PART II

THE VORTEX

XI

Three years passed. It was the autumn of nineteen-ten. Anthony's house

was empty for the time being of all its children except Dorothea.

Michael was in the beginning of his last year at Cambridge. Nicholas was

in his second year. He had taken up mathematics and theoretical

mechanics. In the long vacation, when the others went into the country,

he stayed behind to work in the engineering sheds of the Morss Motor

Company. John was at Cheltenham. Veronica was in Dresden.

Dorothea had left Newnham a year ago, having taken a first-class in

Economics.

As Anthony came home early one evening in October, he found a group of

six strange women in the lane, waiting outside his garden door in

attitudes of conspiracy.

Four of them, older women, stood together in a close ring. The two

others, young girls, hung about near, but a little apart from the ring,

as if they desired not to identify themselves with any state of mind

outside their own. By their low sibilant voices, the daring sidelong

sortie of their bright eyes, their gestures, furtive and irrepressible,

you gathered that there was unanimity on one point. All six considered

themselves to have been discovered.

At Anthony's approach they moved away, with slow, casual steps, passed

through the posts at the bottom of the lane and plunged down the steep

path, as if under the impression that the nature of the ground covered

their retreat. They bobbed up again, one after the other, when the lane

was clear.

The first to appear was a tall, handsome, bad-tempered-looking girl. She

spoke first.

"It's a damned shame of them to keep us waiting like this."

She propped herself up against Anthony's wall and smouldered there in

her dark, sullen beauty.

"We were here at six sharp."

"When they know we were told not to let on where we meet."

"We're led into a trap," said a grey-haired woman.

"I say, who is Dorothea Harrison?"

"She's the girl who roped Rosalind in. She's all right."

"Yes, but are her people all right?"

"Rosalind knows them."

The grey-haired woman spoke again.

"Well, if you think this lane is a good place for a secret meeting, I

don't. Are you aware that the yard of `Jack Straw's Castle' is behind

that wall? What's to prevent them bringing up five or six coppers and

planting them there? Why, they've only got to post one 'tee at the top

of the lane, and another at the bottom, and we're done. Trapped. I call

it rotten."

"It's all right. Here they are."

Dorothea Harrison and Rosalind Jervis came down the lane at a leisured

stride, their long coats buttoned up to their chins and their hands in

their pockets. Their I gestures were devoid of secrecy or any guile.

Each had a joyous air of being in command, of being able to hold up the

whole adventure at her will, or let it rip.

Rosalind Jervis was no longer a bouncing, fluffy flapper. In three years

she had shot up into the stature of command. She slouched, stooping a

little from the shoulders, and carried her pink face thrust forward, as

if leaning from a platform to address an audience. From this salience

her small chin retreated delicately into her pink throat.

"Is Miss Maud Blackadder here?" she said, marshalling her six.

The handsome girl detached herself slowly from Anthony's wall.

"What's the point," she said, "of keeping us hanging about like this--"

"Till _all_ our faces are known to the police--"

"There's a johnnie gone in there who can swear to _me_. Why didn't you

two turn up before?" said the handsome girl.

"Because," said Dorothea, "that johnnie was my father. He was pounding

on in front of us all up East Heath Road. If we'd got here sooner I

should have had to introduce you."

She looked at the six benevolently, indulgently. They might have been

children whose behaviour amused her. It was as if she had said, "I

avoided that introduction, not because it would have been dangerous and

indiscreet, but because it would have spoiled your fun for you."

She led the way into the garden and the house and through the hall into

the schoolroom. There they found eleven young girls who had come much

too soon, and mistaking the arrangements, had rung the bell and allowed

themselves to be shown in.

The schoolroom had been transformed into a sort of meeting hall. The big

oblong table had been drawn across one end of it. Behind it were chairs

for the speakers, before it were three rows of chairs where the eleven

young girls sat scattered, expectant.

The six stood in the free space in front of the table and looked at

Rosalind with significance.

"This," said Rosalind, "is our hostess, Miss Dorothea Harrison. Dorothy,

I think you've met Mrs. Eden, our Treasurer. This is our secretary, Miss

Valentina Gilchrist; Miss Ethel Farmer; Miss Winifred Burstall--"

Dorothy greeted in turn Mrs. Eden, a pretty, gentle woman with a face of

dreaming tragedy (it was she who had defended Rosalind outside the

gate); Miss Valentina Gilchrist, a middle-aged woman who displayed a

large grey pompadour above a rosy face with turned-back features which,

when she was not excited, had an incredulous quizzical expression (Miss

Gilchrist was the one who had said they had been led into a trap); Miss

Ethel Farmer, fair, attenuated, scholastic, wearing pince-nez with an

air of not seeing you; and Miss Winifred Burstall, weather-beaten, young

at fifty, wearing pince-nez with an air of seeing straight through you

to the other side.

Rosalind went on. "Miss Maud Blackadder--"

Miss Blackadder's curt bow accused Rosalind of wasting time in

meaningless formalities.

"Miss--" Rosalind was at a loss.

The other girl, the youngest of the eight, came forward, holding out a

slender, sallow-white hand. She was the one who had hung with Miss

Blackadder in the background.

"Desmond," she said. "Phyllis Desmond."

She shrugged her pretty shoulders and smiled slightly, as much as to

say, "She forgets what she ought to remember, but it doesn't matter."

Phyllis Desmond was beautiful. But for the moment her beauty was asleep,

stilled into hardness. Dorothy saw a long, slender, sallow-white face,

between sleek bands of black hair; black eyes, dulled as if by a subtle

film, like breath on a black looking-glass; a beautiful slender mouth,

pressed tight, holding back the secret of its sensual charm.

Dorothy thought she had seen her before, but she couldn't remember

where.

Rosalind Jervis looked at her watch with a businesslike air; paper and

pencils were produced; coats were thrown on the little school-desks and

benches in the corner where Dorothy and her brothers had sat at their

lessons with Mr. Parsons some twelve years ago; and the eight gathered

about the big table, Rosalind taking the presidential chair (which had

once been Mr. Parsons' chair) in the centre between Miss Gilchrist and

Miss Blackadder.

Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer looked at each other and Miss Burstall

spoke.

"We understood that this was to be an informal meeting. Before we begin

business I should like to ask one question. I should like to know what

we are and what we are here for?"

"We, Mrs. Eden, Miss Valentina Gilchrist, Miss Maud Blackadder and

myself," said Rosalind in the tone of one dealing reasonably with an

unreasonable person, "are the Committee of the North Hampstead Branch of

the Women's Franchise Union. Miss Gilchrist is our secretary, I am the

President and Miss Blackadder is--er--the Committee."

"By whom elected? This," said Miss Burstall, "is most irregular."

Rosalind went on: "We are here to appoint a vice-president, to elect

members of the Committee and enlist subscribers to the Union. These

things will take time."

"_We_ were punctual," said Miss Farmer.

Rosalind did not even look at her. The moment had come to address the

meeting.

"I take it that we are all agreed as to the main issue, that we have not

come here to convert each other, that we all want Women's Franchise,

that we all mean to have it, that we are all prepared to work for it,

and, if necessary, to fight for it, to oppose the Government that

withholds it by every means in our power--"

"By every constitutional means," Miss Burstall amended, and was told by

Miss Gilchrist that, if she desired proceedings to be regular, she must

not interrupt the Chairwoman.

"--To oppose the Government that refuses us the vote, whatever

Government it may be, regardless of party, by _every means in

our power_."

Rosalind's sentences were punctuated by a rhythmic sound of tapping.

Miss Maud Blackadder, twisted sideways on the chair she had pushed

farther and farther back from the table, so as to bring herself

completely out of line with the other seven, from time to time,

rhythmically, twitching with impatience, struck her own leg with her own

walking-stick.

Rosalind perorated. "If we differ, we differ, not as to our end, but

solely as to the means we, personally and individually, are prepared to

employ." She looked round. "Agreed."

"Not agreed," said Dorothy and Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer all at

once.

"I will now call on Miss Maud Blackadder to speak. She will explain to

those of you who are strangers" (she glanced comprehensively at the

eleven young girls) "the present program of the Union."

"I protest," said Miss Burstall. "There has been confusion."

"There really _has_, Rosalind," said Dorothy. "You _must_ get it

straight. You can't start all at sixes and sevens. I protest too."

"We all three protest," said Miss Farmer, frowning and blinking in an

agony of protest.

"Silence, if you please, for the Chairwoman," said Miss Gilchrist.

"May we not say one word?"

"You may," said Rosalind, "in your turn. I now call on Miss Blackadder

to speak."

At the sound of her own name Miss Blackadder jumped to her feet. The

walking-stick fell to the floor with a light clatter and crash,

preluding her storm. She jerked out her words at a headlong pace, as if

to make up for the time the others had wasted in futilities.

"I am not going to say much, I am not going to take up your time. Too

much time has been lost already. I am not a speaker, I am not a writer,

I am not an intellectual woman, and if you ask me what I am and what I

am here for, and what I am doing in the Union, and what the Union is

doing with me, and what possible use I, an untrained girl, can be to you

clever women" (she looked tempestuously at Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer

who did not flinch), "I will tell you. I am a fighter. I am here to

enlist volunteers. I am the recruiting sergeant for this district. That

is the use my leaders, who should be _your_ leaders, are making

of _me_."

Her head was thrown back, her body swayed, rocked from side to side with

the violent rhythm of her speech.

"If you ask me why they have chosen _me_ I will tell you. It's because I

know what I want and because I know how to get what I want.

"I know what I want. Oh, yes, you think that's nothing; you all think

you know what you want. But do you? _Do_ you?"

"Of course we do!"

"We want the vote!"

"Nothing but the vote!"

"_Nothing but?_ Are you quite sure of that? Can you even say you want it

till you know whether there are things you want more?"

"What are you driving at?"

"You'll soon see what I'm driving at. I drive straight. And I ride

straight. And I don't funk my fences.

"Well--say you all want the vote. Do you know how much you want it? Do

you know how much you want to pay for it? Do you know what you're

prepared to give up for it? Because, if you don't know _that_, you don't

know how much you want it."

"We want it as much as you do, I imagine."

