I had not known Ingram long before I guessed that, at one period of

his life or another, women had meant a great deal for him, but that

they had never meant happiness. In what did the impression reside?

I can't say. In a regard perhaps--an inflection of voice--an over

quickness to catch sorrowful meanings--in what he did not say quite

as much as in what he did. But I was as sure of it then when I knew

nothing as now when I know everything. He could not always have loved

in vain. Partings there had been, tearful, emotional, reluctant, but

always partings. Letters reached him even now through changes and

redirections, letters filled with bright, helpful gossip, of the new

friends--the unimagined husband--the children that might so easily

have been his; with only here and there between the lines, for his eye

to see and no other, the tenderness that women keep for the man who

could win their regard but not their persons. And if Ingram felt sure

of anything, I knew he felt sure of this: that the chapter of his life

from which they were a legacy was closed and dead--a great stone rolled

to the door of its tomb, sealed and mortised, and guarded by a whole

cohort of wise intentions. And now, in a week, he had fallen--fallen

as precipitately as the greenest of "rash and inconsiderate youth."

Relying on his experience and disillusionment, he had broken the

covenant of the old, wise king, and, into some unsuspected vacuum of

his heart, a pretty face, a plaintive regard, a few surface tricks

of dress and manner had rushed and were not to be extricated without

endless pain and trouble. Again and again, as he turned from side to

side in the night watches, he went over the images of his fall, for so,

in all seriousness, this strange man regarded it. He felt the thrill

of the young throat stretched to meet him, caught the fragrance, so

faint--so faint that he had not noticed it till then--of the orris

root in which her clothes had lain folded; heard the little fluttering

sigh as his fervor stopped her breath. It had been the first kiss of

passion that had ever touched her lips; he knew because----oh! never

mind how he knew. What, exactly, he wondered, and was not the first

to wonder, did such a kiss signify to a good woman? Board and bed, he

surmised dimly, at some future date; home and home circle, taxes and

life insurance, doctor's bills, children clapping their hands round

Christmas trees. And this from him! He laughed out in the darkness--so

loud that the glass shade of the lamp by which he had read himself to

sleep vibrated with the sound. From him, a mere embodied intelligence,

driven by loneliness and mental suffering to self-expression, doomed

now, while life should last, to breed and bear the calamitous offspring

of the brain.

He had given her his address because that much seemed called for in

decency, but he did not expect a letter for a while. Yet when, after a

few more feverish and wakeful hours and the immense solace of a cold

tub, he passed into the sitting-room in his bath robe, a letter lay on

the breakfast tray that he knew could be from no one else; a square

pale mauve envelope, with an ingenious flap, addressed in a straggling

schoolgirl hand.

"DEAR MR. INGRAM,

"I hope you got home safe and had no _haresbreath_ escapes

from motors. I was nearly run over the other day, I only got on the

pavement in the _knick_ of time.

"I have put the bird in the _conservatery_ and given him a lot

of seed, he throws it about with his _beek_, but hasn't eaten

any. I haven't given him a name because I don't know yet if he is

going to live. Ma was crazy, but I _smouthed_ her down.

"No one ever kissed me before, but some one did hold my hand once

quite a long time. I couldn't _riggle_ it away.

"Rock is ill, he has eaten a _plumb_ stone I think and will

have (to) have some _caster_ oil. If it was one of mine that

makes it this year not never. How exciting!

"I shall be at 14, Hanover Place to-morrow till 4.15. _P'raps_

you would be near there if you are not writing.

"I remain,

"Your loving friend,

"FENELLA."

Paul read the strange letter over and over again, from its prim

apostrophe to the shy little breath of sentiment at its close. The ink

just there was a lighter color than the rest. It was evident that she

had let the letter go dry while wondering how to sign herself.

"Ho! ho!" he said aloud. "So Providence has given you a loving friend,

has it? Now what's a man like yourself, Paul Ingram, to do with a

loving friend and a conscience at one and the same time?"

"Scrap the conscience!" said counsellor the first. "The girl's pretty

and sweet."

"Pull out before any more harm's done!" said another. "She's quite

innocent."

"Give time a chance," said the third--the one that outruns the hounds

but never quite catches up with the hare. "You've got to hurt either

her pride or her heart by making an end of it now, and there's always a

chance her whim will wear out if you wait."

"That's what I'll do," said Ingram at last. "I'll tell her bit by bit

what I am, and hint at what I'm likely to become. She'll see reason.

There's often a lot of hard hog-sense at the bottom of these butterfly

women."

And, by way of starting well, he took her out to tea that afternoon,

and was so genial and natural that the last shadow of self-reproach

vanished from the poor child's heart. And before he left her he had

promised to call for her at her home. He knew by now that she did not

belong to his natural enemies, and the knowledge made it harder to

"pull out" than ever.

* * * * *

I have spent a good deal of time upon this idyll, without, I am afraid,

leaving a very just or a very pleasant impression of Paul Ingram upon

the reader's mind. But there are many excuses to be made for him. In

the first place, he was very poor--poorer than any of us guessed. He

had that profuse careless way with money which is quite as often a

consequence of never having had it as of having had it always. The

commonest, and perhaps the safest, investment of a little money is

to make present life bearable with it while it lasts. But the future

is quite another matter. A great golfer told me once that for days

after he had won a momentous handicap he was obsessed and haunted by

the stealthy patter of the feet that had followed him from hole to

hole. And I have no doubt that many a night, while the child sat upon

his knee and retailed her day's gossip, sweet and unsubstantial as

the sugary _étrennes_ in a Paris confectioner's window, he was

listening less to her than to the stealthy wolf-feet of poverty that

he knew were creeping up behind him.

And then he was, both constitutionally and through circumstances, an

unhappy man. There are souls so designated and set apart for sorrow

that it may be said of them, almost without paradox, that they are

only at ease when bearing it. They grow to recognize in mischance the

environment that suits them best. In such a mind an isolated reason

for happiness cannot exist. It pines away for lack of company. Nothing

convinces the heart of its sorrow so surely as a sudden discrepancy in

its ill-luck--a belated and unassisted piece of good fortune. Fate has

these freaks with those upon whose unhappiness she has determined. It

is not so much her concern that they should have nothing as that they

should always have a little less than might make them happy.

I think he would have been a better lover for what, I if may be

permitted a moment's plain speaking, I would call a little sane and

healthy lust. But he was of the said race of literary lovers, the race

of Swift, of Shelley, of Flaubert, who are as fatal to a woman's heart

as they are harmless to her virtue.

Last of all, I expect the girl, in her ignorance, was exacting, and

had no notion how the smoothest curb can gall. I know for a fact that

she insisted on his writing to her any evening on which he was not

able to see her, and I can imagine no torture more refined for such

a man than to have been forced to sit down, at the end of a long day

of disappointment and mental drudgery, and answer some foolish, fond

letter in language she could understand, and into which no trace of

the _weltschmerz_ should creep that was devouring his heart and

killing hope and ambition by inches. Some of his letters which I have

seen show that he took refuge in an irony and fantasy which make them

something of literary curiosities. He addressed her by all sorts of

strange names--"Crazy kid," "Dear Pierrette," "Maddest of March

Hares." One letter is written in Quaker dialect.

"SWEET FRIEND,

"As arranged betwixt thee and me I called for thee yestereve at

the house of thy worldly acquaintance, but hearkening timely the

laughter of fools from an upper chamber, which is like to thorns

crackling under a pot, refrained, and did not venture. I pray thee

walk soberly, and so farewell."

Some, written, I fancy, in the illiterate and misspelt jargon of the

cowboy of the plains, are, to me at least, unintelligible. At last it

became easier to call than to write at any time, and he appeared an

ardent lover for the very reasons that made him a laggard one.

He put off the first call as long as he could, but a day came when it

could be put off no longer. One foggy evening he found himself outside

the railings at Number Eleven, and Fenella asked him if he was not

coming in to show himself.

"I can't stay out late, you know, until you have," she said, with a

little reproach in her voice. It was the first time she had spoken

sadly to him.

Mrs. Barbour rose, a little flustered, as he came into the room, and

thrust some family mending behind the cushion of her basket chair. Paul

saw at once that she was of his own caste, and you never would have

guessed how his heart went out to her. The heart was under disgrace

just then, and a strict embargo laid upon its impulses.

"I am so pleased to meet you at last," said Mrs. Barbour, when the

first civilities were over, "and so interested to hear you are a

literary man. My husband wrote a good deal during his life."

Fenella was revolving, slowly, on the hearthrug before the mirror.

"Paul doesn't want to hear about books, mother," she said; "he's been

reading stodge all day."

But Mrs. Barbour was already searching the shabby book-shelves, packed

tight with tattered exercise-books, coverless magazines, broken

cardboard boxes, and a host of other things for which book-shelves were

never intended.

"My husband had a very fine library at one time," the widow went on, as

she rummaged, "but most of the best books are upstairs."

"With our lodgers," Fenella further explained. "We're very proud of

our 'paying jests'; aren't we, mummy. We've had them for years--and

years--and years." She let her voice die away, and stretched out her

arms slowly, indicating, indeed, a considerable time vista. "What an

actress!" thought Paul, watching her.

"Here's one," said her mother at last, dusting a slim volume in a brown

cloth binding. "Where _can_ all your father's books have got to,

Nelly?"

