TWELFTH

MRS. Home was walking gently up and down the terrace in front of the

drawing-room windows at her son's house above Pangbourne. The deep heat

of the July afternoon lay heavily on river and land and sky, for the

last fortnight, even in the country, had been of scorching sort, and the

great thunderstorm which, ten days ago, had been as violent here as in

the New Forest, had not sensibly relieved the air. Philip had not been

down for nearly a month, and his mother, though she knew nothing about

gardening (her ideal of a garden-bed was a row of lobelias, backed by a

row of calceolarias, backed by a row of scarlet geraniums), felt vaguely

that though she did not at all understand the sort of thing Philip

wanted, he would be disappointed about the present result. For to-day

she had received a telegram from him--he telegraphed the most

iniquitously lengthy and unnecessary communication--saying that he would

arrive that evening. Surely a postcard even the day before would have

conveyed as much as this telegram, which told her that he was coming

down alone, that he wished a reply if anyone was staying with her, and,

if so, who, that he was leaving Madge in London, and that Evelyn, who

had proposed himself for this last Saturday till Monday in July, was not

coming. Also--this was all in the telegram for which a postcard the day

before could have done duty--Gladys Ellington and her husband, who were

to have spent the three days with them, were unable to come, and he

supposed, therefore, that his mother and he would be alone. The little

party, in fact, that had been arranged would not take place; he himself

would come down there as expected, but nobody else.

To Mrs. Home this was all glad news of a secret kind. She had seen so

little of Philip lately, and to her mother's heart it was a warming

thing to know that he was to spend the last Sunday of his bachelor life

with her, and with nobody else. To say that she had been hurt at his

wishing the family into which he was to marry being present on these

last days before he definitely left his mother to cleave to his wife

would be grossly misinterpreting her feeling; only she was herself glad

that she would have him alone just once more. For the two had been not

only mother and son, but the most intimate of friends; none had held so

close a place to him, and now that Mrs. Home felt, rightly enough, that

henceforward she must inevitably stand second in his confidence, she

was, selfishly she was afraid but quite indubitably, delighted to know

that they were to have one more little time quite alone. All that was to

be said between them had already been said, she had for herself no last

words, and felt sure that Philip had not either, and she rehearsed in

her mind the quiet, ordinary little occupations that should make the

days pass so pleasantly, as they had always passed when they two were

alone together. Philip would get down by tea-time on Saturday, and was

sure to spend a couple of hours in the garden or on the river. Then

would follow dinner out on the terrace if this heat continued, and after

dinner she would probably play Patience, while Philip watched her as he

smoked from a chair beside her observing with vigilant eye any attempt

to cheat on her part. Mrs. Home's appetite for cards was indeed somewhat

minute, and if after twenty minutes or so Miss Milligan, unlike a

growing girl, showed no signs of "coming out," she would, it must be

confessed, enable her to do so by means not strictly legitimate.

Sometimes one such evasion on her part would pass unnoticed by Philip,

which encouraged her, if the laws of chance or her own want of skill

still opposed the desired consummation, to cheat again. But this second

attempt was scarcely ever successful, she was almost always found out,

and Philip demanded a truthful statement as to whether a similar

lamentable indiscretion had occurred before. When they were alone, too,

Philip always read prayers in the evening, some short piece of the

Bible, followed by a few collects. This little ceremony somehow was more

intimately woven in with Mrs. Home's conception of "Philip" than

anything else. It must be feared, indeed, that the dear little old lady

did not pay very much attention either to the chapter he read or the

prayers he said, but "Philip reading Prayers" was a very precious and a

very integral part of her life. His strong, deep voice, his strong,

handsome face vividly illuminated by the lamp he would put close to him,

the row of silent servants, the general sense of good and comforting

words, if comfort was needed, words, anyhow, that were charged with

protection and love, all these things were a very real part of that

biggest thing in her life, namely, that she was his mother, and he her

son. Her son, bone of her bone, and born of her body, and how dear even

he did not guess.