"You want it as much as I do? Good. _Then_ you're going to pay the price

whatever the price is. _Then_ you're ready to give up everything else,

your homes and your families and your friends and your incomes. Until

you're enfranchised you are not going to own any _man_ as father, or

brother or husband" (her voice rang with a deeper and stronger

vibration) "or lover, or friend. And the man who does not agree with

you, the man who refuses you the vote, the man who opposes your efforts

to get the vote, the man who, whether he agrees with you or not, _will

not help you to get it_, you count as your enemy. That is wanting the

vote. That is wanting it as much as I do.

"You women--are you prepared to go against your men? To give up your

men?"

There were cries of "Rather!" from two of the eleven young girls who had

come too soon.

Miss Burstall shook her head and murmured, "Hopeless confusion of

thought. If _this_ is what it's going to be like, Heaven help us!"

"You really _are_ getting a bit mixed," said Dorothy.

"We protest--"

"Protest then; protest as much as you like. Then we shall know where we

are; then we shall get things straight; then we can begin. You all want

the vote. Some of you don't know how much, but at least you know you

want it. Nobody's confused about that. Do you know how you're going to

get it? Tell me that."

Lest they should spoil it all by telling her Miss Blackadder increased

her vehement pace. "You don't because you can't and _I_ will tell you.

You won't get it by talking about it or by writing about it, or by

sitting down and thinking about it, you'll get it by coming in with me,

coming in with the Women's Franchise Union, and fighting for it.

Fighting women, not talkers--not writers--not thinkers are what we

want!" She sat down, heaving a little with the ground-swell of her

storm, amid applause in which only Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer did not

join. She was now looking extraordinarily handsome.

Rosalind bent over and whispered something in her ear. She rose to her

feet again, flushed, smiling at them, triumphant.

"Our Chairwoman has reminded me that I came here to tell you what the

program of our Union is. And I can tell you in six words. It's

Hell-for-leather, and it's Neck-or-nothing!"

"Now," said Rosalind sweetly, bowing towards Miss Burstall, "it's your

turn. We should like to know what you have to say."

Miss Burstall did not rise and in the end Dorothea spoke.

"My friend, Miss Rosalind Jervis, assumed that we were all agreed, not

only as to our aims, but as to our policy. She has not yet discriminated

between constitutional and unconstitutional means. When we protested,

she quashed our protest. We took exception to the phrase 'every means in

our power,' because that would commit us to all sorts of

unconstitutional things. It is in my power to squirt water into the back

of the Prime Minister's neck, or to land a bomb in the small of his

back, or in the centre of the platform at his next public meeting. We

were left to conclude that the only differences between us would concern

our choice of the squirt or the bomb. As some of us here might equally

object to using the bomb or the squirt, I submit that either our protest

should have been allowed or our agreement should not have been taken for

granted at the start.

"Again, Miss Maud Blackadder, in her sporting speech, her heroic speech,

has not cleared the question. She has appealed to us to come in, without

counting the cost; but she has said nothing to convince us that when our

account at our bank is overdrawn, and we have declared war on all our

male friends and relations, and have left our comfortable homes, and are

all camping out on the open Heath--I repeat, she has said nothing to

convince us that the price we shall have paid is going to get us the

thing we want.

"She says that fighters are wanted, and not talkers and writers and

thinkers. Are we not then to fight with our tongues and with our brains?

Is she leaving us anything but our bare fists? She has told us that she

rides straight and that she doesn't funk her fences; but she has not

told us what sort of country she is going to ride over, nor where the

fences are, not what Hell-for-leather and Neck-or-nothing means.

"We want meaning; we want clearness and precision. We have not been

given it yet.

"I would let all this pass if Miss Blackadder were not your

colour-sergeant. Is it fair to call for volunteers, for raw recruits,

and not tell them precisely and clearly what services will be required

of them? How many" (Dorothy glanced at the eleven) "realize that the

leaders of your Union, Mrs. Palmerston-Swete, and Mrs. Blathwaite, and

Miss Angela Blathwaite, demand from its members blind, unquestioning

obedience?"

Maud Blackadder jumped up.

"I protest. I, too, have the right to protest. Miss Harrison calls me to

order. She tells me to be clear and precise. Will she be good enough to

be clear and precise herself? Will she say whether she is with us or

against us? If she is not with us she is against us. Let her explain her

position."

She sat down; and Rosalind rose.

"Miss Harrison," she said, "will explain her position to the Committee

later. This is an open meeting till seven. It is now five minutes to.

Will any of you here"--she held the eleven with her eyes--"who were not

present at the meeting in the Town Hall last Monday, hold up your hands.

No hands. Then you must all be aware of the object and the policy and

the rules of the Women's Franchise Union. Its members pledge themselves

to help, as far as they can, the object of the Union; to support the

decisions of their leaders; to abstain from public and private criticism

of those decisions and of any words or actions of their leaders; and to

obey orders--not blindly or unquestioningly, but within the terms of

their undertakings.

"Those of you who wish to join us will please write your names and

addresses on the slips of white paper, stating what kind of work you are

willing to do and the amount of your subscription, if you subscribe, and

hand your slips to the Secretary at the door, as you go out."

Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer went out. Miss Blackadder

counted--"One--two--"

Eight of the eleven young girls signed and handed in the white slips at

the door, and went out.

"Three--four--"

Miss Blackadder reckoned that Dorothea Harrison's speech had cost her

five recruits. Her own fighting speech had carried the eleven in a

compact body to her side: Dorothea's speech had divided and scattered

them again.

Miss Blackadder hurled her personality at the heads of audiences in the

certainty that it would hit them hard. That was what she was there for.

She knew that the Women's Franchise union relied on her to wring from

herself the utmost spectacular effect. And she did it every time. She

never once missed fire. And Dorothea Harrison had come down on the top

of her triumph and destroyed the effect of all her fire. She had

corrupted five recruits. And, supposing there was a secret program, she

had betrayed the women of the Union to fourteen outsiders, by giving it

away. Treachery or no treachery, Dorothea Harrison would have to pay

for it.

* * * * *

Everybody had gone except the members of the Committee and Phyllis

Desmond who waited for her friend, Maud Blackadder.

Dorothy remembered Phyllis Desmond now; she was that art-student girl

that Vera knew. She had seen her at Vera's house.

They had drawn round the table again. Miss Blackadder and Miss Gilchrist

conferred in whispers.

"Before we go," said Rosalind, "I propose that we ask Miss Dorothea

Harrison to be our Vice-President."

Miss Gilchrist nodded to Miss Blackadder who rose. It was her moment.

"And _I_ propose," she said, "that before we invite Miss Harrison to be

anything we ask her to define her position--clearly and precisely."

She made a sign, and the Secretary was on her feet.

"And first we must ask Miss Harrison to explain _how_ she became

possessed of the secret policy of the Union which has never been

discussed at any open meeting and is unknown to members of the General

Committee."

"Then," said Dorothy, "there _is_ a secret policy?"

"You seem to know it. We have the right to ask _how_ you know? Unless

you invented it."

Dorothy faced them. It was inconceivable that it should have happened,

that she should be standing there, in the old schoolroom of her father's

house, while two strange women worried her. She knew that her back was

to the wall and that the Blackadder girl had been on the watch for the

last half-hour to get her knife into her. (Odd, for she had admired the

Blackadder girl and her fighting gestures.) It was inconceivable that

she should have to answer to that absurd committee for her honour. It

was inconceivable that Rosalind, her friend, should not help her.

Yet it had happened. With all her platform eloquence Rosalind couldn't,

for the life of her, get out one heroic, defending word. From the moment

when the Gilchrist woman had pounced, Rosalind had simply sat and

stared, like a rabbit, like a fish, her mouth open for the word that

would not come. Rosalind was afraid to stand up for her. It was

dreadful, and it was funny to see Rosalind looking like that, and to

realize the extent of her weakness and her obstinacy.

Yet Rosalind had not changed. She was still the school-girl slacker who

could never do a stroke of work until somebody had pushed her into it,

who could never leave off working until stopped by the same hand that

had set her going. Her power to go, and to let herself rip, and the

weakness that made her depend on Dorothy to start her were the qualities

that attracted Dorothy to Rosalind from the beginning. But now she was

the tool of the fighting Suffrage Women. Or if she wasn't a tool, she

was a machine; her brain was a rapid, docile, mechanical apparatus for

turning out bad imitations of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and the two

Blathwaites. Her air of casual command, half-swagger, half-slouch, her

stoop and the thrusting forward of her face, were copied sedulously from

an admired model.

Dorothy found her pitiable. She was hypnotized by the Blathwaites who

worked her and would throw her away when she was of no more use. She

hadn't the strength to resist the pull and the grip and the drive of

other people. She couldn't even hold out against Valentina Gilchrist and

Maud Blackadder. Rosalind would always be caught and spun round by any

movement that was strong enough. She was foredoomed to the Vortex.

That was Dorothy's fault. It was she who had pushed and pulled the

slacker, in spite of her almost whining protest, to the edge of the

Vortex; and it was Rosalind, not Dorothy, who had been caught and sucked

down into the swirl. She whirled in it now, and would go on whirling,

under the impression that her movements made it move.

The Vortex fascinated Dorothy even while she resisted it. She liked the

feeling of her own power to resist, to keep her head, to beat up against

the rush of the whirlwind, to wheel round and round outside it, and

swerve away before the thing got her.

For Dorothy was afraid of the Feminist Vortex, as her brother Michael

had been afraid of the little vortex of school. She was afraid of the

herded women. She disliked the excited faces, and the high voices

skirling their battle-cries, and the silly business of committees, and

the platform slang. She was sick and shy before the tremor and the surge

of collective feeling; she loathed the gestures and the movements of the

collective soul, the swaying and heaving and rushing forward of the many

as one. She would not be carried away by it; she would keep the

clearness and hardness of her soul. It was her soul they wanted, these

women of the Union, the Blathwaites and the Palmerston-Swetes, and

Rosalind, and the Blackadder girl and the Gilchrist woman; they ran out

after her like a hungry pack yelping for her soul; and she was not going

to throw it to them. She would fight for freedom, but not in their way

and not at their bidding.

She was her brother Michael, refusing to go to the party; refusing to

run with the school herd, holding out for his private soul against other

people who kept him from remembering. Only Michael did not hold out. He

ran away. She would stay, on the edge of the vortex, fascinated by its

danger, and resisting.