Ingram took the book from her hand. Its pages had never been cut, and

it exhaled the forlorn odor of the presentation copy. Its strange title

attracted him--

"Climatic Influences Upon the Reformation. A lecture delivered at Wells

before the United Diocesan Congress, 18--. By the Honble. and Revd.

Nigel Kedo Barbour, M. A."

There was a boastful engraved book-plate inside the cover--all plumes

and scrolls and quarterings.

"Has my new hat come, mummy?" asked Fenella, suddenly, in the changed

voice she kept for the serious affairs of life.

"I bade Druce take it up to your room," answered mother. "Have you had

tea yet, dear?"

"No," said Fenella, incisively. "Ring for some while I go upstairs,"

and disappeared forthwith.

Paul kept his eyes upon the mottled page, but knew he was undergoing a

scrutiny at once legitimate and disquieting. Mrs. Barbour spoke at last:

"I hope you don't think my little girl forward, Mr. Ingram."

Paul raised his eyes, closing the book upon his forefinger.

"I think her entirely charming."

"I know she's impulsive," the mother went on. "Yes--she is. It makes me

anxious."

"You don't expect me to quarrel with her latest impulse," Ingram said,

with one of his rare smiles.

Mrs. Barbour shook her head, secure in her own worldly wisdom and code

of conduct.

"But men make mistakes. Don't they? You know they do."

"Of course they do. I've made hundreds, but never the sort I think you

mean."

"You see," explained the clergyman's relict, "Fenella leads a strange

life. Yes"--she repeated the phrase, as though she found it vaguely

comforting--"a strange life. She's very bright and talented, and

receives a great deal of attention; but for reasons that--well, for

_reasons_, she can't see much of her friends here. I assure you,

you are the first gentleman acquaintance she has ever asked in. You

ought to feel very much flattered, Mr. Ingram."

"To an extent that verges on embarrassment, Mrs. Barbour."

"And then," the mother went on, in the heedless fashion that recalled

her daughter, "she has a great number of fine relations who would be

glad to show her attention if she'd make the first move. But Nelly

won't be 'taken up'--that's what she calls it--_taken up_, by any

one."

"Bravo!" said Paul. "Let us be fellow-conspirators, Mrs. Barbour, and

confine her bounty to the laborious and deserving class."

"Oh my!" exclaimed Mrs. Barbour, with sudden helplessness. "You do talk

like my husband! It's quite uncanny."

Fenella interrupted them, entering with noisy suddenness. The new hat,

very large, very smart, was on her head. She looked quickly from one to

the other.

"What've you two been yapping about?" she asked. "Mother"--in an

aggrieved voice--"this beastly hat is an inch too big all round. I told

Clarice so, but you and she would talk me down. You never take my part

with dressmakers and people. It'll have to be altered. Hats are getting

smaller. Have you rung for tea?"

"The maids are upstairs, dear. I'll go and get it myself."

As soon as she had left the room the girl seated herself on Ingram's

knee and kissed him.

"What were you and mummy talking about?" she said, rubbing her lips

after the kiss. "The hat's a bit in the way isn't it? I hate things in

the way, don't you?"

"Not when I perceive them in time."

"Oh, but we aren't going to have any, are we, Paul? No difficulties--no

quarrels--nothing horrid."

Ingram didn't answer her. Perhaps he was listening to those feet

creeping, creeping up behind his shoulder.

* * * * *

So the months passed. When it was too late, Ingram tried to tell

her what he should have told her at first. But Nelly would admit

nothing--listen to nothing. She turned all the clouds inside out and

bade him confine his attention to the silver lining. Upon the subject

of her dancing ambitions she entered an unaccountable and fatal

reserve, but there was nothing else in her life she did not share with

him. Through whatever fringe of whatever society she happened to be

adorning at the moment she dragged her lover gallantly. Fenella led

captive was Fenella less dangerous, and the old popularity revived

at the news of her attachment. Men liked Ingram, and he was thought

"distinguished," "unusual," even in circles that called him "Crabbed

Age" and "The Satyr" behind his back. (Besides, when were satyrs ever

unpopular?) A few mothers held up shuddering hands, but the daughters,

being of the new generation, only seized the occasion to preach the

new evangel, and, generally, to cleanse and sterilize the imagination

of eld. Speculation, in fact, having spent itself, accepted the

situation; and by the time the long-planned foreign holiday arrived,

her mother thought her "improved," "more thoughtful, and more womanly."

XIV

ALTHEA REES

One airless July morning, a good many years ago, now, old Winstanley

came bustling into the sporting editor's room, where I sat on a

desk, swinging my legs and talking "bulldog" with Stedall. He had a

typewritten slip of paper in his hand.

"Probate and Admiralty for you this morning, my boy!" he said,

addressing me. "Here's the cause list. There's two cases down.

M--m--m! '_Vacuum Recovery Co. v. Owners of Dacia. Assessment for

Salvage._' That's a friendly case; it shouldn't take more than a

couple of hours. Here's something spicier: '_Hepworth v. Hepworth: no

parties named_.' It's a defended case. Special jury. Hepworth is old

Lord Hallamshire's grandson, younger son of a younger son, but that's

good enough for a 'Society Divorce,' lead and about a column and a

half. If the turtle doves come on to-day, keep your eyes and ears open,

Prentice! There's some dashed mystery about the case; secret marriage

and that sort of thing. Mrs. Hep's a Yankee. There appears to have been

a separation three years ago, and now the respondent wants the kid.

Blackmail, no doubt."

And off bustled Winstanley, fretting and bawling.

If secret there were, no one seemed to have winded it but Winstanley.

There were not more than the average knot of idlers in the public

gallery. But the body of the court was filled with a bevy of

smartly dressed women, and the five seniors who were briefed were

all well-known leaders. The Salvage case was called first, but the

Trinity Masters were not ready, and so the conjugal knot was attacked

forthwith.

Hart-Milner, the well-known silk and wit, opened with an appeal to the

press. The case, said he, raised no point of any public importance, but

its detail was of the most painful nature with which that court could

be called upon to deal. How far such evidence as they were about to

hear should ever be reported in the public sheets was, he thought, a

vexed question. The entire position of the press in such matters might,

at some future date, have to be revised, and he believed that the final

decision would depend a great deal upon the restraint and decency

with which the privilege had previously been handled. The position

of the parties, moreover--at least of the party to whom his interest

was confined--made a further and personal claim for indulgence upon a

body whose association with literature was growing closer each year.

The name which appeared upon the cause list--the name which he could

well believe had grown to be to his client the intolerable symbol of

all she sought relief from to-day--was, it is true, as obscure as it

was besmirched. But it was far different with the petitioner's maiden

name. That name, a name which, in accordance with a line of defence he

left his friend on the other side to justify if he could, it seemed was

to be imported into this sordid case, it would be only necessary to

mention, in order at once to strike a responsive chord in the breasts

of all who had the interest of literature at heart. (A pause, and "Oh!

you are _strong_," from Nicholls, leading for respondent.) In her

capacity of authoress, petitioner was well known to the reading public

as "Althea Rees."

My! what a buzz and hum and craning of necks! And how the people who

were _in_ congratulated themselves on being in, and of having

refused to be frightened away by the possible technicalities of Vacuum

Salvage, and how they determined that no luncheon interval should tempt

them away from the precincts of the court.

"I say, 'imported into the case,'" goes on Hart-Milner, when order

had been restored, "because I believe I am divulging no secret when

I say that the other side intend to plead condonation, and to take

the unprecedented course of deducing it, not only from letters that

passed between the parties subsequent to the alleged offences, but

from passages in the published work of the petitioner bearing upon the

position of the sexes--passages which, I make no doubt, my learned

friend will know not only how to select, but----"

Nicholls was on his feet. "M'lud! I protest most strongly against the

line my learned friend is seeing fit to take. My learned friend can

have no knowledge whatever of what is in my brief."

"I think, Sir Frederick, I should let it alone at the present stage,"

the president suggests pacifically. "If it's there, we'll come to it in

time."

"Very well, m'lud! Then I'll open my case. The petitioner--Althea Clara

Hepworth, born Althea Clara Rees--only daughter of Mr. Lyman Rees,

president of the Anglo-Occidental Bank, an American gentleman resident

in London, and who has been for years a prominent figure ..." and so

on, and so on, and so on.

* * * * *

I think I see the scene now. The dim court, packed with its restless,

seated occupants; the long shafts of light from the Gothic window over

the judge's seat, all alive with dust motes; the bearded president,

with chin on hand; the intent, puzzled faces of the special jurymen;

and Hart-Milner on his feet, relating, in a voice low but distinct,

and vibrating with the multiplex humanity that made him the darling of

Bar and Commons, the devilish tale of physical and spiritual brutality

in which a man had sought revenge for the inferiority that daily

self-comparison with a woman high-spirited, witty, and admired enforced

upon his own base soul.

At the close of the opening speech the petitioner went into the box.

She was a pathetic figure; all the more so, I thought, because she was

so beautifully gowned. I remember her dress well. It was of brown silk,

with the wide velvet sleeves that no one thought hideous in eighteen

hundred and--never mind. She had a flower hat covered with pale blue

violets, and a bunch of the same flowers at her breast. She kept her

veil down as much as possible, and answered in low monosyllables, or in

little, faltering sentences that one could hardly catch, and that often

had to be repeated for the benefit of the jury. The questions were

frightful. Even Hart-Milner could not do much with them.

