“_Aunt Lavvy!_” A short scornful laugh from Nina. Aunt Lavvy,

with all her gentle wisdom, her sweet eyes, her pretty dainty habits,

her silvery sense of humour, her tolerance, her tact, and the secret

niche of favouritism which Hal and Nina jointly occupied in her

heart--_livid_ indeed!

She would be deeply sorry, yes! Nothing more damaging than that.

“Better go and find out for yourself.”

“I will, then.”

But Aunt Lavvy was down in the drawing-room, having tea.

Tea, as the first public re-union since lunch, was also the tangible

betrayal of moral disorganization at the Laburnums. Aunt Lavvy, Miss

Roberts, Ursula and Lottie were present. Mrs. Maxwell and Grace had

been invited to tea with Mrs. Fennimore, the banker’s wife; and, after

a hurried talk-over with Miss Roberts, Grace had decided it the wiser

policy and the truest service to her country--i. e., the family--to

go as though nothing had happened, and make excuses for Mrs. Maxwell,

whose blotched and tear-swollen condition still kept her to her room.

“You see, Miss Roberts, nobody outside the house _knows_ anything

yet, and we mustn’t let them begin to suspect....”

Hal, aware that by some pressure of invisible law he would have to

appear at dinner, renounced his tea, and, like his mother, shut himself

up in his room. He shut himself up there too long, so that the prospect

of ever leaving it and facing publicity swelled to abnormal difficulty.

Bunny forlornly marched away for a solitary walk; and William, with the

precaution of a large bun annexed from the tea-table, had followed him.

He did not catch up with Bunny, but was satisfied to march unobserved

about a hundred yards behind him. He saw him fling himself face

downwards in a field; sat down and waited ... and finally arrived home

about eight minutes in Bunny’s rear.

Nina, bursting open the door in her search for Aunt Lavvy, had thrown a

look of disgust at the “schoolroom mess” present, and rushed out again.

Lottie asked if she might carry up a cup of tea and some cake to

poor Hal. Aunt Lavvy’s face became smooth and uninterested. But Miss

Roberts, to Ursula’s horror, gave assent: “Do, dear, that will be very

nice of you.”

“You’re not to, Lottie,” Ursula cried passionately.

“Really, Ursula----”

“She’s only curious. Let her take Mother a cup if she wants a canteen

job.”

Aunt Lavvy said, with the faint lisp in her voice a little more

assertive than usual: “Do you know, Lottie darling, I’d have given

you the job of bringing my tea upstairs if I’d only had a little

sitting-room of my own. Food in one’s bedroom is not very tempting, is

it? But just today----”

She sighed. Then smiled bravely, with the corners of her mouth--not

with all of it--when Miss Roberts sympathetically asked whether she had

a headache, and replied: “No, I mustn’t indulge myself by pretending I

have. The headache pose is fatally tempting to old ladies. You’ll know

one day, Miss Roberts.”

“That was meant for Mother,” reflected Ursula; “and sending Miss

Roberts down for stronger tea--she’s never done it before--was to

impress Gums and the servants that she has a right to it because she

pays.” Ursula was making the same discovery as erstwhile Hal had made.

“‘Just today’ was a stinger for Hal. And ‘the little sitting-room of

her own’ she aimed at----”

Ursula, subconsciously, winced with fear.

“Are you going to split on Hal to the Bank?” she asked, wondering what

made her voice sound so noisy.

Again that curious glassy obstinacy passed over Aunt Lavvy’s usually

mobile prettiness. She replied nothing, but with careful selection she

put aside the slices of the Swiss Roll and cut herself a piece from the

uncut portion.

“Ursula, really, this is going too far. This is disloyal. When

your Aunt Lavvy is doing her best to behave as though nothing had

happened----”

“Why should she? Something _has_ happened. But it’ll be like that

all the time, I know. Mother will come down to dinner trying to look

as though she hadn’t cried, and we’ll all look as though of course

she hadn’t. And Father will simply shut up and not play. He’s never

supposed to join in when the rest of us pretend. And Grace will talk

tactfully to Stanley about the babies, and how town is looking, and her

tea-party, and the leaves falling. And Gums will ‘draw out’ Lottie, and

we’ll all of us not stare at Hal, and feel beastlier than we’ve ever

felt before, and goodness knows what Nina and Bunny will do, because I

haven’t seen them since it happened. But it might be a bit better--not

much, but a bit--if we could all be as glum as we liked.”

“Would you have said that during the war, Ursula? Why, I think it was

splendid how every one hid their own feelings and were cheerful.”

Miss Roberts, having been officially given charge of the situation by

Grace--who had not got it to give--and asked to take care of it until a

quarter to six, was feeling the hours unwontedly taut and thrilling.

“This isn’t the war. It’s _us_.”

[VIII]

MR. MAXWELL and Stanley returned together from the golf-house about six

o’clock, and were at once anxiously taken possession of by their wives.

Presently, Hal received the summons he expected to the study.

It was not to be the old thunderous “You young rascal” business, such

as Bunny always encountered, but a Serious Talk; the kind that began:

“Don’t be afraid of me, my boy....”

Hal _was_ afraid. A wrathful parent was a thing that might happen

to any fellow. There was, however, a strange solemnity, proving his

crime in an unspeakable category, about a father who suddenly treated

him as an equal. “I want your confidence, my boy. After all, I’m your

father. What was your motive?”

If Hal had kept the money to extricate himself from some tangible male

scrape--such as a bar-maid--he might have been able to respond to the

spirit of gruff intimacy which the crisis had brought about. It was

obviously impossible to pour out in his own defence a lot of vaporous

drivel about Michaelmas daisies and the goodness of God. He was

miserably certain in his own mind that his father was going to drag in

religion pretty soon--_real_ religion, the Sunday kind.

And sure enough, Tom Maxwell, really staggered in his pride and his

safe trust in permanence, by Hal’s lapse from everyday honesty, was

unable to find any other contribution to the scene than the Eighth

Commandment.

“Yes, I know,” muttered Hal.

For the last six years they had talked only of sport: cricket,

football, boxing, rowing, and, occasionally, to humour the older man,

golf. On this basis, they had presented an appearance of chumminess

which, the world declared, was so typical of the modern unformidable

relations between two generations.

Now--“Can I go, father?”

“Suppose it gets talked about round here? Suppose your Aunt Lavvy

refuses.... Your future career.... A good name travels by road, a bad

name by express.” Mr. Maxwell was too dispirited even to disavow his

originality by a pretence of inverted commas.

Hal’s dread of public humiliation did not stretch beyond Winborough.

That was bad enough, and too bad to face. Home was only an episode that

occurred three times a year.

Mr. Maxwell went slowly back to his wife, and closed the bedroom door

behind him. “He won’t confess. I did my best.”

“She’ll tell.” Florrie Maxwell, with shaking fingers, tried to fasten

up her plentiful black hair.

“Nonsense. What nonsense you talk, Florrie. One would think Lavvy was a

vindictive woman. She’s as fond of the children as we are. After all

these years! Besides, the thing that matters is not whether everybody

gets to know, but that Hal should have----”

“Hal’s Hal to me, whatever he did. I want to save him being punished,

that’s all. But Lavinia _is_ vindictive. You’ve never seen it.

You’ve only seen that she’s got a best-china-tea-set face and a pretty

refined voice, and knows just the right thing to say.... D’you think

I’ve liked it, having her always in the house to put matters right with

you or Nina or Bunny, after I’ve maybe been too quick or clumsy and

blundered somewhere? I’d have rather they stayed wrong, thank you. A

paying guest’s one thing, for you know exactly what you’re getting from

her; and how much ‘Aunt Lavvy’ here, and ‘Aunt Lavvy’ there, you can

allow her for the money. But what she’s been doing in the house for the

last fifteen years ... unless it was for you to keep on comparing her

with me, as I’ve seen you doing over and over again. And the children,

too. But they can be excused, because she’s clever, and she worked for

it, and the Lord gave her silver hair and a sweet voice, and it’s worth

a bit of play-acting to be the one in the house that everybody comes

to first. But you, Tom, to have been taken in too--she’s selfish and

hard, for all her soft ways, and as obstinate.... Well, you’ll see in

the next few days, and I’m glad of it, because for you to have thought

she was the sort of lady you’d rather have married--and I’ve seen you

thinking it over and over again. Oh, I may talk too loud and laugh too

heartily, and perhaps I’m not dainty enough, and my dresses don’t look

like Lavvy’s.... Nina says they always gape where they do up.... For

all that, when it comes to a wife, you’re better off with me than with

her, or else you ought to have known beforehand which was the kind you

admire, and not have special manners for her and the ordinary kind will

do for me....”

And having several times worked up to a climax without achieving it,

Mrs. Maxwell went on with the suspended work of fastening that thick

untidy tail of black hair. She was rather tremulous, but hopeful,

now that she had at last relieved herself, that Tom would give the

cue for a sentimental reconciliation. As a matter of fact, the poor

woman believed that she had expressed her secret bitterness far more

poignantly than was actually the case. Her personality was not fitted

to translate pathos ... with those dropping hairpins, and the bodice of

her purple stuff dress dangling limply downwards from the waist, where

she had just now slipped her arms out, to wash.

Her husband was angry. He fumbled for his justification. Florrie

knew quite well _why_ Miss Lavinia had become Aunt Lavvy, and

why she had stayed on in the house after they could have afforded to

manage without her. If the world accepted her welcome entrance in the

character of delightful-old-Aunt, her sudden exit as a superfluous

lodger would have upset the whole illusion. No need for Florrie to

pretend that she wouldn’t have minded Buckler’s Cross knowing it had

been a vulgar financial arrangement. And then, Florrie owned up barely

half her own shortcomings as though these were all, which he felt

vaguely was an injustice to his tolerance; not only had he suffered her

loud voice and coarse laugh and her dresses that were always failures,

and her lamentable lack of tact; but she had no delicate little

reserves; and her fresh complexion had deepened to mauve with tiny

scratching red lines where the colour was most violent; and she was too

intimate with inferiors, hoping vainly thus to ingratiate herself ...

and ... oh, thousands of minor irritations! If she owned she was one

thing, she ought to own to the rest, in fairness to what he had to put

up with.

Her dressing-table ... useless china ornaments and stands and trays

pushed about anyhow, and her brush with the handle broken off years ago

and never mended; she wielded it from the jagged stump. A lace collar

that had not been put away; a bottle of medicine, half empty, dusty;

pins and safety-pins and brooches; a photograph of her parents; and a

twist of paper screwed into the support of the looking-glass so that it

should not swing backwards....

He was conscious of a tired nausea at the sight of her

dressing-table.... What did Lavvy’s look like? Ah, that was it? She did

not see that Lavvy could still represent to him a woman mysterious and

fragrant, coming down to dinner from behind closed doors. He remembered

now having once said to Florrie in a burst of confidence after a

successful “musical evening,” that they ought to be right-down proud of

having Lavvy to live with them, because anybody could spot that she was

better-class than themselves.