But as she looked at them, at Rosalind with her open mouth, at the

Blackadder girl who was scowling horribly, and at Valentina Gilchrist,

sceptical and quizzical, she laughed. The three had been trying to rush

her, and because they couldn't rush her they were questioning her

honour. She had asked them plainly for a plain meaning, and their idea

of apt repartee was to pretend to question her honour.

Perhaps they really did question it. She didn't care. She loathed their

excited, silly, hurrying suspicion; but she didn't care. It was she who

had drawn them and led them on to this display of incomparable idiocy.

Like her brother Nicholas she found that adversity was extremely funny;

and she laughed.

She was no longer Michael, she was Nicky, not caring, delighting in her

power to fool them.

"You think," she said, "I'd no business to find out?"

"Your knowledge would certainly have been mysterious," said the

Secretary; "unless at least two confidences had been betrayed. Supposing

there had been any secret policy."

"Well, you see, I don't know it; and I didn't invent it; and I didn't

find it out--precisely. Your secret policy is the logical conclusion of

your present policy. I deduced it; that's all. Anybody could have done

the same. Does that satisfy you? (They won't love me any better for

making them look fools!)"

"Thank you," said Miss Gilchrist. "We only wanted to be sure."

The dinner-bell rang as Dorothy was defining her position.

"I'll work for you; I'll speak for you; I'll write for you; I'll fight

for you. I'll make hay of every Government meeting, if I can get in

without lying and sneaking for it. I'll go to prison for you, if I can

choose my own crime. But I won't give up my liberty of speech and

thought and action. I won't pledge myself to obey your orders. I won't

pledge myself not to criticize policy I disapprove of. I won't come on

your Committee, and I won't join your Union. Is that clear and

precise enough?"

Somebody clapped and somebody said, "Hear, Hear!" And somebody said, "Go

it, Dorothy!"

It was Anthony and Frances and Captain Drayton, who paused outside the

door on their way to the dining-room, and listened, basely.

* * * * *

They were all going now. Dorothy stood at the door, holding it open for

them, glad that it was all over.

Only Phyllis Desmond, the art-student, lingered. Dorothy reminded her

that they had met at her aunt Vera Harrison's house.

The art-student smiled. "I wondered when you were going to remember."

"I did, but they all called you Desmond. That's what put me out."

"Everybody calls me Desmond. You had a brother or something with you,

hadn't you?"

"I might have had two. Which? Michael's got green eyes and yellow hair.

Nicky's got blue eyes and black hair."

"It was Nicky--nice name--then."

Desmond's beauty stirred in its sleep. The film of air was lifted from

her black eyes.

"I'm dining with Mrs. Harrison to-night," she said.

"You'll be late then."

"It doesn't matter. Lawrence Stephen's never there till after eight. She

won't dine without him."

Dorothy stiffened. She did not like that furtive betrayal of Vera and

Lawrence Stephen.

"I wish you'd come and see me at my rooms in Chelsea. And bring your

brother. Not the green and yellow one. The blue and black one."

Dorothy took the card on which Desmond had scribbled an address. But she

did not mean to go and see her. She wasn't sure that she liked Desmond.

* * * * *

Rosalind stayed on to dine with Dorothy's family. She was no longer

living with her own family, for Mrs. Jervis was hostile to Women's

Franchise. She had rooms off the Strand, not far from the headquarters

of the Union.

Frances looked a little careworn. She had been sent for to Grannie's

house to see what could be done with Aunt Emmeline, and had found, as

usual, that nothing could be done with her. In the last three years the

second Miss Fleming had become less and less enthusiastic, and more and

more emphatic, till she ceased from enthusiasm altogether and carried

emphasis beyond the bounds of sanity. She had become, as Frances put it,

extremely tiresome.

It was not accurate to say, as Mrs. Fleming did, that you never knew

when Emmeline would start a nervous crisis; for as a matter of fact you

could time her to a minute. It was her habit to wait till her family was

absorbed in some urgent affair that diverted attention from her case,

and then to break out alarmingly. Dorothy was generally sent for to

bring her round; but to-day it was Dorothy who had important things on

hand. Aunt Emmeline had scented the Suffrage meeting from afar, and had

made arrangements beforehand for a supreme crisis that would take all

the shine out of Dorothy's affair.

When Frances said that Aunt Emmy had been tiresome again, Dorothy knew

what she meant. For Aunt Emmy's idea was that her sisters persecuted

her; that Edie was jealous of her and hated her; that Louie had always

trampled on her and kept her under; that Frances had used her influence

with Grannie to spoil all her chances one after another. It was all

Frances's fault that Vera Harrison had come between her and Major

Cameron; Frances had encouraged Vera in her infamous intrigue; and

between them they had wrecked two lives. And they had killed

Major Cameron.

Since Ferdie's death Emmeline Fleming had lived most of the time in a

sort of dream in which it seemed to her that these things had

really happened.

This afternoon she had been more than usually tiresome. She had simply

raved.

"You should have brought her round to the meeting," said Dorothy, "and

let her rave there. I'd back Aunt Emmeline against Maud Blackadder. I

wish, Rosalind, you'd leave off making faces and kicking my shins. You

needn't worry any more, Mummy ducky. I'm going to rope them all into

the Suffrage Movement. Aunt Edie can distribute literature, Aunt Louie

can interrupt like anything, and Aunt Emmeline can shout and sing."

"I think, Dorothy," said Rosalind with weak bitterness, "that you might

have stuck by me."

The two were walking down East Heath Road to the tram-lines where the

motor buses started for Charing Cross.

"It was you who dragged me into it, and the least you could do was to

stick. Why didn't you keep quiet instead of forcing our hands?"

"I couldn't keep quiet. I'll go with you straight or I won't go with you

at all."

"You know what's the matter with you? It's your family. You'll never be

any good to us, you'll never be any good to yourself till you've chucked

them and got away. For years--ever since you've been born--you've simply

been stewing there in the family juice until you're soaked with it. You

oughtn't to be living at home. You ought to be on your own--like me."

"You're talking rot, Rosalind. If my people were like yours I'd have to

chuck them, I suppose; but they're not. They're angels."

"That's why they're so dangerous. They couldn't influence you if they

weren't angels."

"They don't influence me the least little bit. I'd like to see them try.

They're much too clever. They know I'd be off like a shot if they did.

Why, they let me do every mortal thing I please--turn the schoolroom

into a meeting hall for your friends to play the devil in. That

Blackadder girl was yelling the house down, yet they didn't say

anything. And your people aren't as bad as you make out, you know. You

couldn't live on your own if your father didn't give you an allowance. I

like Mrs. Jervis."

"Because she likes you."

"Well, that's a reason. It isn't the reason why I like my own mother,

because she doesn't like me so very much. That's why she lets me do what

I like. She doesn't care enough to stop me. She only really cares for

Dad and John and Nicky and Michael."

Rosalind looked fierce and stubborn.

"That's what's the matter with all of you," she said.

"What is?"

"Caring like that. It's all sex. Sex instinct, sex feeling. Maud's

right. It's what we're up against all the time."

Dorothy said to herself, "That's what's the matter with Rosalind, if she

only knew it."

Rosalind loved Michael and Michael detested her, and Nicky didn't like

her very much. She always looked fierce and stubborn when she heard

Michael's name.

Rosalind went on. "When it comes to sex you don't revolt. You sit down."

"I do revolt. I'm revolting now. I go much farther than you do. I think

the marriage laws are rotten; I think divorce ought to be for

incompatibility. I think love isn't love and can't last unless it's

free. I think marriage ought to be abolished--not yet, perhaps, but when

we've become civilized. It will be. It's bound to be. As it is, I think

every woman has a right to have a baby if she wants one. If Emmeline

had had a baby, she wouldn't be devastating us now."

"That's what you think, but it isn't what you feel. It's all thinking

with you, Dorothy. The revolt goes on in your brain. You'll never do

anything. It isn't that you haven't the courage to go against your men.

You haven't the will. You don't want to."

"Why should I? What do they do? Father and Michael and Nicky don't

interfere with me any more than Mother does."

"You know I'm not thinking of them. They don't really matter."

"Who are you thinking of then? Frank Drayton? You needn't!"

It was mean of Rosalind to hit below the belt like that, when she knew

that _she_ was safe. Michael had never been brought against her and

never would be. It was disgusting of her to imply that Dorothy's state

of mind was palpable, when her own (though sufficiently advertised by

her behaviour) had received from Michael's sister the consecration of

silence as a secret, tragic thing.

They had reached the tram-lines.

At the sight of the Charing Cross `bus Rosalind assumed an air of

rollicking, adventurous travel.

"My hat! What an evening! I shall have a ripping ride down. Don't say

there's no room on the top. Cheer up, Dorothy!"

Which showed that Rosalind Jervis was a free woman, suggested that life

had richer thrills than marrying Dorothy's brother Michael, and fixed

the detested imputation securely on her friend.

Dorothy watched her as she swung herself on to the footboard and up the

stair of the motor bus. There was room on the top. Rosalind, in fact,

had the top all to herself.

* * * * *

As Dorothy crossed the Heath again in the twilight she saw something

white on the terrace of her father's house. Her mother was waiting

for her.

She thought at first that Aunt Emmeline had gone off her head and that

she had been sent for to keep her quiet. She gloried in their dependence

on her. But no, that wasn't likely. Her mother was just watching for her

as she used to watch for her and the boys when they were little and had

been sent across the Heath to Grannie's house with a message.

And at the sight and memory of her mother Dorothy felt a childish, sick

dissatisfaction with herself and with her day, and an absurd longing for

the tranquillity and safety of the home whose chief drawback lately had

been that it was too tranquil and too safe. She could almost have told

her mother how they had all gone for her, and how Rosalind had turned

out rotten, and how beastly it had all been. Almost, but not quite.

Dorothy had grown up, and she was there to protect and not to be

protected. However agreeable it might have been to confide in her

mother, it wouldn't have done.

Frances met her at the garden door. She had been crying.

"Nicky's come home," she said.

"Nicky?"

"He's been sent down."

"Whatever for?"

"Darling, I can't possibly tell you."

But in the end she did.

XII

Up till now Frances had taken a quiet interest in Women's Suffrage. It

had got itself into the papers and thus become part of the affairs of

the nation. The names of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and

Angela Blathwaite had got into the papers, where Frances hoped and

prayed that the name of Dorothea Harrison might not follow them. The

spectacle of a frantic Government at grips with the Women's Franchise

Union had not yet received the head-lines accorded to the reports of

divorce and breach of promise cases and fires in paraffin shops; still,

it was beginning to figure, and if Frances's _Times_ ignored it, there

were other papers that Dorothy brought home.