Nicholls, with his long, mottled face, and jaw as of a dishonest

horse-chaunter, jumped up to cross-examine--loathing his task, but all

the more truculent for that.

"Look at these letters, please!"

A bundle of letters, on a woman's fanciful note-paper, sewn into a

stiff paper cover, was taken across by the gowned usher.

"They are yours?"

"Yes."

"Some are dated, some aren't. May we take it the undated ones were

written within two or three months of those that are?"

"Yes, I think so."

"During your husband's absence in Norway?"

"Yes."

"Written two years after the court has been told that your happiness

and peace of mind and health had been wrecked, your faith in human

nature destroyed, and written to the man who was responsible for all

these things?"

No answer.

"Come! Let's read one or two."

He read them one by one. Foolish, flippant, loving letters. The letters

of a poor little girl-wife, hungering for love and kisses, and--yes,

why not?--for cuddling (the very word was in one of them); and, in

her longing, turning for it to the dishonored, tainted source whence

alone she could ask it now. The poor soul broke down and cried as the

merciless, rasping voice read on and on.

"Now I ask you, and I ask the jury, is this condonation? And if it

isn't, what is?"

Althea threw her arms out with a little stiff, appealing gesture that

she checked immediately.

"Oh!" she sobbed, "what could I do? I was only a girl. I believed what

he told me. He said all men were the same."

The case had not concluded when the court rose. I sprinted back to the

office. The compositor was waiting for me, but I pushed by him and

opened the door of Winstanley's sanctum.

"Hello!" said he, scarcely turning round; "you're late. What have you

brought?"

"Half a column."

"Was it a dry case?"

"It's one that shouldn't be reported at all."

He spun round in his chair and regarded me savagely.

"That means it's d----d good! What's your game, Prentice?"

"Look here, Winstanley," I said nervously, "there _are_ things,

you know----"

"I don't know it at all. People who go into the courts are public

property. If they don't like it, they can stay outside."

"And besides----"

"Besides what?"

"She's my Mrs. Hepworth."

"_Your_ Mrs. Hepworth?"

"Althea Rees, the authoress."

He jumped up, and began to pace the floor savagely. "That's so like

you. I suspect something; I send you down because you can gush, and,

instead of sending your stuff out early and getting the scoop, you turn

up late, with ten lines for the public and a lot of tripe about 'a

woman's heart' for me."

Well, like Fenella, I '_smouthed_' him down. He wasn't a bad

little beast, when you knew him--Winstanley. It wasn't his fault if his

veins were full of printer's ink. I told him the _Herald_ and the

_Courier_ were doing the same as me. He sat grumbling.

"Turn in your stuff, then, and come back here. I'll send down Chaffers

to-morrow, and you can do old Astbury at the City Carlton. You don't

deserve anything better."

But Chaffers, and a good many other people, had their trouble for

nothing. Next morning Nicholls arose in a packed court and announced

that, after consultation, his client had decided to withdraw his

defence, and would take a verdict by consent; each party to pay

their own costs, and neither custody of nor access to the child of

the marriage to be sought. Which decision Sir William Vieille, the

president, commended in a little speech that left no doubt which way

his direction would have gone. And I, hearing the result at midday,

sent Althea the biggest bunch of pale violets I could find in St.

Swithin's Lane. The price of violets in July, was, I admit, an

eye-opener.

* * * * *

You will have guessed it was not on principle alone that I took all

this trouble and risk. I had interviewed Althea a year before on

some shop-assistants' movement or other (she was a woman of varied

activities); and something in the name upon the card I had sent in

seemed to strike her. When the interview was over she asked me to wait,

and, having left the room for a few moments, came back with her father.

Mr. Rees was a big, old-time, orating and banqueting type of American

citizen, with a clean-shaven, ivory-white face and thick silver hair.

He carried a great expanse of starched shirt-front, wore a narrow

black tie, and I rather fancied I detected Wellington boots under his

broadcloth trousers. He had my card in his hand.

"Your name is Hyacinth Prentice?"

"Yes, sir."

"You must be some relative of Hyacinth Prentice of Prentice and

Morales?"

I said I was his son.

"Give me your hand, my boy!" said the old gentleman, impulsively. It

was the last time I was to be called a boy; but I suppose I seemed

young to him, and, indeed, a permanent immaturity of aspect is one of

my disadvantages.

"I knew your father well," goes on old Lyman Rees. "He was one of the

first friends I made when I came to London in sixty--sixty----? Oh,

very well, my dear," for Althea had laid her hand gently upon his

mouth. "We lost sight of one another before the trouble. I wrote him,

though. I said: 'Don't try to reconstruct! Don't show the bad trading!

Buy off the debenture holders! Give them twice the value in ordinary

shares if they insist, and raise another hundred thousand in debenture

on the Chili property.' But your father was an ill man to advise. Ah,

well; it's an old tale to-day. Althea, we mustn't lose sight of Hy

Prentice's son. When we are dining by ourselves?"

Althea gave a date that was significantly far ahead.

"But I'm always at home on Sundays," she added, smiling a good-bye.

"Come in whenever the English Sunday becomes unendurable, Mr. Prentice."

* * * * *

My floral offering must have been only one of many she received, for

all manner of fine friends rallied to her in her trouble; but, perhaps,

coming from a poor devil of a working journalist, the tribute struck

her imagination. A few days afterward I got a little note chiding me

for never having taken advantage of the old invitation, and bidding me

to dinner at the end of the week.

I am not a sentimentalist, whatever Winstanley may pretend he believes,

but I confess that in the course of a friendship which dated from this

dinner Althea became a sort of a heroine with me. Poor woman! the veil

had been so roughly snatched from all the tender privacies of her life

that I think I had the same satisfaction in bringing her my sympathy

and consideration as a knight-errant may have felt, covering with his

own cloak the naked, shamefaced captive whom his sword had cut loose in

the forest. In fact, we became so far friends that one night, more than

six months after her decree had been confirmed, she bade me, in saying

good-night, congratulate her on a very serious step she was taking

on the morrow. I thought she was going to be married, and I admit my

heart sank a little. But it was nothing of the sort, as she explained

hastily. She was on the eve of reception into the Roman Catholic

Church.

XV

HISTORY OF A CONVERSION

She first came into contact with Catholicism--I mean close personal

contact, for, during her residence upon the Continent, such things

had passed her like a painted show--during a stay she made in late

autumn with the Mawhoods (pronounce "_Maud_," please!) in Norfolk.

Harberhall, Sir Cuthbert Mawhood's seat, famous for its tapestries and

formal gardens, is one of the great houses of England. It was also,

for nigh upon two hundred years, while the Howards were tacking and

trimming, the only important stronghold of the prescribed faith in East

Anglia. It has been beset for weeks together by spies and pursuivants;

its gray flint Tudor walls are honeycombed with secret stairways,

sliding panels and "conveyances." Father Fitzsimon or Hopwell, the

seventeenth-century Abelard, lay concealed there for six months during

the Oates mystification, and a strip of sea-beach almost under the

park walls, called Paces to-day, is said to preserve in its name the

tradition of his restless night walks. Set upon a steep hill that

overlooks the fowl-haunted levels of the Wash, there is everything

in the position and associations of Harberhall to arouse a romantic

enthusiasm, and to turn that enthusiasm toward the great central fact

which has lifted a commonplace county family to the heights of heroism

and self-sacrifice.

The chapel of the Mawhoods is a modern Gothic building of the elder

Pugin, whose windows are filled with stained glass from a French abbey

demolished in the Revolution, and is connected with the hall only

by a long wing of palm-houses and vineries. It is also the parish

church of the village below the hill. During the last hundred years

a small congregation of the faith has grown up there, dependents and

old servants' children's children. The Mawhoods have married much

abroad, and little trace remains of the Jansenism with which so many

of the old Catholic families were once tainted. On a hunt morning,

which also happened to be a feast of the Church, Sir Cuthbert and his

two tall sons in pink approached the sacred altar among their servants

and laborers. The Confiteor was recited by the surpliced server--the

tabernacle unveiled. Above each head the chaplain, a tall, curly haired

young doctor, himself a scion of an old West of England cavalier

family, and predestined to the purple, bent reverently and murmured

some formula that Althea could not catch. All returned to their places

with downcast eyes and clasped hands, but with the easiness of long

habit as well. Mass went on with many genuflections--many salutations

from the altar steps, with tinkling of crystal vessels against the gold

chalice rim, and one ecstatic minute in which the bowed congregation

seemed to hold its breath, while a bell trilled sharply six times.

During the mass the pupils of a convent school outside the village,

directed by a community of French refugee nuns, many of them cousins

and kinsfolk to the hall, sang English hymns in sweet quavering

voices--vapid, unmetrical compositions of the veiled cloister, though

not without a certain sentimental charm of their own:

"O Sacred Heart: behold thy children kneeling...."

_or_

"Oh, turn to Jesus, Mother turn!

And call Him by His tenderest names...."

