could not altogether deny.

A pheasant got up across a ploughed field where in the mild season the

young corn was already green. Roger shot, and missed; the bird floated

gaily down the wind, and the head keeper, in disgust, muttered bad

language to the underling beside him.

But after that Barnes was twice as cheerful as before. He whistled as he

walked; his shooting recovered; and by the time the dark fell, keepers

and beaters were once more his friends.

The fact was that just as he missed the pheasant he had taken his

resolution, and seen his way. He would have another determined hunt for

that letter; he would also find and destroy his own letters to

Chloe--those she had returned to him--which must certainly never fall

into Daphne's hands; and then he would go away to London or the North,

to some place whence he could write both to Chloe Fairmile and to his

wife. Women like Daphne were too quick; they could get out a dozen words

to your one; but give a man time, and he could express himself. And,

therewith, a great tenderness and compunction in this man's heart, and a

steady determination to put things right. For was not Daphne Beatty's

mother? and was he not in truth very fond of her, if only she would let

him be?

Now then for the hunt. As he had never destroyed the letters, they must

exist; but, in the name of mischief, where? He seemed to remember

thrusting his own letters to Chloe into a desk of his schoolboy days

which used to stand in his London sitting-room. Very likely some of hers

might be there too. But the thought of his own had by now become a much

greater anxiety to him than the wish to placate Chloe. For he was most

uncomfortably aware that his correspondence with Chloe during their

short engagement had been of a very different degree of fervour from

that shown in the letters to Daphne under similar circumstances. As for

the indelicacy and folly of leaving such documents to chance, he cursed

it sorely.

How to look? He pondered it. He did not even know which attic it was

that had been reserved at the time of the letting of Heston, and now

held some of the old London furniture and papers. Well, he must manage

it, "burgle" his own house, if necessary. What an absurd situation!

Should he consult his mother? No; better not.

* * * * *

That evening General Hobson was expected for a couple of nights. On

going up to dress for dinner, Roger discovered that he had been banished

to a room on the farther side of the house, where his servant was now

putting out his clothes. He turned very white, and went straight to his

wife.

Daphne was on the sofa as before, and received him in silence.

"What's the meaning of this, Daphne?" The tone was quiet, but the

breathing quick.

She looked at him--bracing herself.

"I must be alone! I had no sleep last night."

"You had neuralgia?"

"I don't know--I had no sleep. I must be alone."

His eyes and hers met.

"For to-night, then," he said briefly. "I don't know what's the matter

with you, Daphne and I suppose it's no use to ask you. I thought,

yesterday--but--however, there's no time to talk now. Are you coming

down to dinner?"

"Not to dinner. I will come down for an hour afterwards."

He went away, and before he had reached his own room, and while the heat

of his sudden passion still possessed him, it occurred to him that

Daphne's behaviour might after all prove a godsend. That night he would

make his search, with no risk of disturbing his wife.

* * * * *

The dinner in the newly decorated dining-room went heavily. Lady Barnes

had grown of late more and more anxious and depressed. She had long

ceased to assert herself in Daphne's presence, and one saw her as the

British matron in adversity, buffeted by forces she did not understand;

or as some minor despot snuffed out by a stronger.

The General, who had only arrived just in time to dress, inquired in

astonishment for Daphne, and was told by Roger that his wife was not

well, but would come down for a little while after dinner. In presence

of the new splendours of Heston, the General had--in Roger's

company--very little to say. He made the vague remark that the

dining-room was "very fine," but he should not have known it again.

Where was the portrait of Edward, and the full-length of Edward's father

by Sir Francis Grant? Lady Barnes drew herself up, and said nothing.

Roger hastily replied that he believed they were now in the passage

leading to the billiard-room.

"What! that dark corner!" cried the General, looking with both distaste

and hostility at the famous Signorelli--a full-length nude St.

Sebastian, bound and pierced--which had replaced them on the dining-room

wall. Who on earth ever saw such a picture in a dining-room? Roger must

be a fool to allow it!

Afterwards the General and Lady Barnes wandered through the transformed

house, in general agreement as to the ugliness and extravagance of

almost everything that had been done, an agreement that was as balm to

the harassed spirits of the lady.

"What have they spent?" asked the General, under his breath, as they

returned to the drawing-room--"thousands and thousands, I should think!

And there was no need for them to spend a penny. It is a sinful waste,

and no one should waste money in these days--there are too many

unemployed!" He drew up his spare person, with a terrier-like shake of

the head and shoulders, as of one repudiating Mammon and all its works.

"Daphne has simply no idea of the value of money!" Lady Barnes

complained, also under her breath. They were passing along one of the

side corridors of the house, and there was no one in sight. But Roger's

mother was evidently uneasy, as though Daphne might at any moment spring

from the floor, or emerge from the walls. The General was really sorry

for her.

"It's like all the rest of them--Americans, I mean," he declared; "they

haven't our sense of responsibility. I saw plenty of that in the

States."

Lady Barnes acquiesced. She was always soothed by the General's

unfaltering views of British superiority.

They found Daphne in the drawing-room--a ghostly Daphne, in white, and

covered with diamonds. She made a little perfunctory conversation with

them, avoided all mention of the house, and presently, complaining again

of headache, went back to her room after barely an hour downstairs.

The General whistled to himself, as he also retired to bed, after

another and more private conversation with Lady Barnes, and half an

hour's billiards with a very absent-minded host. By Jove, Laura wanted a

change! He rejoiced that he was to escort her on the morrow to the

London house of some cheerful and hospitable relations. Dollars, it

seemed, were not everything, and he wished to heaven that Roger had been

content to marry some plain English girl, with, say, a couple of

thousand a year. Even the frugal General did not see how it could have

been done on less. Roger no doubt had been a lazy, self-indulgent

beggar. Yet he seemed a good deal steadier, and more sensible than he

used to be; in spite of his wife, and the pouring out of dollars. And

there was no doubt that he had grown perceptibly older. The General felt

a vague pang of regret, so rare and so compelling had been the quality

of Roger's early youth, measured at least by physical standards.

* * * * *

The house sank into sleep and silence. Roger, before saying good-night

to his mother, had let fall a casual question as to the whereabouts of

the room which still contained the _débris_ of the London house. He

must, he said, look up two or three things, some share certificates of

his father's, for instance, that he had been in want of for some time.

Lady Barnes directed him. At the end of the nursery wing, to the right.

But in the morning one of the housemaids would show him. Had she the

key? She produced it, thought no more of it, and went to bed.

