She put out a hand as if to hold that word away. “Oh, trust not that.

They talk of the ennoblement of sacrifice. Ah, do not believe it. It can

go too long, too far, and then like wine too long matured... just acid,

Harry. I never said a bitter thing to you until--thus sacrificing. It is

the kennel dog again. If I went on I’d grow more bitter yet, more bitter

and more bitter. It’s why women are so much more bitter than men. It’s

what they’ve sacrificed. I’m going back, Harry. I’ve got to. You ask

me if I’ve thought of everything. I have; but even if I had not this

outrides it all. I have gone too far. She was right, that woman I told

you of, who said that for a woman, once she has given herself to a

thing, there is no comeback from it. I have tried. It is not to be

done.”

There was a very long silence. She said, “It’s settled, Harry.”

He said, “Nothing’s been said, Rosalie, that gets over what I have said.

There’s no home here while both of us are working. I have a right to a

home. The children have a right to a home. Nothing gets over that.”

She answered, “Then, Harry, give yourself a home. Give the children a

home.”

He said, “I am a man.”

She answered, “I am a woman.”

CHAPTER III

The thing goes now at a most frightful pace for Rosalie. One hates the

slow, laborious written word that tries to show it. There needs a

pen with wings or that by leaping violence of script, by characters

blotched, huge and run together, would symbolise the pace at which the

thing now goes. There’s no procession of the days. Immersed in work or

lost in pleasure, there never is procession of the days, so hurtling

fast goes life. They crowd. They’re driven past like snow across a

window pane. The calendar astounds. It is the first of the month,

and lo, it is the tenth. It’s the sixteenth--half gone!--while yet it

scarcely had begun; a day after the twentieth is the date; it’s next

the twenty-fifth; it’s next--the month has gone.... The month! It is a

season that has flown. Here’s Summer where only yesterday the buds of

Spring; here’s Winter, coming--gone!--while yet the leaves seem falling.

It was like that the thing now went with Rosalie.

They call it a race. It isn’t a race, living like that. It’s a pursuit.

Engaged in it, you’re not in rivalry, you are in flight. You’re fleeing

all the time the reckoning; and he’s a sulky savage, forced to halt to

gather up what you have shed, ordered to pause to note the things that

you have missed, and at each duty cutting notches in a stick.

That is his tally which, come up, he will present to you.

Well, best perhaps to take that tally stick to try by it to show the

pace at which the thing now went. Rosalie, when all was done, could run

the tally over (you have to) in thought, that lightning vehicle that

makes to crawl the swiftest agency of man’s invention: runs through a

lifetime while the electric telegraph is stammering a line; reads memory

in twenty volumes between the whiff and passing of some remembered scent

that’s opened them; travels a life again, cradle to grave, between the

vision’s lighting on and lifting from some token of the past.

All’s done; some years rush on; she sits in retrospection, that tally

stick in hand; and thought, first hovering, would always start for her

from when, returned to her career, the thing at frightful pace began to

go; and then, from there, away! from scene to scene (the notches cut by

reckoning in his stick) rending the womb of memory in dread delivery,

as it were flash on flash of lightning bursting the vault of night from

east to west across the world.

Her thoughts first hovering: There’s Huggo and there’s Doda and there’s

Benji! Her children! Her darling ones! Her lovely ones! Love’s crown;

and, what was more, worn in the persons of those darling joys of hers

in signal, almost arrogant in her disdain of precedent to the contrary,

that woman might be mother and yet live freely and unfettered by her

home, precisely as man is father but follows a career. Ah....

Away! The womb of memory is rent, and rent, delivers.

Look, there they are! She’s down with one or other at some gala at their

schools. It’s Founders’ Day at Tidborough, or it’s at Doda’s school on

Prize Day. Aren’t they just proud to be with her and show her off,

their lovely, brilliant mother so different from the other rather fussy

mothers that come crowding down! All the masters and all the mistresses

know the uncommon woman that she is. The children, growing older, know

it. “You must be very proud of your mother.” It has been said (the

self-same words) to each of them by their respective principals. Nice!

Nice to have your children proud of you!

Look, there’s Huggo telling her how the headmaster had said the thing

to him (she’s just walking with her Huggo across the cricket ground on

Founders’ Day). “And a sloppy young ass that heard him,” says Huggo,

“oh, an awful ass, asked me why the Head had said I must be proud

of you, and I told him, and I said, ‘I bet you’re not proud of your

mother.’ And he said, ‘Of my father, I am. He got the V. C. in South

Africa.’ So I said, ‘Yes, but proud of your mother?’ So this frightful

ass said--what do you think he said? ‘No, I’m not proud of my mother. I

don’t think I’d want to be. I only love her.’”

Huggo mimicked the voice in which the frightful ass had said this; and

Rosalie, at the words and at his tone, had across her body a sudden

chill, as it were physical. She wanted to say something. But it was the

kind of thing you couldn’t, somehow, say to Huggo, at fifteen. But she

said it. “Huggo, you do love me, don’t you?”

He turned to her a face curiously thin-lipped. “Oh, I say, mother, do

look out, some one might hear you!”

Her Huggo! (She wants to stop the passing scenes and to stretch out to

him across the years her arms.) Her Huggo! The one that first along her

arm had laid; the scrap that first within her eyes adoring tears had

brimmed; her baby boy, her tiny manling, her tiny hugging one, her first

born! It is in retrospection that she sits and there’s expelled for ever

from her face that aspect mutinous, intolerant, defiant, that used to

visit there. That, when she housed it, was the aspect of the young man

Ishmael whose hand was against every man. She is like Hagar now to be

imagined, sitting over against these things a good way off, as it were a

bowshot.

Strike on!

Her Huggo! Look, that’s the day they got that bad report of him from

school. She had questioned Harry about a letter in his post and, naming

the headmaster of Tidborough, “Yes, it’s from Hammond,” he had answered

her.

“About Huggo?”

“Yes, it’s about Huggo.”

Nothing more. They were beginning to have exchanges terse as that.

She said presently, “I suppose it would interest me, wouldn’t it?”

His face was very hard. “Do you want to know the answer I feel like

giving to that?”

“I’ve asked for it, haven’t I, Harry?”

“You shall have it. The answer is that I think what the letter says

implicates you.”

She preserved her composure. She by now had had practice in preserving

her composure. “What’s the matter, Harry?”

“Hammond says--as good as says--that Huggo will have to be withdrawn

from Tidborough.”

She knew perfectly well that this was only leading up to something. “May

I hear?”

“You may.” He took up the letter and read from it. “‘Apart from that,

and it would of course be the reason given--the other, I am confident,

is susceptible of change--apart from that, the boy has now twice failed

to keep his place in the school. If he does not get his remove in the

coming term I shall be compelled to ask you to remove him.’” He put down

the letter and looked at her. “That’ll be nice, won’t it?”

She made an appeal. “Harry, don’t. I mean, don’t talk like that. It

won’t happen.”

He softened in no degree. He said sternly: “It will happen.”

She persevered. “I’m quite sure it won’t. You’ve only got to talk

seriously to Huggo. This coming holidays you can get him some coaching.

He’s got brains.”

There was a steely note in Harry’s voice: “Oh, he’s got brains. He can

have coaching. It’s what he hasn’t got and what he can’t get that’s

going to get Huggo withdrawn.”

“What is it you mean?”

“A home.”

She slightly raised the fingers of her hands and dropped them. This

subject!

Harry said: “Hammond says more than I’ve told you.”

“I supposed he did. ‘Apart from that.’ Apart from what?”

“It’s Huggo’s character he’s writing to me about. This is what he says.

‘The boy, though young, has not a good influence in his house. If I may

suggest it, he does not, during the holidays, see enough of his home.’”

He folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. “Does it strike

you that is going to be easy for me to answer?”

“It might be easier, Harry, if your tone made it possible for us to

discuss it.”

He gave a sound that was glint, as it were, of the blade in his voice:

“Our discussions! I am a little tired of that blind alley, Rosalie.”

She said sombrely, “And I.”

“Will you suggest how the letter is to be answered?”

She said: “It’s plain. If you agree with Mr. Hammond, it’s plain. You

can say you will stop Huggo’s invitations. Harry, we’re not by any means

the only family that doesn’t spend the whole of its holidays together.

It’s rather the practice nowadays, young people visiting their friends.

If you think Huggo shouldn’t--you can say so.”

“Yes, I can say that. Tell me this. Is it going to give him a home?”

Her voice sprung from a sudden higher note. “Oh, you insist, you

insist!” she cried. “You speak of blind alleys, but you insist.”

He touched the letter. “This gives me ground for my insistence. This is

an outsider, a stranger, appreciating how we live. This is my son, at my

old school, condemned by how we live.”

She interjected, “A schoolmaster’s primeval animosity--blame the

parent.”

“Rosalie, a parent’s primeval duty. We are responsible for the children.

We have a duty towards them.”

She softly struck her hands together. “Ah, how often, how often, and

always worse! You said just now that I am implicated. It’s always I. You

say we have a responsibility towards the children. But you don’t mean

us, you mean me. Why I more than you? Why am I the accused?”

He began, “Because you--”

“Ah, don’t, don’t!”

But he concluded. “Because you are a woman.”

Her voice that had gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as to the

same reason and with the same words she’d made before, of weariness with

this thing, “Ah, my God, that reason!”

Strike on!

Look, there’s Huggo, failing again to get his remove, superannuated,

withdrawn. There’s Harry having a scene with the boy. There ought to be

tears. There are tears. But they’re in Harry’s voice and twice he wipes

his eyes. They’re not in Huggo’s.