This blessed _eau sucré_ brought tears to Althea's eyes. Harkening

it, she seemed somehow to recover her own hapless, "ill-adventured

youth." The spell of the old, wise religion, so guileless and yet so

subtle, which never seeks to explain the inexplicable, and which is as

tender to those who have lost their happiness as it is merciless to

those who are seeking it, fell over her. The end was never in doubt.

I should like to have been near Althea while she was "under

instruction." I don't mean on account of anything she would have said,

for, like most original thinkers, she was capable of infinite docility;

but just to have watched her face while the Catholic doctrine, say as

to the relation between physical and moral evil, was explained for

her benefit. For she was a child of revolt, if ever there was one;

far more akin to Bruno than to Augustine, to Leopardi than to Newman.

Innately sceptical, a scoffer in the grain, I suppose she discovered

that beyond all negation a doubt persists, and decided to give God

and the creed that speaks most confidently for Him the benefit of

it. Even after her conversion she liked to play at heresy--to be

_enfant terrible_--to have grave monsignori wag their fingers

half reprovingly at her. Her religion remained intensely personal,

and she was never impressed, as some worthy converts have been, by

the spectacle of the Church as a "great going concern." Its dogma

oppressed her: she was not strong enough physically or nervously to

endure its elaborate ritual, and would often leave her seat in church,

suffocating, in the very middle of high mass. What she liked best was

to creep away at dusk, when the world is busied with shopping and tea,

and, before some dimly lit side altar in Farm Street or Brompton, to

set herself adrift upon an ocean of sentiment that, with a little more

conviction and a little less self-consciousness, might almost have

become ecstasy.

Her new interest was immediately made apparent in her books, for her

characters henceforth began to talk theology in season and out of

season. At an earlier stage of her career, I submit, this would have

missed her her public. But her reputation was by now secure: her annual

novel was eagerly awaited by the "passionate few" whose suffrage alone

fine writing can win. Besides, it was noticeable her asceticism

never strayed far from the purlieus and issues of Mayfair. One got up

from her books feeling that one had been in very fine company indeed.

She had that affinity to the highly placed which is less snobbery, I

believe, than a kind of perverse idealism. And, beneath all the pomp

and circumstance, sorrow always worked regardless of earthly shows, and

kept the balance true.

Such, as far as the world has any right to know her, was Althea Rees

at the date I tried to make her Paul Ingram's earthly providence. I

pleaded his cause, not perhaps as strongly as I might, because I wanted

the man and his work to complete the impression for themselves. That

they might do more--that in trying to work good I might be working

mischief--was a thought that, I protest, never once occurred to me.

XVI

HOA-HAKA-NANA-IA

It doesn't much matter how early in the autumn we come back to London;

upon our return we always find the season has stolen a march upon

us. Paul arrived in town on a dark, rainy afternoon. The impatient,

scowling skies were already beginning the ruin of the short-lived

English summer. Beyond the railway terminus the streets, with their

stream of jostling umbrellas, their straining horses and shiny-coated

drivers, were both bewildering and disheartening. Victoria was full

of belated holiday makers setting an anxious face seaward. And on all

sides, from the railway announcements with which the walls of the

vestibule were placarded, from the covers of the summer magazines that

still heaped the book-stalls, from advertisements of soap and jam and

pickles and liquors, girl faces simpered and ogled. Girls in punts,

dabbling their hands in lilied water: sunburnt girls in orchards,

carrying baskets filled with apples: languid girls in hammocks, with

shapely ankles peeping discreetly from their frilled skirts: girls

smiling from carriage windows, or standing with hounds in leash on

windy moors--but always girls, always women. In some of these journals

there might be food for thought or fruit of experience: here and

there--though rarely--an author's name seemed earnest of this; but in

every case, for the written word as for bottled mineral water or patent

cereal, the lure was the same--some pretty, foolish face; something

to excite and feed for a moment the idle desire of the eye. Paul, as

he viewed these things biliously, wondered whether it were true after

all, as his French captain had declared to him once with cursing and

swearing, that the Anglo-Saxon was the most woman-ridden race in the

world; and, alas! remembering how he himself had been employed during

the last fortnight, a spasm of self-contempt contracted and hardened

his heart. He felt degraded, commonplace, banal; caught in the toils

of the delusion that has deposed woman from her proper place as man's

helpmeet and propounds her, tricked and adorned and set on a pedestal,

as his reward.

He put his baggage in the cloak-room, and made first of all for my

lodgings in Pimlico. This was particularly unfortunate, as Mrs.

McNaughten, deceived by the morning's fair promise, had driven me forth

betimes, bidding me, under pain of her displeasure, which is no light

threat, not to return till night, the while my room should be swept and

scoured, "before the murk days comes, and a body canna tell dir-rt frae

darkness." Scribbling a message in the narrow hall, while his umbrella

made a pool upon its shabby oilcloth and Dulcinea, with pail and broom,

ascended laboriously to her attack upon matter in the wrong place, Paul

had an opportunity for contemplating the rewards of literature, the

sort that does get into print. It cannot have been inspiriting.

His own rooms were in Cowley Street, Westminster. He approached them,

through Broad Sanctuary, with the sense of expectancy that every

one feels after even a short absence who nears the spot upon which

the activities of his life converge. He had not left his French

address--and so much can happen in a fortnight!

There was only one letter and a packet: the harvest of two weeks! The

package contained his bank pass-book. He glanced at it hastily and

tossed it aside. The letter was from America, from the lawyers who

managed a slender inheritance that had devolved upon him some years

ago, as a tardy act of justice, years after the foreclosure upon his

mother's farm. As he read it, the blood left his cheeks under their

superficial sunburn. He pocketed it, and made a hasty calculation

upon his fingers--counting months perhaps--or even weeks. He looked

round his sitting-room with hunted eyes. They were particularly

pleasant quarters, these rooms of Ingram's, in a charming old early

Georgian house behind the Abbey. Their windows had deep seats and

looked across the cloistral calm of Cowley Street to similar quaint

windows, curtained with art fabrics and with a hint of pottery and

brass beyond. Actresses of the serious sort, journalists, an artist

or two, one junior Cabinet Minister, were his neighbors. He was proud

and fond of the old-world parlor--of its panelled walls, the slight

list of its floor, its grotesque fire-back and grate. It had been his

home now for two years; even the dust and stillness that lay on it

after a fortnight's absence seemed consecrated--seemed _his_. All

the books and most of the furniture was his own. It is marvellous how

much wandering and uprooting the instinct of a home-making race will

survive. As, give a couple of beavers in an exhibition tank a few logs,

and watch the poor beasts start building!

He had a hasty lunch and went to the Museum. He read hard: he was too

disturbed to write. In its untroubled atmosphere little by little his

agitation left him. A pleasant sense of comradeship reached him from

silent neighbors, many of whom had grown gray in the same thankless

task. He felt he would always be able to breathe freely here. There was

a respite after all, and projects would suggest themselves once his

mind was at rest. Once it was at rest! For certain distractions must be

put out of his way once and for all. He was sorry, truly sorry, for the

girl who used to sit quietly beside him reading "Who's Who" or turning

the leaves of some illustrated book--there, in the seat where the mad

poet was mowing and scribbling this afternoon, but he was sorry for her

only in the same impersonal sense that he was sorry for the woes with

which the musty volume before him was filled:

"Old unhappy, far-off things

And battles long ago."

After all, self-preservation was the first law, and one could not

accept a real responsibility for anything that was as inevitable

as this. He was quite cheerful when I met him for dinner at the

_À-peu-près_, and even pleasantly ironic at the expense of a white

shirt-front and black tie which I was weak enough to think an evening

call upon a lady in Portland Place demanded.

* * * * *

Althea received us in her own sanctum upon the second floor: a long,

beautiful Adams room with creamy white walls hung sparsely with

Carpacciesque Italian drawings in red chalk, a few water-colors of the

old English school, and one great painting of the mad Venetian master,

all splash and impasto, which, seen close at hand, was like a lichen

stain on an old red wall, but, at a little distance, teemed with form

and color. A bookcase of dark carved wood ran breast-high round the

walls. Along its deep shelf were ranged bronzes, old Nankin jars,

fragmental majolica figures--with an occasional faded embroidery or red

morocco missal clasped with hammered silver. The carpet was of thick,

dead-leaf-colored pile, and a brass railed fender with a wide leather

seat ran across the low marble mantelpiece. Althea's room always struck

me, personally, as the last word in that austere taste which roams the

world, seeking and rejecting, in its quest of the beautiful.

She rose to meet us, and Paul had the impression of a woman, still

young, in a loose pale satin gown, rather clumsy of figure but graceful

of movement, with chestnut hair dressed low on her forehead, gray eyes

under thick dark brows, a heavy jaw and just a hint of sensuality in

the mouth. Her arms and hands were white and perfectly shaped; her ears

finely modelled, and set as close to the head as though they had been

carved from it in low relief.

As long as I was there we only talked commonplace, and I left them

early, pleading the editorial discipline. I thought I had done my

part in bringing them together, and walked back to Pimlico "on

eggshells." But no sooner was I gone, (so I have heard since,) than

she recrossed the room and, seating herself upon the fender, gazed at

Ingram in silence for a long while. Try to imagine what balm to the

misunderstood, thwarted spirit that level, frankly admiring regard must

have been.

"Tell me all about it!" she said at last, abruptly and impulsively.