Sunday took up the tale that was so sweet to her. He would be late for

breakfast, as he always was, and very likely she would have finished

before he came down. But she never missed hearing his foot on the

polished boards of the hall, and if he was very late she would have rung

for a fresh teapot before he entered the room, since she had a horror,

only equalled by her horror of snakes, of tea that had stood long. Often

he was so late that his breakfast really had to be curtailed if they

were to get to church before the service began, for they always walked

there, and her mind was sometimes painfully divided as to whether it

would not be better to be late rather than that he should have an

insufficient breakfast. She had heard great things of Plasmon, and a

year ago had secretly bought a small tin of that highly nutritious

though perhaps slightly insipid powder, of which she meant to urge a

tablespoonful on Philip if he seemed to her not to have had enough to

eat before he started for church, since apparently this would be the

equivalent of several mutton chops. But the tin had remained unopened,

and only a few weeks ago she had thrown it away, having read some case

of tinned-food poisoning in the papers. How dreadful if she meant to

give him the equivalent of several mutton chops, and had succeeded only

in supplying him with a fatal dose of ptomaine!

Then after the walk back through the pleasant fields there would be

lunch, and after lunch in this July heat, long lounging in some

sheltered spot in the garden. Tea followed, and after tea Philip's

invariable refusal to go to church again, and her own invariable

yielding to his wish that she should not go either. That again was an

old-established affair, uninteresting and unessential no doubt to those

who drive four-in-hand through life, but to this quiet old lady, whose

nature had grown so fine through long years of speckless life, a part

of herself. He would urge the most absurd reasons; she would be going

alone, and would probably be waylaid and robbed for the sake of her

red-and-gold Church-service; it threatened rain, and she would catch the

most dreadful rheumatism; or life was uncertain at the best, and this

might easily be the last Sunday that he would spend here, and how when

she had buried him about Wednesday would she like the thought that she

had refused his ultimate request? This last appeal was generally

successful, and it was left for Mrs. Home to explain to their vicar, who

always dined with them on Sunday, her unusual absence. This she did very

badly, and Philip never helped her out. It was a point of honour that

she should not say that it was he who had induced her to stay away, and

his grave face watching her from the other side of the table as she

invented the most futile of excuses, seemed to her to add insult to the

injury he had already done her in obliging her to invent what would not

have deceived a sucking child.

Then on Monday morning he would generally have to leave for town very

early, but if this was the case, he always came to her room to wish her

good-bye. And her good-bye to him meant what it said. "God be with you,

my dear," was it, and she added always, "Come again as soon as you can."

All these things, the memory of those days and hours which were so

inexpressibly dear to her, moved gently and evenly in Mrs. Home's mind,

even as the shadows drew steadily and slowly across the grass as she

walked up and down awaiting his arrival. And if sadness was there at

all, it was only the wonderful and beautiful sadness that pervaded the

evening hour itself, the hour when shadows lengthen, and the coolness of

the sunset tells us that the day, the serene and sunlit day, is drawing

to a close. That the day should end was inevitable; the preciousness of

sunlit hours was valued because night would follow them, for had they

been known to be everlasting, the joy of plucking their sweetness would

have vanished. And the same shadowed thought was present in Mrs. Home's

mind as she thought how the evening of her particular relationship to

Philip was come; all these memories, though dear they would always be,

gathered a greater fragrance because in the nature of things they must

be temporary and transitory, even as the memory of childish days is

dear simply because one is a child no longer. While childhood remained

they were uncoloured by romance, the romance the halo of them only

begins to glow when it is known that they are soon to be at an end.