Harry says to Huggo: “I say, I’m not going to be harsh; but, I say,

can’t you understand the disgrace; can’t you understand the shame,

old man? You’ve been at the finest school in England and you’ve had

to leave. You’re sixteen. Old man, when I was sixteen I got my footer

colours. I was the youngest chap in the team. You’re sixteen and you’ve

never even got a house cap and you’ve had to leave. Huggo, I’ve never

missed going down to a Founders’ Day since I went to Oxford. It’s always

been the day of the year for me. I don’t say I’ve ever done much in

life, but every time I’ve been down to Founders’ Day I’ve thought over,

in the train, any little thing I may have pulled out in the year and

I’ve felt, I’ve felt awfully proud to be taking it down to the old

school, so to speak. Old chap, the proudest, far the proudest of all,

was the year I went down when first you were there. I was proud. I’d

given a son to the place. I’d got a boy there. Another Occleve was going

to write the name up on the shields and rolls and things. It was the

year Garnett first came down as a Cabinet Minister. Huggo, I looked old

Garnett in the face with a grin. Whatever he’d done I’d got this much up

on him--he hadn’t given a son to the place. He hadn’t got a boy there.

That’s how I always felt. Well, old man, it’s all over. I can’t go

down to Founders’ Day ever again. I’ve never missed. Now--I’ve had to

withdraw my boy. I can’t go again. I couldn’t face it.”

He wiped his eyes. No tears in Huggo’s eyes. On Huggo’s face only a

look sullen and aggrieved; and sullen and aggrieved his mutter, “Well,

perhaps it was different for you. I couldn’t stick the place.”

She gasped out, “Huggo!” but Harry had heard, and Harry, perhaps in

offset to the emotion he had displayed, smashed his hand down on the

table before him and cried out, “Well, keep your mouth shut about it

then! Couldn’t stick it! What can you be? What can be the matter with

you? Couldn’t stick it! Tidborough! The finest school in the world!

Couldn’t stick it!”

She interposed, “Harry, dear! Huggo; Huggo, tell your father you didn’t

mean that.”

Huggo’s mumble: “I’m sorry, father.”

Harry’s deep, kind voice: “I’m sorry too, old man. It rather jarred.

Look here, this is all over. It’s just been a side-slip. I’ve forgotten

it. So has your mother. You just think over sometimes what I’ve said,

my boy. We’re fixing up this tutor’s for you. You start in fresh and go

like steam. Finest thing in the world a fresh start. Makes a side-slip

worth while. I’m going to be--I am--prouder of you than anything on

earth. My eldest boy! Like steam from now, old chap, eh?”

Strike on!

After that interview and when the boy had left the room--shambled out

of the room in that sullen, aggrieved air he would always assume under

correction--after that she and Harry had talked, most fondly. It was

all, the talk, that poignantly affecting “fresh start” business that

he’d begun with Huggo. Poignantly affecting because Harry, piling upon

his love for Huggo and his pride in Huggo, which she shared, his love

for his old school and his pride in it, which she could understand but

could not share, had been so bravely, cheerfully earnest and assured

about the future. “One who never turned his back but marched breast

forward.” The boy would be all right. Mice and Mumps, old lady, he’d be

all right! It was just a mistake, just a side-slip. He’d got the right

stuff in him, Huggo had, eh, old lady? They must just pull together to

help the boy, eh?

He paused the tiniest space at that and pressed her hand and looked at

her. She knew his meaning. If only....

He went on: This was a good place, this tutor’s down in Norfolk they

were sending him to, Harry was sure it was. It was a pity, of course,

he couldn’t go to another public school; but of course he couldn’t; they

wouldn’t take him; no use worrying about that. This tutor, this man they

were sending him to, was a first-class chap. Only took six pupils. Was

a clergyman. Understood boys and youths who hadn’t quite held their own

and wanted special coaching and attention. Huggo was keen on the idea.

After all, why shouldn’t he have disliked Tidborough? There were such

boys who didn’t like public-school life. There, there! Perhaps it was

the best thing that could have happened. Bet your life this was going

to be the making of old Huggo, this change. This tutor and the quiet,

self-reliant life there, each chap with his own jolly little bed-sitting

room, would prop him up and get him into Oxford when the time came and

make him no end happy and splendid.

“There, there, old lady,” said Harry, and patted her and kissed her

(she’d been affected). “There, there, it’s going to be fine. The rest is

just up to us, eh? We know the boy’s weaknesses. We know what Hammond’s

told us about him--home life and home influences and all that stuff, and

that’s easy; we’ll see the boy gets that, won’t we?”

She used to wring her hands at that, and crying “If only!” cry again

in desperation of excuse: “If only the war hadn’t come! If only the war

hadn’t come!”

The war was on then. It was 1915. “You see,” she used to appeal to the

arbitrament before which, watching these pictures, she found herself,

“you see, the war made everything so difficult, so impossible, so

frightful, so confused, so blinding. Sturgiss had left the Bank to do

war service in the Treasury. More than half the clerks had gone. We were

understaffed and badly staffed at every turn. How could I give it up

then? I don’t say I would have. I’m on my knees. I’ve thrown in my hand.

I’m not pretending anything or anyway trying to delude myself. I don’t

say I would have given it up and come home to make home life for the boy

and for them all. I don’t say I would. I’m only saying how infinitely

harder, how impossibly harder, the war conditions made it. There was the

understaffing--that alone. There was the cry about releasing a man for

the front--that alone. I was releasing half a dozen men. Field said I

was. I knew I was. How could I go back and be one of the women sitting

at home? That alone! How could I? And there was more than that. It

wasn’t only the understaffing. It was Sturgiss going. I’d been absorbing

the banking business for years. It was meat and drink to me. I’d had a

bent for it ever since the Bagehot ‘Lombard Street’ days. I’d nourished

my bent. I’d been encouraged to nourish my bent. The work was just a

passion with me. Sturgiss went. I went practically into his place. I’d

a position in banking that no woman had ever held, nor no banker ever

imagined a woman ever holding, before. It was Sturgiss, a partner, I’d

released for war service. It was Sturgiss’s, a partner’s, place I’d

got. How could I give that up? How could I? How could I? If only the war

hadn’t come. If only....” Strike on!

It isn’t all going as it should with the boy at the tutor’s. But wasn’t

it impossible to observe, at the time, that it wasn’t all going as it

should? Of course (her thoughts would go) it was her fault; but was

not the world, spiritual and material, in conspiracy against her, and

against Huggo, and against her other darlings, to make easy her fault?

Ah, that war, that war! Didn’t it unsettle everybody and everything?

Naturally it unsettled the boy down at the tutor’s. Naturally one did

not notice or foresee the trend of his unsettlement. Naturally it made

plausible the excuses that he made.

There he is, down there at the tutor’s. He wanted to do war work, not

sitting there grinding lessons. All the tutor’s pupils did. Naturally

they did. The boy couldn’t go in the army. He was too young. He was in a

rural district. He got doing land-work. They all did. It was supposed to

be done in leisure hours. Naturally it encroached on, and unfitted for,

work hours. “After all,” as the tutor wrote, “how can you blame the

boys? After all, it’s very hard to seem to try to check this patriotic

spirit.” After all! Oh, why do people say “after all” when they mean

quite the contrary? This was before all, this seductive escape

from uncongenial duties, precedent of all, influencing to all that

happened--after all. Naturally it interfered with scholastic work. That

was condoned. As naturally it interfered with discipline. That was

not mentioned by the tutor. If he was cognisant of it was not domestic

discipline everywhere relaxed “on account of the war”?

There Huggo is. These are his holidays. After the setback at Tidborough

he was to have spent all his holidays at home. He was not, for the

future, to go away on invitations. That war! He never spent any of his

holidays at home. How could the boy be tied down in London with this war

on? He made his land-work his excuse, most plausible. He spent all his

holidays with friends whose homes were in rural districts.

Then it turned out that he had not, as he had given out, been always

at the house of friends. He was found in cottage lodgings living with a

friend, a fellow-pupil at the tutor’s; on land-work truly, but in gross

deception, and in worse.

It came out quite by chance and in a way very horrible. Harry discovered

it. Harry, early in 1915, had been absorbed into the Home Office. His

work was very largely in connection with a special secret service body

dealing with spies. He examined in private arrested suspects. He advised

and he directed on criminal matters therewith connected. He was working,

under immense pressure, terrible hours. He was hardly ever in to dinner.

He often was away all night. He frequently was away travelling for days

together. When he was seen he showed signs of strain to Rosalie.

He came in one evening about nine o’clock. It was early in 1916. Huggo

was then seventeen. Rosalie heard him in the hall and heard that some

one was with him. She heard him, by the dining-room door, say, “You’d

better go in there and get something to eat. I’ll attend to you

presently.”

His voice was iron hard. Who was with him? What was the matter?

He came in to her. His face was iron hard. He shut the door. “Do you

know who I’ve got here with me? Do you know where I’ve been? Do you know

what’s happened?”

His manner was extraordinary. His voice was like heavy axes, thudding.

His face was dark and passionate, menacing. Happened? Things were always

happening in these appalling days. She said, “Oh, what is it, Harry?”

“It’s Huggo.”

“Huggo?”

“Huggo!”

Like axes! It seemed that, of his passion (and she never before had seen

passion in his face), he scarcely could speak. He fought for words. When

they came out they thudded out.

“Do you know where Huggo’s been this past month?”

“With the Thorntons, his friends.”

“He’s not. He’s lied. He’s been living with some blackguard friend in

rooms in Turnhampton, in Buckinghamshire.”

“Harry! Doing what? Land-work?”

“Land-work! Loafing! Drinking!”

“Drinking? Huggo?”

“Listen to me. This is what I’ve come to. This is what that boy’s

come to. I had to go down to this place Turnhampton about a spy they’d

arrested. He was to come up in the police court there this morning. They

took the other cases first. Court going to be cleared for my man. I sat

there, waiting. The second case--this is what I’ve come to--was my son,

my boy, Huggo, brought up from the cells where he’d spent the night.