Paul smiled back into the intense gray eyes.

"All about what?"

"How you ever came to write such a story."

She reached to the mantel-shelf, and, taking down a square silver

cigarette-box, scrawled all over its top and sides with well-known

women's names, handed it across to him. She lit one herself and

arranged her satin draperies.

"You speak as though I had 'arrived!'"

"Oh! success will come," she said confidently. "It's the beginnings

that are most fascinating. I want to be taken behind the scenes. Come,

wizard!" she pleaded "let me be inquisitorial and curious while I'm

under your spell. To-morrow you'll be my rival. Who knows but that I

may hate you then?"

Ingram considered a moment, and flicked the ashes from his cigarette.

"There's not much to tell," he said slowly. "You may have heard or

guessed that I'm a poor man's son. We have our decayed families in

Massachusetts, though I suppose we haven't quite so far back to decay.

I didn't learn much more at free school than to read and write and

figure, but you know with what care and reverence the first steps are

guarded in our country. Nothing so trivial and hopeless as the average

English taste in letters could leave even our primaries. I may say 'our

country,' 'our primaries,' may I not?"

She flashed her sympathy.

"Afterward I led a very lonely life for years. I don't mean

comparative loneliness, or even such loneliness as a man may achieve

for himself in any big city. I mean weeks, months, with never a human

face. And during that time I think"--he laughed--"I think I read every

book in the world."

"No writing? No early efforts?"

"I was twenty-eight before I tried. When I wrote my first essay I'd

almost forgotten how to hold a pen. Please," he urged quickly, "you

must try and believe it."

"I am believing every word you say."

"I was a soldier in the French army. Oh! no glory--just drudgery.

Very good society though: I still believe my corporal was an Austrian

bishop. We were on detachment in the desert, and of course English

books weren't to be had. Besides, some of the lads from Alsace were

eager to learn, and it seemed a chance before I forgot it myself. I

had met all sorts of strange characters, and began to try and set them

down as I remembered them. Then it was only a step to putting them in

new situations and figuring out how they'd make good. And then--and

then--it seemed to me I made a discovery."

He stopped, a little agitated, filled his lungs with smoke, and emptied

them before he spoke again. Althea sat quite still.

"Go on, please," she said in a low voice.

"In all the stories I had read the character seemed to start,

full-fledged, on the first page. All the action of the book develops

it and shows it up. Now that might be literature, but it wasn't life.

What was the reason? Not a mistake; because the best men do it. No. But

I think unconsciously they are following the line of least resistance.

They start the first chapter under a disadvantage: with the last one in

their heads. And they even get praise for preserving the unities--the

_unities_!--of _life_! What a lot of guessing it would save!

I ended by believing there's no such thing as a consistent character

at all. There's something we hang our convictions on as we hang

clothes on pegs, but all the rest is just things happening--things

happening--things happening. And in the intervals"--he laughed again,

"as much character as you like to indulge in: as much as you feel you

can stand yourself. Am I tiring you?"

"Oh, no!"

"Take my book. You've read it through?"

"And through again."

"What's Patty Holt? Only a ranch-woman who broils, and bakes, and

washes, and irons, and has wandering loves. What's her husband? An

Indian trader, who holds up trains and has views on the revision of

Hamilton's masterpiece, the Constitution of the United States. Neither

of them know either how good or how bad they are. Conviction for him

would come with the rope round his neck, and for her when the Ashplant

Vigilance Committee gave her twenty-four hours to bisect the state

boundary line at right angles."

"She'll be compared with Madame Bovary, you know."

"Very unfairly, then. Emma Bovary is a romantic-minded woman set amid

prosaic surroundings, and Holt's wife is a commonplace woman set in

romantic ones. What's wanting to romance? Her lovers ride and kill.

I suppose if they rode--what's the word--_destriers_ instead of

cow-ponies, and carried two-handed swords instead of thirty-thirties,

they'd be legitimate subjects for the most full-blooded cap and sword

romance. And there was--I mean there is--violent and horrid death

at hand any time the Ute bucks lift a demijohn of fifty overproof

Peach Bloom Rye going up to a mining camp. No, what weighs them

both down is just the sordidness of the transplanted civilization

around them, and when the crash comes all they have to turn to is the

little meeting-house God of their youth, which the woman has outgrown

unconsciously during her emotional experiences."

"But surely----What about Mr. Ffoulkes? You don't think that he----?"

Paul jumped to his feet and thrust his hands into his pockets with an

impatient movement.

"Everard Ffoulkes! The cowboy bishop! Isn't it funny how unerringly

even good criticism puts his finger on the one true thing, and declares

'That couldn't happen.' Why he's '_vécu_'--'_erlebt_,' every

word and action of him. I've ridden with him, camped with him, bunked

with him, and even prayed with him."

Althea regarded him awhile, through the smoke haze, with eyes narrowed

to slits.

"Mr. Ingram," she said, flinging her cigarette away, "I'm going to help

you publish your book, but I'm going to hurt you first. Now--are you

ready?"

"Go right ahead."

"You'll have to modify it. Oh! don't bristle and scold. I know I've

touched a nerve. But on your own confession you've lived away from

the world a long time, and you have no conception of"--she paused

for a strong enough word--"the impregnable determination of our race

that certain things shall not be--I won't say discussed, but even

postulated. It's too strong for the strongest of us. The Inquisition

and the Index are indulgent beside it. It's begun to hurt social

progress; but even social progress has to mark time and wait its

pleasure. Right in the midst of our civilization, Mr. Ingram, a great,

rough-hewn granite god uprears his bulk. I always imagine him something

like the Easter Island deity you have to pass on your right going into

the Museum--no forehead, cavernous eye-sockets, vast nostrils and

mouth--HOA-HAKA-NANA-IA: the god of things as they must be

supposed to be. And his thighs and stomach are simply larded with the

smoke of intellectual sacrifice. There is a legend, you know, that no

great literary work, once carried through, has failed to somehow or

another reach the world. I fancy Hoa could throw some light on that

tale. Shall we go on the balcony? It's rather warm in here."

She put her hand to her forehead as he followed her down the room.

Outside the rain had ceased, and the September night was clear and

fresh. Across the nobly planned street, the broadest and most effective

prospect in London, the windows of the great stuccoed mansions were

dark and shuttered, with only here and there a pale glow in fanlight

or upper window, but the many storied Langham Hotel, filled with

trans-Atlantic birds of passage, closed the vista cheerily, and a broad

flare of light round the corner showed where Regent Street and the

shops and restaurants began.

"Do you know French well?" she asked, presently.

"Only everyday French and a few curiosities I'm trying to forget."

"It is a pity. You could have turned your book into a French novel, and

then translated it."

Paul shook his head. "I wouldn't do that. It's here or nowhere. The

very houses, the very self-satisfied faces, are a challenge."

"Isn't it wonderful?" Althea mused, leaning on the rail and regarding

the houses opposite. "And this is only one street. There are hundreds

like it. House after house, wealth upon wealth, millions running to

milliards till the brain reels. And in hardly one a single misgiving, a

single suspicion that the same fate which measures can re-measure. Only

pleasure, food, fine raiment, and the stealthy rapture of possession.

But it can't go on forever." She shook her head. "No, here in the

cradle of the race the racial revolution will come about. These sober,

policed streets will be the theatre of the completest subversion the

world has ever known. It's one of the charms of living in London, where

things _will_ happen. I have my visions. Westminster Cathedral

full of little beds is one--I don't know why--and nurses and doctors

with their sleeves rolled up.... What made you call your book 'Sad

Company,' Mr. Ingram?" she asked, with a sudden inconsequence. "Did you

know it was a quotation?"

"I don't think so. I may have seen it somewhere and forgotten."

"It wasn't this, was it?--

"'Go from me! I am one of those that fall.

What! has no cold wind swept your heart at all

In my sad company?...'

"--Let us go in. It's not as warm as I thought. I'll ring for coffee,

and introduce you to my father. I've let him dip into your manuscript.

You don't mind? He's one of the proprietors of the _Parthenon_,

so be very pleasant and alert. He's been in Colorado, too, and thinks

a lot of your scenery passages." She turned and, smiling, held up a

finger impressively. "Mind! I say your _scenery_."

XVII

THE CONTINENTAL EXPRESS

I heard nothing from Paul for days, and was beginning to think

reproachfully of his conduct, when, on the morning of the third day, a

note was brought by hand to the _Panoply_ office. It was short and

rather cryptic. He was evidently in some trouble, the exact nature of

which he didn't disclose. He wanted me to come to him at once, and to

keep the afternoon open.

I hurried down after lunch. Mrs. Gribble's face as she opened his hall

door expressed relief. Paul has always been rather yearned upon by his

landladies.

"Oh! I'm that glad you've come, Mr. Prentice," the good woman said, as

she ushered me up the wide, shallow stair. "I don't think Mr. Ingram

oughter be alone. He's bin talkin' to hisself dreadful all night. Me

nor my 'usband couldn't get no sleep for harkening at 'im."

I entered the room with that air of boisterous incredulity which men

keep for a stricken brother.

"On your back, Ingram? Nothing much wrong, I hope."

Paul was lying on the bed, half clad and in his dressing-gown. His

pipe was in his mouth, and through the drift of tobacco smoke, with

which the dark, oddly shaped little room was filled, I thought his face

looked drawn. He motioned me to a chair with a wet pipe stem.