Yet Mrs. Home would not have had anything different; that her relation

to Philip must fade as the day-star in the light of dawn, she had always

known. Even when the day-star was very bright and the dawn not yet

hinted in Eastern skies, she knew that, and now when the whole East was

suffused with the rosy glow, she would not have delayed the upleap of

the resplendent sun by an hour or a minute. For old-age unembittered was

her's, and in the completeness and fulness of Philip's manhood, not in

keeping him undeveloped and unstung by the sunlight, though through it

was flung bitter foam of the sea that breaks forever round this life of

man, she realised not herself only but him most fully and best. She

would not retain him, even if she could; he had got to live his life,

and make it as round and perfect as it could be made. It was her part

only to watch from the shore as he put out into the breakers, and wish

him God-speed. Yet now, as far as she could forecast, no breakers were

there, a calm sunny ocean awaited him; there was but the tide which

would bear him smoothly out. How far he would go, whether out of sight

of the land, where she strained dim eyes after him, or whether, so to

speak, he should anchor close to her, she did not know. He had now to

put out; once more they--he and she alone--would play together on the

sands, but each would know--he very much more than she, that they played

together for the last time. After this he must, as he ought, take

another for his playmate. And if at the thought her kind blue eyes were

a little dim, it was the flesh only that was weak. With all her soul she

bade him push out, and if to herself she said: "Oh, Philip! must you

go?" all in herself that she wished to be reckoned by, all that was

truly herself, said "God-speed" to him.

The gardeners at Pangbourne Court had been startled into dreadful

activity that day. "The master," it was known, would be down for this

Sunday, but "the master" by himself was a much more formidable affair

than he with a party. As Philip had conjectured at Whitsuntide, there

would come a break in the happy life of the garden, and it was quite

indubitably here now. The hot and early summer which had produced so

glorious an array of blossom in that June week now exacted payment for

that; roses which should have flowered into August had exhausted

themselves, the blooms of summer were really over, while the autumn

plants were still immature. All this was really not the fault of the

gardeners, but of the weather; but, as has been said, they were stirred

into immense activity by the prospect of Philip's arrival, since if the

beds presented a fair show, he would be more likely to be lenient to

other deficiencies. But Mrs. Home, as she went up and down the paths

waiting for his arrival, saw but too clearly that things were not quite

as they should be. A dryness, an arrest of growth, seemed to have laid

hands on the beds; it was as if some catastrophe had stricken the

vegetable kingdoms that withered and blighted them. The grass of the

lawn, too, lacked the vividness of the velvet that so delighted Philip's

London-wearied eye--there were patches of brown and withered green

everywhere, instead of the "excellent emerald." Yet, perhaps, surely

almost, he would not vex himself with that. Three days only intervened

between now and the twenty-eighth; he would have no fault to find with

anything in the sunlight of life which so streamed on him.

She was passing between two old hedges of yew, compact and thick of

growth as a brick wall, and impervious to the vision. Her own path lay

over the grass, but on either far side of these hedges was a gravel

walk, and half-way up this she heard a footstep sounding crisply. For

one moment she thought it was Philip's, and nearly called to him, the

next she smiled at herself for having thought so, for it altogether

lacked the brisk decision with which he walked, and she made sure it was

one of the gardeners. It went parallel with her, however, in the same

direction, and when she got to the end of her own yew-girt avenue, she

met the owner of the footstep in the little sunk Alpine garden, which

was Philip's especial delight. It was he. She had not recognised the

footstep, and though when they met, her eyes told her that this

certainly was her son, it was someone so different from him whom she

knew that she scarcely recognised him.

Misery sat in his face, misery and a hardness as of iron. He often

looked stern, often looked tired, but now it seemed as if it was of

life that he was tired, and his whole face was inflexible and

inexorable. It was not the sort of misery that could break down and sob

itself into acquiescence, it was the misery of the soul into which the

iron has entered. And mother and son looked at each other long without

speaking, he with that face and soul of iron, she with a hundred terrors

winnowing her. He had not given her any greeting, nor she him. Then she

clasped her hands together in speechless entreaty, and held them out to

him. But still he said nothing, and it was she who spoke first.

"Philip, what is it?" she said. "Whatever it is, tell me quickly, my

dear. I can bear to know anything. I cannot bear not to."

He looked away from her for a moment, striking the gravel with his

stick.

"Madge?" said Mrs. Home. "Is she dead?"

