"You said I was to come and wake you," said Minta, drawing up the blind;

"but I don't believe you're a bit fit to be going about. Here's some hot

water, and there's a letter just come."

Marcella woke with a start, Minta put the letter on her knee, and dream

and reality flowed together as she saw her own name in Wharton's

handwriting.

She read the letter, then sat flushed and thinking for a while with her

hands on her knees.

A little while later she opened the Hurds' front-door.

"Minta, I am going now. I shall be back early after supper, for I

haven't written my report."

"There--now you look something like!" said Minta, scanning her

approvingly--the wide hat and pretty black dress. "Shall Daisy run out

with that telegram?"

"No, thanks. I shall pass the post. Good-bye."

And she stooped and kissed the little withered woman. She wished,

ardently wished, that Minta would be more truly friends with her!

After a brisk walk through the June evening she stopped--still within

the same district--at the door of a house in a long, old-fashioned

street, wherein the builder was busy on either hand, since most of the

long leases had just fallen in. But the house she entered was still

untouched. She climbed a last-century staircase, adorned with panels of

stucco work--slender Italianate reliefs of wreaths, ribbons, and

medallions on a pale green ground. The decoration was clean and cared

for, the house in good order. Eighty years ago it was the home of a

famous judge, who entertained in its rooms the legal and literary

celebrities of his day. Now it was let out to professional people in

lodgings or unfurnished rooms. Edward Hallin and his sister occupied the

top floor.

Miss Hallin, a pleasant-looking, plain woman of about thirty-five, came

at once in answer to Marcella's knock, and greeted her affectionately.

Edward Hallin sprang up from a table at the further end of the room.

"You are so late! Alice and I had made up our minds you had forgotten

us!"

"I didn't get home till four, and then I had to have a sleep," she

explained, half shyly.

"What! you haven't been night-nursing?"

"Yes, for once."

"Alice, tell them to bring up supper, and let's look after her."

He wheeled round a comfortable chair to the open window--the charming

circular bow of last-century design, which filled up the end of the room

and gave it character. The window looked out on a quiet line of back

gardens, such as may still be seen in Bloomsbury, with fine plane trees

here and there just coming into full leaf; and beyond them the backs of

another line of houses in a distant square, with pleasant irregularities

of old brickwork and tiled roof. The mottled trunks of the planes, their

blackened twigs and branches, their thin, beautiful leaves, the forms of

the houses beyond, rose in a charming medley of line against the blue

and peaceful sky. No near sound was to be heard, only the distant murmur

that no Londoner escapes; and some of the British Museum pigeons were

sunning themselves on the garden-wall below.

Within, the Hallins' room was spacious and barely furnished. The walls,

indeed, were crowded with books, and broken, where the books ceased, by

photographs of Italy and Greece; but of furniture proper there seemed to

be little beside Hallin's large writing-table facing the window, and a

few chairs, placed on the blue drugget which brother and sister had

chosen with a certain anxiety, dreading secretly lest it should be a

piece of self-indulgence to buy what pleased them both so much. On one

side of the fireplace was Miss Hallin's particular corner; her chair,

the table that held her few special books, her work-basket, with its

knitting, her accounts. There, in the intervals of many activities, she

sat and worked or read, always cheerful and busy, and always watching

over her brother.

"I wish," said Hallin, with some discontent, when Marcella had settled

herself, "that we were going to be alone to-night; that would have

rested you more."

"Why, who is coming?" said Marcella, a little flatly. She had certainly

hoped to find them alone.

"Your old friend, Frank Leven, is coming to supper. When he heard you

were to be here he vowed that nothing could or should keep him away.

Then, after supper, one or two people asked if they might come in. There

are some anxious things going on."

He leant his head on his hand for a moment with a sigh, then forcibly

wrenched himself from what were evidently recurrent thoughts.

"Do tell me some more of what you are doing!" he said, bending forward

to her. "You don't know how much I have thought of what you have told me

already."

"I'm doing just the same," she said, laughing. "Don't take so much

interest in it. It's the fashion just now to admire nurses; but it's

ridiculous. We do our work like other people--sometimes badly, sometimes

well. And some of us wouldn't do it if we could help it."

She threw out the last words with a certain vehemence, as though eager

to get away from any sentimentalism about herself. Hallin studied her

kindly.

"Is this miscellaneous work a relief to you after hospital?" he asked.

"For the present. It is more exciting, and one sees more character. But

there are drawbacks. In hospital everything was settled for you--every

hour was full, and there were always orders to follow. And the 'off'

times were no trouble--I never did anything else but walk up and down

the Embankment if it was fine, or go to the National Gallery if it was

wet."

"And it was the monotony you liked?"

She made a sign of assent.

"Strange!" said Hallin, "who could ever have foreseen it?"

She flushed.

"You might have foreseen it, I think," she said, not without a little

impatience. "But I didn't like it all at once. I hated a great deal of

it. If they had let me alone all the time to scrub and polish and

wash--the things they set me to at first--I thought I should have been

quite happy. To see my table full of glasses without a spot, and my

brass-taps shining, made me as proud as a peacock! But then of course I

had to learn the real work, and that was very odd at first."

"How? Morally?"

She nodded, laughing at her own remembrances. "Yes--it seemed to me all

topsy-turvy. I thought the Sister at the head of the ward rather a

stupid person. If I had seen her at Mellor I shouldn't have spoken two

words to her. And here she was ordering me about--rating me as I had

never rated a house-maid--laughing at me for not knowing this or that,

and generally making me feel that a raw probationer was one of the

things of least account in the whole universe. I knew perfectly well

that she had said to herself, 'Now then I must take that proud girl down

a peg, or she will be no use to anybody;' and I had somehow to put up

with it."

"Drastic!" said Hallin, laughing; "did you comfort yourself by

reflecting that it was everybody's fate?"

Her lip twitched with amusement.

"Not for a long time. I used to have the most absurd ideas!--sometimes

looking back I can hardly believe it--perhaps it was partly a queer

state of nerves. When I was at school and got in a passion I used to try

and overawe the girls by shaking my Speaker great-uncle in their faces.

And so in hospital; it would flash across me sometimes in a plaintive

sort of way that they _couldn't_ know that I was Miss Boyce of Mellor,

and had been mothering and ruling the whole of my father's village--or

they wouldn't treat me so. Mercifully I held my tongue. But one day it

came to a crisis. I had had to get things ready for an operation, and

had done very well. Dr. Marshall had paid me even a little compliment

all to myself. But then afterwards the patient was some time in coming

to, and there had to be hot-water bottles. I had them ready of course;

but they were too hot, and in my zeal and nervousness I burnt the

patient's elbow in two places. Oh! the _fuss_, and the scolding, and the

humiliation! When I left the ward that evening I thought I would go home

next day."

"But you didn't?"

"If I could have sat down and thought it out, I should probably have

gone. But I couldn't think it out--I was too _dead_ tired. That is the

chief feature of your first months in hospital--the utter helpless

fatigue at night. You go to bed aching and you wake up aching. If you

are healthy as I was, it doesn't hurt you; but, when your time comes to

sleep, sleep you _must_. Even that miserable night my head was no sooner

on the pillow than I was asleep; and next morning there was all the

routine as usual, and the dread of being a minute late on duty. Then

when I got into the ward the Sister looked at me rather queerly and went

out of her way to be kind to me. Oh! I was so grateful to her! I could

have brushed her boots or done any other menial service for her with

delight. And--then--somehow I pulled through. The enormous interest of

the work seized me--I grew ambitious--they pushed me on

rapidly--everybody seemed suddenly to become my friend instead of my

enemy--and I ended by thinking the hospital the most fascinating and

engrossing place in the whole world."

"A curious experience," said Hallin. "I suppose you had never obeyed any

one in your life before?"

"Not since I was at school--and then--not much!"

Hallin glanced at her as she lay back in her chair. How richly human the

face had grown! It was as forcible as ever in expression and colour, but

that look which had often repelled him in his first acquaintance with

her, as of a hard speculative eagerness more like the ardent boy than

the woman, had very much disappeared. It seemed to him absorbed in

something new--something sad and yet benignant, informed with all the

pathos and the pain of growth.

"How long have you been at work to-day?" he asked her.

"I went at eleven last night. I came away at four this afternoon."

Hallin exclaimed, "You had food?"

"Do you think I should let myself starve with my work to do?" she asked

him, with a shade of scorn and her most professional air. "And don't

suppose that such a case occurs often. It is a very rare thing for us to

undertake night-nursing at all."

"Can you tell me what the case was?"

She told him vaguely, describing also in a few words her encounter with

Dr. Blank.

"I suppose he will make a fuss," she said, with a restless look, "and

that I shall be blamed."

"I should think your second doctor will take care of that!" said Hallin.

"I don't know. I couldn't help it. But it is one of our first principles

not to question a doctor. And last week too I got the Association into

trouble. A patient I had been nursing for weeks and got quite fond of

had to be removed to hospital. She asked me to cut her hair. It was

matted dreadfully, and would have been cut off directly she got to the

ward. So I cut it, left her all comfortable, and was to come back at one

to meet the doctor and help get her off. When I came, I found the whole

court in an uproar. The sister of the woman, who had been watching for

me, stood on the doorstep, and implored me to go away. The husband had

gone out of his senses with rage because I had cut his wife's hair

without his consent. 'He'll murder you, Nuss!' said the sister, 'if he

sees you! Don't come in!--he's mad--he's _been going round on 'is 'ands

and knees on the floor_!'"--Hallin interrupted with a shout of laughter.

Marcella laughed too; but to his amazement he saw that her hand shook,

and that there were tears in her eyes.

"It's all very well," she said with a sigh, "but I had to come away in

disgrace, all the street looking on. And he made such a fuss at the

office as never was. It was unfortunate--we don't want the people set

against the nurses. And now Dr. Blank!--I seem to be always getting into

scrapes. It is different from hospital, where everything is settled for

one."

Hallin could hardly believe his ears. Such womanish terrors and

depressions from Marcella Boyce! Was she, after all, too young for the

work, or was there some fret of the soul reducing her natural force? He

felt an unwonted impulse of tenderness towards her--such as one might

feel towards a tired child--and set himself to cheer and rest her.

He had succeeded to some extent, when he saw her give a little start,

and following her eyes he perceived that unconsciously his arm, which

was resting on the table, had pushed into her view a photograph in a

little frame, which had been hitherto concealed from her by a glass of

flowers. He would have quietly put it out of sight again, but she sat up

in her chair.

"Will you give it me?" she said, putting out her hand.

He gave it her at once.

"Alice brought it home from Miss Raeburn the other day. His aunt made

him sit to one of the photographers who are always besieging public men.

We thought it good."

"It is very good," she said, after a pause. "Is the hair really--as grey

as that?" She pointed to it.

"Quite. I am very glad that he is going off with Lord Maxwell to Italy.

It will be ten days' break for him at any rate. His work this last year

has been very heavy. He has had his grandfather's to do really, as well

as his own; and this Commission has been a stiff job too. I am rather

sorry that he has taken this new post."

"What post?"

"Didn't you hear? They have made him Under-secretary to the Home

Department. So that he is now in the Government."