But for Frances the affairs of the nation sank into insignificance

beside Nicky's Cambridge affair.

There could be no doubt that Nicky's affair was serious. You could not,

Anthony said, get over the letters, the Master's letter and the

Professor's letter and Michael's. They had arrived one hour after Nicky,

Nicky so changed from his former candour that he refused to give any

account of himself beyond the simple statement that he had been sent

down. They'd know, he had said, soon enough why.

And soon enough they did know.

To be sure no details could be disentangled from the discreet

ambiguities of the Master and the Professor. But Michael's letter was

more explicit. Nicky had been sent down because old "Booster" had got

it into his head that Nicky had been making love to "Booster's" wife

when she didn't want to be made love to, and nothing could get it out of

"Booster's" head.

Michael was bound to stand up for his brother, and it was clear to

Anthony that so grave a charge could hardly have been brought without

some reason. The tone of the letters, especially the Professor's, was

extraordinarily restrained. That was what made the thing stand out in

its sheer awfulness. The Professor, although, according to Michael, he

conceived himself to be profoundly injured, wrote sorrowfully, in

consideration of Nicky's youth.

There was one redeeming circumstance, the Master and the Professor both

laid stress on it: Anthony's son had not attempted to deny it.

"There must," Frances said wildly, "be some terrible mistake."

But Nicky cut the ground from under the theory of the terrible mistake

by continuing in his refusal to deny it.

"What sort of woman," said Anthony, "is the Professor's wife?"

"Oh, awfully decent," said Nicky.

"You had no encouragement, then, no provocation?"

"She's awfully fascinating," said Nicky.

Then Frances had another thought. It seemed to her that Nicky was

evading.

"Are you sure you're not screening somebody else?"

"Screening somebody else? Do you mean some other fellow?"

"Yes. I'm not asking you to give the name, Nicky."

"I swear I'm not. Why should I be? I can't think why you're all making

such a fuss about it. I don't mean poor old 'Booster.' He's got some

cause, if you like."

"But what was it you did--really did, Nicky?"

"You've read the letters, Mother."

Nicky's adolescence seemed to die and pass from him there and then; and

she saw a stubborn, hard virility that frightened and repelled her,

forcing her to believe that it might have really happened.

To Frances the awfulness of it was beyond belief. And the pathos of her

belief in Nicky was unbearable to Anthony. There were the letters.

"I think, dear," Anthony said, "you'd better leave us."

"Mayn't I stay?" It was as if she thought that by staying she could

bring Nicky's youth back to life again.

"No," said Anthony.

She went, and Nicky opened the door for her. His hard, tight man's face

looked at her as if it had been she who had sinned and he who suffered,

intolerably, for her sin. The click of the door as he shut it

stabbed her.

"It's a damnable business, father. We'd better not talk about it."

But Anthony would talk about it. And when he had done talking all that

Nicky had to say was: "You know as well as I do that these

things happen."

* * * * *

For Nicky had thought it out very carefully beforehand in the train.

What else could he say? He couldn't tell them that "Booster's" poor

little wife had lost her head and made hysterical love to him, and had

been so frightened at what she had done that she had made him promise on

his word of honour that, whatever happened, he wouldn't give her away to

anybody, not even to his own people.

He supposed that either Peggy had given herself away, or that poor old

"Booster" had found her out. He supposed that, having found her out,

there was no other line that "Booster" could have taken. Anyhow, there

was no other line that _he_ could take; because, in the world where

these things happened, being found out would be fifty times worse for

Peggy than it would be for him.

He tried to recall the scene in the back drawing-room where she had

asked him so often to have tea with her alone. The most vivid part was

the end of it, after he had given his promise. Peggy had broken down and

put her head on his shoulder and cried like anything. And it was at that

moment that Nicky thought of "Booster," and how awful and yet how funny

it would be if he walked into the room and saw him there. He had tried

hard not to think what "Booster's" face would look like; he had tried

hard not to laugh as long as Peggy's head was on his shoulder, for fear

of hurting her feelings; but when she took it off he did give one

half-strangled snort; for it really was the rummest thing that had ever

happened to him.

He didn't know, and he couldn't possibly have guessed, that as soon as

the door had shut on him Peggy's passion had turned to rage and utter

detestation of Nicky (for she had heard the snort); and that she had

gone straight to her husband's study and put her head on _his_ shoulder,

and cried, and told him a lie; and that it was Peggy's lie and not the

Professor's imagination that had caused him to be sent down. And even if

Peggy had not been Lord Somebody's daughter and related to all sorts of

influential people she would still have been capable of turning every

male head in the University. For she was a small, gentle woman with

enchanting manners and the most beautiful and pathetic eyes, and she had

not yet been found out. Therefore it was more likely that an

undergraduate with a face like Nicky's should lose his head than that a

woman with a face like Peggy's should, for no conceivable reason, tell a

lie. So that, even if Nicky's word of honour had not been previously

pledged to his accuser, it would have had no chance against any

statement that she chose to make. And even if he had known that she had

lied, he couldn't very well have given it against poor pretty Peggy who

had lost her head and got frightened.

As Nicky packed up his clothes and his books he said, "I don't care if I

am sent down. It would have been fifty times worse for her than it

is for me."

He had no idea how bad it was, nor how much worse it was going to be.

For it ended in his going that night from his father's house to the

house in St. John's Wood where Vera and Mr. Lawrence Stephen lived.

And it was there that he met Desmond.

* * * * *

Nicky congratulated himself on having pulled it off so well. At the

same time he was a little surprised at the ease with which he had taken

his father and mother in. He might have understood it if he had known

that Vera had been before him, and that she had warned them long ago

that this was precisely the sort of thing they would have to look out

for. And as no opinion ever uttered on the subject of their children was

likely to be forgotten by Frances and Anthony, when this particular

disaster came they were more prepared for it than they would have

believed possible.

But there were two members of his family whom Nicky had failed

altogether to convince, Michael and Dorothy. Michael luckily, Nicky said

to himself, was not on the spot, and his letter had no weight against

the letters of the Master and the Professor, and on this also Nicky had

calculated. He reckoned without Dorothy, judging it hardly likely that

she would be allowed to know anything about it. Nobody, not even

Frances, was yet aware of Dorothy's importance.

And Dorothy, because of her importance, blamed herself for all that

happened afterwards. If she had not had that damned Suffrage meeting,

Rosalind would not have stayed to dinner; if Rosalind had not stayed to

dinner she would not have gone with her to the tram-lines; if she had

not gone with her to the tram-lines she would have been at home to stop

Nicky from going to St. John's Wood. As it was, Nicky had reached the

main road at the top of the lane just as Dorothy was entering it from

the bottom.

At first Frances did not want Dorothy to see her father. He was most

horribly upset and must not be disturbed. But Dorothy insisted. Her

father had the letters, and she must see the letters.

"I may understand them better than you or Daddy," she said. "You see,

Mummy, I know these Cambridge people. They're awful asses, some

of them."

And though her mother doubted whether attendance at the Professor's

lectures would give Dorothy much insight into the affair, she had her

way. Anthony was too weak to resist her. He pushed the letters towards

her without a word. He would rather she had been left out of it. And yet

somehow the sight of her, coming in, so robust and undismayed and

competent, gave him a sort of comfort.

Dorothy did not agree with Michael. There was more in it than the

Professor's imagination. The Professor, she said, hadn't got any

imagination; you could tell from the way he lectured. But she did not

believe one word of the charge against her brother. Something had

happened and Nicky was screening somebody.

"I'll bet you anything you like," said Dorothy, "it's 'Booster's' wife.

She's made him give his word."

Dorothy was sure that "Booster's" wife was a bad lot.

"Nicky said she was awfully decent."

"He'd _have_ to. He couldn't do it by halves."

"They couldn't have sent him down, unless they'd sifted the thing to the

bottom."

"I daresay they've sifted all they could, the silly asses."

She could have killed them for making her father suffer. The sight of

his drawn face hurt her abominably. She had never seen him like that.

She wasn't half so sorry for her mother who was sustained by a secret,

ineradicable faith in Nicky. Why couldn't he have faith in Nicky too?

Was it because he was a man and knew that these things happened?

"Daddy--being sent down isn't such an awful calamity. It isn't going to

blast his career or anything. It's always touch and go. _I_ might have

been sent down any day. I should have been if they'd known about me half

what they don't know about Nicky. Why can't you take it as a rag? You

bet _he_ does."

Anthony removed himself from her protecting hand. He got up and went to

bed.

But he did not sleep there. Neither he nor Frances slept. And he came

down in the morning looking worse than ever.

Dorothy thought, "It must be awful to have children if it makes you feel

like that." She thought, "It's a lucky thing they're not likely to cut

up the same way about me." She thought again, "It must be awful to have

children." She thought of the old discussions in her room at Newnham,

about the woman's right to the child, and free union, and easy divorce,

and the abolition of the family. Her own violent and revolutionary

speeches (for which she liked to think she might have been sent down)

sounded faint and far-off and irrelevant. She did not really want to

abolish Frances and Anthony. And yet, if they had been abolished, as

part of the deplorable institution of parentage, it would have been

better for them; for then they would not be suffering as they did.

It must be awful to have children. But perhaps they knew that it was

worth it.

And as her thoughts travelled that way they were overtaken all of a

sudden by an idea. She did not stop to ask herself what business her

idea had in that neighbourhood. She went down first thing after

breakfast and sent off two wires; one to Captain Drayton at Croft House,

Eltham; one to the same person at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.

"Can I see you? It's about Nicky.

"DOROTHY HARRISON."

Wires to show that she was impersonal and businesslike, and that her

business was urgent. "Can I see you?" to show that he was not being

invited to see _her_. "It's about Nicky" to justify the whole

proceeding. "Dorothy Harrison" because "Dorothy" by itself was too much.

* * * * *

As soon as she had sent off her wires Dorothy felt a sense of happiness

and well-being. She had no grounds for happiness; far otherwise; her

great friendship with Rosalind Jervis was disintegrating bit by bit

owing to Rosalind's behaviour; the fiery Suffrage meeting had turned

into dust and ashes; her darling Nicky was in a nasty scrape; her father

and mother were utterly miserable; yet she was happy.