If Florrie had been offended then, why didn’t she say so? Hang it, he

had included himself in the inferiority!

He was accumulating grievances, while he moved about the room, changing

from his golfing tweeds into “something comfortable,” while Florrie

waited, with turbulent heart, for the miracle of understanding to take

place in him.

The children. They carried their confidences to Lavvy, and Florrie was

jealous. Women were always jealous, and never logical. If, instead

of being cattish, she had studied the reason why Grace and Nina and

Hal and Ursula and Bunny and Lottie and William preferred Aunt Lavvy,

except for the perfunctory “of course Mother comes first” ... Florrie

was so brusque and boisterous with them--laughed at their bruises and

snubbed their sorrows; furthering her ridiculously overdone theory of

“not putting up with any nonsense.” Had Florrie been tenderer----

Then Ronald might have been alive still.

And Hal would probably not have disgraced them all by keeping money

which did not belong to him.

Queer--how this stormy business with Hal had tossed up the forgotten

jetsam of the years! How long was it since he had grieved for Ronald?

The child was only three when he had died of the measles.... “Better

let ’em all have it together, and get it over” ... that was Florrie.

And Ronald had got it over--promptly.

But if Florrie had only taken a decent mother’s care of the little

chap....

And Mr. Maxwell said so, quite suddenly, having reached this point

in his reflections without giving his wife any clue as to how he got

there. She had hoped he was all the while dreaming back to their

courtship. Perhaps he might break out with: “By George, Flo, d’you

remember that drive home from Richmond in the hansom, after the

Wilkinsons’ ball?”

But ... Ronald? She stared, stupefied. And then she gulped: “You might

as well say straight out I’m a murderess.”

“I didn’t say that, but it doesn’t do to be too slapdash with babies.

Tender at the two ends, tough in the middle, is most persons’ lives!”

“I’ve brought up seven healthy ones for you. Or perhaps _Lavvy_

brought them up?” Her uncontrollable grievance had possessed her again,

and she linked it on to his, with: “I suppose--if Lavvy had been

Ronald’s mother----”

“He might not have,” Tom Maxwell answered her. And left the room.

Downstairs in the hall, on the salver, a letter awaited him, just come

by the seven o’clock post. And next to the letter stood Bunny:

“It’s for you, dad.”

“Ah--thank you, my boy!”

With eyes more than usually bright and dark, Bunny watched him read it.

He had known from the postmark and uncertain handwriting, “Mr. Maxwell”

instead of “T. Maxwell, Esq.,” that it was from the tuck-shop to which

he owed fifteen bob. Hal’s note, written after lunch, and containing a

postal order for that sum, was too late to save him from exposure. But

Bunny was glad of it. His imagination had given birth to a scheme in

bold colourings and with some surprising dramatic effects, directly he

had spotted that letter on the salver.

“I thought I’d forbidden you to owe to the tradesmen round your school,

Bunny.”

But it would have been “Bernard,” and a much sterner tone, if Hal’s

crime had not dwindled a mere scrape to insignificance.

“Yes, I know, dad. I’m sorry. You’ve guessed now, of course, why Hal

kept back that quid from the Bank?”

“You asked him----?” And the burden of depression lightened with

Bunny’s answer:

“Yes, I was dead scared that old Swayne would write to you. He’d

threatened to; so I owned up to Hal--and he sent off the fifteen bob

today, and told me not to worry any more. It--was awfully decent of

him, wasn’t it, dad?”

“Theft is never decent, my boy.”

“But it makes a difference,” Bunny urged, “that he grabbed the note to

shield me from your wrath?”

“To shield me from your wrath” was overdoing it. And if Mr. Maxwell

had remembered more about boys in their teens, he would have realized

here that Bunny’s confession was too glib and well-produced to be

natural. If Bunny had been relating a true state of affairs, his manner

would have been either sullen or abashed, and his speech a stumbling

incoherence.

“It makes a difference, yes. Go and tell Hal I want him.”

Hal listened disgustedly to Bunny’s account of the altered situation.

“You costly young fathead. What in the name of Mike made you spin him a

yarn like that?”

“Just an idea,” Bunny explained airily.

“Idea your grandmother! Well, you can march straight down again, and

tell him it’s all bunkum.” Hal hated theatricals. And no small part of

his shame at the recent situation was the fact that it seemed to twitch

everybody’s behaviour well away from the normal.

Bunny had known Hal well enough not to expect from him a quick flush of

emotion, a grateful hand laid on his shoulder, a gruff: “It’s--awfully

decent of you, Bunny, old man. I shan’t forget ...” which was the way

a boy accepted another boy’s sacrifice in the noblest type of school

fiction. But he had just hoped to persuade Hal to acquiesce in the

inspired falsehood.

“The letters crossed. You _did_ send off fifteen bob for me today.

Wasn’t it the same quid?”

“No.”

“Well, but it works out to the same. When you hung on to Aunt Lavvy’s

pound, wasn’t it because lending me that fifteen bob made you fifteen

bob short?”

“No. Nothing to do with it. She’d had her ’phone call from the Bank,

and asked me about that extra pound note, before you came out to me at

the earthworks about your tuck-shop scrape.”

Bunny immediately collapsed into tears again.

“Oh--_don’t_!” Hal was unhappy and frightened beyond ordinary

exasperation now. He simply could not understand what had occurred to

Bunny, to weaken him like this. Nor could Bunny, except that his own

scrapes always left him something to do, something to suffer, some

poise to maintain, and an inner conviction that, in spite of all the

surface fuss, they really did not fundamentally matter. Whereas Hal’s

loss of moral prestige did matter. And it had, moreover, robbed Bunny

of a prerogative. Bunny liked being the bad boy of the family. Hal’s

usurpation of the position was unnatural; and when Bunny tried to

adjust the look of things--only the look of them--Hal resisted and made

brutal statements of fact. And Bunny felt helpless.... Especially as

he had lulled his quivering and damaged faith in Hal into a belief

that the money had really been annexed in his own interest, and that,

therefore, the tuck-shop scrape was at the bottom of all the recent

widdershins action of the world.

Still showing stained cheeks, and with listless feet, Bunny returned

to his father, and repeated Hal’s dogged denial of his tale. And Mr.

Maxwell spread about the house how Bunny had tried to shield his elder

brother by pretending his elder brother was shielding him. And Bunny

gained more halo, and was correspondingly more downcast and wretched,

wearing it uneasily, as a woman in a resplendent new hat which does not

suit her.

[IX]

DINNER forced the scattered agitations of the Laburnums round the same

table. It was Hal’s reluctance, and not his sense of climax, which

brought him last into the dining-room. The occasion was very much as

Ursula had foretold, except that she had not reckoned on the swift

personal misery which conquered her at the first sight of Hal, hitherto

invulnerable, now exposed without his armour of unconscious lordliness.

Up till now, she had been aware of the blow which the family had

sustained, without, as it were, becoming intimate with it. But now--“I

can’t bear it,” she told herself, fingers interlocked and crushed

together under the cloth, knees rigid, and heart pounding at a

ridiculous pace....

Aunt Lavvy was saying to Stanley: “I’m afraid all your favourite books

are too solemn for me, Stanley. I tried hard to read more than seven

pages of ‘Archæological Splendours of the Dolomites,’ but it was

doleful work!”

Did none of them _see_ ... that unless he could be quickly

protected, big splendid Hal was injured for life?

Surely Aunt Lavvy would not make him face the world--school

and ’Varsity and Buckler’s Cross--as he now faced the family,

apologetically, and with careful eyes that fixed themselves only on

inanimate objects. Oh, surely she would not tell?

But Ursula knew she would.

Aunt Lavvy was wearing her prettiest lilac dress, with a strip of black

velvet ribbon round the throat, and a cobwebby lace fichu held in its

place by a pearl miniature brooch. But Mr. Maxwell was pointedly not

admiring her, with a--“There you are?” to the false suspicions of his

wife; and Florrie Maxwell was thinking of her sons Ronald and Hal, but

mostly of Ronald; and Grace tried, in low tones and by dumb pressure of

hand, to cheer her up. Bunny moped, and Nina displayed an attitude of

savage silence that defied any reminder of her lifelong championship

of a Hal without peer. Lottie, who only had milk and biscuits, passed

things to Hal far more often than was necessary; and Stanley and Miss

Roberts and Aunt Lavvy divided the conversation between them.

“And they’re the only three not of the family,” thought Ursula, to whom

alone that night the foggy atmosphere was pellucid. “And they’d none of

them do a thing to help Hal, either!”

She lifted her lids suddenly, and met Hal’s gaze full upon her. It was

as though he pleaded: “Get me out of this ...” and then his eyes were

downcast again, leaving her with the responsibility.

Stanley Watson and his father-in-law remained over their wine, after

the others had left the table with a precipitation that suggested

escape rather than withdrawal. Stanley immediately tackled the delicate

subject from the point of view neither of Hal nor of Aunt Lavvy, but

the bank-clerk:

“Just because our natural desire is to shield Hal, we ought to remember

that all the time the poor chap who made the mistake in cashing the

cheque will get into trouble unless the guilt is clearly acknowledged

in other quarters. Don’t you agree with me, sir?”

“No,” said Mr. Maxwell resentfully, wondering what his eldest daughter

had ever seen in this long-winded prig of a fellow.

Afterwards, he tackled Grace in a corner of the drawing-room.

“But I do so respect Stanley for being able to be just and impartial

about it, when, of course, we’re all so over-heated, father dear.”

“I don’t save your husband rent and rates all the year round so that

he should be just and impartial when I don’t want him to be!” and Mr.

Maxwell strode wrathfully away to his study.

Grace, in a sudden shower of tears at the unkind reminder of an

obligation, flew in search of her confidante, Miss Roberts. The

nursery slid back into a schoolroom directly the babies were in bed;

but finding there only Ursula, Bunny, Nina, Lottie, and William in

pyjamas--five in hot conclave--she gave them a mere glimpse of her

piteously working features, and ran on up to the attic bedroom.

“Now, what’s the matter with ‘our sensible one’?” Ursula mimicked her

mother’s usual introduction of Grace to strangers.

“I expect Stanley’s taking Aunt Lavvy’s side, and father’s rowed her

about it,” was the solution laid down by William’s drawl.

“And she tells Gums _everything_, and they say, ‘it’s been such

a relief to talk matters over and get something settled,’” Lottie

contributed towards enlightenment. She was a child who could usually

be trusted by her elders not to tittle-tattle, but William need not

suppose he was unrivalled in the intelligence department.

“Stanley--Aunt Lavvy--Gums----” Ursula sat sideways on the big

rocking-horse, her small smooth head, with its lustreless gold hair

brushed back to a long plait, tilted against the wallpaper, on which

the legend of Miss Muffet and the spider was stamped in nauseous

pale-blue-and-mustard repetition. “Hasn’t anything funny struck you

about just those three being against us?”

“Against Hal, you mean?”