She put back the photograph, and moved her chair a little so as to see

more of the plane trees and the strips of sunset cloud.

"How is Lord Maxwell?" she asked presently.

"Much changed. It might end in a sudden break-up at any time."

Hallin saw a slight contraction pass over her face. He knew that she had

always felt an affection for Lord Maxwell. Suddenly Marcella looked

hastily round her. Miss Hallin was busy with a little servant at the

other end of the room making arrangements for supper.

"Tell me," she said, bending over the arm of her chair and speaking in a

low, eager voice, "he is beginning to forget it?"

Hallin looked at her in silence, but his half sad, half ironic smile

suggested an answer from which she turned away.

"If he only would!" she said, speaking almost to herself, with a kind of

impatience. "He ought to marry, for everybody's sake."

"I see no sign of his marrying--at present," said Hallin, drily.

He began to put some papers under his hand in order. There was a cold

dignity in his manner which she perfectly understood. Ever since that

day--that never-forgotten day--when he had come to her the morning after

her last interview with Aldous Raeburn--come with reluctance and

dislike, because Aldous had asked it of him--and had gone away her

friend, more drawn to her, more touched by her than he had ever been in

the days of the engagement, their relation on this subject had been the

same. His sweetness and kindness to her, his influence over her life

during the past eighteen months, had been very great. In that first

interview, the object of which had been to convey to her a warning on

the subject of the man it was thought she might allow herself to marry,

something in the manner with which he had attempted his incredibly

difficult task--its simplicity, its delicate respect for her

personality, its suggestion of a character richer and saintlier than

anything she had yet known, and unconsciously revealing itself under the

stress of emotion--this something had suddenly broken down his pale,

proud companion, had to his own great dismay brought her to tears, and

to such confidences, such indirect askings for help and understanding as

amazed them both.

Experiences of this kind were not new to him. His life consecrated to

ideas, devoted to the wresting of the maximum of human service from a

crippling physical weakness; the precarious health itself which cut him

off from a hundred ordinary amusements and occupations, and especially

cut him off from marriage--together with the ardent temperament, the

charm, the imaginative insight which had been his cradle-gifts--these

things ever since he was a lad had made him again and again the guide

and prop of natures stronger and stormier than his own. Often the

unwilling guide; for he had the half-impatient breathless instincts of

the man who has set himself a task, and painfully doubts whether he will

have power and time to finish it. The claims made upon him seemed to him

often to cost him physical and brain energy he could ill spare.

But his quick tremulous sympathy rendered him really a defenceless prey

in such matters. Marcella threw herself upon him as others had done; and

there was no help for it. Since their first memorable interview, at long

intervals, he had written to her and she to him. Of her hospital life,

till to-night, she had never told him much. Her letters had been the

passionate outpourings of a nature sick of itself, and for the moment of

living; full of explanations which really explained little; full too of

the untaught pangs and questionings of a mind which had never given any

sustained or exhaustive effort to any philosophical or social question,

and yet was in a sense tortured by them all--athirst for an impossible

justice, and aflame for ideals mocked first and above all by the

writer's own weakness and defect. Hallin had felt them interesting, sad,

and, in a sense, fine; but he had never braced himself to answer them

without groans. There were so many other people in the world in the same

plight!

Nevertheless, all through the growth of friendship one thing had never

altered between them from the beginning--Hallin's irrevocable judgment

of the treatment she had bestowed on Aldous Raeburn. Never throughout

the whole course of their acquaintance had he expressed that judgment to

her in so many words. Notwithstanding, she knew perfectly well both the

nature and the force of it. It lay like a rock in the stream of their

friendship. The currents of talk might circle round it, imply it, glance

off from it; they left it unchanged. At the root of his mind towards

her, at the bottom of his gentle sensitive nature, there was a

sternness which he often forgot--she never.

This hard fact in their relation had insensibly influenced her greatly,

was constantly indeed working in and upon her, especially since the

chances of her nursing career had brought her to settle in this

district, within a stone's throw of him and his sister, so that she saw

them often and intimately. But it worked in different ways.

Sometimes--as to-night--it evoked a kind of defiance.

A minute or two after he had made his remark about Aldous, she said to

him suddenly,

"I had a letter from Mr. Wharton to-day. He is coming to tea with me

to-morrow, and I shall probably go to the House on Friday with Edith

Craven to hear him speak."

Hallin gave a slight start at the name. Then he said nothing; but went

on sorting some letters of the day into different heaps. His silence

roused her irritation.

"Do you remember," she said, in a low, energetic voice, "that I told you

I could never be ungrateful, never forget what he had done?"

"Yes, I remember," he said, not without a certain sharpness of tone.

"You spoke of giving him help if he ever asked it of you--has he asked

it?"

She explained that what he seemed to be asking was Louis Craven's help,

and that his overtures with regard to the _Labour Clarion_ were

particularly opportune, seeing that Louis was pining to be able to

marry, and was losing heart, hope, and health for want of some fixed

employment. She spoke warmly of her friends and their troubles, and

Hallin's inward distaste had to admit that all she said was plausible.

Since the moment in that strange talk which had drawn them together,

when she had turned upon him with the passionate cry--"I see what you

mean, perfectly! but I am not going to marry Mr. Wharton, so don't

trouble to warn me--for the matter of that he has warned me

himself:--but my _gratitude_ he _has_ earned, and if he asks for it I

will _never_ deny it him "--since that moment there had been no word of

Wharton between them. At the bottom of his heart Hallin distrusted her,

and was ashamed of himself because of it. His soreness and jealousy for

his friend knew no bounds. "If that were to come on again"--he was

saying to himself now, as she talked to him--"I could not bear it, I

could not forgive her!"

He only wished that she would give up talking about Wharton altogether.

But, on the contrary, she would talk of him--and with a curious

persistence. She must needs know what Hallin thought of his career in

Parliament, of his prospects, of his powers as a speaker. Hallin

answered shortly, like some one approached on a subject for which he

cares nothing.

"Yet, of course, it is not that; it is injustice!" she said to herself,

with vehemence. "He _must_ care; they are his subjects, his interests

too. But he will not look at it dispassionately, because--"

So they fell out with each other a little, and the talk dragged. Yet,

all the while, Marcella's inner mind was conscious of quite different

thoughts. How good it was to be here, in this room, beside these two

people! She must show herself fractious and difficult with Hallin

sometimes; it was her nature. But in reality, that slight and fragile

form, that spiritual presence were now shrined in the girl's eager

reverence and affection. She felt towards him as many a Catholic has

felt towards his director; though the hidden yearning to be led by him

was often oddly covered, as now, by an outer self-assertion. Perhaps her

quarrel with him was that he would not lead her enough--would not tell

her precisely enough what she was to do with herself.

CHAPTER V.

While she and Hallin were sitting thus, momentarily out of tune with

each other, the silence was suddenly broken by a familiar voice.

"I say, Hallin--is this all right?"

The words came from a young man who, having knocked unheeded, opened the

door, and cautiously put in a curly head.

"Frank!--is that you? Come in," cried Hallin, springing up.

Frank Leven came in, and at once perceived the lady sitting in the

window.

"Well, I _am_ glad!" he cried, striding across the room and shaking

Hallin's hand by the way. "Miss Boyce! I thought none of your friends

were ever going to get a sight of you again! Why, what--"

He drew back scanning her, a gay look of quizzing surprise on his fair

boy's face.

"He expected me in cap and apron," said Marcella, laughing; "or means to

pretend he did."

"I expected a sensation! And here you are, just as you were, only twice

as--I say, Hallin, doesn't she look well!"--this in a stage aside to

Hallin, while the speaker was drawing off his gloves, and still studying

Marcella.

"Well, _I_ think she looks tired," said Hallin, with a little attempt at

a smile, but turning away. Everybody felt a certain tension, a certain

danger, even in the simplest words, and Miss Hallin's call to supper was

very welcome.

The frugal meal went gaily. The chattering Christchurch boy brought to

it a breath of happy, careless life, to which the three

others--over-driven and over-pressed, all of them--responded with a kind

of eagerness. Hallin especially delighted in him, and would have out all

his budget--his peacock's pride at having been just put into the

'Varsity eleven, his cricket engagements for the summer, his rows with

his dons, above all his lasting amazement that he should have just

scraped through his Mods.

"I thought those Roman emperors would have done for me!" he declared,

with a child's complacency. "_Brutes!_ I couldn't remember them. I

learnt them up and down, backwards and forwards--but it was no good;

they nearly dished me!"

"Yet it comes back to me," said Hallin, slily, "that when a certain

person was once asked to name the winner of the Derby in some obscure

year, he began at the beginning, and gave us all of them, from first to

last, without a hitch."

"The winner of the _Derby_!" said the lad, eagerly, bending forward with

his hands on his knees; "why, I should rather think so! That isn't

memory; that's _knowledge_!--Goodness! who's this?"

The last remark was addressed _sotto voce_ to Marcella. Supper was just

over, and the two guests, with Hallin, had returned to the window, while

Miss Hallin, stoutly refusing their help, herself cleared the table and

set all straight.

Hallin, hearing a knock, had gone to the door while Leven was speaking.

Four men came crowding in, all of them apparently well known both to

Hallin and his sister. The last two seemed to be workmen; the others

were Bennett, Hallin's old and tried friend among the Labour-leaders,

and Nehemiah Wilkins, M.P. Hallin introduced them all to Marcella and

Leven; but the new-comers took little notice of any one but their host,

and were soon seated about him discussing a matter already apparently

familiar to them, and into which Hallin had thrown himself at once with

that passionate directness which, in the social and speculative field,

replaced his ordinary gentleness of manner. He seemed to be in strong

disagreement with the rest--a disagreement which troubled himself and

irritated them.

Marcella watched them with quick curiosity from the window where she was

sitting, and would have liked to go forward to listen. But Frank Leven

turned suddenly round upon her with sparkling eyes.

"Oh, I say! don't go. Do come and sit here with me a bit. Oh, isn't it

rum! isn't it _rum_! Look at Hallin,--those are the people whom he

_cares_ to talk to. That's a shoemaker, that man to the left--really an

awfully cute fellow--and this man in front, I think he told me he was a

mason, a Socialist of course--would like to string _me_ up to-morrow.

Did you ever see such a countenance? Whenever that man begins, I think

we must be precious near to shooting. And he's pious too, would pray

over us first and shoot us afterwards--which isn't the case, I

understand, with many of 'em. Then the others--you know them? That's

Bennett--regular good fellow--always telling his pals not to make fools

of themselves--for which of course they love him no more than they are

obliged--And Wilkins--oh! _Wilkins_"--he chuckled--"they say it'll come

to a beautiful row in the House before they've done, between him and my

charming cousin, Harry Wharton. My father says he backs Wilkins."

Then suddenly the lad recollected himself and his clear cheek coloured a

little after a hasty glance at his companion. He fell to silence and

looking at his boots. Marcella wondered what was the matter with him.

Since her flight from Mellor she had lived, so to speak, with her head

in the sand. She herself had never talked directly of her own affairs to

anybody. Her sensitive pride did not let her realise that,

notwithstanding, all the world was aware of them.