My son! Drunk and disorderly. He didn’t see me. The police gave him a

character. I sat there and listened to it. My son! A visitor, the police

described him. Supposed to be working on some farm. Not a desirable

character in the village. My son! Always loafing about. Always in the

inn. Last night drunk. Assaulted the landlady. My son! Arrested. My

son!”

He turned away.

She cried, “Harry! What happened?”

He turned on her in a violence renewed. “I declare to you that if he had

gone to prison I would not have raised a hand to stop him. He’d had

the grace--or he’d all the time had the guile--to give an assumed name.

Would I have confessed, to save him, that he was my son? I believe I

couldn’t. He got off with a fine. I got hold of him. I’ve brought him

back. He’s here.”

She went to the bell. “I must get you some food.”

He stayed her. “Food! I’ll tell you what to get me. I’ll tell you what

to get that boy. Get me a home. Get him a home. That’s what’s caused

this. Do you know what he said to me coming up in the train? I said to

him, ‘Why are you always away like this? Why, in the holidays, are you

never at home?’ He said, ‘What home is there for me to come to? Who’s

ever there?’ He’s right. Who is? Are you?”

She said quietly, “Harry, not now. Dear, you are not yourself.”

He was not and continued not to be. “Well, answer my question. Are you

ever in the home?”

She implored, “Oh, my dear!”

He was not to be placated. “Where is the home?”

“Harry!”

“Where’s Doda?”

She began in her spirit to move. “Staying with friends.”

“Where’s Benji?”

“You perfectly well know. Staying with friends.”

“Where are you?”

She put her hand to her bosom. “Oh, beware me, Harry. Here.”

“For the night. Are you ever in the children’s home?”

“Are you?”

“That sophistry! I have my work!”

“I’ve mine.”

He smote his hand upon the mantelshelf by which he stood and turned and

left the room.

Strike on!

Of course it healed and was obliterated and all passed over. Of course

Harry forgave the boy. Of course he was handsome to the boy’s excuses.

Drunk! Of course it was just a slightly tipsy ebullition. Had been in

the hot sun in the fields all day and was affected by a too long slake

of beer. Assaulted the landlady! She’d been rough mannered and objected

to his noise and got in the way and he had pushed her. “The boy’s all

right,” Harry said to Rosalie after, the boy forgiven, he sat and talked

with her. “He’s got no vice. How could he have? It was wrong, it was

deceitful, going off like that to that place without telling us. But he

meant no harm. He’s explained. He’s genuinely sorry. He’s just got out

of hand a bit. They all have, the young people, in this war time. The

boy’s all right. He’s eighteen in a few months. I’ll see if I can speed

it up a bit getting him into the army. He’s magnificently keen. He’ll

do fine, God bless him. Think no more about it, old lady. In the whole

business I’m only sick with myself that I lost my temper with him as I

did--and with you, my dear, and with you.” And he put out his hand to

her.

“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward.”

“And with you.” Of course he was distressed he had been violent with

her. Of course that painful outbreak was healed, obliterated, put away.

He had expressed his utter regret. He’d been badly rattled with this

infernal war all that week; this business on the top of it had been

a most frightful shock to him. What had he said? Forgive, Rosalie,

forgive! Of course she had nothing to forgive. Forgiveness also was for

her to ask. As to the point thus violently raised, he saw, didn’t he,

the clear impossibility of her giving up her work, war work as much as

his own, at such a time? Not to say the unnecessity of it--the children

were growing up... it clearly could be done now. The position she

held...

He said, “I know, old lady.” He said, “I know, I know,” and sighed.

Ah, from that vision of him saying, “I know,” and sighing, and from the

mute appeal that then was in his eyes, from that--strike on!

Most retentive to her, as it had passed, of Huggo’s share in all that

episode had been that she from her expostulation with Huggo had not come

away with the same satisfaction as seemingly had Harry. She put before

the boy how terribly his father had felt the shame of it, how almost

broken-hearted he had been. “He idolises you, Huggo. You’re always his

eldest son. He thinks the world of you.”

Huggo took it all with that familiar air of his of being the party that

was aggrieved. He listened with impatience that was not concealed and he

had no contrition to display. “Well, mother, it’s all over. What is the

good of going on and on about it? I’ve had it by the hour from father.

He’s understood. What is the good?”

She very lovingly talked to him. He all the time had an argument.

He kept up his own case. He presently said, “And I do wish, mother,

especially now I’m going into the army soon, I do wish you’d drop that

‘Huggo.’ You can’t tell how I hate it. You might just as well call me

Baby. It’s a baby’s name.”

“Oh, Huggo, it was the name we loved you by.”

“Well, I can’t stick it. My name’s Hugh.”

Strike on!

There he is. He’s in the army. He’s utterly splendid in his uniform. How

proud of him she is! They no longer gave commissions direct from civil

life; but he’d been in the cadet corps at Tidborough and Harry was able

to get him direct into an officer cadet battalion. He’s off to France

in what seems next to no time. He’s home on leave and there’s nothing

that’s too good for him and her purse at his disposal when he’s run

through Harry’s generous allowance. He seems to get through an immense

amount of money on leave. He’s never at home. He’s often out all

night. Well, he’s on leave. He’s fighting for his country. You can’t be

anything but utterly lenient with a boy that’s fighting for his country.

He went back. Three days after he was supposed to have gone back Rosalie

came face to face with him in Piccadilly. He was with some flapper

type of girl, in the detestable phrase (as she thought it) by which the

detestable products of the war (as she thought them) were called. He was

just getting into a cab. She called out to him, astounded. She heard him

swear and he jumped into the cab and was driven away. She didn’t tell

Harry. Harry found out. It came out that the boy for overstaying his

leave was to be court-martialled. She did not know what Harry did. She

noticed in those days what a beaten look Harry’s face was getting. It

was, of course, the war strain; but it only was first evident to her in

that time of the court-martial. He scarcely spoke to her. She did not

know what he did, but she knew he had much influence and exerted it at

no sparing of himself. The boy got off with a severe reprimand and was

returned to France. And to be in France, out there, in that ever-present

shadow of death, was to be excused everything and to be forgiven

everything.

Miraculously the war ended. The boy had had rather more than two years

of it. He applied for immediate demobilisation as being a student, and

he was one of the batch that got away immediately on that ground. He

was nearly twenty then. Now what was he going to do? Oxford, of course,

Harry said, and then the Bar, as always intended. Huggo, larking about

in uniform long after he ought to have been out of it, was in immense

feather with himself. He didn’t say No and he didn’t say Yes to the

Oxford idea. All he said was that he voted all that wasn’t discussed the

very day he got back (it was more than six weeks since he had got back).

He surely, he said, was entitled to a bit of a holiday first, after

all he had been through. London seemed to be swarming with thousands

of young men who claimed they were entitled to a bit of a holiday first

after all they had been through. Huggo was never in the house. He had

picked up with a man, Telfer, whom he had met in France, a big business

man, Huggo described him as, and he seemed to spend all his time with

this man. Telfer was a much older man than Huggo. Huggo brought him to

dinner one night. It was rather a shock to Rosalie, meeting the man of

whom she had heard so much. Huggo had never said anything about his age.

He must have been quite forty. He had dull, cloudy eyes and a bad mouth.

He called Huggo “Kid,” using the word in every sentence, and it was easy

to see from Harry’s manner that Telfer was repellent to him. Easy, also,

and not nice, to see Telfer’s dominion over Huggo. Not nice to hear

Huggo’s loud, delighted laughter at everything addressed to him by

Telfer. Harry spoke less and less as the meal advanced. The two left

early; they were going to a music hall. When they had gone Rosalie and

Harry looked at one another across the table and by their look exchanged

a great deal.

“That’s a detestable companion for Huggo,” Harry said. “Rosalie, there’s

been enough of this. The boy must get to work.”

It appeared, in interviews following that evening, that Huggo was not a

bit keen on the Oxford idea. He wanted to go into business. He was not

clear as to precisely what kind of business, but he wanted the freedom

and the excitement of earning his own living, not to be cooped up at

the “Varsity” like back at school again. Harry took a firm line. The

boy resented the firm line. Well, anyway, he argued, he couldn’t go till

October, it was only June now; all right, he’d go in October--if he

had to. Harry made arrangements for some reading through the summer

preparatory to Oxford. It upset plans made by Huggo. He thought

it “uncommonly hard” that he should have to spend the whole summer

“swotting.” Oh, well, if he had to, he had to. He had an invitation for

a month for that immediate time to Scotland. The reading was arranged

to start a month ahead. He didn’t in the least want to be out of London

just when there was so much going on and all his pals here; but anything

was better than sticking this kind of life at home, father always at

him; so he’d go to Scotland; he supposed he was entitled to a bit of

country holiday before they cooped him up? He went to Scotland.

Twice during that month Rosalie thought she saw Huggo in the West End.

But London was full of young men of the Huggo type. It wasn’t likely.

It turned out to have been very likely. It turned out that Huggo had

never been in Scotland at all but in London all the time. And much worse

than that. One evening, towards the end of the so-called Scotland month,

Huggo unexpectedly walked into the house. Rosalie was sitting with Harry

in the dining-room over the end of dinner. Doda was upstairs putting

last touches to herself before going out to a dance. Doda was eighteen

then (it was 1919), had left school, and, with a large circle of

friends, was going out a great deal. Benji was still at school, at

Milchester. Harry had never resumed relations with beloved Tidborough.

The door opened and Huggo walked in. His face was very flushed and his

articulation a little odd. When, after greetings, he sat down, he sat

down with a curiously unsteady thud and gave a little laugh and said,

“Whoa, mare, steady!”