Yet even as she spoke she knew it was not that. That, even that, would

not have made Philip like this. He would have come to her to be

comforted; it was not comfort that he asked for.

"No, she is not dead," he said. "I wish she was. She has betrayed me and

thrown me over. She is probably by this time married to Evelyn Dundas!"

He paused a moment.

"That is what has happened," he said; "and, here to you and now, mother,

I curse them both. I met them together yesterday, I cursed them to their

faces. There is nothing I will not do that can damage them in any way. I

will ruin him if I can, and I will wait long for my vengeance if need

be. I tried to forgive them, I tried to go to the house and tell them

so, but I could not. I don't forgive them, and if for that reason God

does not forgive me what I have done amiss, I don't care. I would

forgive them if I could; I can't. If that is wrong I can't help it. It

is better you should know this at once. I am sorry if it hurts you, but

there is no manner of use in my trying to 'break it' to you, as they

call it. Break it! It is I who am broken!"

Then all the tenderness of maternity, all the years of love between her

and Philip, the complete confidence which had forged so strong and

golden a chain between them, rose in Mrs. Home's mind and sent to her

lips the only answer she could make. Sorrow for him, sympathy with him,

of course he took for granted; there was no need to speak of things

like these.

"Ah, dear Philip, unsay that, unsay that!" she cried. "Whatever happens

to one, it is impossible that you should feel that!"

He looked at her with the same glooming face.

"I don't unsay it," he said, "I don't unsay one single word of it. In

proportion as both of them were dear to me, so is that which has

happened detestable to me. I don't want to talk about it--there is no

use in that. I have got to begin my life again; that is what it comes

to, and I have to begin it on a basis of hate and utter distrust. Two

people who were the friends of my heart, people whom I could have

trusted, so I should have thought, to the uttermost verge of eternity,

have done this."

Then all his bitterness, and there was much of that, all his resentment

and anger, all his love gone sour, rose in his throat.

"For what guarantee have I now," he cried, "that everyone else whom I

trusted will not behave to me like that? You, mother, you, what plans

and plots may you not have got against me? It is all very well to say

that you cannot, that you are my friend. But what is my experience of

friends? They are those who know one best, and can thus stab most

deeply. God defend me from my friends--I would sooner shake hands with

my enemies. Ah! I forgive them, for I might know that they were enemies;

but, fool that I was, I never guessed that my friends were but enemies

who sat at my table. They ate my food--I wish it had choked them; they

drank my wine again and again--I wish I had poisoned it. For they have

poisoned me, they have made my life impossible. Ah, don't say I shall

get over it! That is silly. How can I get over it? For if I could, I

should not say these things to you. I should be silent, I hope, and

trust to what is called the healing hand of Time. But there are certain

things Time never heals. One of them is the infidelity of those whom one

thought were friends."

He was speaking quickly now, the bile of bitterness overflowed.

"Friends!" he said. "Madge and Evelyn and I were friends. But they two

have done this accursed thing. And if I have another friend in this

world, I shall now expect him to believe the chance word of any lying

tongue. Apart from you, I have one friend left, and if Tom Merivale told

me to-morrow that I had cheated at cards, and that in consequence he

declined the pleasure of my further acquaintance, I should not be

surprised. I believe nothing good of my friends, and I believe less harm

of my enemies! They, anyhow, can hurt me less. I have had but four

friends in my life, and yet even with four, fool that I was, I counted

myself rich in them. Two have gone, and there are just two people in

this world whom I hate. Till yesterday there were none."

Mrs. Home laid her hand timidly on his arm.

"Philip, dear Philip," she said, "is there any good in saying these

things? Does it help in any way what has happened, or does it help you?"

"No, it does no good," said he. "I don't want to do any good. I just

choose to say what I am saying, and what I say, I assure you, is no

exaggeration of what I feel--it does not even do justice to what I feel.