He waited in his room till after midnight, then took off his shoes, his

pride smarting, and emerged. There was one electric light burning in the

hall below. This gave enough glimmer on the broad open landing for him

to grope his way by, and he went noiselessly toward the staircase

leading up to Beatty's rooms. Once, just as he reached it, he thought he

caught the faint noise of low talking somewhere in the house, an

indeterminate sound not to be located. But when he paused to listen, it

had ceased and he supposed it to be only a windy murmur of the night.

He gained the nursery wing. So far, of course, the way was perfectly

familiar. He rarely passed an evening without going to kiss Beatty in

her cot. Outside the door of the night-nursery he waited a moment to

listen. Was she snoozling among her blankets?--the darling! She still

sucked her thumb, sometimes, poor baby, to send her to sleep, and it was

another reason for discontent with Miss Farmer that she would make a

misdemeanour of it. Really, that woman got on his nerves!

Beyond the nursery he had no knowledge whatever of his own house. The

attics at Heston were large and rambling. He believed the servants were

all in the other wing, but was not sure; he could only hope that he

might not stumble on some handmaiden's room by mistake!

A door to the right, at the end of the passage. He tried the key. Thank

goodness! It turned without too much noise, and he found himself on the

threshold of a big lumber-room, his candle throwing lines of dusty light

across it. He closed the door, set down the light, and looked round him

in despair. The room was crowded with furniture, trunks, and boxes, in

considerable confusion. It looked as though the men employed to move

them had piled them there as they pleased; and Roger shrewdly suspected

that his mother, from whom, in spite of her square and business-like

appearance, his own indolence was inherited, had shrunk till now from

the task of disturbing them.

He began to rummage a little. Papers belonging to his father--an endless

series of them; some in tin boxes marked with the names of various

companies, mining and other; some in leather cases, reminiscent of

politics, and labelled "Parliamentary" or "Local Government Board."

Trunks containing Court suits, yeomanry uniforms, and the like; a medley

of old account books, photographs, worthless volumes, and broken

ornaments: all the refuse that our too complex life piles about us was

represented in the chaos of the room. Roger pulled and pushed as

cautiously as he could, but making, inevitably, some noise in the

process. At last! He caught sight of some belongings of his own and was

soon joyfully detaching the old Eton desk, of which he was in search,

from a pile of miscellaneous rubbish. In doing so, to his dismay, he

upset a couple of old cardboard boxes filled with letters, and they fell

with some clatter. He looked round instinctively at the door; but it was

shut, and the house was well built, the walls and ceilings reasonably

sound-proof. The desk was only latched--beastly carelessness, of

course!--and inside it were three thick piles of letters, and a few

loose ones below. His own letters to Chloe; and--by George!--the lost

one!--among the others. He opened it eagerly, ran it through. Yes, the

very thing! What luck! He laid it carefully aside a moment on a trunk

near by, and sat with the other letters on his lap.

His fingers played with them. He almost determined to take them down

unopened, and burn them, as they were, in his own room; but in the end

he could not resist the temptation to look at them once more. He pulled

off an india-rubber band from the latest packet, and was soon deep in

them, at first half ashamed, half contemptuous. Calf love, of course!

And he had been a precious fool to write such things. Then, presently,

the headlong passion of them began to affect him, to set his pulses

swinging. He fell to wondering at his own bygone facility, his own

powers of expression. How did he ever write such a style! He, who could

hardly get through a note now without blots and labour. Self-pity grew

upon him, and self-admiration. By heaven! How could a woman treat a

man--a man who could write to her like this--as Chloe had treated him!

The old smart revived; or rather, the old indelible impressions of it

left on nerve and brain.

The letters lay on his knee. He sat brooding: his hands upon the

packets, his head bowed. One might have thought him a man overcome and

dissolved by the enervating memories of passion; but in truth, he was

gradually and steadily reacting against them; resuming, and this time

finally, as far as Chloe Fairmile was concerned, a man's mastery of

himself. He thought of her unkindness and cruelty--of the misery he had

suffered--and now of the reckless caprice with which, during the

preceding weeks, she had tried to entangle him afresh, with no respect

for his married life, for his own or Daphne's peace of mind.

He judged her, and therewith, himself. Looking back upon the four years

since Chloe Fairmile had thrown him over, it seemed to him that, in some

ways, he had made a good job of his life, and, in others, a bad one. As

to the money, that was neither here nor there. It had been amusing to

have so much of it; though of late Daphne's constant reminders that the

fortune was hers and not his, had been like grit in the mouth. But he

did not find that boundless wealth had made as much difference to him as

he had expected. On the other hand, he had been much happier with Daphne

than he had thought he should be, up to the time of their coming to

Heston. She wasn't easy to live with, and she had been often, before

now, ridiculously jealous; but you could not, apparently, live with a

woman without getting very fond of her--he couldn't--especially if she

had given you a child; and if Daphne had turned against him now, for a

bit--well, he could not swear to himself that he had been free from

blame; and it perhaps served him right for having gone out deliberately

to the States to marry money--with a wife thrown in--in that shabby sort

of way.

But, now, to straighten out this coil; to shake himself finally free of

Chloe, and make Daphne happy again! He vowed to himself that he could

and would make her happy--just as she had been in their early days

together. The memory of her lying white and exhausted after child-birth,

with the little dark head beside her, came across him, and melted him;

he thought of her with longing and tenderness.

With a deep breath he raised himself on his seat; in the old Greek

phrase, "the gods breathed courage into his soul"; and as he stretched

out an indifferent hand toward Chloe's letters on the trunk, Roger

Barnes had perhaps reached the highest point of his moral history; he

had become conscious of himself as a moral being choosing good or evil;

and he had chosen good. It was not so much that his conscience accused

him greatly with regard to Chloe. For that his normal standards were not

fine enough. It was rather a kind of "serious call," something akin to

conversion, or that might have been conversion, which befell him in this

dusty room, amid the night-silence.

As he took up Chloe's letters he did not notice that the door had

quietly opened behind him, and that a figure stood on the threshold.

A voice struck into the stillness.

"Roger!"

He turned with a movement that scattered all his own letters on the

floor. Daphne stood before him--but with the eyes of a mad woman. Her

hand shook on the handle of the door.

"What are you doing here?" She flung out the question like a blow.

"Hallo, Daphne!--is that you?" He tried to laugh. "I'm only looking up

some old papers; no joke, in all this rubbish." He pointed to it.

"What old papers?"

"Well, you needn't catechize me!" he said, nettled by her tone, "or not

in that way, at any rate. I couldn't sleep, and I came up here to look

for something I wanted. Why did you shut your door on me?"

He looked at her intently, his lips twitching a little. Daphne came

nearer.