It appeared, after explanations, that he had come to talk about “this

Oxford business.” “I really can’t very well go to Oxford now, father. I

really ought to start in some money-making business now, and I’ve got a

jolly good opening promised me. I really ought to take it.”

The decanters were on the table. He had already taken a glass of port.

He filled another and drank it.

“The fact is, I’m--married.”

There were some hard and bitter things said between his father and the

boy. The boy fumbled--he obviously had been drinking--between would not

or could not say very much as to who it was that he had married.

Harry said, “Who are her people? That’s a plain question, isn’t it?”

Huggo, very red, increasingly difficult to understand, said, “It’s a

plain enough question. It’s a plain enough question. I’ve come here to

be perfectly frank and plain and plain enough question. The fact is I

don’t know very much about her plain enough people.”

Rosalie broke out of the frozen stupefaction that had numbed her.

“Huggo, you must know. You must know who her people are.”

Huggo turned a very slow gaze around from his father to his mother. He

looked at her. He said with astonishing violence, “Well, I tell you I

don’t. People! What have her people got to do with it? I haven’t married

her people. She’s my little girl and I’ve married her, not her people.

Isn’t that enough for you?”

Harry got up and went over to him. “Look here, you’d better run along.

You’re not in a fit state to talk to your mother. I’m not sure you’re

in a fit state to talk to any-body or to know what you’re saying. You’d

better go, my boy. We’ll go into this in the morning. Come round early

in the morning. We’ll settle it then.”

He was passing with Huggo through the door when Doda, equipped for her

dance, came running down the stairs. “Hull-o, Huggo! Why, I haven’t seen

you for weeks. Where have you been?”

Huggo, standing unsteadily, unsteadily regarded her. “Point is, where

are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I’ll bet you have!

I’ve seen you jazzing about the place when you haven’t seen me, Dods.

And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching you at the Riddle

Club the other night told me some pretty fierce--”

“Oh, dash, I’ve left my fan,” cried Doda, and turned and ran back up the

stairs.

Huggo called, “I say, Dods. I’m in a row. So’ll you be one day, if you

don’t look out for yourself.”

Doda’s voice: “Oh, dry up--you fool!”

Strike on!

CHAPTER IV.

Her Doda! The one that was her baby girl, that was her tiny daughter!

The one that was to be her woman treasury in which she’d pour her woman

love; that was to be her self’s own self, her heart’s own heart, her

tiny woman-bud to be a woman with her in the house of Harry and of

Huggo! Her Doda!

Look, there she is! There’s lovely Doda! She’s fourteen. It’s early in

1915, in the first twelve months of the war. (That war!) She’s at that

splendid school. She’s been there nearly three years. She loves it.

She’s never so happy as when she’s there, except, judging by her

chatter, when she’s away in the holidays at the house of one of her

friends. It’s at home--when she is at home--that she’s never really

happy. She’s so dull, she always says, at home. She always wants to be

doing something, to be seeing something, to be playing with somebody.

She can’t bear being in the house. She can’t bear being, of an evening,

just alone with Rosalie. “Oh, dear!” she’s always saying. “Oh, dear, I

do wish it would hurry up and be term time again.”

“Darling, you are a restless person,” Rosalie says.

“Well, mother, it is dull just sticking here.”

“You know how Benji loves to have you home, Doda. Benji simply lives for

you. I’ve never known a brother so devoted. You ought to think of Benji

sometimes, Doda.”

“Well, I can’t be always thinking of Benji. I’m surely entitled to be

with my own friends sometimes. I don’t ask Benji to be devoted to me.”

She’s strangely given to expressions like that: “I didn’t ask

for”--whatever circumstance or obligation it might be that was irksome

to her. “Not traditions--precedents!” The watchword of the school was

strangely to be traced in her attitude, still in her childish years,

towards a hundred commonplaces of the daily life. She was always

curiously older than her years. She seemed to have a natural bent

away from traditionally childish things and towards attractions not

associated with childhood. She did excellently well at the school. She

was, her reports said, uncommonly quick and vivid at her lessons.

She was always in a form above her years. Her friends, while she was

smallish, were always the elder girls, and the elder girls gave her

welcome place among them. “Perhaps a shade precocious,” wrote the lady

principal in one of the laconic, penetrating sentences with which, above

her signature, each girl’s report was terminated: and, in a later term,

“Has ‘Forward!’ for her banner, but should remember ‘not too fast’.”

“Gripes! I know what she’s referring to,” said Doda, seeing it, and

laughed, obviously flattered.

“Your expressions, Doda!”

“Huggo uses it.”

“They’re wretched even in Huggo. But Huggo’s a boy. You’re a girl.”

“Well, mother, I didn’t ask to be a girl.”

“Doda, that’s merely silly.”

“A lot of us say it, that’s all I know.”

“Then, darling, a lot of you are silly.”

“Oh, I shall be glad when next week I go to the Fergussons. It is dull.”

Look, there she is. She’s sixteen. She’s beautiful. She’s pretty as

a picture, and she knows she is. She’s grown out of the rather early

fullness of figure that had been hers. She’s slim and tall and straight

and supple and slender as a willow wand. If she had her hair up and her

skirts lengthened (skirts then were only starting on their diminution

to the knees), she’d pass for twenty anywhere, and a twenty singularly

attractive, curiously self-possessed, strikingly suggestive in her pale

and beautiful countenance, and in an alternating sleepiness and glinting

in her eyes; strikingly suggestive of, well, strikingly suggestive

according to the predilictions and the principles of the beholder.

This was in 1917. She was beginning rather to hate school now. She

wanted to be out and doing some war work of some kind. Oh, those

sickening scarves and things they were eternally knitting, that wasn’t

war work. It was fun at first. They were fed to death with doing them

now. She didn’t much want to go into a hospital or into any of these

women’s corps. They were a jolly sight too cooped up in those things

from what she’d heard. She wanted to go into one of the Government

offices and do clerical work. Several of the school Old Girls who had

been there with her were doing that and it was the most ripping rag. Of

course you had to work, and of course it was jolly good patriotic work,

but you had a topping time in many ways. That was what she wanted to do.

Oh, mother, do let her chuck school now and get to it! Not till she was

seventeen? Well, it was sickening. Well, it was only another term, thank

goodness.

It was in the holidays--in her brief days at home of the holidays--in

which these wishes were expressed, that Rosalie found Doda was

corresponding with officers at the front.

Doda was appallingly untidy in her habits. She was out one evening to a

party--she managed to get a considerable number of parties into her dull

days at home. Rosalie, come in from Field’s, peeped into her bedroom to

find her. She had not known that Doda was going out. The bedroom cried

aloud that Doda had gone out. Drawers were open and articles of dress

hanging out of them. One drawer, no doubt stubborn in its yieldings, was

bodily out in the middle of the room. Clothes were on the floor.

Clothes strewed the bed. Powder was all over the mirror. It was as if a

whirlwind had passed through the room.

“Powder!” murmured Rosalie.

The state of the room dismayed her. The intense orderliness of her own

character forbade her ringing for a maid. She simply could not look at

untidiness like that without tidying it. She started to tidy. Doda’s box

was open. Its contents looked as if a dog had burrowed in it, throwing

up the things as he worked down. If anything was to go in, everything

must first come out. Rosalie lifted out an initial clearance.

There lay scattered beneath it quite half a dozen photographs of

officers in khaki.

There were all inscribed. “To the school kid.” “Wishing you were here.”

“With kisses.” “Till we meet.” And with slangy nicknames of the writers.

There lay with them a number of letters, all in their envelopes. There

lay also a sheet of paper covered in Doda’s bold handwriting. It began

“Wonderful Old Thing.”

Rosalie had not touched these evidences of an unknown interest in Doda’s

life. She stooped, staring upon them, the lifted bundle of clothes in

her hand. The stare that took in “Wonderful Old Thing” took in also the

first few lines. They were not nice. But she oughtn’t to read it. One

didn’t do that kind of thing. She replaced the bundle and closed the

box. Then she tidied the room and wiped the mirror.

Early next morning, immediately on coming out of her bath, she went in

to Doda. She opened the door softly and she distinctly saw the lids of

Doda’s eyes flash up and close again.

“Doda!”

Doda pretended to be asleep. Rosalie had sat up for Doda the previous

night but had said nothing to her either of her discovery or of going

to an invitation without having told her. Doda wasn’t pretending to be

asleep because she feared trouble. She was pretending to be asleep just

because she had no wish for an early talk with her mother.

There was a little pang at the heart of Rosalie.

But it was just that the child wasn’t demonstrative of her affections.

None of them were. Even Benji not really what you would call

demonstrative. How beautiful the child was! Her Doda! How little she

ever saw of her!

She called her again.

Doda opened her eyes. “Hullo, mother.”

Just that. No more. They were different, the children.

She sat down on Doda’s bed and began to talk to her. Tidiness! “Doda,

your room as you left it last night when you went out was simply

terrible. How can you?”

“Oh, I can’t be tidy,” said Doda. “I simply can’t. It’s no good trying.”

“Darling, you ought to try. It’s so odd. I’m so fearfully tidy. It’s

almost a vice with me. One would have thought you’d have had it too.”

Doda said indifferently, “I don’t see why.” She said, “Oh, I am sleepy.

It’s a matter of teaching when you’re a kid, that sort of thing. You’re

tidy, but you never taught me to be tidy.”

Rosalie said some more of encouragement to tidiness. She then said, “And

there’s another thing, Doda. I think you ought not to have rushed off

like that to the Trevors last night without telling me.”

“Mother, you knew where I was. I told the maids.”

“You should have consulted me, Doda.”

The child assumed the Huggo look. “Mother, how could I? They only asked

me on the telephone at tea-time. How could I have consulted you?”