Half-way home her mind began to ask questions of its own accord.

"Supposing you had to choose between the Suffrage and Frank Drayton?"

"But I haven't got to."

"You might have. You know you might any minute. You know he hates it.

And supposing--"

But Dorothy refused to give any answer.

His wire came within the next half hour.

"Coming three sharp. FRANK."

Her sense of well-being increased almost to exaltation.

* * * * *

He arrived with punctuality at three o'clock. (He was in the gunners and

had a job at Woolwich.) She found him standing on the hearth-rug in the

drawing-room. He had blown his nose when he heard her coming, and

that meant that he was nervous. She caught him stuffing his

pocket-handkerchief (a piece of damning evidence) into his

breast-pocket.

With her knowledge of his nervousness her exaltation ceased as if it had

not been. At the sight of him it was as if the sentence hidden somewhere

in her mind--"You'll have to choose. You know you'll have to"--escaping

thought and language, had expressed itself in one suffocating pang.

Unless Nicky's affair staved off the dreadful moment.

"Were you frightfully busy?"

"No, thank goodness."

The luck she had had! Of course, if he had been busy he couldn't

possibly have come.

She could look at him now without a tightening in her throat. She liked

to look at him. He was made all of one piece. She liked his square face

and short fine hair, both the colour of light-brown earth; his eyes, the

colour of light brown earth under clear water; eyes that looked small

because they were set so deep. She liked their sudden narrowing and

their deep wrinkles when he smiled. She liked his jutting chin, and the

fine, rather small mouth that jerked his face slightly crooked when he

laughed. She liked that slender crookedness that made it a face

remarkable and unique among faces. She liked his brains. She liked all

that she had ever seen or heard of him.

Vera had told them that once, at an up-country station in India, he had

stopped a mutiny in a native battery by laughing in the men's faces.

Somebody that Ferdie knew had been with him and saw it happen. The men

broke into his office where he was sitting, vulnerably, in his

shirt-sleeves. They had brought knives with them, beastly native things,

and they had their hands on the handles, ready. They screamed and

gesticulated with excitement. And Frank Drayton leaned back in his

office chair and looked at them, and burst out laughing, because, he

said, they made such funny faces. When they got to fingering their

knives, he tilted back his chair and rocked with laughter. His sudden,

incredible mirth frightened them and stopped the mutiny. She could see

him, she could see his face jerked crooked with delight.

That was the sort of thing that Nicky would have done. She loved him for

that. She loved him because he was like Nicky.

She was not able to recall the process of the states that flowered in

that mysterious sense of well-being and exaltation. A year ago Frank

Drayton had been only "that nice man we used to meet at Cheltenham."

First of all he had been Ferdie's and Vera's friend. Then he became

Nicky's friend; the only one who took a serious interest in his

inventions and supported him when he wanted to go into the Army and

consoled him when he was frustrated. Then he had become the friend of

the family. Now he was recognized as more particularly Dorothea's

friend.

At Cheltenham he had been home on leave; and it was not until this year

that he had got his job at Woolwich teaching gunnery, while he waited

for a bigger job in the Ordnance Department. Ferdie Cameron had always

said that Frank Drayton would be worth watching. He would be part of the

brains of the Army some day. Nicky watched him. His brains and their

familiarity with explosives and the machinery of warfare had been his

original attraction for Nicky. But it was Dorothea who watched him most.

She plunged abruptly into Nicky's affair, giving names and lineage. "You

know all sorts of people, do you know anything about her?"

He looked at her clearly, without smiling. Then he said "Yes. I know a

good bit about her. Is that what's wrong with Nicky?"

"Not exactly. But he's been sent down."

His wry smile intimated that such things might be.

Then she told him what the Master had written and what the Professor had

written and what Michael had written, and what Nicky had said, and what

she, Dorothea thought. Drayton smiled over the Master's and the

Professor's letters, but when it came to Michael's letter he

laughed aloud.

"It's all very well for _us_. But Daddy and Mummy are breaking their

hearts. Daddy says he's going down to Cambridge to see what really

did happen."

Again that clear look. She gathered that he disapproved of "Booster's"

wife. He disapproved of so many things: of Women's Suffrage; of

revolutions; of women who revolted; of anybody who revolted; of Mrs.

Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite. It was

putting it too mildly to say he disapproved of Rosalind Jervis; he

detested her. He disapproved of Vera and of her going to see Vera; she

remembered that he had even disapproved, long ago, of poor Ferdie,

though he liked him. Evidently he disapproved of "Booster's" wife for

the same reason that he disapproved of Vera. That was why he didn't

say so.

"I believe you think all the time I'm right," she said. "Would you go

down if you were he?"

"No. I wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because he won't get anything out of them. They can't give her away any

more than Nicky can. Or than _you_ can, Dorothy."

"You mean I've done it already--to you. I _had_ to, because of Nicky. I

can't help it if you _do_ think it was beastly of me."

"My dear child--"

He got up vehemently, as if his idea was to take her in his arms and

stifle her outbreak that way. But something in her eyes, cold, unready,

yet aware of him, repelled him.

He thought: "It's too soon. She's all rigid. She isn't alive yet.

That's not what she wired for." He thought: "I wish people wouldn't send

their children to Newnham. It retards their development by ten years."

And she thought: "No. I mustn't let him do that. For then he won't be

able to go back on me when I tell him my opinions. It would be simply

trapping him. Supposing--supposing--"

She did not know that that instinctive renunciation was her answer to

the question. Her honour would come first.

"Of course. Of course you had to."

"What would you do about it if you were Daddy?"

"I should send them all to blazes."

"No, but _really_ do?"

"I should do nothing. I should leave it. You'll find that before very

long there'll be letters of apology and restitution."

"Will you come down to the office with me and tell Daddy that?"

"Yes, if you'll come to tea with me somewhere afterwards."

(He really couldn't be expected to do all this for nothing.)

She sent her mother to him while she put on her hat and coat. When she

came down Frances was happy again.

"You see, Mummy, I was right, after all."

"You always were right, darling, all the time."

For the life of her she couldn't help giving that little flick at her

infallible daughter.

"She _is_ right--most of the time," said Drayton. His eyes covered and

protected her.

Anthony was in his office, sitting before the open doors of the cabinet

where he kept his samples of rare and valuable woods. The polished slabs

were laid before him on the table in rows, as he had arranged them to

show to a customer: wine-coloured mahogany, and golden satinwood; ebony

black as jet; tulip-wood mottled like fine tortoiseshell; coromandel

wood, striped black and white like the coat of a civet cat; ghostly

basswood, shining white on dead white; woods of clouded grain, and woods

of shining grain, grain that showed like the slanting, splintered lines

of hewn stone, like moss, like the veins of flowers, the fringes of

birds' feathers, the striping and dappling of beasts; woods of exquisite

grain where the life of the tree drew its own image in its own heart;

woods whose surface was tender to the touch like a fine tissue; and

sweet-smelling sandalwood and camphor-wood and cedar.

Anthony loved his shining, polished slabs of wood. If a man must have a

business, let it be timber. Timber was a clean and fine and noble thing.

He had brought the working of his business to such a pitch of smooth

perfection that his two elder sons, Michael and Nicholas, could catch up

with it easily and take it in their stride.

Now he was like a sick child that has ranged all its toys in front of it

and finds no comfort in them.

And, as he looked at them, the tulip-wood and the scented sandalwood and

camphor-wood gave him an idea.

The Master and the Professor had both advised him to send his son

Nicholas out of England for a little while. "Let him travel for six

months and get the whole miserable business out of his head."

Nicky, when he gave up the Army, had told him flatly that he would

rather die than spend his life sitting in a beastly office. Nicky had

put it to him that timber meant trees, and trees meant forests; why,

lots of the stuff they imported came from the Himalaya and the West

Indies and Ceylon. He had reminded him that he was always saying a

timber merchant couldn't know enough about the living tree. Why

shouldn't he go into the places where the living trees grew and learn

all about them? Why shouldn't he be a tree-expert? Since they were

specializing in rare and foreign woods, why shouldn't he specialize in

rare and foreign trees?

And the slabs of tulip-wood and scented camphor-wood and sandalwood were

saying to Anthony, "Why not?" Neither he nor Frances had wanted Nicky to

go off to the West Indies and the Himalaya; but now, since clearly he

must go off somewhere, why not?

Drayton and Dorothy came in just as Anthony (still profoundly

dejected) was saying to himself, "Reinstate him. Give him

responsibility--curiosity--healthy interests. Get the whole miserable

business out of his head."

It seemed incredible, after what they had gone through, that Drayton

should be standing there, telling him that there was nothing in it, that

there never had been any miserable business, that it was all a storm in

a hysterical woman's teacup. He blew the whole dirty nightmare to

nothing with the laughter that was like Nicky's own laughter.

Then Anthony and Drayton and Dorothy sat round the table, drafting

letters to the Master and the Professor. Anthony, at Drayton's

dictation, informed them that he regretted the step they had seen fit to

take; that he knew his own son well enough to be pretty certain that

there had been some misunderstanding; therefore, unless he received

within three days a written withdrawal of the charge against his son

Nicholas, he would be obliged to remove his son Michael from the

Master's College.

The idea of removing Michael was Anthony's own inspiration.

Drayton's advice was that he should give Nicky his choice between Oxford

and Germany, the big School of Forestry at Aschaffenburg. If he chose

Germany, he would be well grounded; he could specialize and travel

afterwards.

"Now _that's_ all over," Anthony said, "you two had better come and have

tea with me somewhere."

But there was something in their faces that made him consult his watch

and find that "Oh dear me, no! he was afraid he couldn't." He had an

appointment at five.

When they were well out of sight he locked up his toys in his cabinet,

left the appointment at five to Mr. Vereker, and went home to tell

Frances about the letters he had written to Cambridge and the plans that

had been made for Nicky's future.

"He'll choose Germany," Anthony said. "But that can't be helped."

Frances agreed that they could hardly have hit upon a better plan.

So the affair of Nicky and "Booster's" wife was as if it had never been.

And for that they thanked the blessed common sense and sanity of

Captain Drayton.

And yet Anthony's idea was wrecked by "Booster's" wife. It had come too

late. Anthony had overlooked the fact that his son had seventeen hours'

start of him. He was unaware of the existence of Nicky's own idea; and

he had not allowed for the stiff logic of his position.