"It must be something you want very badly--something you don't want

other people to see--something you're ashamed of!--or you wouldn't be

searching for it at this time of night." She raised her eyes, still with

the same strange yet flaming quiet, from the littered floor to his face.

Then suddenly glancing again at the scattered papers--"That's your

hand-writing!--they're your letters! letters to Mrs. Fairmile!"

"Well, and what do you make of that?" cried Roger, half wroth, half

inclined to laugh. "If you want to know, they are the letters I wrote to

Chloe Fairmile; and I, like a careless beast, never destroyed them, and

they were stuffed away here. I have long meant to get at them and burn

them, and as you turned me out to-night----"

"What is that letter in your hand?" exclaimed Daphne, interrupting him.

"Oh, that has nothing to do with you--or me----" he said, hastily making

a movement to put it in his coat pocket. But in a second, Daphne, with a

cry, had thrown herself upon him, to his intense amazement, wrestling

with him, in a wild excitement. And as she did so, a thin woman, with

frightened eyes, in a nurse's dress, came quickly into the room, as

though Daphne's cry had signalled to her. She was behind Roger, and he

was not aware of her approach.

"Daphne, don't be such a little fool!" he said indignantly, holding her

off with one hand, determined not to give her the letter.

Then, all in a moment--without, as it seemed to him, any but the mildest

defensive action on his part--Daphne stumbled and fell.

"Daphne!--I say!----"

He was stooping over her in great distress to lift her up, when he felt

himself vehemently put aside by a woman's hand.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir! Let me go to her."

He turned in bewilderment. "Miss Farmer! What on earth are you doing

here?"

But in his astonishment he had given way to her, and he fell back pale

and frowning, while, without replying, she lifted Daphne--who had a cut

on her forehead and was half fainting--from the ground.

"Don't come near her, sir!" said the nurse, again warding him off. "You

have done quite enough. Let me attend to her."

"You imagine that was my doing?" said Roger grimly. "Let me assure you

it was nothing of the kind. And pray, were you listening at the door?"

Miss Farmer vouchsafed no reply. She was half leading, half supporting

Daphne, who leant against her. As they neared the door, Roger, who had

been standing dumb again, started forward.

"Let me take her," he said sternly. "Daphne!--send this woman away."

But Daphne only shuddered, and putting out a shaking hand, she waved him

from her.

"You see in what a state she is!" cried Miss Farmer, with a withering

look. "If you must speak to her, put it off, sir, at least till

to-morrow."

Roger drew back. A strange sense of inexplicable disaster rushed upon

him. He sombrely watched them pass through the door and disappear.

* * * * *

Daphne reached her own room. As the door closed upon them she turned to

her companion, holding out the handkerchief stained with blood she had

been pressing to her temple.

"You saw it all?" she said imperiously--"the whole thing?"

"All," said Miss Farmer. "It's a mercy you're not more hurt."

Daphne gave a hysterical laugh.

"It'll just do--I think it'll do! But you'll have to make a good deal

out of it."

And sinking down by the fire, she burst into a passion of wild tears.

The nurse brought her sal volatile, and washed the small cut above her

eyebrow.

"It was lucky we heard him," she said triumphantly. "I guessed at once

he must be looking for something--I knew that room was full of papers."

A knock at the door startled them.

"Never mind." The nurse hurried across the room. "It's locked."

"How is my wife?" said Roger's strong, and as it seemed, threatening

voice outside.

"She'll be all right, sir, I hope, if you'll leave her to rest. But I

won't answer for the consequences if she's disturbed any more."

There was a pause, as though of hesitation. Then Roger's step receded.

Daphne pushed her hair back from her face, and sat staring into the

fire. Everything was decided now. Yet she had rushed upstairs on Miss

Farmer's information with no definite purpose. She only knew that--once

again--Roger was hiding something from her--doing something secret and

disgraceful--and she suddenly resolved to surprise and confront him.

With a mind still vaguely running on the legal aspects of what she meant

to do, she had bade the nurse follow her. The rest had been half

spontaneous, half acting. It had struck her imagination midway how the

incident could be turned--and used.

She was triumphant; but from sheer excitement she wept and sobbed

through the greater part of the night.

PART III

CHAPTER IX

It was a cheerless February day, dark and slaty overhead, dusty below.

In the East End streets paper and straw, children's curls, girls'

pinafores and women's skirts were driven back and forward by a bitter

wind; there was an ugly light on ugly houses, with none of that kind

trickery of mist or smoke which can lend some grace on normal days even

to Commercial Street, or to the network of lanes north of the Bethnal

Green Road. The pitiless wind swept the streets--swept the children and

the grown-ups out of them into the houses, or any available shelter; and

in the dark and chilly emptiness of the side roads one might listen in

fancy for the stealthy returning steps of spirits crueller than Cold,

more tyrannous than Poverty, coming to seize upon their own.

* * * * *

In one of these side streets stood a house larger than its neighbours,

in a bit of front garden, with some decrepit rust-bitten-railings

between it and the road. It was an old dwelling overtaken by the flood

of tenement houses, which spread north, south, east, and west of it. Its

walls were no less grimy than its neighbours'; but its windows were

outlined in cheerful white paint, firelight sparkled through its

unshuttered panes, and a bright green door with a brass knocker

completed its pleasant air. There were always children outside the

Vicarage railings on winter evenings, held there by the spell of the

green door and the firelight.

Inside the firelit room to the left of the front pathway, two men were

standing--one of whom had just entered the house.

"My dear Penrose!--how very good of you to come. I know how frightfully

busy you are."

The man addressed put down his hat and stick, and hastily smoothed back

some tumbling black hair which interfered with spectacled eyes already

hampered by short sight. He was a tall, lank, powerful fellow; anyone

acquainted with the West-country would have known him for one of the

swarthy, gray-eyed Cornish stock.

"I am pretty busy--but your tale, Herbert, was a startler. If I can help

you--or Barnes--command me. He is coming this afternoon?"

Herbert French pointed his visitor to a chair.

"Of course. And another man--whom I met casually, in Pall Mall this

morning--and had half an hour's talk with--an American naval officer--an

old acquaintance of Elsie's--Captain Boyson--will join us also. I met

him at Harvard before our wedding, and liked him. He has just come over

with his sister for a short holiday, and I ran across him."

"Is there any particular point in his joining us?"

Herbert French expounded. Boyson had been an old acquaintance of Mrs.