“In the same way as you were invited. On the telephone.”

“Well, I never thought about it. Why should I if I had? I knew you’d

have agreed. You wouldn’t have stopped me, would you? It’s dull enough,

goodness knows.”

“Doda, what I’ve come in to talk about is this. When I was tidying your

room last night--”

Doda sat up. “Did you tidy my room?”

“I couldn’t possibly leave a room like that. Well, I went to tidy your

box--”

“I’ll get up,” said Doda. She jumped very quickly out of bed and put on

a wrapper and her slippers. “Yes, well?”

“Are you writing to men at the front, Doda?”

“Every girl is. It’s a thing to do. It helps them.”

“Are they friends of yours, dear? Personal friends.”

“They’re brothers of girls I’ve stayed with.”

“All?”

“Practically all. There’re not more than two or three. Lonely soldiers,

they’re called. They used to advertise. It helps them. There’s no harm

in it, is there?”

“I haven’t suggested there is, Doda.”

“I can see you’re going to, though. If you ask me--” She stopped.

“I don’t think I like the idea, quite. I never did when I heard of it

being done. Why should they send you their photographs?”

“But what’s the harm? Why shouldn’t they?”

“Darling, it’s I am asking you. I’m your mother.”

“Well, if you ask me--” Doda walked over to the window. She stood there

a moment looking out. She suddenly turned. “If you ask me, I don’t

think it’s right to--Of course if you think it right to--if you’ve been

reading my letters--”

“Doda, I haven’t. I just saw them there. But I’d like to read them,

Doda. May I?”

“They’re private letters. I don’t see how you can expect me to show you

private letters.”

Rosalie went over to Doda and stood by her and stroked her hair. “Doda,

I think we’ll look at it like this. Let me read the letters and we’ll

talk about them and see if it’s nice to go on writing to the men, in

each individual case. That certainly you shall do, continue writing,

if it all seems nice to us, together, Doda. If you won’t show them to

me--well, let us say if you’d rather not show them to me--then I’ll ask

you just to burn them and we’ll forget it.”

Doda stepped violently away from the hand that stroked her hair. “No. I

won’t show them.”

“Then it’s to burn them, Doda.”

Doda looked slowly around the room. Her face was not nice. She said

sullenly, “There’s no fire here.”

“Bring them down with you to the breakfast-room. Your father will have

gone. We’ll see Benji’s not there.”

She went to Doda and kissed her on the forehead. Doda shut her eyes. Her

hand on Doda’s shoulder could feel Doda quivering. She went to the door

and at the door said, “And the photographs, dear. I should bring them

too.”

She had long finished breakfast when at last Doda came down. The tall,

slim, beautiful and pale creature appeared in the doorway. She walked

towards the fire, her head held high, her brown hair in a thick tail to

her waist. She had a packet in her hands. As she began to stoop over the

fire she suddenly uprighted herself and turned upon her mother. She said

violently, “Perhaps you’d like to count them?”

Rosalie said very softly, “Doda!”

Doda bent to the flames and pressed the packet down upon them. She stood

watching them mount about it. A half-burnt photograph slid onto the

hearth. She gave a sound that was a catching at her breath and swiftly

stooped and snatched the burning fragment up and cast it on its fellows.

The leaping flames died down. She turned violently towards Rosalie,

seated at the table watching her, her heart sick. That tall, slim,

beautiful creature whose face had been pale and was habitually pale was

in her face crimson, her slight young bosom heaving, her eyes, so often

sleepy, flashing, her young hands clenched. “I call it a shame!” Her

voice was high and raw. “I call it a shame! I call it wicked! I call it

abominable! I call it an--an outrage!”

Rosalie said, “Doda! Doda, I haven’t reproached you. I haven’t reproved

you. If they had been letters you could have shown me, yes, then a

shame--”

The child called out, “I’m nearly seventeen! I call it an outrage!”

Rosalie got up and went to her. “Darling, they couldn’t be shown.

They’re just burnt. They’re forgotten.” She put out inviting arms. “My

poor Doda!”

That child, almost touched by her arms, brushed herself from the arms.

“Why should I have things like this done to me by you?”

“Doda, I am your mother. You have a duty--”

“Well, I won’t have a duty! Why should I have a duty? I didn’t ask to

be born, did I? You chose for me to be born, didn’t you? I didn’t choose

it. I’ll never forget this. Never, never, never!”

Tears rushed into her eyes and leapt from her eyes. She gave an

impassioned gesture. She rushed from the room.

Strike on!

Look at her. There she is. She’s only eighteen but she’s woman now.

Grown-up. “Out,” as one would have said in the old and stupid days, but

out much wider than the freest budding woman then. It’s 1919. They’ve

caught, the rising generation, the flag of liberty that the war flamed

across the world; license, the curmudgeons call it; liberty, the young

set free. It’s 1919. She’s been a year war-working in one of the huge

barracks run up all over London for the multitudes of women clerks the

Government departments needed and, the war over, not too quickly can

give up. She loves it. She’s made a host of friends. Her friends are all

the girls of wealthy parents, like herself, or of parents of position if

not of means; and all, like her, are far from with complaint against the

war that’s given them this priceless avenue away from home. She loves

it. Of course she doesn’t love the actual work. Who would? What she

loves is the constant titillation of it. The titillation of getting down

there of a morning and of the greetings and the meetings and the rapt

resumptions of the past day’s fun; the titillation of watching the clock

for lunch and of those lunches, here to-day, to-morrow there, and of the

rush to get back not too late. The titillation of watching the clock

for tea, and of tea, and then, most sharpest titillation of them all,

watching the clock for--time!; for--off!; for--out!; away! That is

the charm of it in detail. The charm in general, as once expressed to

Rosalie by one of Doda’s friends brought in to tea one Sunday is, “You

see, it gets you through the day.”

That’s it. The night’s all right. There’s nearly always something doing

for the night. It’s just the day would be so hopeless were there not

this lively way of “getting through the day.” That’s it, for Doda.

Until she found her feet--not in her office, but at home at first

emergence from her school--until she found her feet she often used to be

kept uncommonly late at office. In a very short while she found her

feet and that excuse no longer was put forward. Every girl of Doda’s

association was on her feet in 1919; and for Doda very much easier, at

that, than for the generality, to establish her position in the house.

By 1920, when she was nineteen, she was conducting her life as she

pleased, as nineteen manifestly should. In 1921, when she was twenty,

the war work was over and she was “getting through the day” much as she

lived the night. It was pretty easy to get through the day in 1921. That

which the curmudgeons called license, and liberty the free, was in 1921

held by charter and by right prescriptive.

Look at her. There she is. She’s lovelier yet, if that which was

her budding loveliness could bear a lovelier hue. She’s always out

somewhere, or she’s always off somewhere, or she’s always coming in from

somewhere. Her eyes, in presentation more pronounced, have always got

that sleepy look or got that glinting look. She never talks much at

home. She seems to keep her talking for her friends and she never

brings her friends home. She’s on good terms with Rosalie. That’s the

expression for it. She was to have been a woman treasury into which was

to be poured by Rosalie all her woman love. She was to have been a woman

with her mother in the house of Harry and of Huggo. But that’s all done.

She’s not a daughter to her mother. She never asked to be born to her

mother, as once she told her mother, and though that never now again is

said it is the basis of her stand. She owes no obligations. They just

meet. They get on very pleasantly. She’s on good terms with Rosalie.

It is odd--or else it isn’t odd but only natural--that in all the

pictures seen by Rosalie there scarcely is a picture that ever shows

the children all together. They hardly ever, within the compass of

her pictures, were together. As in their schoolhood, so much more in

adolescence, they never showed a least desire for one another’s company.

They had their friends, each one, and much preferred their friends.

You’d not, it’s true, say that of Benji; but Benji in fraternal wish had

to take what was offered him and there was nothing offered him by Doda;

by Huggo less than nothing.

Benji!

Look, here’s the Benji one; the good, the quiet, gentle one; the one

that never gave a thought of trouble, Benji.

Her Benji! The one that came after disfavour, after remorse; that came

with tears, with thank God, charged-with-meaning tears. The littlest

one. The one that was so tiny wee beside the big and sturdy others. Her

last one! Her Benji!

Look, there he is. Always so quiet, gentle, good. Always, though

snubbed, so passionately fond of Doda. Look, there he is. He’s at

Milchester, in his spectacles, the darling! He’s always in his books. He

isn’t good at games. He does so well at school. Oh, isn’t Harry proud of

him and fond of him! Oh, doesn’t Harry often sigh and wish he could

have gone to Tidborough to win those prizes and those honours there. But

Tidborough’s closed to Harry, Harry says. Look, there goes Benji! It’s

1919. He’s sixteen. It’s Speech Day at Milchester. He’s in the Sixth.

He’s won all those prizes. She’s holding two and Harry’s holding three,

and there he goes to take the Heriot Gold Medal. All the great hall is

simply cheering Benji! The Head is saying that he’s the youngest boy

that’s ever won the Heriot. Look, there’s the Bishop handing it, and

shaking Benji by the hand, and patting Benji on the back, and saying

something to him. You can’t possibly hear what it is, every one is

cheering so. Look, here he comes with the medal, in his spectacles, the

darling! She can scarcely see, her eyes are brimming so. Harry’s quite

shameless. Harry’s got tears standing on his cheeks and he’s set down

the prizes and is stretching both his hands out to the boy. Feel, that’s

his hand--her Benji’s hand--snuggled a moment in hers, and then he turns

to his father and is eagerly whispering to his father, his spectacles

rubbing his father’s head, the darling! He’s more demonstrative to his

father than he is to her. She feels it rather sometimes. He’s awfully

sweet to her, but, you can’t help noticing it, it’s more his gracious

manner than the outpouring she’d give anything to have. It’s funny how

he always seems the tiniest atom strange with her as if he didn’t

know her very well or hadn’t known her very long. It sometimes pains a

little. He’s different with his father. He loves being with his father.