"I don't suppose you know much about your cousin!" she said to him with

a little scorn.

"Well, I don't want to!" said the lad, "that's one comfort! But I don't

know anything about anything!--Miss Boyce!"

He plunged his head in his hands, and Marcella, looking at him, saw at

once that she was meant to understand she had woe and lamentation beside

her.

Her black eyes danced with laughter. At Mellor she had been several

times his confidante. The handsome lad was not apparently very fond of

his sisters and had taken to her from the beginning. To-night she

recognised the old symptoms.

"What, you have been getting into scrapes again?" she said--"how many

since we met last?"

"There! you make fun of it!" he said indignantly from behind his

fingers--"you're like all the rest."

Marcella teased him a little more till at last she was astonished by a

flash of genuine wrath from the hastily uncovered eyes.

"If you're only going to chaff a fellow let's go over there and talk!

And yet I did want to tell you about it--you were awfully kind to me

down at home. I want to tell you--and I don't want to tell you--perhaps

I _oughtn't_ to tell you--you'll think me a brute, I dare say, an

ungentlemanly brute for speaking of it at all--and yet somehow--"

The boy, crimson, bit his lips. Marcella, arrested and puzzled, laid a

hand on his arm. She had been used to these motherly ways with him at

Mellor, on the strength of her seniority, so inadequately measured by

its two years or so of time!

"I won't laugh," she said, "tell me."

"No--really?--shall I?"

Whereupon there burst forth a history precisely similar it seemed to

some half dozen others she had already heard from the same lips. A

pretty girl--or rather "an exquisite creature!" met at the house of some

relation in Scotland, met again at the "Boats" at Oxford, and yet again

at Commemoration balls, Nuneham picnics, and the rest; adored and

adorable; yet, of course, a sphinx born for the torment of men, taking

her haughty way over a prostrate sex, kind to-day, cruel to-morrow; not

to be won by money, yet, naturally, not to be won without it; possessed

like Rose Aylmer of "every virtue, every grace," whether of form or

family; yet making nothing but a devastating and death-dealing use of

them--how familiar it all was!--and how many more of them there seemed

to be in the world, on a man's reckoning, than on a woman's!

"And you know," said the lad, eagerly, "though she's so _frightfully_

pretty--well, frightfully fetching, rather--and well dressed and all the

rest of it, she isn't a bit silly, not one of your empty-headed

girls--not she. She's read a _lot_ of things--a lot! I'm sure, Miss

Boyce"--he looked at her confidently,--"if _you_ were to see her you'd

think her awfully clever. And yet she's so little--and so dainty--and

she dances--my goodness! you should see her dance, skirt-dance I

mean--Letty Lind isn't in it! She's good too, awfully good. I think her

mother's a most dreadful old bore--well, no, I didn't mean that--of

course I didn't mean that!--but she's fussy, you know, and invalidy, and

has to be wrapped up in shawls, and dragged about in bath chairs, and

Betty's an angel to her--she is really--though her mother's always

snapping her head off. And as to the _poor_--"

Something in his tone, in the way he had of fishing for her approval,

sent Marcella into a sudden fit of laughter. Then she put out a hand to

restrain this plunging lover.

"Look here--do come to the point--have you proposed to her?"

"I should rather think I have!" said the boy, fervently. "About once a

week since Christmas. Of course she's played with me--that sort always

does--but I think I might really have a chance with her, if it weren't

for her mother--horrible old--no, of _course_ I don't mean that! But

now it comes in--what I oughtn't to tell you--I _know_ I oughtn't to

tell you! I'm always making a beastly mess of it. It's because I can't

help talking of it!"

And shaking his curly head in despair, he once more plunged his red

cheeks into his hands and fell abruptly silent.

Marcella coloured for sympathy. "I really wish you wouldn't talk in

riddles," she said. "What is the matter with you?--of course you must

tell me."

"Well, I know you won't mind!" cried the lad, emerging. "As if you could

mind! But it sounds like my impudence to be talking to you

about--about--You see," he blurted out, "she's going to Italy with the

Raeburns. She's a connection of theirs, somehow, and Miss Raeburn's

taken a fancy to her lately--and her mother's treated me like dirt ever

since they asked her to go to Italy--and naturally a fellow sees what

_that_ means--and what her mother's after. I don't believe Betty

_would_; he's too old for her, isn't he? Oh, my goodness!"--this time he

smote his knee in real desperation--"now I _have_ done it. I'm simply

_bursting_ always with the thing I'd rather cut my head off than say.

Why they make 'em like me I don't know!"

"You mean," said Marcella, with impatience--"that her mother wants her

to marry Mr. Raeburn?"

He looked round at his companion. She was lying back in a deep chair,

her hands lightly clasped on her knee. Something in her attitude, in the

pose of the tragic head, in the expression of the face stamped to-night

with a fatigue which was also a dignity, struck a real compunction into

his mood of vanity and excitement. He had simply not been able to resist

the temptation to talk to her. She reminded him of the Raeburns, and the

Raeburns were in his mind at the present moment by day and by night. He

knew that he was probably doing an indelicate and indiscreet thing, but

all the same his boyish egotism would not be restrained from the

headlong pursuit of his own emotions. There was in him too such a

burning curiosity as to how she would take it--what she would say.

Now however he felt a genuine shrinking. His look changed. Drawing his

chair close up to her he began a series of penitent and

self-contradictory excuses which Marcella soon broke in upon.

"I don't know why you talk like that," she said, looking at him

steadily. "Do you suppose I can go on all my life without hearing Mr.

Raeburn's name mentioned? And don't apologise so much! It really doesn't

matter what I suppose--that _you_ think--about my present state of mind.

It is very simple. I ought never to have accepted Mr. Raeburn. I behaved

badly. I know it--and everybody knows it. Still one has to go on living

one's life somehow. The point is that I am rather the wrong person for

you to come to just now, for if there is one thing I ardently wish about

Mr. Raeburn, it is that he should get himself married."

Frank Leven looked at her in bewildered dismay.

"I never thought of that," he said.

"Well, you might, mightn't you?"

For another short space there was silence between them, while the rush

of talk in the centre of the room was still loud and unspent.

Then she rated herself for want of sympathy. Frank sat beside her shy

and uncomfortable, his confidence chilled away.

"So you think Miss Raeburn has views?" she asked him, smiling, and in

her most ordinary voice.

The boy's eye brightened again with the implied permission to go on

chattering.

"I know she has! Betty's brother as good as told me that she and Mrs.

Macdonald--that's Betty's mother--she hasn't got a father--had talked it

over. And now Betty's going with them to Italy, and Aldous is going too

for ten days--and when I go to the Macdonalds Mrs. Macdonald treats me

as if I were a little chap in jackets, and Betty worries me to death.

It's sickening!"

"And how about Mr. Raeburn?"

"Oh, Aldous seems to like her very much," he said despondently. "She's

always teasing and amusing him. When she's there she never lets him

alone. She harries him out. She makes him read to her and ride with her.

She makes him discuss all sorts of things with her you'd _never_ think

Aldous would discuss--her lovers and her love affairs, and being in

love!--it's extraordinary the way she drives him round. At Easter she

and her mother were staying at the Court, and one night Betty told me

she was bored to death. It was a very smart party, but everything was so

flat and everybody was so dull. So she suddenly got up and ran across to

Aldous. 'Now look here, Mr. Aldous,' she said; 'this'll never do! you've

got to come and dance with me, and _push_ those chairs and tables

aside'--I can fancy the little stamp she'd give--'and make those other

people dance too.' And she made him--she positively made him. Aldous

declared he didn't dance, and she wouldn't have a word of it. And

presently she got to all her tricks, skirt-dancing and the rest of

it--and of course the evening went like smoke."

Marcella's eyes, unusually wide open, were somewhat intently fixed on

the speaker.

"And Mr. Raeburn liked it?" she asked in a tone that sounded

incredulous.

"Didn't he just? She told me they got regular close friends after that,

and he told her everything--oh, well," said the lad, embarrassed, and

clutching at his usual formula--"of course, I didn't mean that. And

she's fearfully flattered, you can see she is, and she tells me that she

adores him--that he's the only great man she's ever known--that I'm not

fit to black his boots, and ought to be grateful whenever he speaks to

me--and all that sort of rot. And now she's going off with them. I shall

have to shoot myself--I declare I shall!"

"Well, not yet," said Marcella, in a soothing voice; "the case isn't

clear enough. Wait till they come back. Shall we move? I'm going over

there to listen to that talk. But--first--come and see me whenever you

like--3 to 4.30, Brown's Buildings, Maine Street--and tell me how this

goes on?"

She spoke with a careless lightness, laughing at him with a half

sisterly freedom. She had risen from her seat, and he, whose thoughts

had been wrapped up for months in one of the smallest of the sex, was

suddenly struck with her height and stately gesture as she moved away

from him.

"By Jove! Why didn't she stick to Aldous," he said to himself

discontentedly as his eyes followed her. "It was only her cranks, and of

course she'll get rid of _them_. Just like my luck!"

* * * * *

Meanwhile Marcella took a seat next to Miss Hallin, who looked up from

her knitting to smile at her. The girl fell into the attitude of

listening; but for some minutes she was not listening at all. She was

reflecting how little men knew of each other!--even the most intimate

friends--and trying to imagine what Aldous Raeburn would be like,

married to such a charmer as Frank had sketched. His friendship for her

meant, of course, the attraction of contraries--one of the most

promising of all possible beginnings. On the whole, she thought Frank's

chances were poor.

Then, unexpectedly, her ear was caught by Wharton's name, and she

discovered that what was going on beside her was a passionate discussion

of his present position and prospects in the Labour party--a discussion,

however, mainly confined to Wilkins and the two workmen. Bennett had the

air of the shrewd and kindly spectator who has his own reasons for

treating a situation with reserve; and Hallin was lying back in his

chair flushed and worn out. The previous debate, which had now merged in

these questions of men and personalities, had made him miserable; he had

no heart for anything more. Miss Hallin observed him anxiously, and

made restless movements now and then, as though she had it in her mind

to send all her guests away.

The two Socialist workmen were talking strongly in favour of an

organised and distinct Labour party, and of Wharton's leadership. They

referred constantly to Parnell, and what he had clone for "those Irish

fellows." The only way to make Labour formidable in the House was to

learn the lesson of Unionism and of Parnellism, to act together and

strike together, to make of the party a "two-handed engine," ready to

smite Tory and Liberal impartially. To this end a separate organisation,

separate place in the House, separate Whips--they were ready, nay

clamorous, for them all. And they were equally determined on Harry

Wharton as a leader. They spoke of the _Clarion_ with enthusiasm, and

declared that its owner was already an independent power, and was,

moreover, as "straight" as he was sharp.

The contention and the praise lashed Wilkins into fury. After making one

or two visible efforts at a sarcastic self-control which came to

nothing, he broke out into a flood of invective which left the rest of

the room staring. Marcella found herself indignantly wondering who this

big man, with his fierce eyes, long, puffy cheeks, coarse black hair,

and North-country accent, might be. Why did he talk in this way, with

these epithets, this venom? It was intolerable!