Roger Barnes before her marriage. He knew a good deal about the Barnes

story--"feels, so I gathered, very strongly about it, and on the man's

side; and when I told him that Roger had just arrived and was coming to

take counsel with you and me this afternoon, he suddenly asked if he

might come, too. I was rather taken aback. I told him that we were

going, of course, to consider the case entirely from the English point

of view. He still said, 'Let me come; I may be of use to you.' So I

could only reply it must rest with Roger. They'll show him first into

the dining-room."

Penrose nodded. "All right, as long as he doesn't mind his national toes

trampled upon. So these are your new quarters, old fellow?"

His eyes travelled round the small book-lined room, with its shelves of

poetry, history, and theology; its parish litter; its settle by the

fire, on which lay a doll and a child's picture-book; back to the figure

of the new vicar, who stood, pipe in hand, before the hearth, clad in a

shabby serge suit, his collar alone betraying him. French's white hair

showed even whiter than of old above the delicately blanched face; from

his natural slenderness and smallness the East End and its life had by

now stripped every superfluous ounce; yet, ethereal as his aspect was,

not one element of the Meredithian trilogy--"flesh," "blood," or

"spirit"--was lacking in it.

"Yes, we've settled in," he said quietly, as Penrose took stock.

"And you like it?"

"We do."

The phrase was brief; nor did it seem to be going to lead to anything

more expansive. Penrose smiled.

"Well, now"--he bent forward, with a professional change of

tone--"before he arrives, where precisely is this unhappy business? I

gather, by the way, that Barnes has got practically all his legal advice

from the other side, though the solicitors here have been coöperating?"

French nodded. "I am still rather vague myself. Roger only arrived from

New York the day before yesterday. His uncle, General Hobson, died a few

weeks ago, and Roger came rushing home, as I understand, to see if he

could make any ready money out of his inheritance. Money, in fact, seems

to be his chief thought."

"Money? What for? Mrs. Barnes's suit was surely settled long ago?"

"Oh, yes--months ago. She got her decree and the custody of the child in

July."

"Remind me of the details. Barnes refused to plead?"

"Certainly. By the advice of the lawyers on both sides, he refused, as

an Englishman, to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Court."

"But he did what he could to stop the thing?"

"Of course. He rushed out after his wife as soon as he could trace where

she had gone; and he made the most desperate attempts to alter her

purpose. His letters, as far as I could make them out, were

heart-rending. I very nearly went over to try and help him, but it was

impossible to leave my work. Mrs. Barnes refused to see him. She was

already at Sioux Falls, and had begun the residence necessary to bring

her within the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Court. Roger, however,

forced one or two interviews with her--most painful scenes!--but found

her quite immovable. At the same time she was much annoyed and excited

by the legal line that he was advised to take; and there was a moment

when she tried to bribe him to accept the divorce and submit to the

American court."

"To bribe him! With money?"

"No; with the child. Beatty at first was hidden away, and Roger could

find no traces of her. But for a few weeks she was sent to stay with a

Mrs. Verrier at Philadelphia, and Roger was allowed to see her, while

Mrs. Barnes negotiated. It was a frightful dilemma! If he submitted,

Mrs. Barnes promised that Beatty should go to him for two months every

year; if not, and she obtained her decree, and the custody of the child,

as she was quite confident of doing, he should never--as far as she

could secure it--see Beatty again. He too, foresaw that she would win

her suit. He was sorely tempted; but he stood firm. Then before he could

make up his mind what to do as to the child, the suit came on, Mrs.

Barnes got her decree, and the custody of the little girl."

"On the ground of 'cruelty,' I understand, and 'indignities'?"

French nodded. His thin cheek flushed.

"And by the help of evidence that any liar could supply!"

"Who were her witnesses?"

"Beatty's nurse--one Agnes Farmer--and a young fellow who had been

employed on the decorative work at Heston. There were relations between

these two, and Roger tells me they have married lately, on a partnership

bought by Mrs. Barnes. While the work was going on at Heston the young

man used to put up at an inn in the country town, and talk scandal at

the bar."

"Then there was some local scandal--on the subject of Barnes and Mrs.

Fairmile?"

"Possibly. Scandal _pour rire_! Not a soul believed that there was

anything more in it than mischief on the woman's side, and a kind of

incapacity for dealing with a woman as she deserved, on the man's. Mrs.

Fairmile has been an _intrigante_ from her cradle. Barnes was at one

time deeply in love with her. His wife became jealous of her after the

marriage, and threw them together, by way of getting at the truth, and

he shilly-shallied with the situation, instead of putting a prompt end

to it, as of course he ought to have done. He was honestly fond of his

wife the whole time, and devoted to his home and his child."

"Well, she didn't plead, you say, anything more than 'cruelty' and

'indignities'. The scandal, such as it was, was no doubt part of the

'cruelty'?"

French assented.

"And you suspect that money played a great part in the whole

transaction?"

"I don't _suspect_--the evidence goes a long way beyond that. Mrs.

Barnes bought the show! I am told there are a thousand ways of doing

it."

Penrose smoked and pondered.

"Well, then--what happened? I imagine that by this time Barnes had not

much affection left for his wife?"

"I don't know," said French, hesitating. "I believe the whole thing was

a great blow to him. He was never passionately in love with her, but he

was very fond of her in his own way--increasingly fond of her--up to

that miserable autumn at Heston. However, after the decree, his one

thought was for Beatty. His whole soul has been wrapped up in that child

from the first moment she was put into his arms. When he first realized

that his wife meant to take her from him, Boyson tells me that he seemed

to lose his head. He was like a person unnerved and bewildered, not

knowing how to act or where to turn. First of all, he brought an

action--a writ of _habeas corpus_, I think--to recover his daughter, as

an English subject. But the fact was he had put it off too long----"

"Naturally," said Penrose, with a shrug. "Not much hope for him--after

the decree."

"So he discovered, poor old fellow! The action was, of course,

obstructed and delayed in every way, by the power of Mrs. Barnes's

millions behind the scenes. His lawyers told him plainly from the

beginning that he had precious little chance. And presently he found

himself the object of a press campaign in some of the yellow papers--all

of it paid for and engineered by his wife. He was held up as the brutal

fortune-hunting Englishman, who had beguiled an American heiress to

marry him, had carried her off to England to live upon her money, had

then insulted her by scandalous flirtations with a lady to whom he had

formerly been engaged, had shown her constant rudeness and unkindness,

and had finally, in the course of a quarrel, knocked her down,

inflicting shock and injury from which she had suffered ever since. Mrs.