“Isn’t it the same thing?”

Silence duly acknowledged that it was. Nina might be horrified, and

Bunny shocked, and William tactlessly quick to emphasize a Bunny no

longer inferior, but even in their disillusion they were all untried in

the endeavor not to let Hal’s humiliation escape beyond the radius of

the Laburnums itself.

“Well, what about them?” asked Lottie.

“I know.” Bunny listlessly supplied the correct answer to Ursula’s

flung question. “They’re just the only three in the house who aren’t

family.”

Ursula nodded at him. “And it’s a mistake to have people living with

you who don’t belong to the family,” she said. “In a crisis, they’re

black-legs.” She was not sure of the exact meaning of black-legs, but

it expressed her secret angry conviction of a citadel betrayed from

within.

“I don’t believe Aunt Lavvy’s really not one of us, and I’m going to

her now,” and Nina dashed off in a spasm of fierce impulsive energy.

“We should look awf’ly silly,” Lottie remarked after a pause, “if she

came back and said that Aunt Lavvy said that _of course_ she

wouldn’t tell on Hal, and never meant to, and why hadn’t any of us

asked her about it before.”

William chimed in: “After all, no one except Hal himself and Mother

have heard Aunt Lavvy say a word about telling Mr. Fennimore when he

comes to supper tomorrow.”

“Is _that_ when she means to, William? Who told you?”

It proved on closer examination that William had not been told. It had

just drifted into his consciousness that Sunday evening after supper

was the time when Aunt Lavvy would elect to inform Buckler’s Cross

and the world that Hal Maxwell was a thief. They had all wondered

_exactly_ when ... but uncertainty penned them in no longer.

Somehow they felt William had answered the unspoken query correctly.

“I shouldn’t be s’prised if Bunny went to Oxford now,” continued

William in thoughtful tones.

Immediately, he was smote upon the head. “Why the devil should I?”

demanded the second son of the Maxwells.

“Well--” William was in no way perturbed, “now that everything’s

changed----”

“_Nothing’s_ changed!”

And then Nina returned to them with the expression of one who has

dashed her head with violence into hard clear glass where she expected

to find only air.

“Time you were back in bed again, Sweet William,” was all she said.

“And you, too, Lottie.”

“I was just saying,” William repeated, with a subtle relevance which

was almost incredible, considering his years, “that I shouldn’t be

s’prised if Bunny went to Oxford now.”

[X]

THE Laburnums next morning resembled a fever-patient whose temperature

has inexplicably rushed up in the night.

Everybody in the disturbed household had either lain awake, quietly

working up the dimensions of their grievance, viewed from all four

points of the compass; or else had awoken with a start to remember that

their average life was now occupied by a bogey of horror, which, during

the few hours’ oblivion, had swelled to a frightfulness out of all

proportion.

Aunt Lavvy’s bogey was “What must the Bank think of Me.” She lay and

chafed at the thought that she had not yet freed herself, in the

Bank’s eyes, from all complicity with the theft of the missing pound

note. A good many little spinsters, with an otherwise well-balanced

set of values, have this curiously over-rated respect for all male-run

institutions connected with capital, income, investments, dividends and

cheques. It struck her, while the rain spattered at the window, and the

wind creaked the boughs, that she had probably been thrust--through

Hal--nearer than ever before to the outer edge of that safe circle

which enrings the Law abiding. Her impeccable name had perished....

She was entangled in an Unpleasant Affair with the Bank.... Oh, Mr.

Fennimore must be told when he came. She would explain the whole

situation to him, down to the final details. It was urgent.... She was

not afraid, but angry, very angry. Sheer impertinence of Nina to have

urged her so impatiently to save Hal at all costs. Hal, indeed!--and

unless she looked after her own good name, who would do it for her?

The Maxwell children did not really love her, as they always pretended

to do; they merely used her as an auntly convenience. And now they all

turned upon her as the cause of trouble, even though it was obviously

hers and not theirs to be resentful and vindictive.... But that was

always the way, living with families not your own.... She ought to

have taken a flat at the time, and not heeded the Maxwells’ financial

difficulties. A charming, bijou flat--then she could have owned a parma

and primrose boudoir as well as a bedroom----

Ursula, who had been dreaming, woke up with a thumping heart, and

stretched out her hand to fumble for the matches.... She wanted sight

of dear familiar things to lull this dreadful uneasiness that sleep and

the darkness and memory of yesterday had smuggled into the room.

Familiar things.... The tiny grate, in which she had not yet lit

her first triumphantly solitary fire; a framed coloured picture, on

the wall, of pierrots and a vivid blue background and balloons that

were balls of gold fire; very popular for four-and-sixpence in the

picture-shops at the time; and very popular with the flappers of a

period grown beyond “Sir Galahad” and Burne-Jones, and far indeed

beyond “The Souls Awakening,” to a taste that was “quaint” and

“whimsical” or sometimes (proudly) “barbaric.”

Ursula, in her barbaric phase, had hung over the mantlepiece a necklace

of beads and shark’s teeth once given to her by Aunt Lavvy, who had

known a missionary.

The pierrot picture and the beads and the fireplace represented to her

the supreme gems of the room.

The rag-mat on the linoleum was faded, and the other mat, near the

door, did not match it. The wallpaper merely covered the wall with a

yellowish-brown effect, and the chintz on the one rickety basket-chair

was dim; the cushion a crewel-work relic. The white lumpy spread had

been carefully turned back over the iron bedposts. The blind was awry,

and showed, beyond the window, a corner of wall and a cistern belonging

to the house beside the Laburnums. Warm red stuff curtains which Ursula

rather liked, and a light wood dressing-table and washstand which she

would have hated had they not also been, like everything else in the

room, emphatically hers,--these, with another curtain run on a rod

across the bulging corner, behind which were her dresses, completed

the actual furnishings. She had coaxed Hal to fix up a shelf for her

books--about a couple of dozen, with none of the battered look to them

which indicates an owner who is also a lover. Indeed, Ursula valued

them more because their rich, cosy appearance covered part of the

wall, than for their contents. She treasured far more intimately the

lumps and sticks of coloured sealing-wax, gold and lilac and black and

emerald-green, and the squat seal, stamped with a “U,” which, with her

ink-bottle, lay on the small bamboo table. Also the blue pottery jug on

the mantleshelf, holding its bright spread of autumn leaves.

How can one explain the magic of enjoyed loneliness which made each

object in the room, the room itself, the shape of it, and the door that

kept it apart from the rest of the house, and the view contained in the

window, precious and significant to the little girl, sitting up in the

bed?

A single bedroom can hold a thousand different dreams--a double bedroom

only one reality. And so we imagine wide-eyed sixteen in an obviously

appropriate setting of spotless white walls and rosebud cretonne; with

a deep-cushion window-seat, and a view of the sea and moonlight, or a

wild-cherry tree in bloom.

Ursula was very far from being a woman yet; very far from being a

child. She could be sullen--tomboyish--sedate--pert, without knowing

yet which of these personalities was the fundamental herself. Actually,

the fundamental herself was Ursula sedate, shyly impudent, deliciously

clear-cut, her brows drawn low and straight over demurely amused eyes;

her voice uttering with conscious gentleness some startling decision

or idea. “I am the cat that--without defiance and without fuss--walks

by itself.” That was the real Ursula, which would outlast the romp,

the flapper and the stormy adolescent, but which was now only rarely

visible through her inevitably tormented years of trying to imitate

everybody she admired; and trying to grab and make permanent those

glints and hints of splendour which shook pure lights from the leaves

on late afternoons in May, or glowed suddenly in the lit wet hedges of

October when, towards evening, the sun battled its way from under a day

of rain.

Life at the Laburnums was--well, not exactly dull; not a bit dull,

in fact, but lacking in wayward glory. No action was ever performed

that filled her with bursting gladness, amazement, pride, or a queer

big sorrow. Every one was just rather ragged and incomplete, getting

over the patchwork somehow, yes--but Ursula’s veneration was for

completeness. She once thought Aunt Lavvy had achieved it in porcelain

fashion. Hence her phase of Aunt-Lavvy-worship. She once thought Nina

had achieved it, in her sporting well-groomed golden-boy fashion, hence

her phase of Nina--worship. And now--oh, couldn’t they see what Hal

had lost? What he had lost for ever if Aunt Lavvy kept to her threat

of “telling”? He had been invulnerable, a broad-shouldered, careless,

lordly creature. It was, she felt dimly, and then with sudden sureness,

Hal’s one asset, and the one asset of ten thousand Hals, that they were

the type of youth who were ever unconscious of what they did, because

what they did was so naturally the right and decent thing.

And now he was maimed--spoilt. His family knew, and that was why he

came into dinner with such a poignantly defenceless feeling about him.

His family knew, but they might easily forget in a little time, if the

rest of the world could be kept in ignorance. Ursula’s simply-splendid

Hal was menaced, but not yet actually destroyed. And she was aware that

since she alone recognized the menace, she was--somehow--responsible.

After some restless tossing, she fell asleep.

[XI]

THE LABURNUMS spent the next day in viciously proving how much too

small it was for its occupants.

It was Sunday, and the men were at home. All the morning and afternoon

it rained. Everybody had slept badly.

On the previous day, uneasy ancient feuds were swelling up in their

pods of silence. Now they suddenly burst from tight enclosure, and

were very definitely present and visible. Bitter words had been

spoken; accusations flung from one member of the family to another.

They were repeated, and rolled round, within limits of the walls of

the house--loyalty would not suffer any outlet to beyond--and rolled

back again to their owners. It seemed impossible that so much grievance

and anger had lain stagnant until Hal’s lapse from the average had

sanctioned everybody’s lapse. Had Mr. Maxwell really been brooding

for years on Florrie’s criminal carelessness in letting Ronnie die?

Had Florrie Maxwell from the very beginning hated and distrusted and

been jealous of her friend, Lavinia? Was all Aunt Lavvy’s sweetness

and affection for the family hitherto, a mere disguise for her

malignant stubborn will, that cared not how she wrecked them all to

keep her white reputation at the bank from the faintest suggestion

of grubbiness? And Hal--had he never been the splendid Hal, the

traditional eldest son, the athletic hero of his almost first-class

public-school? And if Mr. Maxwell had resented having the Watsons in

the house, and did not consider Stanley as one of the family, why had

he waited until now to say so? And _whose_ territory was the

schoolroom-nursery?... The politeness of Miss Roberts and Nurse had

become an Awful Politeness; Nurse was an indignant ally on the side of

Hal, her first male nursling; and Miss Roberts, flattered by Gracie’s

confidences, and thoroughly sympathizing with the Watson point of view,

followed their lead of strict impartiality and constant references to

the probable state of mind of the bank-clerk, and the injury done to

Miss Lavvy, who had always been so kind.

There was no room for all the currents and cross-currents and

complications of feeling. They were jostled and bruised together;

rebounded, reeling, from one contact, only to bump up against another.