"Sit down and help yourself to tobacco," he said, and smoked on in

silence.

"Prentice!" he broke out all of a sudden, so abruptly that I let the

match I was striking fall; "did you ever break a woman's heart?"

I gaped at him.

"Oh, I'm not joking. I really am collecting evidence on the subject.

I've been studying it hard now for two days and a night. There's

not much help, is there," pointing out the open window, "in three

chimney-pots and a demolition? If you hadn't come, I was prepared to

take Mrs. Gribble's opinion. Come, Prentice--man to man--have you

ever----?"

"No," I answered, rather shortly. "I've been too busy all my life."

"But it can be done?"

"My dear Ingram, you know 'women' is not a subject I've specialized on."

"But still, you keep your eyes open?"

"Well, then; I can't say I think it often happens: nothing like as

often as the other way round; and yet----"

"And yet----I know. It may. And some people are doomed to knock their

heads against exceptions all their lives."

He twisted himself to one side with the weak and peevish movement of a

man seeking relief on the rack.

"Is the woman you're--er--writing about young, or only still young?"

"She's very, very young," he answered, with a curious sort of

smile--bitter and yet tender at the same time.

"Good!" I commented cheerfully. "That's tremendously in her favor."

Paul smoked on. "I really didn't bring you here to talk generalities,

Prentice," he said after a while. "Can you meet some people for me on

the 3.45 Continental train at Charing Cross?"

I told him my afternoon was at his disposal.

"You're a sure good friend," he said simply, and I took the little

phrase in full payment. Paul was seldom American in idiom but when he

was touched or excited. "There's a mother and daughter--Mrs. and Miss

Barbour. Let's see now; how will you spot them?"

"Did the daughter by any chance come with you to the _À-peu-près_,

three weeks ago?"

"That's so, Prentice; I had forgotten."

"I think I shall know her again," I said, smiling a little behind my

cigarette. Poor, unworldly Paul! "What am I to tell them?"

"I'm just figuring it out."

"What is really the matter, old man?"

"Mental vertigo, from thinking too long in a circle, really."

"I think I understand. A sort of moral fatigue."

"That's a splendid name for it."

"But will she--will they, be satisfied with that? Shall I be asked

questions?"

"Say I'm run down."

"Run down and no visitors. Have I got it right?"

"And that I'm writing. Don't forget that part. How's time?"

I went to the window and looked at my watch. "Just time to do it

comfortably."

"Good-bye, then, and thank you, Prentice, from my heart. You're doing

me a big favor. Oh! by the way," calling me back from the door. "About

Mrs. Hepworth."

"Yes?"

"She's written, making an appointment for to-night. The book, you know.

More mutilation. I can't go as I am."

"Very well--I'll 'phone her."

I paused with my finger on the doorknob. "I can say 'moral fatigue' to

her, I suppose."

Ingram seemed to think a moment. I wondered whether I had sounded

impertinent.

"Yes," he said, slowly. "I think you can say it to her."

I reached Charing Cross with nearly ten minutes in hand. The 3.45

Continental, having probably thrown every local and slow train on the

line half an hour out of its reckoning, was signalled "on time." A long

line of porters was strung out along the curved platform. Motor-cars

and carriages awaited the great ones of the earth, and a score of

people paced the flagstones. Among them a couple of press men nodded

absently to me. Punctually to time and quietly, as the expected always

happens, the Folkestone express pushed its smoky old nose into the

station. Porters shouted and jumped on the step, doors flew open, and

the platform was covered in a trice with a jostling crowd of veiled

women and ulstered men, the awkwardness of the long journey still

in their cramped limbs. My trained eye searched the crowd rapidly

but thoroughly for the girl I was to meet, and presently I saw her,

beautiful, happily anxious, becomingly disordered from travel, and with

perhaps a warmer pallor in her cheeks than when I had seen her last.

She did not know me, of course, and it was the strangest, saddest thing

in the world to feel myself scanned unconcernedly and passed over by

the expectant eyes I had come to cloud, and maybe fill with tears. I

reached her side and lifted my hat.

"Miss Barbour, I think."

She looked at me with a slight stiffening of the figure.

"My name is Prentice. I am a friend of Paul Ingram's."

"Of Paul's? Is he here?"

"Miss Barbour, pray do not be alarmed or anxious. Ingram is not quite

well enough to meet the train and has asked me----"

Her eyes filled with terror. "Where is he? At his rooms? Oh! we will go

at once, mother!"

I had never thought it would be easy; I saw now that it was not going

to be as easy even as I had thought.

"Miss Barbour," I said, venturing to lay a hand on her coat-sleeve.

"Pray attend to me for one moment. Ingram is to see no one to-night.

There is no need for alarm, but----"

"----Mother, mother!"

A stout, comely old lady was making her way toward us. By her side a

gnarled and grizzled railway servant walked, soothing her agitation

with a patiently reassuring manner that, had he been a doctor and not a

porter, concerned with chests, in fact, instead of with trunks, might

have won him riches and a title.

"Yes, marm, I understand you puffeckly. Two gladstings, you said--large

tin trunk, and a 'at-box. No, marm, I aint a-leavin' you. I'm agoin'

to git you a four-w'eeler. You stand 'ere until I comes back. Your two

gladstings, your large tin trunk, and your 'at-box is all numbered the

same, and will be put together on this 'ere counter. 'Ave your keys in

your 'and in case they wants one opened. As soon as that there man 'as

marked them with chork I shall come back and put 'em on my barrer; then

I shall take 'em to your four-w'eeler. No marm; I'm your porter, and no

one else sha'n't 'ire me. No marm; nor no one else sha'n't take your

four-w'eeler."

"Mother, Paul is ill, and I'm not to see him. This is Mr. Prentice, a

friend of his."

"There," said Mrs. Barbour, jingling her keys sharply. "What did

I say, Nelly. Those drains at Palèze. Is it something infectious,

mister--mister----? Is there any temperature yet?"

I caught at the "infection" and lied, as I had foreseen I would. People

were jostling and bumping against us. The girl had to catch my arm once.

"Please, _please_ set your minds at rest," I said. "I am confident

it is nothing but a little overwork and worry that will be all right

to-morrow. But, in the meantime, Paul is, as no doubt you know, rather

nervous and scrupulous. To-morrow we shall know for certain what it is.

He is writing, and you may take my word for it, it will be good news.

And now, madam, please let me pass your luggage through the customs,

see you safely into a cab, and take a good report back before Paul

settles for the night." I had not been asked to do this, but nothing

fits so easily and naturally into one lie as another lie.

The mother was tractable and not greatly concerned. I could see she was

one of those ministering women upon whom sickness acts as a challenge,

and who can look forward to a long spell of nursing, untroubled by

misgivings as to the ultimate result. But the girl's white face and

questioning eyes tortured me. I could feel the question in them even

when my back was turned to her. I would not judge Paul hardly: would

not judge him at all. I knew enough of life to know that a man may

without a moment's warning find himself faced by some terrifying,

insoluble problem, out of which there is no gentle, no easy, no

honorable way. But his strange manner--his phrase, stranger still,

about the "exceptions" it had been his lot to encounter, filled me with

misgiving. I even wondered if mayhap I was the last man that should

ever see perfect happiness in that perfect face.

I had put them into their cab, and was leaving the terminus, when,

passing before a telephone box, I remembered my other message. I

rang through to Portland Place, and, for the first time since I

had known her, heard Althea's level voice along the wire, not only

without pleasurable emotion, but even with a sudden inexplicable

distaste. I was surprised, too, at the concern in it when I had

delivered my message. She pressed me for a true account, and, tired

of mystification, I gave her Paul's own words. At her next sentence I

nearly dropped the receiver.

"My dear lady--think! Oh! you _can't_."

"I'll risk it," Althea said, with a stubborn little laugh that I

could fancy a flushed cheek accompanied. "I'm not conventional, as

you know. Besides, you say the creature isn't in bed. Oh! you clever

male duffers, with your insight and analysis, and not enough wit to

know after months what a woman sees in the first five minutes--that a

fellow-creature is perishing before your eyes of sheer intellectual

starvation."

What could I do? Ring off. Sigh and make a further mental note as to

the insane quality in a woman's courage. For what Althea proposed was

nothing more nor less than to call at Ingram's rooms the next day in

her car, if fine, and discuss alterations and revisions with him in

the course of a long motor ride. As for me, with that child's white

face and panic-stricken eyes before me, and a pleasant sense of being

responsible for more than I could control, it was only left to pray for

foul weather. Which, believe me or not, I heartily did.

XVIII

AMENDE HONORABLE

Meantime, with many jolts and halts, and to the accompaniment of a

good deal of mercifully muffled blasphemy from the box, the cab drew

out of the station yard and rolled heavily toward Suffolk Square. The

blighting autumn rain drummed pitilessly on its roof and lashed the

closed window-panes. So dark had the afternoon turned that Mrs. Barbour

could only see her daughter's face as a white blur against the black

velvet cushion, and was forced to guess at its expression. A good deal

of new-born hope mingled with her own concern. I am a poor actor, and

know now that after the first Mrs. Barbour had been undeceived by my

message. She had suspected a "quarrel" on the last day at La Palèze,

and though she had not been a witness to any further manifestations

of it, did not believe, perhaps because she did not wish to believe,

that it had even been made up. She had never approved her daughter's

choice in her heart--had thought it but a poor fulfilment of so many

fond imaginings. She had the relish for change often to be found in

easy-going, hospitable natures. She was not callous nor indifferent

to the girl's probable suffering, but she had lived through a good

deal herself and had the robust scepticism of middle age in affairs of

the heart. Beyond inevitable storms and fevers, beyond a few tearful

days and sleepless nights, what rosy vistas might not be opening!