Barnes had happily freed herself from him, but he was now trying to

bully her through the child--had, it was said, threatened to carry off

the little girl by violence. Mrs. Barnes went in terror of him. America,

however, would know how to protect both the mother and the child! You

can imagine the kind of thing. Well, very soon Roger began to find

himself a marked man in hotels, followed in the streets, persecuted by

interviewers; and the stream of lies that found its way even into the

respectable newspapers about him, his former life, his habits, etc., is

simply incredible! Unfortunately, he gave some handle----"

French paused a moment.

"Ah!" said Penrose, "I have heard rumours."

French rose and began to pace the room.

"It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly," he said at last. "The

night after that first scene between them, the night of her fall--her

pretended fall, so Roger told me--he went downstairs in his excitement

and misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, a

thing he had never done in his life before. But----"

"He has often done it since?"

French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis.

"Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam of

hope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off."

"Well, what came of his action?"

"Nothing--so far. I believe he has ceased to take any interest in it.

Another line of action altogether was suggested to him. About three

months ago he made an attempt to kidnap the child, and was foiled. He

got word that she had been taken to Charlestown, and he went there with

a couple of private detectives. But Mrs. Barnes was on the alert, and

when he discovered the villa in which the child had been living, she had

been removed. It was a bitter shock and disappointment, and when he got

back to New York in November, in the middle of an epidemic, he was

struck down by influenza and pneumonia. It went pretty hard with him.

You will be shocked by his appearance. Ecco! was there ever such a

story! Do you remember, Penrose, what a magnificent creature he was that

year he played for Oxford, and you and I watched his innings from the

pavilion?"

There was a note of emotion in the tone which implied much. Penrose

assented heartily, remarking, however, that it was a magnificence which

seemed to have cost him dear, if, as no doubt was the case, it had won

him his wife.

"But now, with regard to money; you say he wants money. But surely, at

the time of the marriage, something was settled on him?"

"Certainly, a good deal. But from the moment she left him, and the

Heston bills were paid, he has never touched a farthing of it, and never

will."

"So that the General's death was opportune? Well, it's a deplorable

affair! And I wish I saw any chance of being of use."

French looked up anxiously.

"Because you know," the speaker reluctantly continued, "there's nothing

to be done. The thing's finished."

"Finished?" French's manner took fire. "And the law can do _nothing_!

Society can do _nothing_, to help that man either to right himself, or

to recover his child? Ah!"--he paused to listen--"here he is!"

A cab had drawn up outside. Through the lightly curtained windows the

two within saw a man descend from it, pay the driver, and walk up the

flagged passage leading to the front door.

French hurried to greet the new-comer.

"Come in, Roger! Here's George Penrose--as I promised you. Sit down, old

man. They'll bring us some tea presently."

Roger Barnes looked round him for a moment without replying; then

murmured something unintelligible, as he shook hands with Penrose, and

took the chair which French pushed forward. French stood beside him with

a furrowed brow.

"Well, here we are, Roger!--and if there's anything whatever in this

horrible affair where an English lawyer can help you, Penrose is your

man. You know, I expect, what a swell he is? A K. C. after seven

years--lucky dog!--and last year he was engaged in an Anglo-American

case not wholly unlike yours--Brown _v._ Brown. So I thought of him as

the best person among your old friends and mine to come and give us some

private informal help to-day, before you take any fresh steps--if you do

take any."

"Awfully good of you both." The speaker, still wrapped in his fur coat,

sat staring at the carpet, a hand on each of his knees. "Awfully good of

you," he repeated vaguely.

Penrose observed the new-comer. In some ways Roger Barnes was handsomer

than ever. His colour, the pink and white of his astonishing complexion,

was miraculously vivid; his blue eyes were infinitely more arresting

than of old; and the touch of physical weakness in his aspect, left

evidently by severe illness, was not only not disfiguring, but a

positive embellishment. He had been too ruddy in the old days, too

hearty and splendid--a too obvious and supreme king of men--for our

fastidious modern eyes. The grief and misfortune which had shorn some of

his radiance had given a more human spell to what remained. At the same

time the signs of change were by no means, all of them, easy to read, or

reassuring to a friend's eye. Were they no more than physical and

transient?

Penrose was just beginning on the questions which seemed to him

important, when there was another ring at the front door. French got up

nervously, with an anxious look at Barnes.

"Roger! I don't know whether you will allow it, but I met an American

acquaintance of yours to-day, and, subject to your permission, I asked

him to join our conference."

Roger raised his head--it might have been thought, angrily.

"Who on earth----?"

"Captain Boyson?"

The young man's face changed.

"I don't mind him," he said sombrely. "He's an awfully good sort. He was

in Philadelphia a few months ago, when I was. He knows all about me. It

was he and his sister who introduced me to--my wife."

French left the room for a moment, and returned accompanied by a

fair-haired, straight-shouldered man, whom he introduced to Penrose as

Captain Boyson.

Roger rose from his chair to shake hands.

"How do you do, Boyson? I've told them you know all about it." He

dropped back heavily into his seat.

"I thought I might possibly put in a word," said the new-comer, glancing

from Roger to his friends. "I trust I was not impertinent? But don't let

me interrupt anything that was going on."

On a plea of chill, Boyson remained standing by the fire, warming his

hands, looking down upon the other three. Penrose, who belonged to a

military family, reminded himself, as he glanced at the American, of a

recent distinguished book on Military Geography by a Captain Alfred

Boyson. No doubt the same man. A capable face,--the face of the modern

scientific soldier. It breathed alertness; but also some quality warmer

and softer. If the general aspect had been shaped and moulded by an

incessant travail of brain, the humanity of eye and mouth spoke dumbly

to the humanity of others. The council gathered in the vicarage room

felt itself strengthened.

Penrose resumed his questioning of Barnes, and the other two listened

while the whole miserable story of the divorce, in its American aspects,

unrolled. At first Roger showed a certain apathy and brevity; he might

have been fulfilling a task in which he took but small interest; even

the details of chicanery and corruption connected with the trial were

told without heat; he said nothing bitter of his wife--avoided naming

her, indeed, as much as possible.

But when the tale was done he threw back his head with sudden animation

and looked at Boyson.

"Is that about the truth, Boyson? You know."

"Yes, I endorse it," said the American gravely. His face, thin and

tanned, had flushed while Barnes was speaking.

"And you know what all their papers said of me--what _they_ wished

people to believe--that I wasn't fit to have charge of Beatty--that I

should have done her harm?"

His eyes sparkled. He looked almost threateningly at the man whom he

addressed. Boyson met his gaze quietly.

"I didn't believe it."

There was a pause. Then Roger sprang suddenly to his feet, confronting

the men round him.

"Look here!" he said impatiently. "I want some money at once--and a good

lot of it." He brought his fist down heavily on the mantelpiece.