One thing I have misstated, or it was but a mood of the moment. I said I

was broken; I am nothing of the sort. I never did a better day's work

than to-day. But I don't want to say these things again, and I have no

intention of doing so. I beg you also never to refer to them. But I

choose just this once to say what my feeling towards them is. I tried,

indeed I tried my best, to forgive them, but I can't. I can no more now

conceive forgiving them than a blind man can conceive the colour of that

rose. I loved them both, and in proportion as my love for them was

strong, so is my hate for them."

He paused a moment.

"That is all," he said. "I wanted you to know that, and to be under no

misconception as to what I felt. Let us never talk of either of them

again. I have already given all necessary orders in London, and all I

have to do here is to send back all wedding presents. I will do that

to-night."

He looked at her a moment as she stood there with hands that trembled

and eyes that were dim, pitying him to the bottom of her kind, loving

soul, but imploring him, so he felt, not to be like this. And the pity

reached and touched him, though the entreaty did not.

"Poor mother," he said. "I am sorry for you, indeed I am that. We have

not kissed yet, or shaken hands."

But Mrs. Home, gentle and loving and pitiful as she was, could not do

quite as he asked, though her hands and her lips yearned for him.

"No, Philip," she said; "but with whom do I shake hands, and whom do I

kiss? You, the Philip who is my son, or the man who has said this?

Indeed, dear, I know you well, and it is not you who have spoken."

He looked at her steadily.

"Yes, it is I who have spoken," he said. "This is now your son, the man

who has said these things. Do you cast me off, too?"

Unfair, unjust as the words were, she felt no pang of resentment with

him, telling herself that he was not himself. And, whatever he was, her

relationship to him, she knew, could never be altered. If he was lying

in the condemned cell for some brutal murder, whatever he had done or

been could never make any difference to that. He knew that, too, his

best self knew it, and it was to his best self she spoke.

"You know I can never cast you off," she said, "and those were wild

words but they are unsaid. Here is my hand, my darling, and here are my

lips. You want me also never to say any more about it. I will not; but I

must say this about you--that you will not always feel like this. I know

you will not. And when the change comes, tell me. You cannot take that

belief away from me."

He kissed her, holding both her hands in his, but his face did not

relax.

"Poor mother!" he said again.

They walked back towards the house together, down the grassy walk

between the yew hedges, where Mrs. Home had first heard his footstep,

and Philip, according to contract, began at once to speak of other

things. Dismal though this was, it was still perhaps better than

silence; whatever had happened, the present was with them, and the

present had to be lived through; ordinary human intercourse had got to

be continued. Whether in the immediate future he would go abroad, and

try by the conventional prescription of travelling to find, if not

relief, at any rate the sense of unreality that travelling and change

sometimes give, he had not yet determined, though the idea had occurred

to him. He was still really incapable of making plans at all, he could

not yet face the future, but, so far as he had considered it, he was not

disposed to think that he would try it. For idleness to a man accustomed

to lead a very busy life, a life, too, which every day demands

concentration of thought and decisiveness of action, is in itself

irksome, even though the panorama of foreign lands and skies is drawn by

before him. To such a mind, even when it is at peace with itself, a

holiday is generally only a means of recuperation, and the recuperation

effected, such a man frets to be at work again, and to him now, with

this dreadful background always with him, the idea of travel appealed

very little. He would be better, so he thought, back at work, and the

harder and more continuously he worked, the less intolerable, perhaps,

would be the burden which he carried about with him. Truly, we make our

own heaven and hell, and since the kingdom of God is within us, so also

within us are the flames of the nethermost pit.

But in those three minutes as they went back again to the house, Mrs.

Home made her resolve. Whatever it cost her, and however difficult each

minute might be, however much she might long herself to go and weep, or

better still, to weep with him, she would do her very best to act as he

had wished, and never in thought or word dwell on the past. A tragedy

had happened; but it was necessary to go on, to begin life again, not to

sit and bewail; nothing was ever cured, so she told herself, by thinking

of what might have been avoided, if things had been different. But

things were this way and not otherwise, and that which had not been

avoided had already become part of the imperishable past, the hours of

which are, indeed, reckoned up, but do not perish, since it is of them

that the present is made.