And doesn’t Harry love having the boy with him! Harry idolises the boy.

Of course Huggo is Harry’s eldest, and whatever Huggo’s disappointments,

these men--at least these perfect Harry type of men--have for their

eldest boy within their hearts a place no other child can quite exactly

fill. There’s some especial yearning that the eldest seems to call.

There’s some incorporation of the father’s self, there’s some reflection

that he sees, there’s some communion that he seems to find, that makes

“My eldest son” a thing apart. But, with that reservation, and that’s

ingrained in men, it’s Benji that’s the world to Harry. He’s going to

Ox-ford. He’s going to have the Bar career that Huggo wouldn’t take. But

Harry thinks there’s some especial wonders going to come to Benji. He

says the boy’s a dreamer. He says the boy’s a thinker. “Benji’s got

something rare about him, Rosalie,” he says. “That boy’s got a mark on

him that genius has. You wait and see, old lady. It’s Benji’s going to

make the old name shine!” Strike on!

It is odd, sad, significant, that there is scarcely a picture that shows

together those three children, or even two of them. It’s 1921 now and

drawing very close to Finis; but always the old detachment, the seeming

want of mutual love, appears to hold the three apart. Doda is sometimes

glimpsed, no more, with Benji, always putting off or chilling off her

brother for her friends; sometimes she’s seen with Huggo, meeting him

and he her, more like an acquaintance of their sets than like fruit

of the same parents; familiar, apparently, with one another’s lives:

referring to places of amusement by both frequented, as had been done,

in instance, on that night of Huggo’s announcement of his marriage when

with a note that rung sinister he had bantered Doda and she had turned

and run upstairs. But no more than that. The children seem to have no

mutual love. They’re different.

It’s 1921. Huggo was scarcely ever seen now. He had married in haste and

had in haste repented. He also had played a trick, involving a sum of

money, on his father. His wife, as it appeared, had been met at some

dancing club and the brief courtship had continued anywhere but at her

home. Of her home Huggo knew only what she told him; and what she

told him was only what she could invent. She was then, at their first

meeting, in the uniform of a war service corps to which she belonged.

She said her father was a clergyman.

“A clergyman’s daughter!” cried Huggo bitterly, acquainting Rosalie

only three months after his marriage of his marriage’s failure. “A

clergyman’s daughter! That’s what they all say--those! Wasn’t I a fool

to be caught out by that! Oh, wasn’t I a fool! If you want to know what

she really was, she was a teashop waitress, in the city somewhere. If

you want to know what her reverend father in the country was, is, he

doesn’t live in the country; he lives in Holloway, and he doesn’t live

in a rectory in Holloway, he lives in a baker’s shop. That’s what he is,

a baker! That’s what I’ve done for myself, married a waitress! Yes, and

then you, you and father, when she comes whining here and complains I

ill-treat her and keep her without money, you two take her part and send

her back to me with your championship and get me here to pijaw me about

my duty to my pretty young wife! Well, now you know, now you know, and

you can tell father what my pretty young wife is--how she deceived me.

Deceived me! Now you know.”

Rosalie said, “Huggo, you deceived her.”

Huggo had been leaving and now very violently went. “That’s your tone,

is it? I might have known! That’s all you can say, is it? To see me ruin

my life and then reproach me! Ruin my life! It’s not I that’s ruined

my life. It’s you. There, now I’ve told you! I can see things now. What

sort of a chance have I ever had? What sort of a home have I ever had?

Have I ever had a mother? When I was a kid did I ever have a mother like

other kids have? I can see things now. A mother! I can’t ever remember a

time when I wasn’t in the charge of some servant or governess or other.

You said this afternoon before father that I didn’t love you. Did

you ever teach me to love you? By God, I can’t remember it. By God, I

can’t.”

Strike on!

Also that trick, touching a sum of money, upon his father. When he first

made known his marriage, and it was obvious he must have his way and be

set up to start in life, he had also, as he had said, the chance of a

lucrative business. It was the kind of thing he liked. It was the kind

of thing he was keen on. It was a motor-car business. There was a little

syndicate that was putting a new car on the market. They’d got works,

just outside London somewhere. They’d got show-rooms in the West End.

And they’d got an absolutely first-class article. That chap Telfer was

one of the directors; a first-class chap called Turner was another;

they’d let him in for eight thousand pounds and he’d be absolutely set

up for life and be pulling in an immense fortune in no time. You will,

won’t you, father?

Of course Harry forgave the boy, his eldest son. The marriage was done,

what was the use of being unkind or stupid about it? Of course Rosalie

welcomed the wife, Lucy, the prettiest creature, a tiny shade common,

perhaps, but a sweet little soul with always about her a pathetic air of

being afraid of something (of when it should come out precisely what she

was, as the event proved). Of course Harry paid over the eight thousand

pounds. Huggo took, “to start with,” as he said, a tiny furnished flat

in Bayswater. Rosalie installed him and his bride therein and left him,

on their first night there, ever so gay, so confident, so happy. Her

Huggo!

In two months it all came out. Lawyers are notoriously lax in making

their own wills. Harry, who could master a case quicker than any man at

the Bar, and could see to the soul and beyond it of a hostile witness a

minute after getting on his feet to cross-examine, was fooled blind by

the syndicate that was going to put the absolutely first-class article

on the market. Whether it was that there never had been a business, and

that Harry’s inspection of works, visits to show-rooms, and examination

of books, was all part of an elaborate swindle carried out with the aid

of some one who possessed these accessories; or whether it was that the

whole thing was bought up cheap merely to sell at a profit, was never

clearly known to Harry and to Rosalie. Harry was too grieved to pursue

the shock. “I’ll take not a step further in the matter, Rosalie,” Harry

said. “I can’t bear to find the boy out deeper. It’s done. There’s no

sense in being stupid or unkind about it.”

What happened was that the car enterprise never was an enterprise at all

except an enterprise to get eight thousand pounds into the possession

of the syndicate. Nothing ever was properly announced by Huggo. It just

“came out.” It “came out” that the syndicate was not established in the

West End show-rooms but in three rather dingy offices in the city. It

“came out” that the syndicate was not running a motor-car business but

a business cryptically described as “Agents.” Huggo said disaster had

overtaken the car enterprise and that the syndicate, rescuing what

remained of the smash, had pluckily set up on another line. He thought

he could scrape along. It was a knockout of course, but he thought he

could scrape along.

“But what I can’t make out, old man,” said Harry, when Huggo had

stumbled through an entirely non-explanatory explanation of the

syndicate’s business in its new capacity as agents, “What I can’t

make out, old man, is why you should trade under another name. Why,

‘So-and-So, and So-and-So, and So-and-So, Agents’--I can’t ever remember

the names? Why not ‘Telfer, Occleve and Turner’?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, father--I want you to know everything

without any concealment--”

“I know you do, old man. I know you do.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, that’s just a bit of useful swank. The names

we’re trading under are swagger names and we think it sounds better.”

“Occleve sounds pretty good to me, Huggo. We’ve been a good long way on

Occleve, the Occleves.”

“Well, that’s what they think, father, and of course, as I’ve told you,

they know infinitely more about business than I do. They’ll explain the

whole thing to you any time you like. It’s all absolutely above-board,

father.”

“My dearest old boy, don’t talk like that. Of course it is. We’re only

so grieved, your mother and I, that you should have had such a setback

so early. But remember, old man, the great thing is not to let your wife

suffer. No pinching or screwing for her, Huggo. Always your wife first,

Huggo. We’ll give you at the rate of three hundred a year just until

all’s going swimmingly, and that’s to keep Lucy merry and bright, see?”

It was shortly after that it all came out that the thing was a ramp, the

motor-car business never in existence; shortly after that it came out

Huggo was neglecting his wife; shortly after that the high words to

Rosalie, telling her how his wife had deceived him; shortly after that

that the syndicate, amazingly prosperous, moved into offices better

situated and handsomely appointed; shortly after that it came out that

the business of the syndicate was in some way connected with company

promotion.

Harry, seen among these developments, was not the man he used to be.

He was at the crest of his career at the Bar, working enormously and

earning richly, but the old bright, cheery way had gone from Harry.

There was permanently upon his face, and there was intensified, the

beaten look that Rosalie first had seen on that night, in the war, when

there had been the Huggo drinking business and when for the first and

only time he had spoken passionately to Rosalie. When he now was at

home he used to sit for long periods doing nothing, just thinking. When

sometimes, home earlier than he, Rosalie saw him coming up the street

towards the gamboge door she noticed, terribly, the bowed shoulders,

the weary gait, the set, careworn face. She used to run down then to the

famous gamboge door and open it and greet him and his face used to light

up in the old way, but it was not the same face, and the effect of its

radiation therefore not the same. It was not that the face was older. It

was that its aspect was changed.

He used to look up from that chair where he sat just thinking, when

Doda, butterflied for the evening, butterflied across the room, and used

to say, “Out again, Doda?” He then would relapse back into his thoughts.

He had a habit of getting up suddenly and rather strangely wandering

about from room to room of all the principal rooms of the house, just

standing at the door of each, and looking in (they were all empty of

inhabitants), and then coming back and sitting again in the chair and

just sit, thinking.

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

She said more than once when he returned from such a tour, “Dear Harry,

looking for anything?”

He’d say rather heavily, “No; no, dear. Just having a look around.”

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

But he used to be enormously brightened up when Benji came home. Benji

was just at Oxford then, eighteen. He was a different man when Benji was

at home. He used to say, “Rosalie, that boy’s going to make a name for

himself in the world. My heart’s wrapped round that boy, Rosalie. Ay,

me! I wish he’d been our eldest, Rosalie.”