When he drove down in his car to St. John's Wood to fetch Nicky, he

found that he had left that afternoon for Chelsea, where, Vera told him,

he had taken rooms.

She gave him the address. It had no significance for Anthony.

Nicky refused to be fetched back from his rooms in Chelsea. For he had

not left his father's house in a huff; he had left it in his wisdom, to

avoid the embarrassment of an incredible position. His position, as he

pointed out to his father, had not changed. He was as big a blackguard

to-day as he was yesterday; the only difference was, that to-morrow or

the next day he would be a self-supporting blackguard.

He wouldn't listen to his father's plan. It was a beautiful plan, but it

would only mean spending more money on him. He'd be pretty good, he

thought, at looking after machinery. He was going to try for a job as a

chauffeur or foreman mechanic. He thought he knew where he could get

one; but supposing he couldn't get it, if his father cared to take him

on at the works for a bit he'd come like a shot; but he couldn't stay

there, because it wouldn't be good enough.

He was absolutely serious, and absolutely firm in the logic of his

position. For he argued that, if he allowed himself to be taken back as

though nothing had happened, this, more than anything he could well

think of, would be giving Peggy away.

He sent his love to his mother and Dorothy, and promised to come out and

dine with them as soon as he had got his job.

So Anthony drove back without him. But as he drove he smiled. And

Frances smiled, too, when he told her.

"There he is, the young monkey, and there he'll stay. It's magnificent,

but of course he's an ass."

"If you can't be an ass at twenty," said Frances, "when can you be?"

They said it was so like Nicky. For all he knew to the contrary his

career was ruined; but he didn't care. You couldn't make any impression

on him. They wondered if anybody ever would.

Dorothy wondered too.

"What sort of rooms has he got, Anthony?" said Frances.

"Very nice rooms, at the top of the house, looking over the river."

"Darling Nicky, I shall go and see him. What are you thinking of,

Dorothy?"

Dorothy was thinking that Nicky's address at Chelsea was the address

that Desmond had given her yesterday.

XIII

When Frances heard that Nicholas was going about everywhere with the

painter girl they called Desmond, she wrote to Vera to come and see her.

She could never bring herself to go to the St. John's Wood house that

was so much more Mr. Lawrence Stephen's house than it was Vera's.

The three eldest children went now and then, refusing to go back on

Vera. Frances did not like it, but she had not interfered with their

liberty so far as to forbid it positively; for she judged that

frustration might create an appetite for Mr. Stephen's society that

otherwise they might not, after all, acquire.

Vera understood that her husband's brother and sister-in-law could

hardly be expected to condone her last aberration. Her attachment to

Ferdie Cameron had been different. It was inevitable, and in a sense

forgivable, seeing that it had been brought about by Bartie's sheer

impossibility. Besides, the knowledge of it had dawned on them so

gradually and through so many stages of extenuating tragedy, that, even

when it became an open certainty, the benefit of the long doubt

remained. And there was Veronica. There was still Veronica. Even without

Veronica Vera would have had to think of something far worse than

Lawrence Stephen before Frances would have cast her off. Frances felt

that it was not for her to sit in judgment under the shelter of her tree

of Heaven. Supposing she could only have had Anthony as Vera had had

Ferdie, could she have lived without him? For Frances nothing in the

world had any use or interest or significance but her husband and her

children; her children first, and Anthony after them. For Vera nothing

in the world counted but her lover.

"If only I were as sure of Lawrence as you are of Anthony!" she would

say.

Yet she lived the more intensely, if the more dangerously, through the

very risks of her exposed and forbidden love.

Vera was without fidelity to the unreturning dead; but she made up for

it by an incorruptible adoration of the living. And she had been made

notorious chiefly through Stephen's celebrity, which was, you might say,

a pure accident.

Thus Frances made shelter for her friend. Only Vera must be made to

understand that, though _she_ was accepted Lawrence Stephen was not. He

was the point at which toleration ceased.

And Vera did understand. She understood that Frances and Anthony

disapproved of her last adventure considerably more on Ferdie's and

Veronica's account than on Bartie's. Even family loyalty could not

espouse Bartie's cause with any zest. For Bartie showed himself

implacable. Over and over again she had implored him to divorce her so

that Lawrence might marry her, and over and over again he had refused.

His idea was to assert himself by refusals. In that way he could still

feel that he had power over her and a sort of possession. It was he who

was scandalous. Even now neither Frances nor Anthony had a word to

say for him.

So Vera consented to be received surreptitiously, by herself, and

without receiving Frances and Anthony in her turn. It had hurt her; but

Stephen's celebrity was a dressing to her wound. He was so distinguished

that it was unlikely that Frances, or Anthony either, would ever have

been received by him without Vera. She came, looking half cynical, half

pathetic, her beauty a little blurred, a little beaten after seventeen

years of passion and danger, saying that she wasn't going to force Larry

down their throats if they didn't like him; and she went away sustained

by her sense of his distinction and _his_ repudiations.

And she found further support in her knowledge that, if Frances and

Anthony could resist Lawrence, their children couldn't. Michael and

Dorothy were acquiring a taste for him and for the people he knew; and

he knew almost everybody who was worth knowing. To be seen at the

parties he and Vera gave in St. John's Wood was itself distinction. Vera

had never forgotten and never would forget what Anthony and Frances had

done for her and Ferdie when they took Veronica. She wanted to make up,

to pay back, to help their children as they had helped her child; to

give the best she had, and do what they, poor darlings, couldn't

possibly have done. Nicholas was all right; but Michael's case was

lamentable. In his family and in the dull round of their acquaintance

there was not anybody who was likely to be of the least use to Michael;

not anybody that he cared to know. No wonder that he kept up his old

attitude of refusing to go to the party. Lawrence Stephen had promised

her that he would help Michael.

And Frances was afraid. She saw her children, Michael, Nicholas and

Dorothy, swept every day a little farther from the firm, well-ordered

sanctities, a little nearer to the unclean moral vortex that to her was

the most redoubtable of all. She hid her fear, because in her wisdom she

knew that to show fear was not the way to keep her children. She hid her

strength because she knew that to show it was not the way. Her strength

was in their love of her. She had only used it once when she had stopped

Nicky from going into the Army. She had said to herself then, "I will

never do that again." It wasn't fair. It was a sort of sacrilege, a

treachery. Love was holy; it should never be used, never be bargained

with. She tried to hold the balance even between their youth and

their maturity.

So Frances fought her fear.

She had known that Ferdie Cameron was good, as she put it, "in spite of

everything"; but she had not seen Lawrence Stephen, and she did not know

that he had sensibilities and prejudices and scruples like her own, and

that he and Vera distinguished very carefully between the people who

would be good for Michael and Nicholas and Dorothy, and the people who

would not. She did not know that they both drew the line at Desmond.

Vera protested that it was not her fault, it was not Lawrence's fault

that Nicky had met Desmond. She had never asked them to meet each other.

She did not deny that it was in her house they _had_ met; but she had

not introduced them. Desmond had introduced herself, on the grounds that

she knew Dorothy. Vera suspected that, from the first moment when she

had seen him there--by pure accident--she had marked him down. Very

likely she had wriggled into Dorothy's Suffrage meeting on purpose. She

was capable of anything.

Not that Vera thought there was any need for Frances to worry. It was

most unlikely that Desmond's business with Nicky could be serious. For

one thing she was too young herself to care for anybody as young as

Nicky. For another she happened to be in the beginning, or the middle,

certainly nowhere near the end of a tremendous affair with Headley

Richards. As she was designing the dresses and the scenery for the new

play he was putting on at the Independent Theatre, Vera argued very

plausibly that the affair had only just started, and that Frances must

allow it a certain time to run.

"I hope to goodness that the Richards man will marry her."

"My dear, how can he? He's married already to a nice little woman that

he isn't half tired of yet. Desmond was determined to have him and she's

got him; but he's only taken her in his stride, as you may say. I don't

suppose he cares very much one way or another. But with Desmond it's a

point of honour."

"What's a point of honour?"

"Why, to have him. Not to be left out. Besides, she always said she

could take him from poor little Ginny Richards, and she's done it. That

was another point of honour."

With a calmness that was horrible to Frances Vera weighed her friend

Desmond's case. To Frances it was as if she had never known Vera. Either

Vera had changed or she had never known her. She had never known women,

or men either, who discussed such performances with calmness. Vera

herself hadn't made her infidelities a point of honour.

These were the passions and the thoughts of Lawrence Stephen's and of

Desmond's world; these were the things it took for granted. These people

lived in a moral vortex; they whirled round and round with each other;

they were powerless to resist the swirl. Not one of them had any other

care than to love and to make love after the manner of the Vortex. This

was their honour, not to be left out of it, not to be left out of the

vortex, but to be carried away, to be sucked in, and whirl round and

round with each other and the rest.

The painter girl Desmond was horrible to Frances.

And all the time her mind was busy with one question: "Do you think

Nicky knows?"

"I'm perfectly sure he doesn't."

"Perhaps--if he did--"

"No, my dear, that's no good. If you tell him he won't believe it.

You'll have all his chivalry up in arms. And you'll be putting into his

head what may never come into it if he's left alone. And you'll be

putting it into Desmond's head."

* * * * *

Captain Drayton, whom Anthony consulted, said, "Leave him alone." Those

painting and writing johnnies were a rum lot. You couldn't take them

seriously. The Desmond girl might be everything that Vera Harrison said

she was. He didn't think, though, that the idea of making love to her

would enter Nicky's head if they left him alone. Nicky's head had more

important ideas in it.

So they left him alone.

* * * * *

And at first Nicholas really was too busy to think much of Desmond. Too

busy with his assistant manager's job at the Morss Motor Works; too busy

with one of the little ideas to which he owed the sudden rise in his

position: the little idea of making the Morss cars go faster; too busy

with his big Idea which had nothing whatever to do with the Morss

Company and their cars.

His big Idea was the idea of the Moving Fortress. The dream of a French

engineer, the old, abandoned dream of the _forteresse mobile_, had

become Nicky's passion. He claimed no originality for his idea. It was a

composite of the amoured train, the revolving turret, the tractor with

caterpillar wheels and the motor-car. These things had welded themselves

together gradually in Nicky's mind during his last year at Cambridge.