She left him after this to go round the garden; he had already sent for

the head-gardener, who was waiting as bidden at the front door, in some

trepidation of mind. Mrs. Home hated to have to scold and find fault,

she hated also that Philip should do it, and she went indoors instead of

accompanying him. There was no sweeter and kinder soul in this world

than she, and even now, when her heart bled for her son, no

vindictiveness or desire for revenge on those who had made him suffer so

had place in her mind. But forgiveness could not be there yet, and it

was the most she could do to resolve not to think about either Madge or

Evelyn. Philip's sorrow and what faint consolation or palliation she

could bring to that was enough to fill her thoughts; the authors of his

sorrow she wished as far as was humanly possible to root out from her

mind altogether. Resentment would do no good to anybody and only hurt

herself, and since she knew that she could not wholly forgive, since

there was no sign of sorrow or regret on their parts, the best thing she

could cultivate in their regard was oblivion.

She went, therefore, first to the smoking-room, where there hung the

little water-colour sketch that Evelyn had once made of her; a

photograph of him also stood there, and this she took with her also. The

frames were her own, but she took the pictures out of each. Then, going

to her bedroom, she unlocked her jewel-case and took from it the pearl

brooch he had given her. No anger was in her mind; and even as she

handled those dear and familiar things, she detached it from what she

was doing. Then making a packet of them, she sealed and directed it to

him. There was no need that any word of hers should go with it; indeed,

there was no word she could say to him.

But though she had resolved not to think about either of them, that was

one of those resolutions which in the very nature of things cannot be

kept, and afterwards when this business of returning his gifts was over,

and she sat down with her piece of needlework, she could not keep her

mind off them. But now, so far from vindictiveness being there, it was

rather pity, pity deep and sincere, that filled it. Terrible though the

practical result had been, bitter and deadly as was the blow dealt at

the man whom she loved better than anyone else in the world, what other

course had been open? Madge and Evelyn had found they loved each other,

and that being so, how infinitely more wretched must any attempt to

disregard or stifle that have proved! The thought of the girl as

Philip's wife secretly loving another was a situation which she knew

well was far more terrible than this, far more rotten, far more

insecure. There the foundation of their lives would be founded on a lie,

their house would be built over a volcano which might break out and

overwhelm with fire and burning the fabric that was reared upon it. At

the best, what happiness could there be in it, and how could it be a

home in any true sense? And since they two loved, what essential good

was served by their waiting to join themselves together? Convention

certainly would be shocked at the suddenness of it all, but Mrs. Home

found as she thought about it that she, personally, was not. For what

was Madge to do? Go home and continue to live with her mother? She

herself knew Lady Ellington fairly well, and she knew that no girl could

possibly stand it.

So her resolve not to think about them at all had ended in this, that

she thought about them with only pity for what in the inscrutable

decrees of God had, so to speak, been forced on them. That necessity she

deplored with all her heart, for it was pierced as it had never been

pierced before with sorrow for her son, but even in these early hours of

her knowledge of the tragedy, she could not blame them. Then,

half-ashamed of her infirmity of purpose, she went quietly to the

post-box, and took out the package she had just done up, and instead of

sending it, locked it up.