"There's this place of my uncle's, and I'm dashed if I can get a penny

out of it! I went to his solicitors this morning. They drove me mad with

their red-tape nonsense. It will take some time, they say, to get a

mortgage on it, and meanwhile they don't seem inclined to advance me

anything, or a hundred or two, perhaps. What's that? I lost my temper,

and next time I go they'll turn me out, I dare say. But there's the

truth. It's _money_ I want, and if you can't help me to money it's no

use talking."

"And when you get the money what'll you do with it?" asked Penrose.

"Pay half a dozen people who can be trusted to help me kidnap Beatty and

smuggle her over the Canadian frontier. I bungled the thing once. I

don't mean to bungle it again."

The answer was given slowly, without any bravado, but whatever energy of

life there was in the speaker had gone into it.

"And there is no other way?" French's voice from the back was troubled.

"Ask him?" Roger pointed to Boyson.

"Is there any legal way, Boyson, in which I can recover the custody and

companionship of my child?"

Boyson turned away.

"None that I know of--and I have made every possible inquiry."

"And yet," said Barnes, with emphasis, addressing the English barrister,

"by the law of England I am still Daphne's husband and that child's

legal guardian?"

"Certainly."

"And if I could once get her upon ground under the English flag, she

would be mine again, and no power could take her from me?"

"Except the same private violence that you yourself propose to

exercise."

"I'd take care of that!" said Roger briefly.

"How do you mean to do it?" asked French, with knit brows. To be sitting

there in an English vicarage plotting violence against a woman disturbed

him.

"He and I'll manage it," said the quiet voice of the American officer.

The others stared.

"_You?_" said French. "An officer in active service? It might injure

your career!"

"I shall risk it."

A charming smile broke on Penrose's meditative face.

"My dear French, this is much more amusing than the law. But I don't

quite see where _I_ come in." He rose tentatively from his seat.

Boyson, however, did not smile. He looked from one to the other.

"My sister and I introduced Daphne Floyd to Barnes," he said steadily,

"and it is my country, as I hold,--or a portion of it--that allows these

villainies. Some day we shall get a great reaction in the States, and

then the reforms that plenty of us are clamouring for will come about.

Meanwhile, as of course you know"--he addressed French--"New Yorkers and

Bostonians suffer almost as much from the abomination that Nevada and

South Dakota call laws, as Barnes has suffered. Marriage in the Eastern

States is as sacred as with you--South Carolina allows no divorce at

all--but with this licence at our gates, no one is safe, and thousands

of our women, in particular--for the women bring two-thirds of the

actions--are going to the deuce, simply because they have the

opportunity of going. And the children--it doesn't bear thinking of!

Well--no good haranguing! I'm ashamed of my country in this matter--I

have been for a long time--and I mean to help Barnes out, _coûte que

coûte_! And as to the money, Barnes, you and I'll discuss that."

Barnes lifted a face that quivered, and he and Boyson exchanged looks.

Penrose glanced at the pair. That imaginative power, combined with the

power of drudgery, which was in process of making a great lawyer out of

a Balliol scholar, showed him something typical and dramatic in the two

figures:--in Boyson, on the one hand, so lithe, serviceable, and

resolved, a helpful, mercurial man, ashamed of his country in this one

respect, because he adored her in so many others, penitent and patriot

in one:--in Barnes, on the other, so heavy, inert, and bewildered, a

ship-wrecked suppliant as it were, clinging to the knees of that very

America which had so lightly and irresponsibly wronged him.

It was Penrose who broke the silence.

"Is there any chance of Mrs. Barnes's marrying again?" he asked.

Barnes turned to him.

"Not that I know of."

"There's no one else in the case?"

"I never heard of anyone." Roger gave a short, excited laugh. "What

she's done, she's done because she was tired of me, not because she was

in love with anyone else. That was her great score in the divorce

case--that there was nobody."

Biting and twisting his lip, in a trick that recalled to French the

beautiful Eton lad, cracking his brains in pupil-room over a bit of

Latin prose, Roger glanced, frowning, from one to the other of these

three men who felt for him, whose resentment of the wrong that had been

done him, whose pity for his calamity showed plainly enough through

their reticent speech.

His sense, indeed, of their sympathy began to move him, to break down

his own self-command. No doubt, also, the fatal causes that ultimately

ruined his will-power were already at work. At any rate, he broke out

into sudden speech about his case. His complexion, now unhealthily

delicate, like the complexion of a girl, had flushed deeply. As he spoke

he looked mainly at French.

"There's lots of things you don't know," he said in a hesitating voice,

as though appealing to his old friend. And rapidly he told the story of

Daphne's flight from Heston. Evidently since his return home many

details that were once obscure had become plain to him; and the three

listeners could perceive how certain new information had goaded, and

stung him afresh. He dwelt on the letters which had reached him during

his first week's absence from home, after the quarrel--letters from

Daphne and Miss Farmer, which were posted at intervals from Heston by

their accomplice, the young architect, while the writers of them were

hurrying across the Atlantic. The servants had been told that Mrs.

Barnes, Miss Farmer, and the little girl were going to London for a day

or two, and suspected nothing. "I wrote long letters--lots of them--to

my wife. I thought I had made everything right--not that there ever had

been anything wrong, you understand,--seriously. But in some ways I had

behaved like a fool."

He threw himself back in his chair, pressing his hands on his eyes. The

listeners sat or stood motionless.

"Well, I might have spared my pains. The letters were returned to me

from the States. Daphne had arranged it all so cleverly that I was some

time in tracing her. By the time I had got to Sioux Falls she was

through a month of her necessary residence. My God!"--his voice dropped,

became almost inaudible--"if I'd only carried Beatty off _then_!--then

and there--the frontier wasn't far off--without waiting for anything

more. But I wouldn't believe that Daphne could persist in such a

monstrous thing, and, if she did, that any decent country would aid and

abet her."

Boyson made a movement of protest, as though he could not listen any

longer in silence.

"I am ashamed to remind you, Barnes,--again--that your case is no worse

than that of scores of American citizens. We are the first to suffer

from our own enormities."

"Perhaps," said Barnes absently, "perhaps."

His impulse of speech dropped. He sat, drearily staring into the fire,

absorbed in recollection.

* * * * *

Penrose had gone. So had Boyson. Roger was sitting by the fire in the

vicar's study, ministered to by Elsie French and her children. By common

consent the dismal subject of the day had been put aside. There was an

attempt to cheer and distract him. The little boy of four was on his

knee, declaiming the "Owl and the Pussy Cat," while Roger submissively

turned the pages and pointed to the pictures of that immortal history.