With Ingram out of the way, she became seized again of all her old

air-castles. It is a strange fact that the dark homeward drive, which

was one long torture for the daughter, should have been invested for

the being who loved her best with the subdued cheerfulness of an

executor returning from a funeral.

A year ago she would have been profuse of tenderness and sympathy; but

during that year her child's heart had grown away from her, exhausted

by a passion it was too immature to bear, and shrank too perceptibly

from the ministrations of any other love. For the present she judged an

elaborate heedlessness to be at once the easiest and the safest course.

The promise of better days, of a clearer horizon, persisted in

the clean, stately house that welcomed the wanderers home, in its

high-ceiled rooms, so strangely wide and light after the dark, cramped

little cottage in which she had been living under protest, and in the

open kindly English faces of Druce and Kendal, who had not so much

grown gray as they had toughened and flattened in faithful service. Her

lodgers would not be back for a couple of weeks, and she could roam

from room to room and indulge her sense of proprietorship undisturbed,

finding everything brighter, fresher, better for her absence. One would

have said that Number Eleven, too, had taken a trip to the seaside for

change of air. She unpacked her trunk, found her knitting, and was

humming a little brisk air when she returned to the sitting-room.

What she saw struck the song from her lips and the happiness from her

heart. Fenella sat forward in an armchair over the cold, empty grate.

Her poor face seemed tense, strangely unyouthful and set like a stone.

She returned her mother's startled gaze with stricken, inexpressive

eyes. Mrs. Barbour was on her knees at her side in a moment.

"Nelly, darling! Are you ill, child?"

The girl shook her head slowly, and looked away again at the

black-leaded grate.

"Have you been sitting here ever since we came in? Oh, my pet! And I

roaming over the house and never thinking." She drew the gloves off her

daughter's limp hands. "Dear! your poor hands are like ice. Shall I

have a fire lit while tea's making ready?"

Nelly shivered. "I'm chilled," she said, "and--and a little dizzy.

It's the crossing, perhaps. And the house does seem cold and strange,

doesn't it, mummy, after our little _chalêt_?"

Mrs. Barbour rang for tea and ordered a fire to be lit. Her fingers

trembled as she cut thin bread and butter.

"It's her eyes," she kept saying to herself, in that frightened

soliloquy we use to temper a vague dread. "It's her eyes that frighten

me. If I could only get them to look natural, I shouldn't mind so

greatly. She knows something I don't. What did that devil say to her

before he left?"

She wheeled the sofa before the fire--that was an inspiriting thing in

itself on this rainy September evening--tucked a shawl over the child's

shoulders and put furred slippers on the numbed, slender feet. Nelly

sipped her tea, nibbled her toast with the docility of the broken in

spirit. Later she pretended to read, but, happily ignorant how much of

real sorrow may be entombed in the printed page, found no comfort there

in time of present trouble. She was one of those for whom reading is a

last resource, literature the thinnest of veils that can be interposed

between them and the withering breath of reality. The book is yet to

write that will not be laid down at a postman's knock or an infant's

cry.

It was at a postman's knock now that the novel whose pages she had

been listlessly turning slipped from her lap and fell, face downward,

on the hearth-rug. She could not rise, so great was her agitation,

and the fulness of time seemed to gather in every second that

_tick-tocked_ from the clock in the corner before her mother was

in the room again. She was holding a letter before her spectacles, a

letter with a deep black border, at whose superscription her brows were

knitted. Back from failing limbs and reeling brain the blood flowed to

Fenella's heart. But she did not faint. There is always enough life

left us to learn the extent of our sorrow.

"The letter's for you, dear!"

"Read it, mummy," she said, simply. "I can't."

Mrs. Barbour ripped open the envelope. As she glanced over the

unfamiliar writing, her faced glowed with pleased excitement.

"What is it? Oh! _what_ is it?" the puzzled and tortured girl

asked her, seeing her lips move.

Mrs. Barbour looked up. "Darling, what's the matter? It's good news. I

mean--God forgive me!--not very bad. Only your Aunt Hortense dead. You

never knew her."

Fenella, as she took her suspense back into her breast, knew its name

was Hope. Her eyes filled as from some inward sweat of anguish--some

wound felt only when the sword is withdrawn.

"Why do they write to me?"

"It's from your cousin Leslie. Listen! Shall I read to you?" She did

not wait for an answer, but read on breathlessly:

"DEAR COUSIN FENELLA,

"Do you remember--have you ever been told, of the girl who came to

see you fifteen years ago, and whom you would not kiss? Fifteen

years ago! and now she is bringing herself to your notice again. Do

you feel it an insult after so long? You should not, dear cousin.

For there are things that are so hard to write, but that sound so

natural when they are spoken. And even though you resent it, be

patient for the sake of the sad reason that occasions her writing

now. Poor mother was buried on Friday. One can remain loyal and

still admit that she was a woman hard to understand--impossible to

divert from a prejudice once conceived. Even now, although I have

thought of you unnumbered times, sought news of you, even kissed

the picture we have of you as a child, that seemed to me to hold

the promise of a sweet friendship to come in its baby face, I could

not write to you as I am doing did I think that my impulse still

crossed the will of the dead. You will not understand this until

you have seen one you love die by inches under your eyes, while you

stood by, powerless to save, and all but powerless to soothe. But

toward the end of her illness mother spoke of you. Her heart was

changed, and in what I am doing now I am carrying out the wishes

of the dead no less than gratifying what has always been a secret

desire."

Mrs. Barbour paused for breath. "Doesn't she write beautifully, dear?"

"I think it's gush," said Fenella. "Is there much more?"

"Oh! fie, dear. Listen!"

"Dear Cousin, we are to come to town for the autumn. May I call

upon you--see you often--make amends for all the wasted years that

might have made us friends? You are our kin, and, in trouble, blood

calls to blood. We will return to Freres Lulford for Christmas, and

we want you to spend it with us, among your own people. It will

be a sad and quiet one for all, but by then I trust you will have

grown so near to us that we need not grudge you a share in our

grief. Write me when you get this. The earlier your answer reaches

me the easier I shall forgive myself for what, by one cold word,

you can turn to the deepest humiliation I have ever suffered. Think

me impulsive, think me indiscreet, think me even impertinent; but,

believe me, oh! so ready to write myself

"Your loving cousin,

"LESLIE BARBOUR."

Mrs. Barbour wiped her spectacles. They were so dim that she did not

notice her daughter's vacant gaze.

"Mother, are people often taken ill so suddenly?"

"My dear, your cousin says it was a long illness."

Fenella gave the low moan of the misunderstood. "Mother! I don't

mean--that. I mean Paul."

The woman could not check a movement of almost passionate impatience.

"Mr. Ingram? I don't believe he's ill at all. Men who write are always

up or down. They're worse than women. It's the unhealthy life they

lead."

"I wonder--I wonder!" said Nelly under her breath. She was realizing,

with a sick dismay, that this was the last evening delivery and that

to-morrow would be Sunday, a day during which, for those at least who

live in London and wait upon the post for comfort, the operations of

Providence are entirely suspended. Two nights and a day to be lived

through--somehow!

Her mother took out the letter again, and fingered it caressingly.

"It's what I've been longing for all my life," she said. "When are you

going to answer it, dear?"

"To-morrow, mummy, to-morrow," wailed poor Fenella, and fled from the

room.

She climbed the stairs weakly, feeling the empty house's atmosphere

no longer chill, but stifling and oppressive. By the time she had

reached her room the impulse to fling herself upon her knees, to bury

her face in the coverlet and weep and weep, had passed. Instead she

lit both candles of her dressing-table and, sitting down, gazed long

and earnestly at her reflection in the tilted mirror. To study herself

thus was rather a habit of hers. The woman who has beauty and does not

know it is a graceful conception, but lacks reality. All the world is

a conspiracy, pleasant or otherwise, to convince her. Fenella was not

vain, but, with all encountered comeliness compared to it, her body had

not ceased to be a rapture to a curiously impersonal love of beauty,

innate in her as in all sorts of people, but which, in her case, by a

bounteous accident of nature, could be fed most delicately upon its

own outward substance. Nor was she ignorant that, in the quarter to

which she had devoted it, she was, to use the world's chosen language,

and in a sense far beyond its choice meaning, "throwing her good looks

away." She knew it--she gloried in it. No whisper that reached her

from jealous or puzzled friends could add to her own conviction of

it--no secret recess of her being but responded and thrilled to the

call of self-sacrifice. At a certain height of passion woman becomes

strangely sufficient to herself--is priestess and host in one, with an

ecstasy in the immolation that men can only guess at. For all the lack

of curiosity as to her lover's past life which was so unaccountable a

thing to her mother, the girl guessed that it had been hard and sad,

so sad and hard that the full strangeness of the destiny that brought

him to lips and arms like hers could only be dimly comprehended by him.