Hallin roused himself from his fatigue to play the peace-maker. But some

of the things Wilkins had been saying had put up the backs of the two

workmen, and the talk flamed up unmanageably--Wilkins's dialect getting

more pronounced with each step of the argument.

"Well, if I'd ever ha' thowt that I war coomin' to Lunnon to put myself

and my party oonder the heel o' Muster Harry Wharton, I'd ha' stayed at

_home_, I tell tha," cried Wilkins, slapping his knee. "If it's to be

the People's party, why, in the name o' God, must yo put a yoong

ripstitch like yon at the head of it? a man who'll just mak _use_ of us

all, you an' me, and ivery man Jack of us, for his own advancement, an'

ull kick us down when he's done with us! Why shouldn't he? What is he?

Is he a man of _us_--bone of our bone? He's a _landlord_, and an

aristocrat, I tell tha! What have the likes of him ever been but thorns

in our side? When have the landlords ever gone with the people? Have

they not been the blight and the curse of the country for hun'erds of

years? And you're goin' to tell me that a man bred out o' _them_--living

on his rent and interest--grinding the faces of the poor, I'll be bound

if the truth were known, as all the rest of them do--is goin' to lead

_me_, an' those as'll act with me to the pullin' down of the landlords!

Why are we to go lickspittlin' to any man of his sort to do our work for

us? Let him go to his own class--I'm told Mr. Wharton is mighty fond of

countesses, and they of him!--or let him set up as the friend of the

working man just as he likes--I'm quite agreeable!--I shan't make any

bones about takin' his _vote_; but I'm not goin' to make him master over

me, and give him the right to speak for my mates in the House of

Commons. I'd cut my hand off fust!"

Leven grinned in the background. Bennett lay back in his chair with a

worried look. Wilkins's crudities were very distasteful to him both in

and out of the House. The younger of the Socialist workmen, a mason,

with a strong square face, incongruously lit somehow with the eyes of

the religious dreamer, looked at Wilkins contemptuously.

"There's none of you in the House will take orders," he said quickly,

"and that's the ruin of us. We all know that. Where do you think we'd

have been in the struggle with the employers, if we'd gone about our

business as you're going about yours in the House of Commons?"

"I'm not saying we shouldn't _organise_," said Wilkins, fiercely. "What

I'm sayin' is, get a man of the working class--a man who has the _wants_

of the working class--a man whom the working class can get a hold on--to

do your business for you, and not any bloodsucking landlord or

capitalist. It's a slap i' the face to ivery honest working man i' the

coontry, to mak' a Labour party and put Harry Wharton at t' head of it!"

The young Socialist looked at him askance. "Of course you'd like it

yourself!" was what he was thinking. "But they'll take a man as can hold

his own with the swells--and quite right too!"

"And if Mr. Wharton _is_ a landlord he's a good sort!" exclaimed the

shoemaker--a tall, lean man in a well-brushed frock coat. "There's many

on us knows as have been to hear him speak, what he's tried to do about

the land, and the co-operative farming. E's _straight_ is Mr. Wharton.

We 'aven't got Socialism yet--an' it isn't 'is fault bein' a landlord.

Ee was born it."

"I tell tha he's playin' for his own hand!" said Wilkins, doggedly, the

red spot deepening on his swarthy cheek--"he's runnin' that paper for

his own hand--Haven't I had experience of him? I know it--And I'll prove

it some day! He's one for featherin' his own nest is Mr. Wharton--and

when he's doon it by makkin' fools of us, he'll leave us to whistle for

any good we're iver likely to get out o' _him. He_ go agen the landlords

when it coom to the real toossle,--I know 'em--I tell tha--I know 'em!"

A woman's voice, clear and scornful, broke into the talk.

"It's a little strange to think, isn't it, that while we in London go on

groaning and moaning about insanitary houses, and making our small

attempts here and there, half of the country poor of England have been

re-housed in our generation by these same landlords--no fuss about

it--and rents for five-roomed cottages, somewhere about one and

fourpence a week!"

Hallin swung his chair round and looked at the speaker--amazed!

Wilkins also stared at her under his eyebrows. He did not like

women--least of all, ladies.

He gruffly replied that if they had done anything like as much as she

said--which, he begged her pardon, but he didn't believe--it was done

for the landlords' own purposes, either to buy off public opinion, or

just for show and aggrandisement. People who had prize pigs and prize

cattle must have prize cottages of course--"with a race of slaves

inside 'em!"

Marcella, bright-eyed, erect, her thin right hand hanging over her knee,

went avengingly into facts--the difference between landlords' villages

and "open" villages; the agrarian experiments made by different great

landlords; the advantage to the community, even from the Socialist point

of view of a system which had preserved the land in great blocks, for

the ultimate use of the State, as compared with a system like the

French, which had for ever made Socialism impossible.

Hallin's astonishment almost swept away his weariness.

"Where in the world did she get it all from, and is she standing on her

head or am I?"

After an animated little debate, in which Bennett and the two workmen

joined, while Wilkins sat for the most part in moody, contemptuous

silence, and Marcella, her obstinacy roused, carried through her defence

of the landlords with all a woman's love of emphasis and paradox,

everybody rose simultaneously to say good-night.

"You ought to come and lead a debate down at our Limehouse club," said

Bennett pleasantly to Marcella, as she held out her hand to him; "you'd

take a lot of beating."

"Yet I'm a Venturist, you know," she said, laughing; "I _am_."

He shook his head, laughed too, and departed.

When the four had gone, Marcella turned upon Hallin.

"Are there many of these Labour members like _that_?"

Her tone was still vibrating and sarcastic.

"He's not much of a talker, our Nehemiah," said Hallin, smiling; "but he

has the most extraordinary power as a speaker over a large popular

audience that I have ever seen. The man's honesty is amazing,--it's his

tempers and his jealousies get in his way. You astonished him; but, for

the matter of that, you astonished Frank and me still more!"

And as he fell back into his chair, Marcella caught a flash of

expression, a tone that somehow put her on her defence.

"I was not going to listen to such unjust stuff without a word. Politics

is one thing--slanderous abuse is another!" she said, throwing back her

head with a gesture which instantly brought back to Hallin the scene in

the Mellor drawing-room, when she had denounced the game-laws and

Wharton had scored his first point.

He was silent, feeling a certain inner exasperation with women and their

ways.

"'She only did it to annoy,'" cried Frank Leven; "'because she knows it

teases.' _We_ know very well what she thinks of us. But where did you

get it all from, Miss Boyce? I just wish you'd tell me. There's a horrid

Radical in the House I'm always having rows with--and upon my word I

didn't know there was half so much to be said for us!"

Marcella flushed.

"Never mind where I got it!" she said.

In reality, of course, it was from those Agricultural Reports she had

worked through the year before under Wharton's teaching, with so much

angry zest, and to such different purpose.

* * * * *

When the door closed upon her and upon Frank Leven, who was to escort

her home, Hallin walked quickly over to the table, and stood looking for

a moment in a sort of bitter reverie at Raeburn's photograph.

His sister followed him, and laid her hand on his shoulder.

"Do go to bed, Edward! I am afraid that talk has tired you dreadfully."

"It would be no good going to bed, dear," he said, with a sigh of

exhaustion. "I will sit and read a bit, and see if I can get myself into

sleeping trim. But you go, Alice--good-night."

When she had gone he threw himself into his chair again with the

thought--"She must contradict here as she contradicted there! _She_--and

justice! If she could have been just to a landlord for one hour last

year--"

He spent himself for a while in endless chains of recollection,

oppressed by the clearness of his own brain, and thirsting for sleep.

Then from the affairs of Raeburn and Marcella, he passed with a fresh

sense of strain and effort to his own. That discussion with those four

men which had filled the first part of the evening weighed upon him in

his weakness of nerve, so that suddenly in the phantom silence of the

night, all life became an oppression and a terror, and rest, either

to-night or in the future, a thing never to be his.

He had come to the moment of difficulty, of tragedy, in a career which

so far, in spite of all drawbacks of physical health and cramped

activities, had been one of singular happiness and success. Ever since

he had discovered his own gifts as a lecturer to working men, content,

cheerfulness, nay, a passionate interest in every hour, had been quite

compatible for him with all the permanent limitations of his lot. The

study of economical and historical questions; the expression through

them of such a hunger for the building of a "city of God" among men, as

few are capable of; the evidence not to be ignored even by his modesty,

and perpetually forthcoming over a long period of time, that he had the

power to be loved, the power to lead, among those toilers of the world

on whom all his thoughts centred--these things had been his joy, and had

led him easily through much self-denial to the careful husbanding of

every hour of strength and time in the service of his ideal end.

And now he had come upon opposition--the first cooling of friendships,

the first distrust of friends that he had ever known.

Early in the spring of this year a book called _To-morrow and the Land_

had appeared in London, written by a young London economist of great

ability, and dealing with the nationalisation of the land. It did not

offer much discussion of the general question, but it took up the

question as it affected England specially and London in particular. It

showed--or tried to show--in picturesque detail what might be the

consequences for English rural or municipal life of throwing all land

into a common or national stock, of expropriating the landlords, and

transferring all rent to the people, to the effacement of taxation and

the indefinite enrichment of the common lot. The book differed from

_Progress and Poverty_, which also powerfully and directly affected the

English working class, in that it suggested a financial scheme, of great

apparent simplicity and ingenuity, for the compensation of the

landlords; it was shorter, and more easily to be grasped by the average

working man; and it was written in a singularly crisp and taking style,

and--by the help of a number of telling illustrations borrowed directly

from the circumstances of the larger English towns, especially of

London--treated with abundant humour.

The thing had an enormous success--in popular phrase, "caught on." Soon

Hallin found, that all the more active and intelligent spirits in the

working-class centres where he was in vogue as a lecturer were

touched--nay, possessed--by it. The crowd of more or less socialistic

newspapers which had lately sprung up in London were full of it; the

working men's clubs rang with it. It seemed to him a madness--an

infection; and it spread like one. The book had soon reached an immense

sale, and was in every one's hands.

To Hallin, a popular teacher, interested above all in the mingled

problems of ethics and economics, such an incident was naturally of

extreme importance. But he was himself opposed by deepest conviction,

intellectual and moral, to the book and its conclusions. The more its

success grew, the more eager and passionate became his own desire to

battle with it. His platform, of course, was secured to him; his

openings many. Hundreds and thousands of men all over England were keen

to know what he had to say about the new phenomenon.

And he had been saying his say--throwing into it all his energies, all

his finest work. With the result that--for the first time in eleven

years--he felt his position in the working-class movement giving beneath

his feet, and his influence beginning to drop from his hand. Coldness in

place of enthusiasm; critical aloofness in place of affection; readiness

to forget and omit him in matters where he had always hitherto belonged

to the inner circle and the trusted few--these bitter ghosts, with their

hard, unfamiliar looks, had risen of late in his world of idealist

effort and joy, and had brought with them darkness and chill. He could

not give way, for he had a singular unity of soul--it had been the

source of his power--and every economical or social conviction was in

some way bound up with the moral and religious passion which was his

being--his inmost nature. And his sensitive state of nerve and brain,

his anchorite's way of life, did not allow him the distractions of other

men. The spread of these and other similar ideas seemed to him a

question of the future of England; and he had already begun to throw

himself into the unequal struggle with a martyr's tenacity, and with

some prescience of the martyr's fate.