The little girl of two, curled up on her mother's lap close by, listened

sleepily, and Elsie, applauding and prompting as a properly regulated

mother should, was all the time, in spirit, hovering pitifully about her

guest and his plight. There was in her, as in Boyson, a touch of

patriotic remorse; and all the pieties of her own being, all the sacred

memories of her own life, combined to rouse in her indignation and

sympathy for Herbert's poor friend. The thought of what Daphne Barnes

had done was to her a monstrosity hardly to be named. She spoke to the

young man kindly and shyly, as though she feared lest any chance word

might wound him; she was the symbol, in her young motherliness, of all

that Daphne had denied and forsaken. "When would America--dear, dear

America!--see to it that such things were made impossible!"

Roger meanwhile was evidently cheered and braced. The thought of the

interview to which Boyson had confidentially bidden him on the morrow

ran warmly in his veins, and the children soothed him. The little boy

especially, who was just Beatty's age, excited in him a number of

practical curiosities. How about the last teeth? He actually inserted a

coaxing and inquiring finger, the babe gravely suffering it. Any trouble

with them? Beatty had once been very ill with hers, at Philadelphia,

mostly caused, however, by some beastly, indigestible food that the

nurse had let her have. And they allowed her to sit up much too late.

Didn't Mrs. French think seven o'clock was late enough for any child not

yet four? One couldn't say that Beatty was a very robust child, but

healthy--oh yes, healthy!--none of your sickly, rickety little things.

The curtains had been closed. The street children, the electric light

outside, were no longer visible. Roger had begun to talk of departure,

the baby had fallen fast asleep in her mother's arms, when there was

another loud ring at the front door.

French, who was expecting the headmaster of his church schools, gathered

up some papers and left the room. His wife, startled by what seemed an

exclamation from him in the hall outside, raised her head a moment to

listen; but the sound of voices--surely a woman's voice?--died abruptly

away, and the door of the dining-room closed. Roger heard nothing; he

was laughing and crooning over the boy.

"The Pobble that lost his toes

Had once as many as we."

The door opened. Herbert stood on the threshold beckoning to her. She

rose in terror, the child in her arms, and went out to him. In a minute

she reappeared in the doorway, her face ashen-white, and called to the

little boy. He ran to her, and Roger rose, looking for the hat he had

put down on entering.

Then French came in, and behind him a lady in black, dishevelled, bathed

in tears. The vicar hung back. Roger turned in astonishment.

"Mother! You here? Mother!"--he hurried to her--"what's the matter?"

She tottered toward him with outstretched hands.

"Oh Roger, Roger!"

His name died away in a wail as she clasped him.

"What is it, mother?"

"It's Beatty--my son!--my darling Roger!" She put up her hands

piteously, bending his head down to her. "It's a cable from Washington,

from that woman, Mrs. Verrier. They did everything, Roger--it was only

three days--and hopeless always. Yesterday convulsion came on--and this

morning----" Her head dropped against her son's breast as her voice

failed her. He put her roughly from him.

"What are you talking of, mother! Do you mean that Beatty has been ill?"

"She died last night. Roger--my darling son--my poor Roger!"

"Died--last night--Beatty?"

French in silence handed him the telegram. Roger disengaged himself and

walked to the fireplace, standing motionless, with his back to them, for

a minute, while they held their breaths. Then he began to grope again

for his hat, without a word.

"Come home with me, Roger!" implored his mother, pursuing him. "We must

bear it--bear it together. You see--she didn't suffer"--she pointed to

the message--"the darling!--the darling!"

Her voice lost itself in tears. But Roger brushed her away, as though

resenting her emotion, and made for the door.

French also put out a hand.

"Roger, dear, dear old fellow! Stay here with us--with your mother.

Where are you going?"

Roger looked at his watch unsteadily.

"The office will be closed," he said to himself; "but I can put some

things together."

"Where are you going, Roger?" cried Lady Barnes, pursuing him. Roger

faced her.

"It's Tuesday. There'll be a White Star boat to-morrow."

"But, Roger, what can you do? She's gone, dear--she's gone. And before

you can get there--long before--she will be in her grave."

A spasm passed over his face, into which the colour rushed. Without

another word he wrenched himself from her, opened the front door, and

ran out into the night.

CHAPTER X

"Was there ever anything so poetic, so suggestive?" said a charming

voice. "One might make a new Turner out of it--if one just happened to

be Turner!--to match 'Rain: Steam, and Speed.'"

"What would you call it--'Mist, Light, and Spring'?"

Captain Boyson leant forward, partly to watch the wonderful landscape

effect through which the train was passing, partly because his young

wife's profile, her pure cheek and soft hair, were so agreeably seen

under the mingled light from outside.

They were returning from their wedding journey. Some six weeks before

this date Boyson had married in Philadelphia a girl coming from one of

the old Quaker stocks of that town, in whose tender steadfastness of

character a man inclined both by nature and experience to expect little

from life had found a happiness that amazed him.

The bridegroom, also, had just been appointed to the Military

Attachéship at the Berlin Embassy, and the couple were, in fact, on

their way south to New York and embarkation. But there were still a few

days left of the honeymoon, of which they had spent the last half in

Canada, and on this May night they were journeying from Toronto along

the southern shore of Lake Ontario to the pleasant Canadian hotel which

overlooks the pageant of Niagara. They had left Toronto in bright

sunshine, but as they turned the corner of the lake westward, a white

fog had come creeping over the land as the sunset fell.

But the daylight was still strong, the fog thin; so that it appeared

rather as a veil of gold, amethyst, and opal, floating over the country,

now parting altogether, now blotting out the orchards and the fields.

And into the colour above melted the colour below. For the orchards that

cover the Hamilton district of Ontario were in bloom, and the snow of

the pear-trees, the flush of the peach-blossom broke everywhere through

the warm cloud of pearly mist; while, just as Mrs. Boyson spoke, the

train had come in sight of the long flashing line of the Welland Canal,

which wound its way, outlined by huge electric lamps, through the sunset

and the fog, till the lights died in that northern distance where

stretched the invisible shore of the great lake. The glittering

waterway, speaking of the labour and commerce of men, the blossom-laden

earth, the white approaching mist, the softly falling night:--the

girl-bride could not tear herself from the spectacle. She sat beside the

window entranced. But her husband had captured her hand, and into the

overflowing beauty of nature there stole the thrill of their love.

"All very well!" said Boyson presently. "But a fog at Niagara is no

joke!"