There was only just room at the Laburnums for everyday harmony to

fit itself in, with no fraction of margin where emergency emotions

might expand at ease ... they were learning that at last. The first

big out-of-the-ordinary upset showed them how they were cramped.

Perpetually banging doors jarred a dozen headaches, as those who sought

an empty room or one special person in the room, irritably vented their

disappointment at an unexpected encounter with the wrong occupant.

Snatches of irrelevant quarrel drifted about. Crashing voices were

overheard, and those who did not shout, whispered and rustled and cast

meaning looks. Alliances were suddenly formed that were a surprise even

to themselves, and the old unassailable partnerships of ten and twelve

years had come unglued.

And that rough intruder, Passion, was the unseen tenant at the

Laburnums.

Nobody cared to meet anybody face to face, and they were doing it

sixty times an hour. Florrie Maxwell had no means of avoiding; Aunt

Lavvy unless either of them stopped in their bedrooms; and the

servants, mercilessly curious, were all over the bedrooms, clattering

slop-pails, purposely slow at their jobs, until one o’clock. Besides,

Aunt Lavvy had recently discovered that a gentlewoman’s gracious

passage through a day should lead her inevitably from a fragrant toilet

and a dainty meal, to a pretty boudoir or parlour, and not back again

to the disturbed scene of the toilet. In other words, she sat in the

drawing-room. So did Mrs. Maxwell, with intervals in the dining-room,

when she could bear no longer the torture of Aunt Lavvy placidly

behaving as though nothing had happened.

But Stanley and Grace were in the dining-room; Stanley good-humouredly

detached from the Upset (the comprehensive name they had begun to use,

for want of a better, in allusion to all that was happening), and Grace

offended, because what “father” had said naturally involved “mother.”

Sometimes she slipped away to talk things over with Miss Roberts.

“If only they would all be as sensible as you” was soothing to hear;

besides, whenever by quiet policy they re-settled a by-issue, they had

a pleasant illusion that, as representatives, they had thereby settled

the main issue once and for all.

Miss Roberts was sitting up in her attic room that Sunday morning;

but Ursula and Lottie were hanging about in the schoolroom, barely

tolerated by Nurse, who, recognizing them as Hal-ites and nurslings of

the second generation and not the despised third, yet could not forget

that their presence officially stamped the nursery as a schoolroom.

At one moment, Lottie felt that inaction was unbearable, and stole up

into Aunt Lavvy’s empty room to see if anything within her scope could

be done to sweeten matters and lighten them. She found to her content

that the plump little pincushion on the dressing-table was almost void

of pins; and, returning to the nursery, waited for Nurse’s temporary

absence, to tear off several rows from the long bristling paper in the

work-basket. Gleefully, she confided her purpose in Ursula, and then

trotted back to prick the pins into the cushion to form a huge and

elaborate L.

William, not a nice child, had chosen this day of crisis for a bilious

attack, which meant a stay in bed, so that Hal was denied the solace

of his “den” to himself, and had to endure a series of stray visits,

with William listening, and afterwards making thoughtful remarks with

the Bunny bias clearly visible in their roll. Nina came to release

her pent up nerves in a storm of “_Why_ did you do it?” and “How

_could_ you?” His mother came, sat down on William’s bed, and

talked cheerily to Hal about various topics, with frequent pauses in

which he felt her dumb push towards an assurance that she did not care

“any old way” about that “silly old pound.” And when Bunny entered,

and just threw himself down moodily and glowered at William, Hal was

so burdened by the atmosphere of criminal’s cell, that he suggested a

tramp in the rain. Bunny’s gaze of sheer horror conveyed clearly his

reproof--“What--as though nothing had happened?” But he merely said:

“You couldn’t get out without meeting somebody or other----” so that

Hal shrugged his shoulders, and remained where he was.

“... Shut up, William!” Bunny shouted presently, when William had

not uttered a word, and refused to hear the youngster’s righteous

expostulations; and knocked over a tooth-glass, breaking it.

A knock at the door, and Stanley Watson came in: “Look here, Hal old

chap, you mustn’t think me interfering----”

“Oh Lord----” Bunny dived for the door. He had never agreed with Hal

in thinking Stanley humorous; and a fourth statement of the bank

clerk’s point of view “which, just because he is _not_ one of the

family, we ought, by the law of common justice, to recognize before our

own----” was more than his overwrought condition could stand.

Mr. Maxwell, who, alone of the family, could have remained secluded

in his study, walked about the drawing-room, laboriously drawing

his wife’s attention to the fact that he was not paying any special

heed to Aunt Lavvy; grumbling because the Watsons were “all over the

dining-room”; and suggesting from time to time that Florrie had better

run up and have a look at William, whose illness might be more serious

than it visibly appeared....

“I suppose you’re trying to say I’m one to let my sons die and not

care!”

Mr. Maxwell chose to regard the fact that she had “taken it like

that”--his perfectly innocent remark--as significant of guilty memory.

Had he been honest with himself, he would have acknowledged that he

had scratched the memory of Ronnie into such an itching and inflamed

condition that he simply could think and speak of nothing else, and

that his remark about William had indeed been intended for wounding

reminder. Like all jovial men, he had an especial talent for this.

“Our William is a particularly robust child. He cannot live less than

ninety years. So I’m sure, Tom, that Florrie has no need to worry about

him,” said Aunt Lavvy, who, except on the subject of Hal and the bank

and Mr. Fennimore’s impending visit, was just as sweet and nice as she

had ever been.

The midday dinner-gong sounded brazenly. And William, who felt better,

appeared in a dressing-gown to ask if he might come down to dinner.

“I believe the little Busy-Gnomes have been in my room this morning,”

Aunt Lavvy smiled at Lottie, who quivered with pleasure up to the very

bow at the crest of her head. For a blissful instant it seemed to her,

as it had also seemed to Grace and Miss Roberts after “talking it

over,” that the problem was solved by dint of single effort.

But when the roast beef and apple-tart were over, and after the two

servants had cleared away the plates ready for fruit, and left the

room, the master of the house startlingly got up and cleared his

throat--“I want to say something to you all....”

He went on to suggest, into a circle of stricken silence, that it was

Hal’s duty to publicly apologize to their dear Aunt Lavvy for ...

(Was he going to put it--actually--into words?... No, he couldn’t!

he couldn’t! Ursula’s breath was held back by an iron pressure of

suspense.)

“----for the injury he has recently done her. Now, my son,” genially

not disowning him.

None of them had expected this. The upset had not yet been acknowledged

in so many words as existent, except between groups of two or three.

Now, in defiance of the sore atmosphere, it was thrown on to the

dining-room table.

Mr. Maxwell’s motive was to propitiate. The roast beef had stimulated

his imagination; and while showing him more luridly than ever how

dreadful would be the results to his own prestige, and to Hal’s future,

if Aunt Lavvy told the whole truth to Fennimore, it likewise suggested

to him--falsely--that all the dear little lady wanted to appease her

was probably a slight testimony to her importance in front of them all.

Hal, victim of the strategical error, had never dreamt he was to be

trapped into active ignominy. It seemed to him, as it does to most

people at one or another nightmare of their lives, that the moment was

so awful that it simply could not really exist, could not lead to

another as bad. He heard himself stumble out a rather shaky: “Sorry,

Aunt Lavvy, if I ... if I ...” then, fiercely self-despising, managed a

gruffer, firmer voice, and stood up straight, pushing back his chair:

“I’m sorry if I was a rotter to keep back that quid, Aunt Lavvy.”

“If?” repeated Aunt Lavvy, sadly. “If? Oh, Hal!”

“I didn’t mean ‘if.’ I just meant that I was sorry.” He looked very

white, and his forehead was damp with sweat. Even Stanley Watson pitied

him in the pillory, and threw off a magnanimous:

“Oh, leave the boy alone now.”

“I’m glad you realize what a serious matter a theft can be, my dear

boy,” said Aunt Lavvy, stretching out a plump hand for the fruit-dish,

“but I don’t want you to believe, though I’ve forgiven you personally,

that either for my own sake or for the sake of the clerk at the Bank,

I can do anything else but give Mr. Fennimore a clear, straightforward

explanation, this evening, of what has happened. Honor Rose, look

at this lovely plum your Aunt Lavvy is getting ready for you.” But

intention and time were clearly stated at last.

“Nina, d’you want my handkerchief?” proposed Lottie. “Oh no, you’re

laughing--I thought you were crying!”

“She is crying,” William announced, with a certain stolid exuberance.

Nina, in fact, was in hysterics.

[XII]

OUTSIDE the dining-room door, Ursula and Hal became aware of each

other--separately fled from the turmoil. They hesitated, self-conscious

after what had passed.

“I suppose that sort of thing’s not dangerous? She’ll be all right,

won’t she?” Hal jerked his head in the direction of Nina’s sobs.

“Oh Lord, yes. Some girls--not Nina’s kind, though--often get

hysterical.”

“Do they?” Perhaps Hal wished that boys did, too. He walked slowly

away upstairs. And Ursula, giving him time to disappear, rushed for

her room, banged the door behind her and bolted it, all in one swift

movement, as though she were desperately in escape from the ugliness

she had left in the dining-room: Aunt Lavvy and Miss Roberts and Grace

crowding round Nina’s noisy agitation, admonishing her, thrusting

forward remedies; Miss Roberts making futile dabs and sprinkles with

the water-jug; Stanley trying to catch hold of Nina’s wrists and

saying with a stern note of authority the while: “You _must_ be

quiet. You _must_ be quiet”--and, aside: “The one way to treat

hysterics--if you’d only leave her to me!” Her mother upbraiding her

father for having brought about the scene; Lottie’s shrill: “May I

fetch your salts, Aunt Lavvy? May I? Let me, or would you rather

I didn’t?” Honor Rose frightened, and in tears; Mr. Maxwell’s:

“Can’t you keep that kid of yours out of the way, Grace, when she’s

not wanted?”... The smell of roast beef.... A sudden clamour and

concentration of hatred.

But up here, in her room, was refuge and loneliness and space. Ursula’s

grateful love for her room at that moment was so extreme that she

longed to express it. It looked chilly and grey with the drops of

rain dripping down the window, and falling dankly from the opposite

drain-pipe of the next-door house. She suddenly determined that this

was the moment for her first fire, her first _possession_ of a

fire. She would put it off no longer. From the little cupboard she

brought sticks and newspaper and some small lumps of coal. It was a

very tiny grate, and quite soon it was alight, with an exciting crackle

of wood and spurts of flame.... Ursula crouched down in front of it, in

dreamy ecstasy. Her gaze roamed about the familiar objects, so as to

become acquainted with them in their new shimmer and glow. She sprang

up and twitched the red curtains across the window, shutting out the

disappointing wall beyond ... you could so easily dream a perfect

view, with the curtains drawn, and the room bewitched by warm flame.

In future nights she would lie in bed hearing the red embers creak and

flop, and more than ever she would be herself, owning herself, gravely

exultant in self-possession.... Perhaps Mother and Father might give

her for Christmas a small round clock-creature with a small round face

and no hair--but friendly. And then time would be privately hers, too,

as well as space. For now she shared time with everybody else who could

hear the striking hours from the big clock in the hall.