Even Bennett! As he sat there alone in the dim lamp-light, his head bent

over his knees, his hands hanging loosely before him, he thought

bitterly of the defection of that old friend who had stood by him

through so many lesser contests. It was _impossible_ that Bennett

should think the schemes of that book feasible! Yet he was one of the

honestest of men, and, within a certain range, one of the most

clear-headed. As for the others, they had been all against him.

Intellectually, their opinion did not matter to him; but morally it was

so strange to him to find himself on the side of doubt and dissent,

while all his friends were talking language which was almost the

language of a new faith!

He had various lecturing engagements ahead, connected with this great

debate which was now surging throughout the Labour world of London. He

had accepted them with eagerness; in these weary night hours he looked

forward to them with terror, seeing before him perpetually thousands of

hostile faces, living in a nightmare of lost sympathies and broken

friendships. Oh, for _sleep_--for the power to rest--to escape this

corrosion of an ever active thought, which settled and reconciled

nothing!

"_The tragedy of life lies in the conflict between the creative will of

man and the hidden wisdom of the world, which seems to thwart it_."

These words, written by one whose thought had penetrated deep into his

own, rang in his ears as he sat brooding there. Not the hidden fate, or

the hidden evil, but the hidden _wisdom_. Could one die and still

believe it? Yet what else was the task of faith?

CHAPTER VI.

"So I understand you wish me to go down at once?" said Louis Craven.

"This is Friday--say Monday?"

Wharton nodded. He and Craven were sitting in Marcella's little

sitting-room. Their hostess and Edith Craven had escaped through the

door in the back kitchen communicating with the Hurds' tenement, so that

the two men might be left alone a while. The interview between them had

gone smoothly, and Louis Craven had accepted immediate employment on the

_Labour Clarion_, as the paper's correspondent in the Midlands, with

special reference to the important strike just pending. Wharton, whose

tendency in matters of business was always to go rather further than he

had meant to go, for the sake generally of making an impression on the

man with whom he was dealing, had spoken of a two years' engagement, and

had offered two hundred a year. So far as that went, Craven was

abundantly satisfied.

"And I understand from you," he said, "that the paper _goes in_ for the

strike, that you will fight it through?"

He fixed his penetrating greenish eyes on his companion. Louis Craven

was now a tall man with narrow shoulders, a fine oval head and face,

delicate features, and a nervous look of short sight, producing in

appearance and manner a general impression of thin grace and of a

courtesy which was apt to pass unaccountably into sarcasm. Wharton had

never felt himself personally at ease with him, either now, or in the

old days of Venturist debates.

"Certainly, we shall fight it through," Wharton replied, with

emphasis--"I have gone through the secretary's statement, which I now

hand over to you, and I never saw a clearer case. The poor wretches have

been skinned too long; it is high time the public backed them up. There

are two of the masters in the House. Denny, I should say, belonged quite

to the worst type of employer going."

He spoke with light venom, buttoning his coat as he spoke with the air

of the busy public man who must not linger over an appointment.

"Oh! Denny!" said Craven, musing; "yes, Denny is a hard man, but a just

one according to his lights. There are plenty worse than he."

Wharton was disagreeably reminded of the Venturist habit of never

accepting anything that was said quite as it stood--of not, even in

small things, "swearing to the words" of anybody. He was conscious of

the quick passing feeling that his judgment, with regard to Denny, ought

to have been enough for Craven.

"One thing more," said Craven suddenly, as Wharton looked for his

stick--"you see there is talk of arbitration."

"Oh yes, I know!" said Wharton impatiently; "a mere blind. The men have

been done by it twice before. They get some big-wig from the

neighbourhood--not in the trade, indeed, but next door to it--and, of

course, the award goes against the men."

"Then the paper will not back arbitration?"

Craven took out a note-book.

"No!--The quarrel itself is as plain as a pikestaff. The men are asking

for a mere pittance, and must get it if they are to live. It's like all

these home industries, abominably ground down. We must go for them! I

mean to go for them hot and strong. Poor devils! did you read the

evidence in that Bluebook last year? Arbitration? no, indeed! let them

live first!"

Craven looked up absently.

"And I think," he said, "you gave me Mr. Thorpe's address?" Mr. Thorpe

was the secretary.

Again Wharton gulped down his annoyance. If he chose to be expansive, it

was not for Craven to take no notice.

Craven, however, except in print, where he could be as vehement as

anybody else, never spoke but in the driest way of those workman's

grievances, which in reality burnt at the man's heart. A deep

disdain for what had always seemed to him the cheapest form of

self-advertisement, held him back. It was this dryness, combined with an

amazing disinterestedness, which had so far stood in his way.

Wharton repeated the address, following it up by some rather curt

directions as to the length and date of articles, to which Craven gave

the minutest attention.

"May we come in?" said Marcella's voice.

"By all means," said Wharton, with a complete change of tone. "Business

is up and I am off!"

He took up his hat as he spoke.

"Not at all! Tea is just coming, without which no guest departs," said

Marcella, taking as she spoke a little tray from the red-haired Daisy

who followed her, and motioning to the child to bring the tea-table.

Wharton looked at her irresolute. He had spent half an hour with her

_tête-à-tête_ before Louis Craven arrived, and he was really due at the

House. But now that she was on the scene again, he did not find it so

easy to go away. How astonishingly beautiful she was, even in this

disguise! She wore her nurse's dress; for her second daily round began

at half-past four, and her cloak, bonnet, and bag were lying ready on a

chair beside her. The dress was plain brown holland, with collar and

armlets of white linen; but, to Wharton's eye, the dark Italian head,

and the long slenderness of form had never shown more finely. He

hesitated and stayed.

"All well?" said Marcella, in a half whisper, as she passed Louis Craven

on her way to get some cake.

He nodded and smiled, and she went back to the tea-table with an eye all

gaiety, pleased with herself and everybody else.

The quarter of an hour that followed went agreeably enough. Wharton sat

among the little group, far too clever to patronise a cat, let alone a

Venturist, but none the less master and conscious master of the

occasion, because it suited him to take the airs of equality. Craven

said little, but as he lounged in Marcella's long cane chair with his

arms behind his head, his serene and hazy air showed him contented; and

Marcella talked and laughed with the animation that belongs to one whose

plots for improving the universe have at least temporarily succeeded.

Or did it betray, perhaps, a woman's secret consciousness of some

presence beside her, more troubling and magnetic to her than others?

"Well then, Friday," said Wharton at last, when his time was more than

spent.--"You must be there early, for there will be a crush. Miss Craven

comes too? Excellent! I will tell the doorkeeper to look out for you.

Good-bye!--good-bye!"

And with a hasty shake of the hand to the Cravens, and one more keen

glance, first at Marcella and then round the little workman's room in

which they had been sitting, he went.

He had hardly departed before Anthony Craven, the lame elder brother,

who must have passed him on the stairs, appeared.

"Well--any news?" he said, as Marcella found him a chair.

"All right!" said Louis, whose manner had entirely changed since Wharton

had left the room. "I am to go down on Monday to report the Damesley

strike that is to be. A month's trial, and then a salary--two hundred a

year. Oh! it'll do."

He fidgeted and looked away from his brother, as though trying to hide

his pleasure. But in spite of him it transformed every line of the

pinched and worn face.

"And you and Anna will walk to the Registry Office next week?" said

Anthony, sourly, as he took his tea.

"It can't be next week," said Edith Craven's quiet voice, interposing.

"Anna's got to work out her shirt-making time. She only left the

tailoresses and began this new business ten days ago. And she was to

have a month at each."

Marcella's lifted eyebrows asked for explanations. She had not yet seen

Louis's betrothed, but she was understood to be a character, and a

better authority on many Labour questions than he.

Louis explained that Anna was exploring various sweated trades for the

benefit of an East End newspaper. She had earned fourteen shillings her

last week at tailoring, but the feat had exhausted her so much that he

had been obliged to insist on two or three days respite before moving on

to shirts. Shirts were now brisk, and the hours appallingly long in this

heat.

"It was on shirts they made acquaintance," said Edith pensively. "Louis

was lodging on the second floor, she in the third floor back, and they

used to pass on the stairs. One day she heard him imploring the little

slavey to put some buttons on his shirts. The slavey tossed her head,

and said she'd see about it. When he'd gone out, Anna came downstairs,

calmly demanded his shirts, and, having the slavey under her thumb, got

them, walked off with them, and mended them all. When Louis came home he

discovered a neat heap reposing on his table. Of course he

wept--whatever he may say. But next morning Miss Anna found her shoes

outside her door, blacked as they had never been blacked before, with a

note inside one of them. Affecting! wasn't it? Thenceforward, as long as

they remained in those lodgings, Anna mended and Louis blacked.

Naturally, Anthony and I drew our conclusions."

Marcella laughed.

"You must bring her to see me," she said to Louis.

"I will," said Louis, with some perplexity; "if I can get hold of her.

But when she isn't stitching she's writing, or trying to set up Unions.

She does the work of six. She'll earn nearly as much as I do when we're

married. Oh! we shall swim!"

Anthony surveyed his radiant aspect--so unlike the gentle or satirical

detachment which made his ordinary manner--with a darkening eye, as

though annoyed by his effusion.

"Two hundred a year?" he said slowly; "about what Mr. Harry Wharton

spends on his clothes, I should think. The Labour men tell me he is

superb in that line. And for the same sum that he spends on his clothes,

he is able to buy _you_, Louis, body and soul, and you seem inclined to

be grateful."

"Never mind," said Louis recklessly. "He didn't buy some one else--and I

_am_ grateful!"

"No; by Heaven, you shan't be!" said Anthony, with a fierce change of

tone. "_You_ the dependent of that charlatan! I don't know how I'm to

put up with it. You know very well what I think of him, and of your

becoming dependent on him."

Marcella gave an angry start. Louis protested.

"Nonsense!" said Anthony doggedly; "you'll have to bear it from me, I

tell you--unless you muzzle me too with an Anna."

"But I don't see why _I_ should bear it," said Marcella, turning upon

him. "I think you know that I owe Mr. Wharton a debt. Please remember

it!"

Anthony looked at her an instant in silence. A question crossed his

mind concerning her. Then he made her a little clumsy bow.

"I am dumb," he said. "My manners, you perceive, are what they always

were."

"What do you mean by such a remark," cried Marcella, fuming. "How can a

man who has reached the position he has in so short a time--in so many

different worlds--be disposed of by calling him an ugly name? It is more

than unjust--it is absurd! Besides, what can you know of him?"

"You forget," said Anthony, as he calmly helped himself to more bread

and butter, "that it is some three years since Master Harry Wharton

joined the Venturists and began to be heard of at all. I watched his

beginnings, and if I didn't know him well, my friends and Louis's did.

And most of them--as he knows!--have pretty strong opinions by now about

the man."