The table in Nicky's sitting-room at the top of the house in Chelsea was

now covered with the parts of his model of the Moving Fortress. He made

them at the Works, one by one; for the Morss Company were proud of him,

and he had leave to use their material and plant now and then for little

ideas of his own. The idea of the Moving Fortress was with him all day

in the workshops and offices and showrooms, hovering like a formless

spiritual presence among the wheeled forms. But in the evening it took

shape and sound. It arose and moved, after its fashion, as he had

conceived it, beautiful, monstrous, terrible. At night, beside the image

of the _forteresse mobile_, the image of Desmond was a thin ghost that

stood back, mournful and dumb, in the right-hand corner of the vision.

But the image of Desmond was there.

At first it stood for Nicky's predominant anxiety: "I wonder when

Desmond will have finished the drawings."

The model of the Moving Fortress waited upon Desmond's caprice.

The plans of the parts and sections had to be finished before these

could be fitted together and the permanent model of the Moving Fortress

set up. The Moving Fortress itself waited upon Desmond.

For, though Nicky could make and build his engine, he could not draw his

plans properly; and he could not trust anybody who understood engines to

draw them. He was haunted, almost insanely, by the fear that somebody

else would hit upon the idea of the Moving Fortress; it seemed to him so

obvious that no gunner and no engineer could miss it. And the drawings

Desmond made for him, the drawings in black and white, the drawings in

grey wash, and the coloured drawings were perfect. Nicky, unskilled in

everything but the inventing and building up of engines, did not know

how perfect the drawings were, any more than he knew the value of the

extraordinary pictures that hung on the walls and stood on the easels in

her studio; but he did know that, from the moment when he took Desmond

into his adventure, he and his Idea were dependent on her.

He didn't care. He liked Desmond. He couldn't help it if Drayton

disapproved of her and if Dorothy didn't like her. She was, he said to

himself, a ripping good sort. She might be frightfully clever; Nicky

rather thought she was; but she never let you feel it; she never talked

that revolting rot that Rosalind and Dorothy's other friends talked. She

let you think.

It was Desmond who told him that his sister didn't like her and that

Frank Drayton disapproved of her.

"They wouldn't," said Nicky, "if they knew you." And he turned again to

the subject of his Moving Fortress.

For Desmond's intelligence was perfect, and her sympathy was perfect,

and her way of listening was perfect. She sat on the floor, on the

orange and blue cushions, in silence and in patience, embracing her

knees with her long, slender, sallow-white arms, while Nicky stamped up

and down her studio and talked to her, like a monomaniac, about his

Moving Fortress. It didn't bore her to listen, because she didn't have

to answer; she had only to look at him and smile, and nod her head at

him now and then as a sign of enthusiasm. She liked looking at him; she

liked his young naïveté and monomania; she liked his face and all his

gestures, and the poise and movement of his young body.

And as she looked at him the beauty that slept in her dulled eyes and in

her sallow-white face and in her thin body awoke and became alive. It

was not dangerous yet; not ready yet to tell the secret held back in its

long, subtle, serious, and slender lines. Desmond's sensuality was woven

with so fine a web that you would have said it belonged less to her body

than to her spirit and her mind.

* * * * *

In nineteen-eleven, on fine days in the late spring and early summer,

when the Morss Company lent him a car, or when they sent him motoring

about the country on their business, he took Desmond with him and

Desmond's painting box and easel. And they rested on the grass borders

of the high roads and on the edges of the woods and moors, and Desmond

painted her extraordinary pictures while Nicky lay on his back beside

her with his face turned up to the sky and dreamed of flying machines.

For he had done with his Moving Fortress. It only waited for Desmond to

finish the last drawing.

When he had that he would show the plans and the model to Frank Drayton

before he sent them to the War Office.

He lived for that moment of completion.

* * * * *

And from the autumn of nineteen-ten to the spring of nineteen-eleven

Desmond's affair with Headley Richards increased and flowered and

ripened to its fulfilment. And in the early summer she found that things

had happened as she had meant that they should happen.

She had always meant it. She had always said, and she had always thought

that women were no good unless they had the courage of their opinions;

the only thing to be ashamed of was the cowardice that prevented them

from getting what they wanted.

Desmond had no idea that the violence of the Vortex had sucked her in.

Being in the movement of her own free will, she thought that by simply

spinning round faster and faster she added her own energy to the whirl.

It was not Dorothy's vortex, or the vortex of the fighting Suffrage

woman. Desmond didn't care very much about the Suffrage; or about any

kind of freedom but her own kind; or about anybody's freedom but her

own. Maud Blackadder's idea of freedom struck Desmond as sheer moral and

physical insanity. Yet each, Desmond and Dorothy and Maud Blackadder and

Mrs. Blathwaite and her daughter and Mrs. Palmerston-Swete, had her own

particular swirl in the immense Vortex of the young century. If you had

youth and life in you, you were in revolt.

Desmond's theories were Dorothy's theories too; only that while Dorothy,

as Rosalind had said, thought out her theories in her brain without

feeling them, Desmond felt them with her whole being; and with her whole

being, secret, subtle and absolutely relentless, she was bent on

carrying them out.

And in the summer, in the new season, Headley Richards decided that he

had no further use for Desmond. The new play had run its course at the

Independent Theatre, a course so brief that Richards had been

disappointed. He put down the failure mainly to the queerness of the

dresses and the scenery she had designed for him. Desmond's new art was

too new; people weren't ready yet for that sort of thing. At the same

time he discovered that he was really very much attached to his own wife

Ginny, and when Ginny nobly offered to give him his divorce he had

replied nobly that he didn't want one. And he left Desmond to face

the music.

Desmond's misery was acute; but it was not so hopeless as it would have

been if she could have credited Ginny Richards with any permanent power

of attraction for Headley. She knew he would come back to her. She knew

the power of her own body. She held him by the tie that was never broken

so long as it endured. He would never marry her; yet he would come back.

But in the interval between these acts there was the music.

And the first sound of the music, the changed intonations of her

landlady, frightened Desmond; for though she was older than Nicky she

was very young. And there were Desmond's people. You may forget that you

have people and behave as if they weren't there; but, if they are there,

sooner or later they will let you know it. An immense volume of sound

and some terrifying orchestral effects were contributed by Desmond's

people. So that the music was really very bad to bear.

Desmond couldn't bear it. And in her fright she thought of Nicky.

She knew that she hadn't a chance so long as he was absorbed in the

Moving Fortress. But the model was finished and set up and she was at

work on the last drawing. And no more ideas for engines were coming into

Nicky's head. The Morss Company and Nicky himself were even beginning to

wonder whether there ever would be any more.

Then Nicky thought of Desmond. And he showed that he was thinking of her

by sitting still and not talking when he was with her. She did not fill

that emptiness and spaciousness of Nicky's head, but he couldn't get her

out of it.

* * * * *

When Vera noticed the silence of the two she became uneasy, and judged

that the time had come for discreet intervention.

"Nicky," she said, "is it true that Desmond's been doing drawings for

you?"

"Yes," said Nicky, "she's done any amount."

"My dear boy, have you any idea of the amount you'll have to pay her?"

"I haven't," said Nicky, "I wish I had. I hate asking her, and yet I

suppose I'll have to."

"Of course you'll have to. _She_ won't hate it. She's got to earn her

living as much as you have."

"Has she? You don't mean to say she's hard up?"

He had never thought of Desmond as earning her own living, still less as

being hard up.

"I only wish she were," said Vera, "for your sake."

"Why on earth for my sake?"

"Because _then_, my dear Nicky, you wouldn't have to pay so stiff a

price."

"I don't care," said Nicky, "how stiff the price is. I shall pay it."

And Vera replied that Desmond, in her own queer way, really was a rather

distinguished painter. "Pay her," she said. "Pay her for goodness sake

and have done with it. And if she wants to give you things don't

let her."

"As if," said Nicky, "I should dream of letting her."

And he went off to Chelsea to pay Desmond then and there.

Vera thought that she had been rather clever. Nicky would dash in and do

the thing badly. He would be very proud about it, and he would revolt

from his dependence on Desmond, and he would show her--Vera hoped that

he would show her--that he did not want to be under any obligation to

her. And Desmond would be hurt and lose her temper. The hard look would

get into her face and destroy its beauty, and she would say detestable

things in a detestable voice, and a dreadful ugliness would come between

them, and the impulse of Nicky's yet unborn passion would be checked,

and the memory of that abominable half-hour would divide them for ever.

* * * * *

But Vera herself had grown hard and clever. She had forgotten Nicky's

tenderness, and she knew nothing at all about Desmond's fright. And, as

it happened, neither Nicky nor Desmond did any of the things she thought

they would do.

Nicky was not impetuous. He found Desmond in her studio working on the

last drawing of the Moving Fortress, with the finished model before her.

That gave him his opening, and he approached shyly and tentatively.

Desmond put on an air of complete absorption in her drawing; but she

smiled. A pretty smile that lifted the corners of her mouth and made it

quiver, and gave Nicky a queer and unexpected desire to kiss her.

He went on wanting to know what his debt was--not that he could ever

really pay it.

"Oh, you foolish Nicky," Desmond said.

He repeated himself over and over again, and each time she had an

answer, and the answers had a cumulative effect.

"There isn't any debt. You don't pay anything--"

"I didn't do it for _that_, you silly boy."

"What did I do it for? I did it for fun. You couldn't draw a thing like

that for anything else. Look at it--"

--"Well, if you want to be horrid and calculating about it, think of the

lunches and the dinners and the theatre tickets and the flowers you've

given _me_. Oh, and the gallons and gallons of petrol. How am I ever to

pay you back again?"

Thus she mocked him.

"Can't you see how you're spoiling it all?"

And then, passionately: "Oh, Nicky, please don't say it again. It

hurts."

She turned on him her big black looking-glass eyes washed bright, each

with one tear that knew better than to fall just yet. He must see that

she was holding herself well in hand. It would be no use letting herself

go until he had forgotten his Moving Fortress. He was looking at the

beastly thing now, instead of looking at her.

"Are you thinking of another old engine?"

"No," said Nicky. "I'm not thinking of anything."

"Then you don't want me to do any more drawings?"

"No."

"Well then--I wonder whether you'd very much mind going away?"

"Now?"

"No. Not now. But soon. From here. Altogether."