When the Maxwells stayed on the river near Cookham for one summer

holiday, Ursula nosed about until she found a willow tree up a

back-water, where the branches swept round her boat like a tent and

enclosed it. When they went, as they usually did, to the seaside, she

would discover for herself special places on the leeside of a deserted

breakwater, or between hedge and tree-trunk in a corner of a field.

Wherever she could find an equivalent for the room, she was happy. It

was her funny instinct (and certain small animals have it, too) to

burrow and squirm her way into some hedged-in space, and curl up with

a sigh of content, naming it hers. Her romantic sense of property was,

maybe, over-developed from the edged contrast of life in a family where

the sense of property barely existed at all, and who only in a crisis,

and then but dimly, felt the need for more room. In everything else she

was more or less like the other Maxwells.

But--watch Ursula as she claims a privacy even so fleeting as an

empty train compartment. Already, as the door slams on her before the

platform has been well left behind, the rushing haven is intimately

hers. She leans eagerly forward, hands clasped between her knees, and

enjoys it--a slim girl in a rather pathetically skimpy navy-blue coat

and skirt, which always associates itself with the Ursula type of

flapper, a dull, fair rope of hair falling over one shoulder, staid

lips, pale as apple-blossom, curved in a slight smile of triumph, brows

level above her softly thoughtful eyes.... Ursula!... She is not showy,

but she may claim loveliness later on. There is a delicate artistry in

the cut of her head and chin and neck, and in the brave square moulding

of her eyelids. Ursula.... Not a musical name! She would have liked to

be called Naomi or Rosalind or Pamela....

Aunt Lavvy’s cough and rustle on the other side of the locked door--and:

“I shall have to give up my room to her,” thought Ursula, “so that she

shan’t tell old Fennimore tonight.” And she knew that the necessity

had been stammering up in her ever since, the evening before, Hal had

looked at her across the dinner-table.

That was why she had slept uneasily; and why she had squatted so long

motionless, and fiercely loving her solitude, in front of her first

fire--her last fire.

People can only be bribed by something you are sure they want. And,

except Ursula, nobody at the Laburnums could imagine, in this crisis,

anything that Aunt Lavvy desperately wanted.

Aunt Lavvy wanted the little room next to her bedroom, for a

sitting-room. She wanted to be able to say she had a suite--two rooms

adjoining. She had wanted this with tranquil obduracy for several

years now. And Ursula, aware of it, had taunted the locked door

between, with elvish dances and curtsyings.

At first the idea of bribing Aunt Lavvy with the room had occurred

quite simply as an eleventh hour expedient to save Hal. But directly

afterwards, Ursula saw her deed spring out in brilliantly illuminated

letters, like the advertisements in Piccadilly Circus by night, as a

Sacrifice.

And a Sacrifice, of course--if it be big enough--would make all the

difference of colour and wind and enchantment to the days following

it--days that would be as though they were of running liquid gold.

Ursula was tremendously excited by the prospect of Sacrifice. She had

always dreamt how it would touch life with miraculous fingers, touch

and transform it. Life that was hitherto all right, but only just all

right, and not even vigorously wrong, humdrum and patchy and drab and

lacking in power, a picture in muddy paint! Ursula held out her longing

arms towards glamour....

Sacrifice! And, after it had happened, everything different!

So the child made up her mind, gambling for splendour.

But it meant giving up the room. Giving up--room.

... That time--she was huddled on the floor again in front of the fire,

one arm resting on the armchair’s seat--that time a year ago, when

Nina gave a party; and she, with hair recently washed to fall in a

loose shimmering cloud down her back, and wearing a new bluish-grey

party-frock, graceful folds of pale soft satin, was so flushed and

stimulated with the sudden achievement of real prettiness that she

behaved as though she were a delicately intoxicated fairy--and laughed

and talked as if it were _her_ party, and gave orders, and tossed

herself about, and was imperious, and a flirt, and a queen ... until

Nina said to her, when everybody had gone: “What _was_ the matter

with you, kid? Everybody was laughing at you; and that good-looking man

whom Bobbie Mathers brought, told Bobbie you ran after him till he was

afraid to stay. How could you make such a fool of yourself?”

The room had seen her through, then; had mercifully hidden her shame

and her stung vanity and her hot disgust with herself. Supposing,

though, that same evening of blunder were still to come, and no place

for her to be alone in after Nina had said: “Everybody was laughing at

you....”

For a moment the memory was vivid again, and Ursula clenched her hands

against the humiliation. Ambitious to be neither rich nor a genius,

and scornful of sentimental slush, she had always hoped for fame as a

hostess, a quaintly witty, worldly yet serene personality, who was an

influence in a shining spacious atmosphere, where only supple minds

and graceful figures were suffered. Her idea of the perfect setting

in which to be serene and witty was acres of parquet floor, and one

little twisty gold and brocade sofa, and a sort of mellow amber light

in it, and miniatures, and low, cool voices, and long, cool necks.

And when she tried--only just tried--to realize her conception of a

Social Personality, Nina said....

The good-looking man whom Bobbie Mathers brought, did not figure

distinctly in her aftermath of rage and shame. He was merely an

indecipherable part of it. Men ... they didn’t count yet. Sometimes

Ursula’s imagination played games in which, queerly, she forsook her

own part, and became a chivalrous ardent squire to one Ursula, touched

up and ennobled, but in the main essentials herself. Narcissus and

Narcissa.... It was good to be a male, a swashbuckler; and it seemed

quite natural, as such, to fall in love with the demure grey-eyed

Ursula.... “But you know your eyes aren’t grey at all, they’ve got

green and brown and blue, all mixed in. Once, in a storm off Lagos,

I saw the hollow of the waves just that colour a second before they

shattered over the deck.... God, I’d like to have had you there with

me!”

And Ursula took this, how? But it was impossible to _be_ Ursula

as well as Ursula’s lover. So the girl in the scene remained always

objective, seen but not felt. She was sweet, but adamant, this Ursula,

and elusive with some mysterious want he could not satisfy. The man

wondered what it was; and “I wonder, too,” reflected Ursula, puzzled,

in her rôle of lover, by the subtleties of her own projection.

Games--but it was good-bye to them now! They would not play themselves

elsewhere but alone in the room.

The summons to tea left her still crouching before her bowl of red

fire. Tea!--if she as much as opened that door, all the widened feuds

and jealousies and passions, pressing against the farther side, would

tumble in. The door was a barricade. Who knows how much fresh horror

had accumulated beyond it since dinner, or how many irretrievable blows

newly dealt, or old injuries exhumed from burial?

Restraint was inside out. It might stop anywhere, or--it might never

stop ... since Nina had begun to be hysterical, and Aunt Lavvy proved

an enemy, and Bunny was shockable, and Father was beastly to Mother,

Mother starting such odd sentences that she nearly finished--but

not quite--so that you caught your breath; and Mother hating Aunt

Lavvy, and Grace huffy, and Gums and Stanley blacklegging from the

Maxwell Union, and Nurse speaking her mind, and the servants a nudging

community of gossip, and all the rooms chaotically surrendered for

quarrel, and Hal morally in the dock.... Nobody kind, oh, nobody kind,

and Mr. Fennimore expected tonight!

The blessing of being out of it! Ursula forgot, for the moment, that if

she stuck to her purpose, solitude was already a fugitive with a price

upon its head. Revelling in the four quiet walls, she reached out an

indolent hand for the crumpled sheet of newspaper in which to pick up

more coal. She had no shovel.

It was last Sunday’s paper. She glanced at it, after laying the coal in

the shaking hollows of flame. Glanced ... and then was absorbed.

From the cheap print, the lurid relishing headlines, the blurred

semi-grotesque photographs of criminals, the whole sinister underworld

came swarming up at her. Creatures who lived within reaching grasp

of the law, creatures who crawled into the papers.... Subterranean

folk, dwelling where gas hissed and cisterns dripped, and half-starved

cats slunk through the gutter. And they had faces with swollen lips

and large, fierce eyes, and their names were not the names of people

one knew, and their clothes were unfamiliar. Their last incoherent

letters were printed in neat, straight, passionless lines down the

column. Something more complex than just “the poor”; a twilight

more sinister, where drunken sexless figures dealt each other blows

with, oddly, implements that were meant for homely use, pokers, and

rolling-pins and chairs. In this stunted sallow underworld, boys and

girls actually killed themselves in sudden rages of love and despair.

And the inhabitants were hungrier than ordinary hunger. “Any previous

conviction?” asked the magistrate. “Two against the woman Hobbs,

Your Worship.”... A world where women were known by their surnames

to magistrate and policeman and court missionary.... To Ursula it

seemed as though into the room had drifted a raw fog, and beyond it

the strident yell of newsboys. Over a barrow of rusty old garments, a

row of naphtha lights flapped uneasily ... a lad furtively running was

pursued by two policemen.... He was wanted for theft.... As, breathing

hard, he padded round the corner, Ursula saw his face ... Hal’s face!

Hal had brought the underworld quite close to the Laburnums. He had

done something which might--oh no! no!--which might get into the papers.

Wild with panic, Ursula scrambled to her feet. What time was it? How

long had she been squatting there with that horrible beastly paper,

reading it and imagining things. It was getting dark. Six--seven

o’clock. And Mr. Fennimore came at eight. And Aunt Lavvy was going to

tell him, and he might think it his duty--as Stanley would--to tell the

police. And Hal....

It wasn’t safe to wait a second longer. What had to be done was urgent.

Without even a conscious glance of renunciation at her room, Ursula

left it, and knocked at Aunt Lavvy’s door.

“Come in.”

With direct action, panic had vanished. She was confident now, and

powerfully gentle, and even, with a tinting of irony, amused. Leaping

ten or fifteen years of slow development to the grown-up Ursula she

would undoubtedly become.

“Aunt Lavvy, I wondered if you would be a darling”--Aunt Lavvy, with

a stiffening of her concealed obstinacies, waited for the plea for

Hal--“and visit me in my room. You see, I’ve lit my first fire--you

remember my birthday present?--and it seems silly to sit in front of it

by oneself, and, well, it would be ever so jolly if you came in for a

little while,” with a rush of shy impulsiveness--calculated.

Aunt Lavvy beamed like a cluster of little pink and silver suns.

“Why, what a delightful surprise. The rain is so dreary, I was simply

longing for firelight, but I had no idea an invitation was on its way.”

“Then may I borrow one of your cushions?” Ursula was a spectacle of

pretty, though rather childish excitement. She pulled Aunt Lavvy by the

hand into the next-door room, and arranged her in the one armchair, and

poked the smouldering coal to flames, and tugged at the window-curtains

anew, and then settled herself with crossed legs, tailor-fashion, on

the rag-mat on the opposite side of the hearth. She looked over at Aunt

Lavvy with an air of affectionate content.