"Come, come, Anthony!" said Louis, "nobody expects a man of that type to

be the pure-eyed patriot. But neither you nor I can deny that he has

done some good service. Am I asked to take him to my bosom? Not at all!

He proposes a job to me, and offers to pay me. I like the job, and mean

to use him and his paper, both to earn some money that I want, and do a

bit of decent work."

"_You_--use Harry Wharton!" said the cripple, with a sarcasm that

brought the colour to Louis's thin cheek and made Marcella angrier than

before. She saw nothing in his attack on Wharton, except personal

prejudice and ill-will. It was natural enough, that a man of Anthony

Craven's type--poor, unsuccessful, and embittered--should dislike a

popular victorious personality.

"Suppose we leave Mr. Wharton alone?" she said with emphasis, and

Anthony, making her a little proud gesture of submission, threw himself

back in his chair, and was silent.

It had soon become evident to Marcella, upon the renewal of her

friendship with the Cravens, that Anthony's temper towards all men,

especially towards social reformers and politicians, had developed into

a mere impotent bitterness. While Louis had renounced his art, and

devoted himself to journalism, unpaid public work and starvation, that

he might so throw himself the more directly into the Socialist battle,

Anthony had remained an artist, mainly employed as before in decorative

design. Yet he was probably the more fierce Venturist and anticapitalist

of the two. Only what with Louis was an intoxication of hope, was on the

whole with Anthony a counsel of despair. He loathed wealth more

passionately than ever; but he believed less in the working man, less in

his kind. Rich men must cease to exist; but the world on any terms would

probably remain a sorry spot.

In the few talks that he had had with Marcella since she left the

hospital, she had allowed him to gather more or less clearly--though

with hardly a mention of Aldous Raeburn's name--what had happened to her

at Mellor. Anthony Craven thought out the story for himself, finding it

a fit food for a caustic temper. Poor devil--the lover! To fall a victim

to enthusiasms so raw, so unprofitable from any point of view, was hard.

And as to this move to London, he thought he foresaw the certain end of

it. At any rate he believed in her no more than before. But her beauty

was more marked than ever, and would, of course, be the dominant factor

in her fate. He was thankful, at any rate, that Louis in this two years'

interval had finally transferred his heart elsewhere.

After watching his three companions for a while, he broke in upon their

chat with an abrupt--

"What _is_ this job, Louis?"

"I told you. I am to investigate, report, and back up the Damesley

strike, or rather the strike that begins at Damesley next week."

"No chance!" said Anthony shortly, "the masters are too strong. I had a

talk with Denny yesterday."

The Denny he meant, however, was not Wharton's colleague in the House,

but his son--a young man who, beginning life as the heir of one of the

most stiff-backed and autocratic of capitalists, had developed socialist

opinions, renounced his father's allowance, and was now a member of the

"intellectual proletariat," as they have been called, the free-lances of

the Collectivist movement. He had lately joined the Venturists. Anthony

had taken a fancy to him. Louis as yet knew little or nothing of him.

"Ah, well!" he said, in reply to his brother, "I don't know. I think the

_Clarion can_ do something. The press grows more and more powerful in

these things."

And he repeated some of the statements that Wharton had made--that

Wharton always did make, in talking of the _Clarion_--as to its growth

under his hands, and increasing influence in Labour disputes.

"Bunkum!" interrupted Anthony drily; "pure bunkum! My own belief is

that the _Clarion_ is a rotten property, and that he knows it!"

At this both Marcella and Louis laughed out. Extravagance after a

certain point becomes amusing. They dropped their vexation, and Anthony

for the next ten minutes had to submit to the part of the fractious

person whom one humours but does not argue with. He accepted the part,

saying little, his eager, feverish eyes, full of hostility, glancing

from one to the other.

However, at the end, Marcella bade him a perfectly friendly farewell. It

was always in her mind that Anthony Craven was lame and solitary, and

her pity no less than her respect for him had long since yielded him the

right to be rude.

"How are you getting on?" he said to her abruptly as he dropped her

hand.

"Oh, very well! my superintendent leaves me almost alone now, which is a

compliment. There is a parish doctor who calls me 'my good woman,' and a

sanitary inspector who tells me to go to him whenever I want advice.

Those are my chief grievances, I think."

"And you are as much in love with the poor as ever?"

She stiffened at the note of sarcasm, and a retaliatory impulse made her

say:--

"I see a great deal more happiness than I expected."

He laughed.

"How like a woman! A few ill-housed villagers made you a democrat. A few

well-paid London artisans will carry you safely back to your class. Your

people were wise to let you take this work."

"Do you suppose I nurse none but well-paid artisans?" she asked him,

mocking. "And I didn't say 'money' or 'comfort,' did I? but 'happiness.'

As for my 'democracy,' you are not perhaps the best judge."

She stood resting both hands on a little table behind her, in an

attitude touched with the wild freedom which best became her, a gleam of

storm in her great eyes.

"Why are you still a Venturist?" he asked her abruptly.

"Because I have every right to be! I joined a society, pledged to work

'for a better future.' According to my lights, I do what poor work I can

in that spirit."

"_You_ are not a Socialist. Half the things you say, or imply, show it.

And we _are_ Socialists."

She hesitated, looking at him steadily.

"No!--so far as Socialism means a political system--the trampling out of

private enterprise and competition, and all the rest of it--I find

myself slipping away from it more and more. No!--as I go about among

these wage-earners, the emphasis--do what I will--comes to lie less and

less on possession--more and more on character. I go to two tenements in

the same building. One is Hell--the other Heaven. Why? Both belong to

well-paid artisans with equal opportunities. Both, so far as I can see,

might have a decent and pleasant life of it. But one is a man--the

other, with all his belongings, will soon be a vagabond. That is not

all, I know--oh! don't trouble to tell me so!--but it is more than I

thought. No!--my sympathies in this district where I work are not so

much with the Socialists that I know here--saving your presence!

but--with the people, for instance, that slave at Charity Organisation!

and get all the abuse from all sides."

Anthony laughed scornfully.

"It is always the way with a woman," he said; "she invariably prefers

the tinkers to the reformers."

"And as to your Socialism," she went on, unheeding, the thought of many

days finding defiant expression--"it seems to me like all other

interesting and important things--destined to help something else!

Christianity begins with the poor and division of goods--it becomes the

great bulwark of property and the feudal state. The Crusades--they set

out to recover the tomb of the Lord!--what they did was to increase

trade and knowledge. And so with Socialism. It talks of a new

order--what it _will_ do is to help to make the old sound!"

Anthony clapped her ironically.

"Excellent! When the Liberty and Property Defence people have got hold

of you--ask me to come and hear!"

Meanwhile, Louis stood behind, with his hands on his sides, a smile in

his blinking eyes. He really had a contempt for what a handsome

half-taught girl of twenty-three might think. Anthony only pretended or

desired to have it.

Nevertheless, Louis said good-bye to his hostess with real, and, for

him, rare effusion. Two years before, for the space of some months, he

had been in love with her. That she had never responded with anything

warmer than liking and comradeship he knew; and his Anna now possessed

him wholly. But there was a deep and gentle chivalry at the bottom of

all his stern social faiths; and the woman towards whom he had once felt

as he had towards Marcella Boyce could never lose the glamour lent her

by that moment of passionate youth. And now, so kindly, so eagerly!--she

had given him his Anna.

When they were all gone Marcella threw herself into her chair a moment

to think. Her wrath with Anthony was soon dismissed. But Louis's thanks

had filled her with delicious pleasure. Her cheek, her eye had a child's

brightness. The old passion for ruling and influencing was all alive and

happy.

"I will see it is all right," she was saying to herself. "I will look

after them."

What she meant was, "I will see that Mr. Wharton looks after them!" and

through the link of thought, memory flew quickly back to that

_tête-à-tête_ with him which had preceded the Cravens' arrival.

How changed he was, yet how much the same! He had not sat beside her for

ten minutes before each was once more vividly, specially conscious of

the other. She felt in him the old life and daring, the old imperious

claim to confidence, to intimacy--on the other hand a new atmosphere, a

new gravity, which suggested growing responsibilities, the difficulties

of power, a great position--everything fitted to touch such an

imagination as Marcella's, which, whatever its faults, was noble, both

in quality and range. The brow beneath the bright chestnut curls had

gained lines that pleased her--lines that a woman marks, because she

thinks they mean experience an I mastery.

Altogether, to have met him again was pleasure; to think of him was

pleasure; to look forward to hearing him speak in Parliament was

pleasure; so too was his new connection with her old friends. And a

pleasure which took nothing from self-respect; which was open,

honourable, eager. As for that ugly folly of the past, she frowned at

the thought of it, only to thrust the remembrance passionately away.

That _he_ should remember or allude to it, would put an end to

friendship. Otherwise friends they would and should be; and the personal

interest in his public career should lift her out of the cramping

influences that flow from the perpetual commerce of poverty and

suffering. Why not? Such equal friendships between men and women grow

more possible every day. While, as for Hallin's distrust, and Anthony

Craven's jealous hostility, why should a third person be bound by either

of them? Could any one suppose that such a temperament as Wharton's

would be congenial to Hallin or to Craven--or--to yet another person, of

whom she did not want to think? Besides, who wished to make a hero of

him? It was the very complexity and puzzle of the character that made

its force.

* * * * *

So with a reddened cheek, she lost herself a few minutes in this

pleasant sense of a new wealth in life; and was only roused from the

dreamy running to and fro of thought by the appearance of Minta, who

came to clear away the tea.

"Why, it is close on the half-hour!" cried Marcella, springing up.

"Where are my things?"

She looked down the notes of her cases, satisfied herself that her bag

contained all she wanted, and then hastily tied on her bonnet and cloak.

Suddenly--the room was empty, for Minta had just gone away with the

tea--by a kind of subtle reaction, the face in that photograph on

Hallin's table flashed into her mind--its look--the grizzled hair. With

an uncontrollable pang of pain she dropped her hands from the fastenings

of her cloak, and wrung them together in front of her--a dumb gesture of

contrition and of grief.

She!--she talk of social reform and "character," she give her opinion,

as of right, on points of speculation and of ethics, she, whose main

achievement so far had been to make a good man suffer! Something

belittling and withering swept over all her estimate of herself, all her

pleasant self-conceit. Quietly, with downcast eyes, she went her way.

CHAPTER VII.

Her first case was in Brown's Buildings itself--a woman suffering from

bronchitis and heart complaint, and tormented besides by an ulcerated

foot which Marcella had now dressed daily for some weeks. She lived on

the top floor of one of the easterly blocks, with two daughters and a

son of eighteen.

When Marcella entered the little room it was as usual spotlessly clean

and smelt of flowers. The windows were open, and a young woman was busy

shirt-ironing on a table in the centre of the room. Both she and her

mother looked up with smiles as Marcella entered. Then, they introduced

her with some ceremony to a "lady," who was sitting beside the patient,

a long-faced melancholy woman employed at the moment in marking linen

handkerchiefs, which she did with extraordinary fineness and delicacy.

The patient and her daughter spoke of Marcella to their friend as "the

young person," but all with a natural courtesy and charm that could not

have been surpassed.