His blindness forced self-valuation upon her. She flung her beauty, the

freshness of her youth, the tribute of other men's burning eyes and

stammering tongues, into the scale against it. She asked only love. Let

him but love, she would teach him appreciation in time. She had her own

white conscience in such matters, too, even though the obtuseness of

her lover's senses tempted her to lengths that innocence does not often

venture. It was not three weeks ago since, sitting upon the dunes, at

the end of an afternoon during which the grizzled head had been her

plaything, she had asked Paul abruptly whether he did not in his heart

sometimes think her a shameless woman. And the undisguised astonishment

of the gray eyes at her question had been at once a reproach and

the sweetest, completest assurance that it was possible to have.

And then and there, drawing from his arms, and while the loose sand

trickled through her fingers, she had made the poor little apologia

of her love, haltingly and timidly, and told him that should it ever

happen--inconceivable surely on this day of sunshine and sweet airs as

that sky and sea should change places--that he should go one way in

life, she another, she had such a store of shameful memories as would

press her to the earth all the rest of her days.

Yet it was this possibility, scarce to be imagined a fortnight ago,

which she was facing to-night; now, as she combed and plaited her black

hair, so fine and loose that the comb ran through its length at a

single stroke; now as, unfastening the corset that had chafed and rayed

the tender flesh at her waist, she put on her long white robe and stood

before the mirror, a trembling penitent, about to make amends through a

whole racked night for the follies of her undisciplined heart. Buoyant

and hopeful by nature, and really knowing nothing yet for certain, she

was aghast at the urgency with which defeat claimed acceptance, and

at the weakness and intermittence that her imagination, pressed into

loyalty's service, showed in working toward her lover's justification.

She felt herself sentenced, a culprit, a prey to the illogical anger

of some power which she had failed to propitiate only because she had

not known of its existence. The chill of abandonment was already at

her heart. As for the letter which she had just heard read to her, she

hardly gave it a thought, although a wish of her own heart, unavowed,

but very intimate, was realized in it. To-night any comfort save the

one for which her whole being ached was a traitor--an accomplice in the

conspiracy of silence, of shrugged shoulders, of amused wonder that

had surrounded her poor little love-story from the first. No one had

meddled, she remembered; no one had interfered or seemed anxious. With

smarting eyes as she laid her head on her pillow she paid her tribute

to the wisdom of the world.

* * * * *

The morrow with its suspended bustle--its clanging church bells and the

awkward voices of milkwomen and paper-boys ringing upon the silence of

the streets and squares, was a torture not to be borne. As soon as her

mother had gone to church she dressed herself and left the house. The

morning was fine but close. In the park the moisture of a whole week's

rain, sucked out of the stale earth by the sun, surcharged the air

almost to the level of the tree-tops with a palm-house atmosphere that

weighed alike upon flesh and spirit. Although it was September, the

parks as she crossed them were full of smartly dressed people--mothers

and young daughters--sturdy children with dawdling lawn-clad

nurses--ivory-faced old ladies in ample creased robes of silk--an

occasional earnest young man, professionally silk-hatted, striding

along with a chattering girl at his side, who bravely but jerkily

maintained the pace of his long legs. They all seemed to be coming in

opposite directions. She was on one of those unhappy errands when we

feel we are making head alone against a contrary current of joyous

contentment.

The bell from the great Parliament tower was tolling twelve as she

passed into Dean's Yard. The old gravelly square was deserted, except

for a statuesque policeman and one little blue-coated messenger boy,

with his round cap cocked over his ear, who from pure lightness of

heart was waking its staid echoes with a shrill medley of popular airs.

She had set out with no precise intention, drawn as by a magnet to the

spot where the treasure of her heart was kept from her, but, though

she did not reason, with every step her insensate impulse hardened.

She would test the tottering fabric of her happiness now, though, at a

touch, it should topple into ruins about her head.

Cowley Street was empty, and pigeons were feeding in the roadway. She

was leaning against the railings--fighting, reasoning with a heart

that the mere sight of his windows had driven into tumult, when the

stillness was invaded by the blast of a motor-horn. The doves took

flight above the sunlit roofs. A big touring car, coming from the

river, swept into the street, and drew up, with a creaking of its

brakes, outside the door that she was praying for strength to approach.

A woman alighted, glanced at the number upon the red door, and plied

the knocker briskly. Her hat was veiled and a light dust-cloak covered

her dress, but one moment's application of that intuitive knowledge

which women possess told the girl that she was probably handsome

and undeniably rich. The whirr and clutter of the cylinders ceased

unaccountably just as the door was opened. Cowley Street on Sunday is

more than still. She heard his name clearly, the very accent in which

it was uttered somehow confirming her first impression; then the door

closed. With a single jaunty glance at the remaining feminine interest,

the green-coated chauffeur swung himself out of his seat and busied

himself with some recalcitrant machinery or other under the bonnet of

the car.

Have you ever, on a railway journey, or in a packed public meeting,

from which there was no escape without unwelcome comment, fought

against deadly faintness? How the landscape crawled past the spinning,

flashing, wheels! How the sermon, the address pelted on, a meaningless

torrent of vocables, against the brain that was tense and taut for one

thing only--that thing deliverance! In such a mood Fenella hurried

through the streets and parks toward her home. She had forgotten her

purse at setting out, and the cheapest, slowest amelioration of her

journey was denied her. Another woman! Another woman! No defeat could

have been more complete. Everything had been imaginable but this.

Against every aspect that the annihilation of her suspense could have

shown her she would have done battle--save only this. Women are taught

by their whole life's training to seek concrete motives for action

and, when found, to respect them. To principle they concede little,

and they expect as little from it. If they fight selfishly, at least

they fight bravely, naked and unambushed--warrior, weapon and reward in

one. Auguring nothing from past treacheries, so the treachery be not

to them, betrayal always finds them unprepared, as, once shattered,

nothing really rebuilds their faith. Could it be otherwise? What value

to them in a love or a devotion whose incentive lies outside of them

and beyond them?

She reached home at last. Her mother had been watching for her from the

window and ran to open the door. She had a letter in her hand. Where

had the girl been? How ill she looked! There was news for her, brought

by a boy messenger half an hour ago. The poor child could only shake

her head and, taking her letter, seek refuge once more in her own room.

During her absence her trunk had been unpacked; all the silver vanities

were ranged, with snowy doylies beneath them, on the woman's altar of

her dressing-table. The bed on which she had tossed and moaned all

night was spread white and cool and smooth. A little breeze was rising,

and fluttered the curtains at the open windows.

After what she had seen no letter could matter much; but she read it

through dutifully, with a little sigh as each page fluttered from

her hands to the floor. It was long and kind and tender; the letter

of a man who would select his language at the very judgment seat of

God; a fair copy, without blot or erasure, product of a night no less

sleepless than her own. If the balance lay all at one side of the

account, at least he had ruled the ledger straight. The old arguments

were reiterated, the old impossibilities pressed home. The dilemma,

evaded once before, had confronted Ingram again, harder, crueller for

the delay, as is the manner of evaded dilemmas. He had had to choose

again between wounding her pride or wounding her heart--to death this

time--and with the anxiety such a man will always have to preserve a

woman's good opinion at all costs, which is half fine feeling and half

vanity, he had chosen the second. Wisely? Who shall say? At least his

end was gained. He was loved at the last. She pressed the sheet which

bore his signature madly, unrestrainedly against her mouth, blurring

the ink with her moist lips. She would have kissed his hand so--holding

the knife at her throat.

And with the kiss her childhood ended. Then and there the thorn-plaited

crown of her womanhood was proffered her. She put it on bravely and

unflinchingly. She did not despair of life nor of life's end. Flowers,

laurels, she felt might crown her yet, but under blossom or bay leaf

she would always know where to look for the old scars. And, finding

them, she would bless them for his sake.

* * * * *

An hour later Mrs. Barbour, trembling a little at her own temerity,

knocked at the door, and, getting no answer, opened it. Nelly was

sitting on the bed, dry-eyed, sucking her thumb. The pages of her

lover's last letter were littered over the quilt and on the floor.

The mother asked no question. She closed the sash softly, drew

down the blind, and, going to her daughter without a word, held her

close--held her for two long hours, while the Sabbath baked meats

went to grease and the gong roared unheeded below; held her through

a tempest so deep at life's sources that she trembled and prayed as

the frail body shook against her breast. But the green tree bears the

hurricane because it is green. The storm was passing away in sobs that

grew fainter and fainter, the stained cheek was beginning to move

restlessly upon her drenched shoulder, when she spoke:

"Was it bad news?--from him?" she asked, and compressed her lips.

"Mother," said the girl, with a fresh outburst of tears that was only

the leaves shaking off the rain, "don't blame him! It's not quite his

fault. He's so unhappy. We shall never see Paul again. And oh, mummy,

I've been a bad, undutiful, careless child to you--but I'll be better

now."

"You've been my dearest child, always," Mrs. Barbour answered. "It will

be the old times over again for both of us. I ask nothing more."

Fenella was calm enough now to smile wanly at her mother's words. But

even she could not guess how unlike any old times the new ones were to

be.