“It was lonely--till I brought you in,” she said. “I sometimes wish I

shared a room with somebody.”

“This one would be too small, of course. But you’ve made it look so

nice, Ursula dear.”

“Have I? But you can’t do much with a bed and dressing-table sticking

themselves out .... It ought really to be a sitting-room with a

bedroom next door.” And Ursula’s gaze at Aunt Lavvy was full and pure

and empty of all significance.

Aunt Lavvy reflected for a moment or two ... and understood.

“Let’s pretend, then,” she suggested at last, her plump little mouth

bent to a whimsical smile, “that I have been whisked away to Terra del

Fuego on a broomstick, so that you are able to have my room for your

bedroom, and could do as you liked with this one. How would you plan

it?”

Aunt Lavvy might be a sweet-scented malignant little bundle of

implacability, but she had to her credit a delightfully light and

sensitive touch with the situation. Ursula, to whom clumsiness would

have been unbearable in her own inspired mood of fine execution,

appreciated the bland twist by which Aunt Lavvy had made it appear that

_she_ was to be the one eliminated from tenancy.

“Well--help me, then! I’d have the wallpapers that very deep cream tint

that you’re so fond of, Aunt Lavvy----”

“More primrose than cream,” supplied Aunt Lavvy. “And wistaria cretonne

curtains, Ursula, and the same on two armchairs, and a lot of cushions,

mauve and blue and primrose-yellow. Wouldn’t that be rather quaint and

pretty?”

“And a bluey-mauve carpet, also the colour of wistaria.” Ursula threw

the same enthusiasm into these furnishings as though she were not

intuitively leading Aunt Lavvy on to describe exactly how, again

and again, from the farther side of the door, she must have imagined

Ursula’s room furnished to her own private desires. The more these

desires were allowed to escape and take form, the easier would she fall

to the bribe ... presently, when the time came to talk about Hal.

“And your lovely tea-set--Spode, isn’t it? Would you bring that in

here, and have shelves put up for it?”

“That wouldn’t be very safe, would it? No, shelves for my books, and

my low cupboard with the glass doors could be moved in for the china.”

Aunt Lavvy had forgotten that they were arranging the room for Ursula.

“A primrose silk shade for the light, I think, and a small round table

for potpourri. I wonder if my little davenport would fit slantwise

across that corner recess near the window?”

“With a shade to match for the lamp, and a whole lot of mauve and

yellow bowls and vases. Oh, there are such lots of flowers that would

look too heavenly in here: violas and pansies and blue irises and

primroses and larkspur and Michaelmas daisies--anything that isn’t pink

or red. Daffodils, of course--and cowslips. And your miniatures hung

over the fireplace.... Aunt Lavvy, if you said nothing to Mr. Fennimore

tonight, but explained to them at the Bank tomorrow that after all you

had found the pound note loose at the bottom of your bag, I’m sure

they’d believe you.”

“Will you be quite frank with me, my dear child?” With a sudden tender

seriousness, Aunt Lavvy set aside the irrelevancy of rooms and a room.

She had her data now! “You really called me in here to plead for poor

Hal.”

“I’m not pleading, Aunt Lavvy,” steadily.

“It’s dreadful for me that you should all think me hard and

unforgiving. Nina came to me last night----”

“Yes, I know. I suppose she was rude, and blurted things out.”

“She hurt me,” Aunt Lavvy confessed, with a little sigh. “And your

mother, too. Ursula”--with a gesture of confidence--“you’re a wise

girl, and we’ve always been friends, haven’t we? Do _you_ see how

unfair they are? I love Hal--but what am I to do?” She threw out her

hands, and her diamond rings twinkled as the firelight burnished them.

Ursula comprehended that she _was_ to plead, and so give Aunt

Lavvy an excuse for “coming off her perch”--to borrow a phrase from

Bunny. She accepted the cue for a sedate, sensible little sister,

rather old-fashioned, a bit of a prig, perhaps.... Her hidden demon was

doubled up with laughter!

“Wouldn’t you say that Hal had been punished enough, Aunt Lavvy

darling?”

After about ten minutes of parleying along these lines, Aunt Lavvy

conceded that Hal’s moral chastisement had indeed been severe. Quite

suddenly she gave way, admitting, with the impulsiveness of a

contemporary, that she had longed to do so all along.... Her glance

strayed to the niche beside the window, still not quite satisfied that

it was wide enough for her davenport to stand there.

“And I’ll move for good into Nina’s room,” said Ursula, speaking aloud

the last line of their contract.

[XIII]

MR. FENNIMORE came that evening to the Laburnums, and Mr. Fennimore

went. Aunt Lavvy did not betray Hal to him, though the Maxwells were

taut with apprehension from minute to minute. After he had gone, Ursula

privately informed her mother that she was henceforth going to share

Nina’s bedroom, and that Aunt Lavvy, in consideration of the gift of an

adjoining sitting-room to her present apartment, would gloss the matter

over with the Bank tomorrow.

“So Hal’s all right, and I’m moving my things over so’s to sleep with

Nina tonight.”

“But, darling,” exclaimed Mrs. Maxwell, almost weeping with relief,

“won’t it do in the morning?”

“No, _tonight_,” insisted Ursula, who had passed from the ageless

wisdom of Medea, to a stage of crude and intensely youthful heroics,

when it seemed urgent that her sacrifice should begin immediately,

without the anti-climax of postponement. Because, beyond surrender of

the room, and beyond suffering, lay that diffusion of gold over a grey

world which was to be her recognition from the gods. She knew that

“Virtue is its own reward,” must not be taken materially, in the sense

that an automatic machine promptly doles out chocolate on insertion of

a penny--(bent or battered coins not accepted); but--oh, surely she

might count on _something_ happening! “People would be different”

... and she, too, would be different, conscious of a deepening of

colour, a more vivid meaning, scents sharper and sweeter, all sounds

harmonized, everywhere a lightness and a quickening up, less drag and

shuffle, the same clean happy intoxication of spirit that can usually

be won by actual high speed ... by gallop on horseback over soft turf,

or two-reefed sailing, or a race in one of those long lean cars that

crouch low to the road.

In fact, Ursula’s modest expectation demanded, in return for one

room delivered, to dwell henceforth and continually in that state of

jubilant ecstasy which may have come to our one or two really great

poets for two or three minutes on completion of their three or four

most perfect lines.

She moved into Nina’s room that night. Nina helped her carry her

things. And Mrs. Maxwell went to Mr. Maxwell--whom she found in his

study, having a distinct row with his only son-in-law--and told him it

was all right about Hal. And Stanley told Grace, who told Miss Roberts,

who woke up Lottie to tell her. And Mr. Maxwell told Bunny, who told

Hal. And everybody at the Laburnums slept better that night, because

of the news, except William, who had remained asleep and slept well in

spite of it.

The next day, the effect of Ursula’s act on the household was like a

window flung open on to an enclosure where there had been a gas-escape.

Gradually the fumes noticed the window and crept out and were

dissipated.

Aunt Lavvy walked along the pleasant half-country road towards the

shops of Buckler’s Cross. And, passing the branch of Platt’s Bank,

dropped in, and told the clerk, leaning politely over the polished

counter, that she had, after all, been the thief of that pound-note

which he had missed on Saturday morning. She used the word “thief”

whimsically, and the young man’s amusement proved to her that certainly

her name had not suffered from the incident. “At the bottom of my bag.

They weren’t pinned together, and it must have been the outside one. I

collect so many bills and papers and letters loose in my bag--you men

will always blame me for that....” She dimpled at the bank-clerk, and

handed him back the pound. And he thought what a delightful little old

lady she was, and wished his mother, a large, gaunt and incredulous

woman, were more in that style. He apologized for his own carelessness,

and hoped she would not punish them by depositing elsewhere. They

parted in the attitudes of a Marcus Stone picture. Then Aunt Lavvy went

on into the town, and arranged with the local decorators to paper her

sitting-room at once, a deep cream with a wistaria frieze. Luckily,

they were able to show her a sample of the latter in stock; but for her

cretonne and carpet she knew she would have to take a day in London.

Impulsively, she determined to go that very afternoon.

Mr. Maxwell and Stanley were, of course, at business. They were still

resenting each other when they left the house; but before they reached

the station, they had realized the flatness of disputing over a

bank-clerk who, as far as the moral point at issue was concerned, no

longer existed. But with regard to Mr. Maxwell’s taunt that Stanley,

if he wanted his own opinions, ought also to maintain his wife and

child in his own home--Stanley left private injunctions with Grace ...

and she, too, was out most of the day. She did not tell Miss Roberts

where, as she was afraid she had rather let herself go too much to poor

Gums the last day or two, and it was not quite a nice thing to do, to

grumble about your parents to the governess in their employ.

It was awfully sweet of Aunt Lavvy to put things right with the Bank,

without involving Hal. And distinctly clever of Ursula, too, to think

of offering her the room. It looked as though Ursula were going to be

unselfish, “and that would be so nice for Mother when Nina marries, and

I....”

Miss Roberts and Nurse resumed a courteous recognition of each other’s

claim to the nursery-schoolroom. Nurse said she was sorry if she’d

spoken too plain, and Miss Roberts understood that it _was_ very

irritating to come in with the babies and find the only table strong

enough for the sewing-machine, littered up with lesson-books.

Nina, when they were dressing the next morning, asked Ursula suddenly

and fiercely:

“What did you expect to get out of it?”

“Out of what?” Ursula, with the comb, swept her long hair to a veil in

front of her face.

“Giving up your room. Look here, Ursula, squarely, between you and me,

you must have meant to get something out of it. What?”

Ursula understood that if she disclaimed all hidden purpose of a

benefit in the matter, there would be no other name for her than a

prig, from the viewpoint of her sister and brothers. Simple nobility

was indeed a completely priggish quality. Ursula felt ashamed. Even

Bunny would censure her for it, in his soul. Even Hal, whom she had

rescued....

“Well, d’you suppose I was just ‘being good’ for its own sake?” scoffed

Ursula, thereby thoroughly deserving to be termed traitor.

Nina nodded, placated. “Tell me, though?”

“It’s my business.”

“Something from Aunt Lavvy? From Dad? From Hal?”

Tiny green imps twinkled for a second in Ursula’s eyes.... Already

Nina was mentioning Hal’s name with some of the old reverence. Already

Nina was arrogant.... Ursula had not been to school herself, but she

had learnt enough from her brothers and sisters not to remind Nina of

hysterics, though not enough to refrain from regret that decency should

forbid such gentle reminder.

“Don’t be a nuisance, Nina. I’ll say what I like, and shut up when I

like.”

“You needn’t think you can be as cheeky as you like, though, in this

room. It was mine before you came to share it, so in a way I’ve given

up as much as you.”

Ursula turned, not an indignant scarlet as Nina expected, but white.