Marcella knelt to undo the wrappings of the foot. The woman, a pale

transparent creature, winced painfully as the dressing was drawn off;

but between each half stifled moan of pain she said something eager and

grateful to her nurse. "I never knew any one, Nurse, do it as gentle as

you--" or--"I _do_ take it kind of you, Nurse, to do it so _slow_--oh!

there were a young person before you--" or "hasn't she got nice hands,

Mrs. Burton? they don't never seem to _jar_ yer."

"Poor foot! but I think it is looking better," said Marcella, getting up

at last from her work, when all was clean and comfortable and she had

replaced the foot on the upturned wooden box that supported it--for its

owner was not in bed, but sitting propped up in an old armchair. "And

how is your cough, Mrs. Jervis?"

"Oh! it's very bad, nights," said Mrs. Jervis, mildly--"disturbs Emily

dreadful. But I always pray every night, when she lifts me into bed, as

I may be took before the morning, an' God ull do it soon."

"Mother!" cried Emily, pausing in her ironing, "you know you oughtn't to

say them things."

Mrs. Jervis looked at her with a sly cheerfulness. Her emaciated face

was paler than usual because of the pain of the dressing, but from the

frail form there breathed an indomitable air of _life_, a gay courage

indeed which had already struck Marcella with wonder.

"Well, yer not to take 'em to heart, Em'ly. It ull be when it will

be--for the Lord likes us to pray, but He'll take his own time--an'

she's got troubles enough of her own, Nurse. D'yer see as she's leff off

her ring?"

Marcella looked at Emily's left hand, while the girl flushed all over,

and ironed with a more fiery energy than before.

"I've 'eerd such things of 'im, Nurse, this last two days," she said

with low vehemence--"as I'm _never_ goin' to wear it again. It 'ud burn

me!"

Emily was past twenty. Some eighteen months before this date she had

married a young painter. After nearly a year of incredible misery her

baby was born. It died, and she very nearly died also, owing to the

brutal ill-treatment of her husband. As soon as she could get on her

feet again, she tottered home to her widowed mother, broken for the time

in mind and body, and filled with loathing of her tyrant. He made no

effort to recover her, and her family set to work to mend if they could

what he had done. The younger sister of fourteen was earning seven

shillings a week at paper-bag making; the brother, a lad of eighteen,

had been apprenticed by his mother, at the cost of heroic efforts some

six years before, to the leather-currying trade, in a highly skilled

branch of it, and was now taking sixteen shillings a week with the

prospect of far better things in the future. He at once put aside from

his earnings enough to teach Emily "the shirt-ironing," denying himself

every indulgence till her training was over.

Then they had their reward. Emily's colour and spirits came back; her

earnings made all the difference to the family between penury and ease;

while she and her little sister kept the three tiny rooms in which they

lived, and waited on their invalid mother, with exquisite cleanliness

and care.

Marcella stood by the ironing-table a moment after the girl's speech.

"Poor Emily!" she said softly, laying her hand on the ringless one that

held down the shirt on the board.

Emily looked up at her in silence. But the girl's eyes glowed with

things unsaid and inexpressible--the "eternal passion, eternal pain,"

which in half the human race have no voice.

"He was a very rough man was Em'ly's husband," said Mrs. Jervis, in her

delicate thoughtful voice--"a very uncultivated man."

Marcella turned round to her, startled and amused by the adjective. But

the other two listeners took it quite quietly. It seemed to them

apparently to express what had to be said.

"It's a sad thing is want of edication," Mrs. Jervis went on in the same

tone. "Now there's that lady there"--with a little courtly wave of her

hand towards Mrs. Burton--"she can't read yer know, Nurse, and I'm that

sorry for her! But I've been reading to her, an' Emily--just while my

cough's quiet--one of my ole tracks."

She held up a little paper-covered tract worn with use. It was called "A

Pennorth of Grace, or a Pound of Works?" Marcella looked at it in

respectful silence as she put on her cloak. Such things were not in her

line.

"I do _love_ a track!" said Mrs. Jervis, pensively. "That's why I don't

like these buildings so well as them others, Em'ly. Here you never get

no tracks; and there, what with one person and another, there was a new

one most weeks. But"--her voice dropped, and she looked timidly first at

her friend, and then at Marcella--"she isn't a Christian, Nurse. Isn't

it sad?"

Mrs. Burton, a woman of a rich mahogany complexion, with a black

"front," and a mouth which turned down decisively at the corners,

looked up from her embroidery with severe composure.

"No, Nurse, I'm not a Christian," she said in the tone of one stating a

disagreeable fact for which they are noways responsible. "My brother

is--and my sisters--real good Christian people. One of my sisters

married a gentleman up in Wales. She 'as two servants, an' fam'ly

prayers reg'lar. But I've never felt no 'call,' and I tell 'em I can't

purtend. An' Mrs. Jervis here, she don't seem to make me see it no

different."

She held her head erect, however, as though the unusually high sense of

probity involved, was, after all, some consolation. Mrs. Jervis looked

at her with pathetic eyes. But Emily coloured hotly. Emily was a

churchwoman.

"Of course you're a Christian, Mrs. Burton," she said indignantly. "What

she means, Nurse, is she isn't a 'member' of any chapel, like mother.

But she's been baptised and confirmed, for I asked her. And of course

she's a Christian."

"Em'ly!" said Mrs. Jervis, with energy.

Emily looked round trembling. The delicate invalid was sitting bolt

upright, her eyes sparkling, a spot of red on either hollow cheek. The

glances of the two women crossed; there seemed to be a mute struggle

between them. Then Emily laid down her iron, stepped quickly across to

her mother, and kneeling beside her, threw her arms around her.

"Have it your own way, mother," she said, while her lip quivered; "I

wasn't a-goin' to cross you."

Mrs. Jervis laid her waxen cheek against her daughter's tangle of brown

hair with a faint smile, while her breathing, which had grown quick and

panting, gradually subsided. Emily looked up at Marcella with a

terrified self-reproach. They all knew that any sudden excitement might

kill out the struggling flame of life.

"You ought to rest a little, Mrs. Jervis," said Marcella, with gentle

authority. "You know the dressing must tire you, though you won't

confess it. Let me put you comfortable. There; aren't the pillows easier

so? Now rest--and good-bye."

But Mrs. Jervis held her, while Emily slipped away.

"I shall rest soon," she said significantly. "An' it hurts me when Emily

talks like that. It's the only thing that ever comes atween us. She

thinks o' forms an' ceremonies; an' _I_ think o' _grace_."

Her old woman's eyes, so clear and vivid under the blanched brow,

searched Marcella's face for sympathy. But Marcella stood, shy and

wondering in the presence of words and emotions she understood so

little. So narrow a life, in these poor rooms, under these crippling

conditions of disease!--and all this preoccupation with, this passion

over, the things not of the flesh, the thwarted, cabined flesh, but of

the spirit--wonderful!

* * * * *

On coming out from Brown's Buildings, she turned her steps reluctantly

towards a street some distance from her own immediate neighbourhood,

where she had a visit to pay which filled her with repulsion and an

unusual sense of helplessness. A clergyman who often availed himself of

the help of the St. Martin's nurses had asked the superintendent to

undertake for him "a difficult case." Would one of their nurses go

regularly to visit a certain house, ostensibly for the sake of a little

boy of five just come back from the hospital, who required care at home

for a while, _really_ for the sake of his young mother, who had suddenly

developed drinking habits and was on the road to ruin?

Marcella happened to be in the office when the letter arrived. She

somewhat unwillingly accepted the task, and she had now paid two or

three visits, always dressing the child's sore leg, and endeavouring to

make acquaintance with the mother. But in this last attempt she had not

had much success. Mrs. Vincent was young and pretty, with a flighty,

restless manner. She was always perfectly civil to Marcella, and

grateful to her apparently for the ease she gave the boy. But she

offered no confidences; the rooms she and her husband occupied showed

them to be well-to-do; Marcella had so far found them well-kept; and

though the evil she was sent to investigate was said to be notorious,

she had as yet discovered nothing of it for herself. It seemed to her

that she must be either stupid, or that there must be something about

her which made Mrs. Vincent more secretive with her than with others;

and neither alternative pleased her.

To-day, however, as she stopped at the Vincents' door, she noticed that

the doorstep, which was as a rule shining white, was muddy and

neglected. Then nobody came to open, though she knocked and rang

repeatedly. At last a neighbour, who had been watching the strange

nurse through her own parlour window, came out to the street.

"I think, miss," she said, with an air of polite mystery, "as you'd

better walk in. Mrs. Vincent 'asn't been enjyin' very good 'ealth this

last few days."

Marcella turned the handle, found it yielded, and went in. It was after

six o'clock, and the evening sun streamed in through a door at the back

of the house. But in the Vincents' front parlour the blinds were all

pulled down, and the only sound to be heard was the fretful wailing of a

child. Marcella timidly opened the sitting-room door.

The room at first seemed to her dark. Then she perceived Mrs. Vincent

sitting by the grate, and the two children on the floor beside her. The

elder, the little invalid, was simply staring at his mother in a

wretched silence; but the younger, the baby of three, was restlessly

throwing himself hither and thither, now pulling at the woman's skirts,

now crying lustily, now whining in a hungry voice, for "Máma! din-din!

Máma! din-din!"

Mrs. Vincent neither moved nor spoke, even when Marcella came in. She

sat with her hands hanging over her lap in a desolation incapable of

words. She was dirty and unkempt; the room was covered with litter; the

breakfast things were still on the table; and the children were

evidently starving.

Marcella, seized with pity, and divining what had happened, tried to

rouse and comfort her. But she got no answer. Then she asked for

matches. Mrs. Vincent made a mechanical effort to find them, but

subsided helpless with a shake of the head. At last Marcella found them

herself, lit a tire of some sticks she discovered in a cupboard, and put

on the kettle. Then she cut a slice of bread and dripping for each of

the children--the only eatables she could find--and after she had

dressed Bertie's leg she began to wash up the tea things and tidy the

room, not knowing very well what to be at, but hoping minute by minute

to get Mrs. Vincent to speak to her.

In the midst of her labours, an elderly woman cautiously opened the door

and beckoned to her.

Marcella went out into the passage.

"I'm her mother, miss! I 'eered you were 'ere, an' I follered yer. Oh!

such a business as we 'ad, 'er 'usband an' me, a gettin' of 'er 'ome

last night. There's a neighbour come to me, an' she says: 'Mrs. Lucas,

there's your daughter a drinkin' in that public 'ouse, an' if I was you

I'd go and fetch her out; for she's got a lot o' money, an' she's

treatin' everybody all round.' An' Charlie--that's 'er 'usband--ee come

along too, an' between us we got holt on her. An' iver sence we brought

her 'ome last night, she set there in that cheer, an' niver a word to

nobody! Not to me 't any rate, nor the chillen. I believe 'er 'usband

an' 'er 'ad words this mornin'. But she won't tell me nothin'. She sits

there--just heart-broke"--the woman put up her apron to her eyes and

began crying. "She ain't eatin' nothink all day, an' I dursen't leave

the 'ouse out o' me sight--I lives close by, miss--for fear of 'er doing

'erself a mischief."