The night stole on, and the cloud through which they journeyed grew

denser. Up crept the fog, on stole the night. The lights of the canal

faded, the orchards sank into darkness, and when the bride and

bridegroom reached the station on the Canadian side the bride's pleasure

had become dismay.

"Oh, Alfred, we shan't see anything!"

And, indeed, as their carriage made its slow progress along the road

that skirts the gorge, they seemed to plunge deeper and deeper into the

fog. A white darkness, as though of impenetrable yet glimmering cloud,

above and around them; a white abyss beneath them; and issuing from it

the thunderous voice of wild waters, dim first and distant, but growing

steadily in volume and terror.

"There are the lights of the bridge!" cried Boyson, "and the towers of

the aluminum works. But not a vestige of the Falls! Gone! Wiped out! I

say, darling, this is going to be a disappointment."

Mrs. Boyson, however, was not so sure. The lovely "nocturne" of the

evening plain had passed into a Vision or Masque of Force that captured

the mind. High above the gulf rose the towers of the great works,

transformed by the surging fog and darkness into some piled and castled

fortress; a fortress of Science held by Intelligence. Lights were in the

towers, as of genii at their work; lights glimmered here and there on

the face of the farther cliff, as though to measure the vastness of the

gorge and of that resounding vacancy towards which they moved. In front,

the arch of the vast suspension bridge, pricked in light, crossed the

gulf, from nothingness to nothingness, like that sky bridge on which the

gods marched to Walhalla. Otherwise, no shape, no landmark; earth and

heaven had disappeared.

"Here we are at the hotel," said Boyson. "There, my dear,"--he pointed

ironically--"is the American Fall, and there--is the Canadian! Let me

introduce you to Niagara!"

They jumped out of the carriage, and while their bags were being carried

in they ran to the parapeted edge of the cliff in front of the hotel.

Niagara thundered in their ears; the spray of it beat upon their faces;

but of the two great Falls immediately in front of them they saw nothing

whatever. The fog, now cold and clammy, enwrapped them; even the bright

lights of the hotel, but a stone's throw distant, were barely visible;

and the carriage still standing at the steps had vanished.

Suddenly, some common impulse born of the moment and the scene--of its

inhuman ghostliness and grandeur--drew them to each other. Boyson threw

his arm round his young wife and pressed her to him, kissing her face

and hair, bedewed by the spray. She clung to him passionately, trembling

a little, as the roar deafened them and the fog swept round them.

* * * * *

As the Boysons lingered in the central hall of the hotel, reading some

letters which had been handed to them, a lady in black passed along the

gallery overhead and paused a moment to look at the new arrivals brought

by the evening train.

As she perceived Captain Boyson there was a quick, startled movement;

she bent a moment over the staircase, as though to make sure of his

identity, and then ran along the gallery to a room at the farther end.

As she opened the door a damp cold air streamed upon her, and the

thunder of the Falls, with which the hotel is perpetually filled, seemed

to redouble.

Three large windows opposite to her were, in fact, wide open; the room,

with its lights dimmed by fog, seemed hung above the abyss.

An invalid couch stood in front of the window, and upon it lay a pale,

emaciated woman, breathing quickly and feebly. At the sound of the

closing door, Madeleine Verrier turned.

"Oh, Daphne, I was afraid you had gone out! You do such wild things!"

Daphne Barnes came to the side of the couch.

"Darling, I only went to speak to your maid for a moment. Are you sure

you can stand all this damp fog?"

As she spoke Daphne took up a fur cloak lying on a chair near, and

wrapped herself warmly in it.

"I can't breathe when they shut the windows. But it is too cold for

you."

"Oh, I'm all right in this." Daphne drew the cloak round her.

Inwardly she said to herself, "Shall I tell her the Boysons are here?

Yes, I must. She is sure to hear it in some way."

So, stooping over the couch, she said:

"Do you know who arrived this evening? The Alfred Boysons. I saw them in

the hall just now."

"They're on their honeymoon?" asked the faint voice, after a just

perceptible pause.

Daphne assented. "She seems a pretty little thing."

Madeleine Verrier opened her tired eyes to look at Daphne. Mrs.

Floyd--as Daphne now called herself--was dressed in deep black. The

costly gown revealed a figure which had recently become substantial, and

the face on which the electric light shone had nothing left in it of the

girl, though Daphne Floyd was not yet thirty. The initial beauty of

complexion was gone; so was the fleeting prettiness of youth. The eyes

were as splendid as ever, but combined with the increased paleness of

the cheeks, the greater prominence and determination of the mouth, and a

certain austerity in the dressing of the hair, which was now firmly

drawn back from the temples round which it used to curl, and worn high,

_à la Marquise_, they expressed a personality--a formidable

personality--in which self-will was no longer graceful, and power no

longer magnetic. Madeleine Verrier gazed at her friend in silence. She

was very grateful to Daphne, often very dependent on her. But there were

moments when she shrank from her, when she would gladly never have seen

her again. Daphne was still erect, self-confident, militant; whereas

Madeleine knew herself vanquished--vanquished both in body and soul.

Certain inner miseries and discomforts had been set vibrating by the

name of Captain Boyson.

"You won't want to see him or come across him?" she said abruptly.

"Who? Alfred Boyson? I am not afraid of him in the least. He may say

what he pleases--or think what he pleases. It doesn't matter to me."

"When did you see him last?"

Daphne hesitated a moment. "When he came to ask me for certain things

which had belonged to Beatty."

"For Roger? I remember. It must have been painful."

"Yes," said Daphne unwillingly, "it was. He was very unfriendly. He

always has been--since it happened. But I bore him no malice"--the tone

was firm--"and the interview was short."

"----" The half inaudible word fell like a sigh from Madeleine's lips as

she closed her eyes again to shut out the light which teased them. And

presently she added, "Do you ever hear anything now--from England?"

"Just what I might expect to hear--what more than justifies all that I

did."

Daphne sat rigid on her chair, her hands crossed on her lap. Mrs.

Verrier did not pursue the conversation.

Outside the fog grew thicker and darker. Even the lights on the bridge

were now engulfed. Daphne began to shiver in her fur cloak. She put out

a cold hand and took one of Mrs. Verrier's.

"Dear Madeleine! Indeed, indeed, you ought to let me move you from this

place. Do let me! There's the house at Stockbridge all ready. And in

July I could take you to Newport. I must be off next week, for I've

promised to take the chair at a big meeting at Buffalo on the 29th. But

I can't bear to leave you behind. We could make the journey quite easy

for you. That new car of mine is very comfortable."

"I know it is. But, thank you, dear, I like this hotel; and it will be

summer directly."