Nina?--why, Nina had never cared about her room except to sleep in

it, never minded how many visitors at the Laburnums overlapped her

return home from her own visits, was quite content to have the shrine

spoken of as the “spare-room” during her absence. Nina never fled to

her room during trouble, she’d be just as content if her hockey group

photographs and silver cups had their place anywhere else in the house.

Oh, Ursula was sure--surer than sure--that the strange listening

_growing_ feeling never happened to Nina in solitude.

And now Nina was claiming an equal part in the sacrifice.... Put in

that desperately reasonable way, it certainly had the appearance of

being a half-and-half affair, but--would it truly look like that

to--to whoever attended to haphazard sacrifices which came drifting

up from the world? Might Ursula not even say to herself that she, and

no one else, responsible by seeing Hal in his lordliness, was also

responsible for keeping him so?

For there was no damage done that would not be covered by the new skin

even now growing thickly over his rawness.

Nina, with a last sturdy backward brush at her gleaming hair, swung

to the door, ready for breakfast. She was careless and spruce and

clear-cut as ever. Ursula remembered the days when she had worshipped

her for these effects.

“I say, kid, I didn’t mean half of what I said just now, so you needn’t

look so wretchedly serious. I rather appreciate having you in here,

really. It’s some one to talk to while I’m putting on my stockings.

And it really was quite decent of you to fix things up with Aunt

Lavvy--though, mind you, I don’t believe she’d have told old Fennimore

when it came to it. She was ruffled up the wrong way, but she’s rather

an old darling, and frightfully fond of Hal and the rest of us.”

[XIV]

THE weather was not sufficiently self-conscious to clear up at

precisely the same instant as the psychological clearing-up; but the

day after, the sun flashed out, and the workman sang as he distempered

Aunt Lavvy’s sitting-room, and the carrier’s boy whistled as he

delivered her carpet and other packages from Whiteley’s furnishing

department. And Hal and Nina and Bunny and Ursula and Maisie and

Dorothy played their last tennis foursomes on the doctor’s asphalt

court, taking turns to be the two out, because on Wednesday the

boys were due back at Winborough. Hal was a great deal easier in

his mind when he discovered that the blend of Maisie and Michaelmas

daisies--though she played a jolly good game, and of course the daisies

were all right in their way--yet did not make a second attempt to play

any incomprehensible wizard trick with him which had resulted in the

bad dream of the week-end just over. He was not quite comfortable yet,

though, with his family, and consoled by the prospect of Winborough,

where nobody except Bunny knew anything about his downfall; and, a term

after that, Oxford, where nobody at all would know. By Jove! Supposing

Aunt Lavvy had kept her word, and had spread the whole hateful business

all over the place.... It was clever of that kid Ursula to have thought

of a way to bribe her. Decent of her, too ... gratefully he served her

with a soft ball, which she missed, because she was expecting a hard

one.

Hal and Maisie won their set against Ursula and Bunny. Then Hal and

Dorothy played Nina and Bunny, and again Hal and his partner won.

“Not one of you is any good at the net,” he pronounced at last. “And

you ought to practise your backhand shots, Dorothy.”

Meanwhile, Aunt Lavvy and Florrie Maxwell, sitting by the French

windows of the drawing-room, open to the garden, were drifting into

leisurely intimate talk ... the children at tennis ... the croquet they

had played as girls ... that odd man with the canary-silk waistcoat and

the lively eyes who had wanted to marry Aunt Lavvy.... “D’you remember,

Florrie, that picnic when I wore the rose-coloured dress which looked

so awful near his waistcoat, and he couldn’t understand why I ran away

from him all day ...” (and remembering, they giggled, two silly girls

together). From the rose-coloured to other dresses ... the present

time, and what suited Nina, and what suited Ursula--not Grace, because

the Decisive Dress which suited Grace had already been worn--the dress

which first attracted her husband’s attention. The “marrying mother”

dies hard. “Mr. Barry Noyes once said that Ursula would be the beauty

of the family; and really, I don’t think men like fine girls as they

used to ...” and Tom’s taste in women ... and Tom ... and--confidence

finally unleashed--what Tom had brought up against her about poor

little Ronnie!

And Florrie’s unspoken penitence for each hard thought she had ever

had of Lavvy, separated the gossip like commas and semi-colons and

exclamation marks. Lavvy was so sympathetic.... And how delicious for

two women, how invigorating yet soothing--the resemblance to cocoa is

accidental!--the ripple backward and forward between them, on those

certain subjects in which neither men nor girls nor young married women

nor one’s own husband nor anybody but just that other woman, are in

the least intelligent.

Tom Maxwell came home on Monday evening to an atmosphere a-quiver with

a few memories and traces of the recent heavy storm, but otherwise

peaceful, united, and, metaphorically, lit by quiet sunshine. He

thought: “When a good row clears the air, it always proves the air

needed it!” By Tuesday evening it occurred to him, however, that the

air was not clear between himself and Florrie; and he remembered, as

one with the difficulty of remembering a grotesque nightmare, that he

had been amazingly hectic on the subject of a baby who had died of

measles eleven years ago. He marvelled at his agitation, now limp to

his proddings as a dead caterpillar. Had he actually charged Florrie

with neglecting the kid? Preposterous!

“It isn’t as though things didn’t happen,” blurted out Mr. Maxwell,

bending over his trouser-press, to his wife already in bed. “And of

course it stands to reason that if one could help them happening, one

would. And, say what you like, to rear seven out of eight’s not bad. My

mother lost three in a family of five.”

Florrie, understanding all that lay beyond the articulate apology,

stretched out her hand towards her back view of him, and replied, after

one or two happy gulps, “Lavvy and I had such a nice talk today while

the children were out. It would be so dull for me here without her.”

[XV]

AMONG her other purchases in London, Aunt Lavvy had bought Hal a

beautiful fountain pen--value about twenty-five shillings--which she

gave him on his return to Winborough for the Christmas term. Bunny she

tipped ten shillings. But her gift to Hal proved, among a variety of

subtle points, that it was not the _money_ loss she had minded in

the episode of the pound-note.

[XVI]

URSULA was just big enough to make a sacrifice, but not big enough to

carry it off. For the first three or four days afterwards, she was

able to behave gallantly enough, expectant of what Wordsworth, who

had not, perhaps, a slender grace in titles, called “intimations of

immortality”--but then, all at once, her belief snapped, and with it

her patience, and she began to moon about the house in the spirit of

a restive martyr who, after burning at the stake, has just discovered

that the gates of heaven are only “cultured” pearl, and the streets an

inferior rolled gold.

Then Aunt Lavvy remarked at breakfast one morning: “My little

sitting-room is ready now, and it looks charming, but I’ve just

remembered that there’s no key to the door between the two rooms. I

must send for Marks to have the lock fitted. Oh dear, and I had hoped

I had done with workmen. They’re such friendly dears, and _will_

talk to me about the Government. Haven’t you noticed, Tom, how sound

I’ve been in my politics just lately?”

“Is the door locked, then?”

“Oh yes, it has been as long as I can remember. And the key lost.”

Mrs. Maxwell said breezily: “Ursula, it’s a topping day. It’d do you

good to jump on your bike and pedal down to the town for Aunt Lavvy,

before Miss Roberts is ready to study with you.”

“Nina can go,” suggested Ursula, hating the errand. “She’s bursting

with loving-kindness this morning.”

“I’m going up by the eleven-forty to a matinée with Dorothy.”

Mrs. Maxwell teased Ursula merrily for being a “lazy-bones.” Stanley

came in with a scientific fact about the stimulant of exercise just

before mental concentration, together with statistics proving the large

percentage of millionaires who had started their successful careers by

living far enough from the station to entail a run for the train every

morning. Mr. Maxwell waggishly remarked that, in that case, cooks ought

to be bribed to serve the breakfast late; and Ursula said indolently:

“Send Honor Rose to the locksmith’s. She’s got your steadfast sense of

responsibility, Stan.”

Grace cried: “At _her_ age! Alone into Buckler’s Cross! You must

be mad, Ursula. I sometimes let her toddle to the pillar-box at the

corner, but----”

“Do let me go to the locksmith’s for you, Aunt Lavvy darling, directly

Miss Roberts has finished with me. I’d love to.” The offer was Lottie’s.

“So as to miss your practising? What a brain!”

“Ursula, it’s right-down shabby of you to tease your sister because

she’s more obliging than you are.”

Ursula flared up. “It wasn’t Lottie, was it, who gave up her room to

Aunt Lavvy when she--when Hal----” She struggled with scalding tears at

the back of the throat. Why do they always come hotter for injustice

and self-pity than for sorrow?

Her hearers were startled and embarrassed beyond words at the reminder.

They wanted to forget that episode, now that they were all united and

kind and jovial again. It was indecent of Ursula to have hurled their

obligation at them in this violent fashion, especially as there was no

reply possible. They had all been grateful and thanked her. She could

not exact gratitude twice over. Downcast eyelids and tightly-pressed

mouths all round the table.... Of course she was only a child still, a

charming undisciplined young colt, but even then----

The fact was that Ursula’s rather-more-than-usually-good deed

had created a greater uneasiness among the Maxwells than Hal’s

rather-more-than-bad deed which had preceded it. A thoroughly average

family is not accustomed to either extension from the normal. Both Hal

and Ursula were disturbingly “different.” Hal’s moral lapse had rapidly

developed into a problem of consequences, which had been as rapidly

wiped out, leaving next to nothing of the original shock. And then he

had gone back to school.... Somehow, it was all not so uncomfortably

evident as the sight of Ursula round the house, a disconsolate moping

Peri emphasizing her yielded Paradise. For if she could be as noble as

all that, she might at any moment be equally noble, or nobler. And the

rest of them would have to live up to it, or else feel inferior.

So that Hal, who could be forgiven, and who was eager to forget, was

easily a more popular figure than Ursula, who had been their rescuer,

and now prevented them from forgetting.

“But I shall enjoy a walk to Marks, to see about a new key.” Aunt Lavvy

broke the silence. “The hedges are just beginning to turn colour all

along the road. It’s my favourite season.”

Ursula had dashed out of the room, they all thought, in tears ... but

presently she came back like a gale, and flung a small heavy object on

to the breakfast-table.

“There’s your key,” defiantly.

“The key of the door between?” Aunt Lavvy picked it up. “You clever

child! Where did you find it?”

“I didn’t find it. I had hidden it--at the bottom of my

handkerchief-box.”

“You had hidden it? And why, pray?” demanded her father.

Ursula thrust her hands into the pockets of her jersey, and tilted back

her head. She was not crying now--indeed, there was urchin roguery

sparkling in her eyes, and the corners of her lips were enigmatic:

“To protect myself from visitors,” she replied sweetly.

“Plain speech is a short cut,” said Tom Maxwell, getting angry with

this young daughter, who, from being more or less of a cipher, had

dared first to place him under an obligation, and then to taunt his

helplessness with insubordination.

“Well, then”--Ursula spoke with even greater sweetness--“to protect

myself from our Paying Guest.”