"How long has she been like this?" said Marcella, drawing the door

cautiously to behind her.

"About fourteen month," said the woman, hopelessly. "An' none of us

knows why. She was such a neat, pretty girl when she married 'im--an' ee

such a steady fellow. An' I've done _my_ best. I've talked to 'er, an'

I've 'id 'er 'at an' her walking things, an' taken 'er money out of 'er

pockets. An', bless yer, she's been all right now for seven weeks--till

last night. Oh, deary, deary, me! whatever 'ull become o' them--'er, an'

'im, an' the children!"

The tears coursed down the mother's wrinkled face.

"Leave her to me a little longer," said Marcella, softly; "but come back

to me in about half an hour, and don't let her be alone."

The woman nodded, and went away.

Mrs. Vincent turned quickly round as Marcella came back again, and spoke

for the first time:

"That was my mother you were talkin' to?"

"Yes," said Marcella, quietly, as she took the kettle off the fire. "Now

I do want you to have a cup of tea, Mrs. Vincent. Will you, if I make

it?"

The poor creature did not speak, but she followed Marcella's movements

with her weary eyes. At last when Marcella knelt down beside her holding

out a cup of tea and some bread and butter, she gave a sudden cry.

Marcella hastily put down what she carried, lest it should be knocked

out of her hand.

"He struck me this morning!--Charlie did--the first time in seven years.

Look here!"

She pulled up her sleeve, and on her white, delicate arm she showed a

large bruise. As she pointed to it her eyes filled with miserable tears;

her lips quivered; anguish breathed in every feature. Yet even in this

abasement Marcella was struck once more with her slim prettiness, her

refined air. This woman drinking and treating in a low public-house at

midnight!--rescued thence by a decent husband!

She soothed her as best she could, but when she had succeeded in making

the wretched soul take food, and so in putting some physical life into

her, she found herself the recipient of an outburst of agony before

which she quailed. The woman clung to her, moaning about her husband,

about the demon instinct that had got hold of her, she hardly knew

how--by means it seemed originally of a few weeks of low health and

small self-indulgences--and she felt herself powerless to fight; about

the wreck she had brought upon her home, the shame upon her husband, who

was the respected, well-paid foreman of one of the large shops of the

neighbourhood. All through it came back to him.

"We had words, Nurse, this morning, when he went out to his work. He

said he'd nearly died of shame last night; that he couldn't bear it no

more; that he'd take the children from me. And I was all queer in the

head still, and I sauced him--and then--he looked like a devil--and he

took me by the arm--and _threw_ me down--as if I'd been a sack. An' he

never, _never,_--touched me--before--in all his life. An' he's never

come in all day. An' perhaps I shan't ever see him again. An' last

time--but it wasn't so bad as this--he said he'd try an' love me again

if I'd behave. An' he did try--and I tried too. But now it's no good,

an' perhaps he'll not come back. Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do!"

she flung her arms above her head. "Won't _anybody_ find him? won't

_anybody_ help me?"

She dropped a hand upon Marcella's arm, clutching it, her wild eyes

seeking her companion's.

But at the same moment, with the very extremity of her own emotion, a

cloud of impotence fell upon Marcella. She suddenly felt that she could

do nothing--that there was nothing in her adequate to such an

appeal--nothing strong enough to lift the weight of a human life thus

flung upon her.

She was struck with a dryness, a numbness, that appalled her. She tried

still to soothe and comfort, but nothing that she said went home--took

hold. Between the feeling in her heart which might have reached and

touched this despair, and the woman before her, there seemed to be a

barrier she could not break. Or was it that she was really barren and

poor in soul, and had never realised it before? A strange misery rose in

her too, as she still knelt, tending and consoling, but with no

efficacy--no power.

At last Mrs. Vincent sank into miserable quiet again. The mother came

in, and silently began to put the children to bed. Marcella pressed the

wife's cold hand, and went out hanging her head. She had just reached

the door when it opened, and a man entered. A thrill passed through her

at the sight of his honest, haggard face, and this time she found what

to say.

"I have been sitting by your wife, Mr. Vincent. She is very ill and

miserable, and very penitent. You will be kind to her?"

The husband looked at her, and then turned away.

"God help us!" he said; and Marcella went without another word, and

with that same wild, unaccustomed impulse of prayer rilling her being

which had first stirred in her at Mellor at the awful moment of Hurd's

death.

* * * * *

She was very silent and distracted at tea, and afterwards--saying that

she must write some letters and reports--she shut herself up, and bade

good-night to Minta and the children.

But she did not write or read. She hung at the window a long time,

watching the stars come out, as the summer light died from the sky, and

even the walls and roofs and chimneys of this interminable London spread

out before her took a certain dim beauty. And then, slipping down on the

floor, with her head against a chair--an attitude of her stormy

childhood--she wept with an abandonment and a passion she had not known

for years. She thought of Mrs. Jervis--the saint--so near to death, so

satisfied with "grace," so steeped in the heavenly life; then of the

poor sinner she had just left and of the agony she had no power to stay.

Both experiences had this in common--that each had had some part in

plunging her deeper into this darkness of self-contempt.

What had come to her? Daring the past weeks there had been something

wrestling in her--some new birth--some "conviction of sin," as Mrs.

Jervis would have said. As she looked back over all her strenuous youth

she hated it. What was wrong with her? Her own word to Anthony Craven

returned upon her, mocked her--made now a scourge for her own pride, not

a mere, measure of blame for others. Aldous Raeburn, her father and

mother, her poor--one and all rose against her--plucked at

her--reproached her. "Aye! what, indeed, are wealth and poverty?" cried

a voice, which was the voice of them all; "what are opinions--what is

influence, beauty, cleverness?--what is anything worth but

_character_--but _soul?_"

And character--soul--can only be got by self-surrender; and

self-surrender comes not of knowledge but of love.

A number of thoughts and phrases, hitherto of little meaning to her,

floated into her mind--sank and pressed there. That strange word "grace"

for instance!

A year ago it would not have smitten or troubled her. After her first

inevitable reaction against the evangelical training of her school

years, the rebellious cleverness of youth had easily decided that

religion was played out, that Socialism and Science were enough for

mankind.

But nobody could live in hospital--nobody could go among the

poor--nobody could share the thoughts and hopes of people like Edward

Hallin and his sister, without understanding that it is still here in

the world--this "grace" that "sustaineth"--however variously

interpreted, still living and working, as it worked of old, among the

little Galilean towns, in Jerusalem, in Corinth. To Edward Hallin it did

not mean the same, perhaps, as it meant to the hard-worked clergymen she

knew, or to Mrs. Jervis. But to all it meant the motive power of

life--something subduing, transforming, delivering--something that

to-night she envied with a passion and a yearning that amazed herself.

How many things she craved, as an eager child craves them! First some

moral change, she knew not what--then Aldous Raeburn's pardon and

friendship--then and above all, the power to lose herself--the power to

_love_.

Dangerous significant moment in a woman's life--moment at once of

despair and of illusion!

CHAPTER VIII.

Wharton was sitting in a secluded corner of the library of the House of

Commons. He had a number of loose sheets of paper on a chair beside him,

and others in his hand and on his knee. It was Friday afternoon;

questions were going on in the House; and he was running rapidly for the

last time through the notes of his speech, pencilling here and there,

and every now and then taking up a volume of Hansard that lay near that

he might verify a quotation.

An old county member, with a rugged face and eye-glasses, who had been

in Parliament for a generation, came to the same corner to look up a

speech. He glanced curiously at Wharton, with whom he had a familiar

House-of-Commons acquaintance.

"Nervous, eh?" he said, as he put on his eye-glasses to inspect first

Wharton, then the dates on the backs of the Reports.

Wharton put his papers finally together, and gave a long stretch.

"Not particularly."

"Well, it's a beastly audience!" said the other, carrying off his book.

Wharton, lost apparently in contemplation of the ceiling, fell into a

dreamy attitude. But his eye saw nothing of the ceiling, and was not at

all dreamy. He was not thinking of his speech, nor of the other man's

remark. He was thinking of Marcella Boyce.

When he left her the other day he had been conscious, only more vividly

and intensely, more possessively as it were, than she, of the same

general impression that had been left upon her. A new opening for

pleasure--their meeting presented itself to him, too, in the same way.

What had he been about all this time? _Forget_?--such a creature? Why,

it was the merest wantonness! As if such women--with such a brow, such

vitality, such a gait--passed in every street!

What possessed him now was an imperious eagerness to push the matter, to

recover the old intimacy--and as to what might come out of it, let the

gods decide! He could have had but a very raw appreciation of her at

Mellor. It seemed to him that she had never forced him to think of her

then in absence, as he had thought of her since the last meeting.

As for the nursing business, and the settlement in Brown's Buildings, it

was, of course, mere play-acting. No doubt when she emerged she would be

all the more of a personage for having done it. But she must emerge

soon. To rule and shine was as much her _métier_ as it was the _métier_

of a bricklayer's labourer to carry hods. By George! what would not Lady

Selina give for beauty of such degree and kind as that! They must be

brought together. He already foresaw that the man who should launch

Marcella Boyce in London would play a stroke for himself as well as for

her. And she must be launched in London. Let other people nurse, and

pitch their tents in little workmen's flats, and _live_ democracy

instead of preaching it. Her fate was fixed for her by her physique. _Il

ne faut pas sortir de son caractère_.

The sight of Bennett approaching distracted him.

Bennett's good face showed obvious vexation.

"He sticks to it," he said, as Wharton jumped up to meet him. "Talks of

his conscience--and a lot of windy stuff. He seems to have arranged it

with the Whips. I dare say he won't do much harm."

"Except to himself," said Wharton, with dry bitterness. "Goodness! let's

leave him alone!"

He and Bennett lingered a few minutes discussing points of tactics.

Wilkins had, of course, once more declared himself the _enfant terrible_

of a party which, though still undefined, was drawing nearer day by day

to organised existence and separate leadership. The effect of to-night's

debate might be of far-reaching importance. Wharton's Resolution,

pledging the House to a Legal Eight Hours' Day for all trades, came at

the end of a long and varied agitation, was at the moment in clear

practical relation to labour movements all over the country, and had in

fact gained greatly in significance and interest since it was first

heard of in public, owing to events of current history. Workable

proposals--a moderate tone--and the appearance, at any rate, of harmony

and a united front among the representatives of labour--if so much at

least could be attained to-night, both Wharton and Bennett believed that

not only the cause itself, but the importance of the Labour party in the

House would be found to have gained enormously.

"I hope I shall get my turn before dinner," said Bennett, as he was

going; "I want badly to get off for an hour or so. The division won't be

till half-past ten at earliest."

Wharton stood for a moment in a brown study, with his hands in his

pockets, after Bennett left him. It was by no means wholly clear to him

what line Bennett would take--with regard to one or two points. After a

long acquaintance with the little man, Wharton was not always, nor

indeed generally, at his ease with him. Bennett had curious reserves. As

to his hour off, Wharton felt tolerably certain that he meant to go and

hear a famous Revivalist preacher hold forth at a public hall not far

from the House. The streets were full of placards.