That was because he couldn’t tear away the wrappings of his heart from

about his eldest. Men can’t.

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

Of course, with everything now known, Huggo was forgiven. Huggo was

prosperous now, almost aggressively prosperous. He kept a car. The

syndicate, whatever it actually did, was obviously doing enormously

well. What was the good of being stupid and unkind to the boy now that,

at last, he had found his feet? But Huggo scarcely ever came to the

house. He had virtually left Lucy. Lucy lived on in the originally-taken

furnished flat in Bayswater. Huggo had rooms somewhere, no one quite

knew where, and lived there. Rosalie used to get Lucy to the house

sometimes, but Lucy was never at her ease on these visits, and Doda, who

sympathized entirely with Huggo in the matter, very much disliked her

and would not meet her. Lucy was in bad health and she was going to have

a baby. Her health and her condition made her look much more common than

she used to look.

Then the baby was born; a little girl. Poor, grateful Lucy called it

Rosalie. She told Rosalie that Huggo said he didn’t care what the baby

was called. He was very angry about the baby. “He was worse than usual

when he was here last week,” said Lucy. “I think he’s got something on

his mind. I think he’s worrying about something. Oh, he was sharp.”

Lucy was very ill with the birth of her baby. She didn’t seem able to

pick up again from her confinement. She kept her bed. Then, suddenly,

she developed pneumonia. The maternity nurse, paid by Rosalie, was still

in attendance. Rosalie sent in another nurse, and on that same night,

going straight to the sick bed from Field’s, and then coming home very

late, told Harry, who was waiting up for her, that the worst was feared

for Lucy. She then said, “Harry, if anything happens, I think we’ll have

that baby here. It will practically be a case of adopting the child.”

Harry agreed.

“I’d get in a nurse for her, the new little Rosalie.” She sighed.

“Yes, yes,” said Harry.

She said after a little, “Harry, the nurseries in use again!”

He sat there as he was always sitting, thinking.

She went over to him. “Dear, won’t you like the nurseries to be in use

again?”

He said slowly, “I will, very much, Rosalie. It’s lonely, these empty

rooms. I will very much--in some ways.”

Rosalie knew what Harry meant. She touched his hand. “Dear, I think it

can be made different.”

Harry knew what Rosalie meant. He pressed the hand that touched his own.

“That’s all right, Rosalie. That’s all right, dearest.”

Rosalie was down early next morning. She desired an early breakfast and

to go on to see Lucy before Field’s. It might be necessary to stay the

day with Lucy. There was also Huggo. What was Huggo doing? Overnight

Rosalie had seen Doda, come in late from an evening with a very intimate

friend of hers always known, through some private joke of Doda’s, as

“the foreign friend.” The foreign friend, not in the least foreign but

English, was a young married woman living apart from her husband. Doda

had brought her to the house once. She was very pretty and a cheery

soul. She would have been called fast when Rosalie was a girl. In 1921

she would almost, in the manner she presented to Rosalie, have been

called slow. Doda and she were greatly attached.

Doda, overnight, going straight upstairs to bed, had said, “Have you

seen Huggo to-day? He’s in a scrape of some sort.”

“Oh, Doda, what kind of a scrape?”

“He didn’t tell me. I ran into him quite by chance coming away from a

theatre with the foreign friend. We both thought he was rather badly

rattled.”

“Was he going on to Lucy? Did he know Lucy was very ill indeed?”

Doda said, “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. Is she?” and indifferently

passed upstairs.

Rosalie at her early breakfast was thinking what news the day would

give of Lucy and of Huggo. She was suddenly, by Huggo in person, brought

intelligence of both. She heard the door bell ring and in a minute Huggo

surprisingly broke into the room. He had kept his hat on. He looked

white, drawn and very agitated. He shut the door behind him. “Lucy’s

dead.”

Tears sprang into the eyes of Rosalie, “Oh, my poor Huggo!”

He made a gesture. “Oh, that’s no good! Look here, mother, will you look

after things over there for me? That’s all I’ve come in to say. Will you

see to everything and will you take the kid? I can’t stop.”

He made to go.

“Huggo, of course I will. But you’ll be there? Are you going there now?”

“I’m not. I’m going away.”

“Going away?”

His hand was on the door. “Yes, going away. Look here, there’s another

thing. If any one comes here for me will you say you haven’t seen me?

It’s important. It’s vital.”

“Huggo, what is the matter?”

“You’ll jolly soon know. You may as well know now. Then you’ll realise.

If you want to know--the police are after me.”

He was gone.

CHAPTER V

In the Book of Job it all happened, to Job, in the apparent compass

of one piece of time not broken by diurnal intervals, not mitigated by

recuperative cessations between blow and blow. It seemed to Rosalie that

it was like that it happened also to her. There seemed no interval. It

seemed to her wrath on wrath, visitation upon visitation, judgment upon

judgment.

It seemed to her that she was no sooner come down out of the Old

Bailey--her hand touching at things for support, her vision vertiginous,

causing the solid ground to be in motion, her ears resonant, crying

through her brain the words she saw in Huggo’s look as they removed him;

it seemed to her she was no sooner out from there than she was at the

telephone and summoned by the foreign friend and was there with Doda and

was in process of “Oh, Doda!”--“Oh, mother!”; it seemed to her she was

no sooner out from that than she was with that burly messenger, going

with him, returning from him. There were days and nights walled up in

weeks and months between these things, but that is how they seemed to

Rosalie.

The syndicate was laid by the heels, one here, one there, Huggo in

France, very shortly after the warning that had put Huggo in flight.

The syndicate went through the police court where was unfolded a story

sensational with surprising sums of money, captivating with ingenuity of

fraud covered up by fraud to help new fraud again. The syndicate stood

in the dock at the Old Bailey. Those two of the syndicate described by

the prosecution and by the judge as the principals were sentenced to

three years’ penal servitude. “You,” said the judge, addressing with

a new note in his voice the third prisoner, “You, Occleve, stand in a

different--”

Rosalie began to pray.

Harry would not attend the trial. He had done all that could be done,

and of his position there was very much that he was able to do, and had

attended the police court during the initial proceedings. He would not

go to the Old Bailey. He would not go out. He would not read the papers.

He used to sit about the house. “My son a felon.... My boy a felon. My

son.... My eldest son....”

Rosalie was given a seat in the floor of the court on the first days of

the hearing. On the day when the verdict was to be given and sentence

passed she could not bear that. An usher, much pitying, obtained her a

place in the gallery. She looked down immediately upon her Huggo. Her

hands, upon the ledge before her, were all the time clasped. Her eyes

alternately were in her hands and on her Huggo. Her heart moved between

her Huggo and her God.

“You, Occleve, stand in a different position. . . .”

She began to pray. All of her being, all of her soul, all of her life,

with a spiritual and a physical intensity transcending all that her body

and her mind had ever known, was in apotheosis of supplication. “O God

the Father! O God the Father! O God the Father!”

Her Huggo! Those words that only in snatches she heard were being

addressed to her Huggo.

“... Your counsel has most eloquently pleaded for you.... You bear an

honoured name.... You bear a name held in these precincts in honour, in

esteem, in love, in admiration.... You have had a good home, a great and

a noble father, a distinguished and devoted mother....”

That suppliant crouched lower in her supplication.

“... You have been the dupe, you have been the tool, you have been

in large part, as your counsel has pleaded, and as I believe, the

unsuspecting agent.... Nevertheless, the least sentence I can pass on

you--”

“O God the Father, the Father!”

“... is six months’ imprisonment.”

That boy, whose head had been hung and eyes downcast, lifted his head

and raised his eyes and gave one look into the eyes of that suppliant

for him that sat above him. There was recalled by that suppliant a look

that had passed from the place of accusation to the place of assembly in

the place called the Sanhedrin.

Her Huggo!

They took him away.

Doda didn’t stop going out. She seemed to go out more. The pain within

that house, brought there by Huggo, seemed to make that house more than

before unbearable to Doda. She often spent the night, or the week end

away, staying with the foreign friend, she generally said. She would

have nothing whatever to do with the baby now installed in the house.

She never would go near it. Once she passed it in the hall in its

perambulator. She stopped and stooped over the face of lovely innocence

that lay there and gazed upon it with an extraordinary intensity. She

drew back with a sharp catch at her breath and sharply stepped away and

turned and ran very quickly upstairs. After that when she chanced to

pass the child, she turned aside and would not look upon the child. She

began not to look well, Rosalie thought. There often was upon her

lovely face a pinched and drawn expression, disfiguring it. On the rare

occasions when she was in to dinner she sat strangely moody. There only

was a moodiness about that table then; but the moodiness of Doda was

noticeable to Rosalie. She ate hardly at all. She sometimes would get up

suddenly before a meal was ended and go away, generally to her own room.

Very many times Rosalie would seek anxiously to question her, but apart

from the independence which commonly she maintained towards Rosalie,

Doda seemed very much to resent solicitude upon her health. “What should

be the matter? I look perfectly well, don’t I?”

“Doda, you don’t. I’ve noticed it a long time.”

“Well, I am perfectly well. If I wasn’t I’d say so.”

Strike on!

Rosalie was called up on the telephone by the foreign friend. It was the

evening, about ten o’clock. Doda was away for a week at Brighton with

the foreign friend. She was due back to-morrow. Harry was out with

Benji. Benji was nineteen then and was home on vacation from Oxford.

Harry never could bear Benji out of his sight when Benji was home. In

the affliction that had come upon them, he seemed to cling to Benji.

Rosalie had persuaded him that evening to go with Benji to a concert.