[XVII]

BUT in spite of these impertinences, Aunt Lavvy had the room, and Aunt

Lavvy had the laugh of her. Moreover, now that the room was completely

ready to sit in, and charming in its lilac and primrose tints as when

their imaginations had planned it together, Aunt Lavvy did not sit

in it. She sat downstairs with the others. She was more than usually

convivial, and fragrant with content when somebody--Mrs. Maxwell or

Nina or Lottie or Miss Roberts--asserted playfully that she could not

be spared from them to go and sit in solitude.

Tenacious in her desire to own a sitting-room, it now stood empty and

unused in that packed house.

Ursula, moping homeless about the stairs and landings of her home, was

conscious of that sequestered oblong of space as though it were alive.

She infected the rest of the household, who also became conscious of

it--and, more than ever, of her. One or the other of them was wont to

say to her, guiltily off-hand: “Oh, by the way, Ursula, there’s nobody

in the dining-room for half an hour, if you want to be alone. I looked

in on my way up,” and “Then I’ll tell Minnie not to disturb you.”...

And behold Ursula, mooching disconsolately round the dining-room, a

conspicuous captive to the misapprehension that she “liked to be alone

sometimes.”

“Look here,” Mr. Maxwell anxiously consulted his wife one evening.

“What’s all this trouble about Ursula? I mean, she’s quite comfortable

digging-in with Nina, isn’t she? Sisters, and all that. What’s she

in such a deuced queer state about ever since----Damn it, it was the

girl’s own suggestion to change rooms.”

“Nina’s much easier to understand than Ursula. Nina’s much more like

me--hot-tempered and says right out what’s in her mind and then it’s

all over.”

For it is a pet illusion with most people that they have exactly this

popular sort of temper, and no other.

Her husband drew closer. “Look here, Florrie. Hadn’t you better have a

quiet talk with Ursula. A serious talk. You’re the girl’s mother. Get

her to confide in you. I dunno--but it doesn’t seem ... natural to me,

this fuss about not sleeping alone. Was there anything wrong going on

when she----Well, what do you think?”

His suggestion of an interview with Ursula in the spirit of “you’re the

girl’s mother” was a parallel to his serious talk with Hal--“After all,

I’m your father.”... Thus, twice in the last week or two, parenthood

had ceased to be nominal.

“What do you think, Florrie?” He had been nice to her ever since their

reconciliation, and especially nice in insisting on her prior right

to be consulted and even listened to with deference, on all subjects

connected with the children.

Mrs. Maxwell said slowly: “Yes--I’ll talk to Ursula. But I think I

know.... A sort of shyness--some girls are like that. Oh, _I_

wasn’t--not I!” and she laughed heartily.

“Look here, Ursula, my dear”--it was always easiest to approach a

significant interview with “look here”--“I’m not going to mince words

with you. If the trouble is that you don’t like undressing right down

in front of Nina, because you’re not used to it--well, it’s false

modesty, my dear, that’s what it is, but you can’t help your feelings.”

And, very red in the face, but determined not to be put off either

from her theory or her remedy, she described how Ursula could put on

her nightgown over all her underclothes, and undress decently beneath

it, manœuvering unseen knots and buttons until each garment flapped

from concealment on to the floor; and, in the same way, could dress

completely underneath her nightgown, and then only take it off--“It’s

just a knack, and you’re not clumsy, so with a bit of practice--though,

mind you, Ursula, you may say I’m too broad-minded, but it’s better

than being morbid, which you are when you act as though your body’s

something to be ashamed of.”

“Darling Mummie, I don’t care twopence if Nina or anybody else sees me

stark naked.”

Florrie Maxwell collapsed on to the ledge of the landing-window. For

though the Laburnums was now in its wonted pleasant humour, it still

gave father the advantage of a study for “serious talks” with his

offspring, and left mother to be despised for her less successful

efforts in the uncertain privacy of the landings or the stairs.

Mrs. Maxwell was annoyed with Ursula. She had enjoyed being

broad-minded and advanced, in a wind-on-the-open-heath voice, to a

prim, shy, absurd little daughter ... but Ursula’s “stark naked” had

at once reversed their positions, and discouragingly forced her back

into the distasteful attitude of a slightly shocked parent.... For why

“stark” naked? “Stark” nakedness contains an impropriety beyond the

mere heartiness of a body unclothed.

“Then if it’s not that that’s upsetting you, what is it?” bluntly.

Ursula became impenetrable. Oh, Nina with her “What did you hope

to get out of it?” and now the grown-ups with “Why do you mind not

sleeping alone?” hinting at--Ursula did not know what they were hinting

at; and nor, as a matter of course, did they, except for an uneasy

conviction that it was unnatural.

But Aunt Lavvy understood. That was what so exasperated Ursula. Of all

of them, Aunt Lavvy, who did not belong to them, who did not love them

(not really), and who was, moreover, her enemy, should alone possess

subtle mastery of whatever situation arose at the Laburnums. She did

not _want_ to be understood by Aunt Lavvy. But in truth she was,

and to herself she owned it.

When--when would it begin ... the glorious transformation of the

commonplace, reward of sacrifice? Would it never begin? Not today?

Not tomorrow? If there were any place to cry and cry and cry out

the fulness of her heart and the tightness of her throat, the

disappointment might not press so heavily. The room had been a lovely

place to cry in.

[XVIII]

“SHE’D be best at boarding-school,” said Mr. Maxwell one evening in the

drawing-room, after Ursula had gone to bed. His wife and Aunt Lavvy and

Grace and Nina and Stanley and Miss Roberts all agreed. Grace, because

she had liked school, and was sure Ursula would like it, and had always

pitied her for being cheated of it; Nina, because she honestly believed

it would supply some qualities lacking in her young sister--sporting

Winborough qualities; Miss Roberts, because Ursula was growing beyond

her in temperament, intelligence and impertinence--and anyway, Lottie

would suffice to keep her in employment until Honor Rose was old

enough to require a governess; and Aunt Lavvy for a reason dissimilar

to Grace’s, and also from a feeling not dissimilar to Ursula’s--that

she disliked a presence at the Laburnums that understood where it did

not love her. But the main reason for agreement with all of them was

not mentioned; that it was impossible for the scar of recent conflict

to be properly healed, or for the Laburnums to settle down to its

former complacency, while the main reminder of the unusual was still

in the house--reminding them. Metaphorically, they still twitched

their shoulders when Ursula was about. Ursula was a dear, quaint kid,

but--when people took to sacrifices you could never be sure what would

be their next out-of-the-way freak. Something higher, nobler still

perhaps, and even more uncomfortable.... They did not see that there

was nothing to be frightened of in poor little Ursula, who was just not

big enough to carry it off. If, indeed, she had followed up her lapse

from the average by letting them all forget it--ah, then their spirits

might well have been awed by the sudden distance separating her from

the rest of them.

“I’ll go and see Miss Luther tomorrow,” said Florrie Maxwell. “As you

say, Nina, the term will have started, but it’s too long to wait for

the half-term, so perhaps they’ll make an exception, as you and Grace

were there, and let her enter at once.”

Then Stanley broke it to them. “I may as well tell you now, Mother and

Father”--he only called them thus when on the brink of some significant

announcement--“that I’ve been negotiating for the remainder of the

lease of ‘The Kopje’--we shan’t call it that, naturally. Old Gurney

wants to move out at once; it’s too small for him. I think it’s fairly

certain that we’ll get it. It’s time Grace and the babies had the run

of their own house; and, quite frankly, sir”--turning with good-humour

to his father-in-law--“from something you said to me the other day, I

gathered you’d prefer it.”

“Well, well.” Mr. Maxwell remembered with regret that he had been

irritable in the matter. “Perhaps we are rather tumbling over each

other’s toes in the old Laburnums. And as long as you’re still in the

same road--we can’t let our grandchildren go too far away, can we,

mother?”

Mrs. Maxwell nodded absently, for her thoughts were already bustling

about the rooms, re-arranging them. It really seemed as though the

sudden exodus would be like releasing a spring, and that they would

all reel out into spaciousness, rather crumpled and breathless from

having been packed so close. Lottie and Miss Roberts could now have

an undisputed schoolroom, and also move down into their old bedroom,

where Nurse and the Watson babies had been sleeping. Because an attic

was much more suitable for boys--she had always known it, and if Hal

were going to college next year, that was the signal that he was

grown-up--her grown-up son!--and ought to have a room to himself. Bunny

and William would be perfectly happy, rampaging about the attic. And

Mrs. Maxwell realized with pride that at last they would actually be

able to boast a spare-room, at present Grace and Stanley’s bedroom.

“And that makes Nina’s room much more hers as well--I must say she’s

been very good about visitors in it--but now she won’t be plagued

except during Ursula’s holidays. And the spare-room will do splendidly

if Hal wants to bring home his college pals.”

[XIX]

MISS Luther, headmistress of Regina Hall, Tunbridge Wells, had just

said good-bye to Mrs. Maxwell; and was discussing the prospective new

pupil with Miss Greyling, her second in command:

“Her sisters were both thoroughly nice girls, and Nina, I remember,

was one of our best hockey captains. But there seems to be something

mysterious about this one--Ursula. At all events, they’re in a special

hurry to get rid of her. As far as I can gather from the mother’s

manner, she had got herself into some sort of a scrape at home....”

[XX]

THINGS were not different after a sacrifice. Things were exactly the

same--only horrider. Ursula knew now.

The taxi sprang away from the open front door of the Laburnums. Sitting

on a back seat, she was able to see, through the rain-blurred windows,

her mother in the porch, and Aunt Lavvy and Lottie.... They drew in out

of the wet, their last smiles still encouraging her with the formula:

“You’ll love it when the first homesickness is over.”

Nina and Grace were taking her down, both eager for a glimpse of their

old school.

Ursula’s beautiful mouth was set and grave, her eyelids downcast, her

hands, as usual, clenched in the deep pockets of her coat. It was

simply not worth while to be good. At Regina Hall would be dozens of

girls, eating, working, sleeping together. Herded even in thought.

There would be confidences and slop and brimming-over affection....

“Oh, a _mess_ of girls!”

But after all, Hal was all right. She had given him back to the world

as a complete specimen of hero--a careless, lordly, invulnerable being,

good-natured, with a voice of lazy authority. Anything so complete was

surely precious, though it was said that only suffering and humiliation

enriched the soul ... but so many people with doubtlessly enriched

souls, yet dragged about, to all appearances maimed and burdened and

spoilt. So might not an occasional Hal remain splendidly poised,

neither fretted by consciousness, nor torn by imagination? And Ursula

had achieved that for him. She had power. There was sudden dazzlement

in the thought.... She lifted her head proudly.... To have secret

vision, and to act on it, swiftly, clearly, successfully ... why, she

was almost God!

The luminous moment was swept into grey commonplace again, and only a

disconsolate little girl in a taxi was on her way to the station.

But she broke into a happy gurgle of laughter, remembering how Lottie

had tried to deal with the situation by arranging pins in a pattern on

Aunt Lavvy’s cushion.