"Go? Altogether? Me? Why?"

He was utterly astonished. He thought that he had offended Desmond past

all forgiveness.

"Because I came here to be alone. To work. And I can't work. And I want

to be alone again."

"Am I--spoiling it?"

"Yes. You're spoiling it damnably."

"I'm sorry, Desmond. I didn't mean to. I thought--" But he hadn't the

heart to say what he had thought.

She looked at him and knew that the moment was coming.

It had come.

She turned away from the table where the Moving Fortress stood,

threatening her with its mimic guns, and reminding Nicky of the things

she most wanted him to forget. She withdrew to her crouching place at

the other end of the studio, among the cushions.

He followed her there with slow, thoughtful steps, steps full of

brooding purpose and of half-unconscious meaning.

"Nicky, I'm so unhappy. I didn't know it was possible for anybody to be

so unhappy in this world."

She began to cry quietly.

"Desmond--what is it? What is it? Tell me. Why can't you tell me?"

* * * * *

She thought, "It will be all right if he kisses me once. If he holds me

in his arms once. Then I can tell him."

For then he would know that he loved her. He was not quite sure now. She

knew that he was not quite sure. She trusted to the power of her body to

make him sure.

Her youth neither understood his youth, nor allowed for it, nor pitied

it.

He had kissed her. He had held her in his arms and kissed her more than

once while she cried there, hiding her face in the hollow of his arm.

She was weak and small. She was like some small, soft, helpless animal

and she was hurt. Her sobbing and panting made her ribs feel fragile

like the ribs of some small, soft, helpless animal under the pressure of

his arms. And she was frightened.

He couldn't stand the sight of suffering. He had never yet resisted the

appeal of small, weak, helpless things in fright and pain. He could feel

Desmond's heart going thump, thump, under the blue thing he called her

pinafore. Her heart hurt him with its thumping.

And through all his painful pity he knew that her skin was smooth and

sweet like a sallow-white rose-leaf. And Desmond knew that he knew it.

His mouth slid with an exquisite slipperiness over the long, polished

bands of her black hair; and he thought that he loved her. Desmond knew

that he thought it.

And still she waited. She said to herself, "It's no good his thinking

it. I daren't tell him till he says it. Till he asks me to marry him."

* * * * *

He had said it at last. And he had asked her to marry him. And then she

had told him.

And all that he said was, "I don't care." He said it to Desmond, and he

said it to himself.

The funny thing was that he did not care. He was as miserable as it was

well possible to be, but he didn't really care. He was not even

surprised. It was as if the knowledge of it had been hiding in the back

of his head behind all the ideas.

And yet he couldn't have known it all the time. Either it must have gone

away when his ideas went, or he must have been trying not to see it.

She had slipped from his arms and stood before him, dabbing her mouth

and eyes now and then with her pocket-handkerchief, controlling herself,

crying quietly.

She knew, what had not dawned on Nicky yet, that he didn't love her. If

he had loved her he would have cared intolerably. He didn't care about

Headley Richards because he didn't care about Desmond any more. He was

only puzzled.

"Why did you do it?"

"I can't think why. I must have been off my head. I didn't know what it

was like. I didn't know. I thought it would be wonderful and beautiful.

I thought he was wonderful and beautiful."

"Poor little Desmond."

"Oh, Nicky, do you think me a beast? Does it make you hate me?"

"No. Of course it doesn't. The only awful thing is--"

"What? Tell me."

"Well--you see--"

"You mean the baby? I know it's awful. You needn't tell me that, Nicky."

He stared at her.

"I mean it's so awful for _it_."

She thought he had been thinking of himself and her.

"Why should it be?"

"Why? There isn't any why. It just is. I _know_ it is."

He was thinking of Veronica.

"You see," he said simply, "that's why this sort of thing is such a

rotten game. It's so hard on the kiddy. I suppose you didn't think of

that. You couldn't have, or else you wouldn't--"

He paused. There was one thing he had to know. He must get it out of

her.

"It hasn't made you feel that you don't want it?"

"Oh--I don't know what I want--_now_. I don't know what it makes me

feel!"

"Don't let it, Desmond. Don't let it. It'll be all right. You won't feel

like that when you've married me. Can't you see that _that's_ the

wonderful and beautiful part?"

"_What_ is?" she said in her tired drawl.

"_It_--the poor kiddy."

Because he remembered Veronica he was going to marry Desmond.

* * * * *

Veronica's mother was the first to hear about it. Desmond told her.

Veronica's mother was determined to stop it for the sake of everybody

concerned.

She wrote to Nicholas and asked him to come and dine with her one

evening when Lawrence Stephen was dining somewhere else. (Lawrence

Stephen made rather a point of not going to houses where Vera was not

received; but sometimes, when the occasion was political, or otherwise

important, he had to. That was her punishment, as Bartholomew had meant

that it should be.)

Nicky knew what he had been sent for, and to all his aunt's assaults and

manoeuvres he presented an inexpugnable front.

"You mustn't do it; you simply mustn't."

He intimated that his marriage was his own affair.

"It isn't. It's the affair of everybody who cares for you."

"Their caring isn't my affair," said Nicky.

And then Vera began to say things about Desmond.

"It's absurd of you," she said, "to treat her as if she was an innocent

child. She isn't a child, and she isn't innocent. She knew perfectly

well what she was about. There's nothing she doesn't know. She meant it

to happen, and she made it happen. She said she would. She meant you to

marry her, and she's making you marry her. I daresay she said she would.

She's as clever and determined as the devil. Neither you nor Headley

Richards ever had a chance against her."

"She hasn't got a dog's chance against all you people yelping at her now

she's down. I should have thought--"

"You mean _I_'ve no business to? That was different. I didn't take any

other woman's husband, or any other woman's lover, Nicky."

"If you had," said Nicky, "I wouldn't have interfered."

"I wouldn't interfere if I thought you cared _that_ for Desmond. But you

don't. You know you don't."

"Of course I care for her."

He said it stoutly, but he coloured all the same, and Vera knew that he

was vulnerable.

"Oh, Nicky dear, if you'd only waited--"

"What do you mean?"

His young eyes interrogated her austerely; and she flinched. "I don't

know what I mean. Unless I mean that you're just a little young to

marry anybody."

"I don't care if I am. I don't _feel_ young, I can tell you. Anyhow

Desmond's years younger."

"Desmond is twenty-three. You're twenty. It's Veronica who's years

younger."

"Veronica?"

"She's sixteen. You don't imagine Desmond is as young as that, do you?

Wait till she's twenty-five and you're twenty-two."

"It wouldn't do poor Desmond much good if I did. I could kill Headley

Richards."

"What for?"

"For leaving her."

Vera smiled. "That shows how much you care. You wouldn't have felt like

killing him if he'd stuck to her. Why should you marry Headley Richards'

mistress and take on his child? It's preposterous."

"It isn't. If the other fellow's a brute it's all the more reason why I

shouldn't be. I want to be some use in this rotten world where people

are so damnably cruel to each other. And there's that unhappy kiddy.

You've forgotten the kiddy."

"Do you mean to say it's Desmond's child _you_'re thinking of?"

"I can't understand any woman not thinking of it," said Nicky.

He looked at her, and she knew that he remembered Veronica.

Then she gave him back his own with interest, for his good.

"If you care so much, why don't you choose a better mother for your own

children?"

It was as if she said: "If you care so much about Veronica, why don't

you marry _her_?"

"It's a bit too late to think of that now," said poor Nicky.

Because he had cared so much about Veronica he was going to marry

Desmond.

* * * * *

"I couldn't do anything with him," Vera said afterwards. "Nothing I said

made the least impression on him."

That however (as both Vera and Nicky were aware), was not strictly true.

But, in spite of Nicky's terrible capacity for remembering, she stuck to

it that Desmond's affair would have made no impression on him if it had

not been for that other absurd affair of the Professor's wife. And it

would have been better, Lawrence Stephen said, for Nicky to have made

love to all the married women in Cambridge than for him to marry

Phyllis Desmond.

These reflections were forced on them by the ironic coincidence of

Nicky's engagement with his rehabilitation at the University.

Drayton's forecast was correct; Nicky's brother Michael had not been

removed from Nicky's College eight months before letters of apology and

restitution came. But both apology and restitution came too late.

For by that time Nicky had married Desmond.

XIV

After Nicholas, Veronica; and after Veronica, Michael.

Anthony and Frances sat in the beautiful drawing-room of their house,

one on each side of the fireplace. They had it all to themselves, except

for the cats, Tito and Timmy, who crouched on the hearthrug at their

feet. Frances's forehead and her upper lip were marked delicately with

shallow, tender lines; Anthony's eyes had crow's-feet at their corners,

pointing to grey hairs at his temples. To each other their faces were as

they had been fifteen years ago. The flight of time was measured for

them by the generations of the cats that had succeeded Jane and Jerry.

For still in secret they refused to think of their children as grown-up.

Dorothy was upstairs in her study writing articles for the Women's

Franchise Union. They owed it to her magnanimity that they had one child

remaining with them in the house. John was at Cheltenham; Veronica was

in Dresden. Michael was in Germany, too, at that School of Forestry at

Aschaffenburg which Anthony had meant for Nicky. They couldn't bear to

think where Nicky was.

When Frances thought about her children now her mind went backwards. If

only they hadn't grown-up; if only they could have stayed little for

ever! In another four years even Don-Don would be grown-up--Don-Don who

was such a long time getting older that at fourteen, only two years

ago, he had been capable of sitting in her lap, a great long-legged,

flumbering puppy, while mother and son rocked dangerously together in

each other's arms, like two children, laughing together, mocking

each other.

She was going to be wiser with Don-Don than she had been with Nicky. She

would be wiser with Michael when he came back from Germany. She would

keep them both out of the Vortex, the horrible Vortex that Lawrence

Stephen and Vera had let Nicky in for, the Vortex that seized on youth

and forced it into a corrupt maturity. After Desmond's affair Anthony

and Frances felt that to them the social circle inhabited by Vera and

Lawrence Stephen would never be anything but a dirty hell.

As for Veronica, the longer she stayed in Germany the better.

Yet Frances knew that they had not sent Veronica to Dresden to prevent

her mother from getting hold of her. When she remembered the fear she

had had of the apple-tree house, she said to herself that Desmond was a

judgment on her for sending little Veronica away.