Harry said the idea of anything like that was detestable to him,

but Rosalie had pleaded with him. Just a little chamber concert was

different. It would do him so much good to have an evening away and to

hear a little music and Benji would love it. Harry allowed himself to be

persuaded and went off arm-in-arm with Benji. He always put his arm in

Benji’s when he walked with Benji.

Rosalie was waiting for them when the telephone bell rang and she was

spoken to by the foreign friend.

It then happened like this.

The voice of the foreign friend was very alarmingly urgent. “Would she

come and see Doda at once, at once, at once?”

The voice struck a chill to the heart of Rosalie. “But where are you?

You’re at Brighton, aren’t you? Are you speaking from Brighton?”

“No, no. At my flat. At my flat.”

“But what is it? What is it? Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

“It’s an--it’s an--.” The voice stammered and hesitated.

“Oh, speak! Oh, speak.”

She could hear the voice gulping.

“Oh, please do speak!”

“Doda isn’t very well. Doda’s very ill. It’s an--it’s an accident.”

“I’ll come. I’ll come.”

“Is Mr. Occleve there?”

“He isn’t. He’s out.”

“Can you get him?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I can’t think. Oh, tell me. Tell me.”

“Will you leave a message for him to come at once?”

“At once. At once.”

She wrote a message for Harry and she picked up a wrap and she ran out

hatless to find a cab.

She found a cab and went to Doda.

This all happened as quickly as bewilderingly. It was not like a

dream, and it was not like a nightmare. It was like a kind of trance to

Rosalie.

The foreign friend was not seen at the flat. She was in some other room

and did not appear. She said afterwards, and proved, that she had been

away the previous night, leaving Doda at the flat, and had returned

to find her--as she was found; and had immediately called the nearest

doctor and then Doda’s mother.

It was the doctor that opened the door to Rosalie. He was a Scotchman; a

big and rugged man, all lines and whiskers and with a rugged accent.

He said, “You’rre her mother, arren’t ye? Where’s her father?”

“He’s coming. Where is my child?”

The doctor jerked his head towards a wall. “She’s yon.”

“Tell me, please.”

He pushed a chair towards her but she shook her head. “Please tell me.”

“Ye’ll want your courage.” He again indicated the chair. She again shook

her head. “It’ll try ye. She’s dying.”

The lips of Rosalie formed the words: “Tell me.” There was no sound in

her.

The doctor said, “I cannot tell ye. It is for your husband to hear.”

The heart of Rosalie stood still. She put both her hands upon her heart

and she said to the doctor, “Tell me. I am strong.”

The doctor looked upon Rosalie intently and he said: (he was perhaps

dexterously giving her time that she might weld herself) he said, “Ye’ll

need be strong. Ye look sensible. Ye’ll need be sensible.” He said,

“There’s been before me here another--There’s been a creature here

before me. There’s been blackguarrd work here. There’s been--that poor

child there...” He told her.

She moaned: “O God, be merciful!”

That child, as that night went, was in delirium. She seemed to lie upon

a bed. She lay, in fact, upon the altar of her gods, of self, of what

is vain, of liberty undisciplined, of restless itch for pleasure, and of

the gods of Rosalie, a piteous sacrifice to them. You that have tears to

shed prepare to shed them now. Or if you have no tears, but for emotion

only sneers, do stop and put the thing away. It is intolerable to think

to have beside that bed, beside that child, beside that Rosalie, your

sneers. It’s not for you, and you do but exacerbate the frightful pain

there’s been in feeling it with them.

Rosalie was all night with that child. Harry was there upon the other

side upon his knees and never raised his head. Benji was there that

loved his sister so. Across the unblinded window strove a moon that

fought with mass on mass of fierce, submerging clouds as it might be a

soul that rose through infinite calamity to God. That child was in much

torment. That child was in delirium and often cried aloud. That child

burned with a fever, incredible, at touch of her poor flesh, to think

that human flesh such flame could hold and not incinerate. That child in

her delirium moaned often names and sometimes cried them out. Nicknames

that in the sexless jargon of her day and of her kind might have been

names of women and might be names of men. Darkie, Topsy, Skipper,

Kitten, Bluey, Tip, Bill, Kid. Names, sometimes, more familiar. Once

Huggo; once father; once loud and very piteously, “Benji, Benji, Benji,

Benji, Benji!”

She never once said mother.

She calmed and a long space was mute. The moon, its duress passed, stood

high, serene, alone. The doctor breathed, “She’s passing.” That child

raised her lids and her eyes looked out upon her watchers.

Rosalie cried, “Oh, Doda!”

That child sighed. “Oh, mother!”

There was no note of love. There was of tenderness no note. There only

was in that child’s sigh a deathly weariness. “Oh, mother!” That child

passed out.

They came home in the very early morning. Rosalie was in her working

room. She had some things to do. She wrote to Mr. Field a letter of her

resignation from Field’s Bank. She only wrote two lines. They ended,

“This is Final. I have done.”

She sealed that letter and she moved about the room unlaying and as she

unlaid, destroying, all evidences, all treasures, all landmarks, all

that in any way referred to or touched upon her working life. There were

cherished letters, there were treasured papers. She destroyed them

all. From one bundle, not touched for years, dust-covered and

time-discoloured, there came out a battered volume. She turned it over.

“Lombard Street.” She opened it and saw the eager underlinings and saw

the eager margin notes, and ghosts... (it’s written earlier in these

pages). She rent the book across its perished cover and pressed it on

the fire and on to the flames in the fire. “I have done.”

But she was not done with and she had the feeling that she was not done

with. She said to Harry, “This is not the children’s tragedy. This is

my tragedy. These were not the children’s faults. These were my

transgressions. Life is sacrifice. I never sacrificed. Sacrifice is

atonement. It now is not possible for me to atone.”

She was on her knees beside his chair. He stroked her hair.

There was an inquest. Harry went. She stayed at home and Benji stayed

with her to be with her. Benji was not to be consoled. His mood was very

dreadful. A report was printed in the evening paper before Harry came

home. Benji read it and told Rosalie a witness, a man, had been arrested

on the coroner’s warrant. Benji said, “I think I’ll go out now, mother,

for a little.”

Later in the afternoon when Rosalie was with Harry a maid came into the

room and looked at Harry and saw how sunk he was in his chair and so

went to Rosalie and whispered to her. Rosalie went out. There was a man

wished to see the master. Rosalie spoke to him. He was a large, burly

man with a strong face. He looked like, and was, a police officer in

plain clothes. Rosalie heard what he began to say and said she would go

with him. In the cab, the man told her about it. All his sentences began

with or contained “The young gentleman.”

“The young gentleman... the prisoner, when the young gentleman

came rushing in, happened to be in the charge-room writing out a

statement.... The young gentleman, before any one could stop him, rushed

at this prisoner and caught him by the throat and threw him and the

table over and banged the man’s head against the floor, fair trying to

kill him. They got the young gentleman off. They ought to have arrested

the young gentleman, and they did most earnestly wish they had of

arrested him, and blamed themselves properly that they didn’t arrest

him. But they felt cruelly sorry for the young gentleman and they got

him outside and let him go and no more said. Of course, as madam

knew, the police office wasn’t very far from Gower Street station, the

underground station with them steep stairs leading straight down from

the street to the platform, as madam might be aware.... The young

gentleman was seen by witnesses, whose names were took, to come rushing

down these stairs on to the platform as if some one was after him....

The young gentleman come rushing down and there was a train just coming

in, and whether he couldn’t stop or whether he.... There’s some say

one thing and some say the other.... Whichever way it was the young

gentleman....”

Rosalie did her errand with the man and then came back to Harry. She had

to tell Harry.

He was sitting in his chair. He had an open book on his knees. She saw,

as one notices these things, it was a Shakespeare. She stood up there at

the door before him and she said, “Harry--Benji!”

He saw it in her face.

He groaned.

He took the book off his knees and fumbled it, and with a groaning

mutter dropped it: “‘Unarm, Eros, the long day’s work is done.’”

She came to him and saw, as one sees things, above his head the picture

he had hung when raven was his hair and radiant his face, and had hit

his thumb, and jumped, and cried out, “Mice and Mumps!” and had laughed

and wrung his hands, and cried out, “Mice and Mumps!” and laughed again.

She came to him and saw him wilt and crumple in his chair, and could

have sworn she saw the iron of his head, that had been raven, go grey

anew and greyer yet. She came to him and she said, “Harry--Benji--an

accident--not an accident--on the railway--killed.”

His voice went, not exclamatorily, but in a thick mutter, as one agrope,

in sudden darkness, befogged, betrayed. “My God, my God, my God, my God,

my God!”

She fell on her knees; and on her arms and on his lap she buried then

her face.

He suddenly stooped to her, and caught his arms about her, and raised

her to him, and pressed his face to hers, and held her there; and his

cry was as once before, passionately holding her, his cry had been; then

from his heart to her heart, now from the abysses of his soul to her

soul’s depths, “Rosalie! Rosalie!”

POSTSCRIPT.

There was to have been some more of it; but there, they’re in each

other’s arms, and one has suffered so with them one cannot any more go

on. One’s suffered so! One has looked backward with her. The heart must

break but for a forward glimpse:--

They’re all right now. Huggo’s in Canada. He writes every week. They’re

all right now. That other Rosalie that they brought in is looking after

them. She’s looking after them, that elf, that sprite, that tricksy

scrap, that sunshine thing. She calls Harry father and Rosalie she

calls mother. She has all her meals with them. There’s no nurse.

It’s breakfast she loves best. She’s on the itch all breakfast. When

breakfast’s done she’s off her chair and hopping. She trumpets in

her tiny voice, “Lessons! Lessons!” She trumpets in her tiny voice,

“Lessons, lessons! On mother’s knee! On mother’s knee!”

THE END