She did not see Philip again till dinner-time, and then this ghastly

game of make-believe that nothing was wrong began again. She saw well

what he felt, that as no words could possibly ameliorate the situation,

it was best that no words should pass concerning it, and she guessed

also with a woman's intuition that drops unerringly on to the right

place, even as a bird drops on to a twig, that any expression of pity or

sympathy were, above all, what he could not stand. He could bear no

hand, however gentle, to touch the wound, but winced at even the thought

of it. So they spoke just of all those things except one, which they

would naturally have spoken about, and they said the same things on such

subjects as they would naturally have said. The drought, the Japanese

war, the irritating particles of dust from wood-pavements, all the

topics of the day were there, and there were no silences, not even any

racking of the brain on the part of either to think what should be said

next. That dreadful mechanical engine of habit was in full work, and

just as Philip would have maintained normality though the City was in a

depressed and depressing state, and just as Mrs. Home would have been

quite herself to her guests though some below-stairs crisis was most

critical between domestics, so now when the crisis was such that nothing

could have touched her more keenly, it was easy, but dismal, to

maintain the ordinary forms of life. Servants certainly, that relentless

barometer of local disturbances, saw nothing that night which indicated

trouble; no storm-cone was hoisted, the gardeners, too, had come off

lightly, and Mr. Philip was pronounced to be at the utmost "rather

silent about next week's occurrences." That was the phrase of "the

room," which crystallised any vague or fluid speech that might find

utterance. "Just a little silent"--so well the prime actors in the

dining-room played their parts.

Yet yearning was on one side, the yearning of the mother for the

break-down--for it was that it amounted to--of the son, and on the son's

side was a harshness which the mother could not yet believe existed. But

his implacable speeches had been soberly and literally true, and the

strength of his hate was proportionate to what the strength of his love

had been. There was no denying the genuineness of that dreadful alchemy;

love in a hard nature indeed may undergo that terrible transformation,

whereas liking can scarcely be transmuted into anything more deadly than

dislike, while it is most hard of all for mere indifference to struggle

into the ranks of the more potent lords of the human soul. It is a

matter of indifference or at most of reprisal, what are the doings of

those who are indifferent to one. Action for damages may ensue, but hate

still slumbers in its cave. But it is when those whom a man loves hurt

him that the hurt festers and spreads poison through the soul. Indeed,

it is only those whom such a man loves who have power to hurt him at

all.

After dinner, too, the daily round was continued in all its dismal

unreality. Philip even asked, an old and quite uninteresting joke,

whether he might smoke in the drawing-room, and on Mrs. Home's saying

"No!" threatened to go to the stables. It was never a good joke, or,

indeed, anything approaching it, but to-night it came near to move tears

on the poor lady's part, for it was like speaking of the odd little ways

of some loved one who is dead. Then, again, in the drawing-room the

table for cards was placed out, with decorous wax candles burning at the

corners, and Mrs. Home sat in her usual seat, and as usual Philip drew a

chair sideways near her, so that he could watch without seeming to

watch. And his mother announced Miss Milligan, with the usual futile

determination not to cheat. So in silence Miss Milligan pursued her

abhorred way; and during that silence the tears, the break-down

inevitable for all her brave resolves, came close to the surface. Mrs.

Home already could not speak, she had to clench her teeth to prevent the

sobs coming. Then at last there came a hitch, she cheated, and Philip

saw it.

"Black nine," he said; "not red nine."

Mrs. Home's hands were already trembling, and at this they failed, and

the cards were scattered over the table.

"Oh, Philip!" she cried, "I can't bear it, I can't bear it. Oh, my

darling! put your head on my lap as you used to do when you were a

little boy and in trouble, and let me see if I cannot comfort you."

She looked up at him with tear-dimmed eyes, and not till then did she

fully know how deep the iron had gone. Not a sign of relenting or

softening was there. He got up and spoke in a perfectly hard, dry voice.

"Not one atom can you comfort me," he said. "We have both to bear what

has to be borne, and as I have said, it is better to bear in silence. I

think now I had better go; I have those matters to arrange to-night

which I spoke to you of. Perhaps you would tell the servants that--that

everything will go on just as usual here."

Mrs. Home saw the hopelessness of further appeal just now.

"Yes, dear, go and do what you have to," she said. "I will tell them.

Will you come back to read prayers, Philip?"

"No," said he.

Then he bent and kissed her, and as he held her hands the first faint

sign in the trembling of his lip showed that for her, at any rate, he

was not all adamant.

"I am not sorry for myself," he said, "but I am sorry for you, dear

mother, that you cannot possibly help me. Breakfast as usual to-morrow?

Good night."