I answered that the really beastly thing was his being there; his having

brought her there; and that it would give me pleasure to pitch him over

the canal bridge, only that the canal water was too clean for him.

He said, "The canal water is filthy. But it isn't filthier than--it isn't

half so filthy as your imagination. Your imagination, Furnival, is like

the main sewer of this city."

He said it without any sort of passion, in his voice of utter weariness,

as if he was worn-out with struggling against imaginations such as mine.

"But," he went on, "even your imagination isn't as obscene as Withers's.

You may as well tell me what he said to you about Miss Thesiger."

"He said that she--that you were staying together in the same hotel."

"Why shouldn't we? It's a pretty big hotel. Do you mind my going back to

it?"

I said grimly that I was going back to it myself. I wasn't going to let

Jevons out of my sight. I felt as if I had taken him into custody.

We went back.

We didn't speak till we came into the Market-Place. Then Jevons said

quietly:

"As it happens, we aren't staying together in that damned hotel. I'm

staying in it by myself. We were dining there and having breakfast when

Withers spotted us. You don't suppose she'd let me take her to the same

hotel, do you? I got a room for her in a boarding-house. Kept by some

ladies."

"What do you mean by bringing her here at all? If," I said, "you _did_

bring her."

He meditated as if he too wondered what he had meant by it.

"I brought her all right. That's to say, I made her come."

"You mean you didn't bring her? She followed you?"

(I _had_ to know what they had done, how they had arranged it.)

We stood for a moment in the middle of the vast foreign Market-Place,

talking in voices whose softness veiled our hostility.

He answered with a little spurt of anger. "You can't call it following.

She came."

"Don't prevaricate," I said. "She came because you made her come. I'm not

going to ask you why you made her. It's obvious."

"Is it?" he said. "I wish I knew why. I wish to God I knew."

"Don't talk rot," I said. "You knew all right. And she didn't."

He looked at me. Standing there in the lighted Marketplace, under the

shadow of the monument, he looked at me with shining, tragic eyes.

"No, Furnival," he said. "Before God I didn't know. Neither of us knew.

But I know now. And I'm going to-morrow."

* * * * *

He stuck to it that he was going. He seemed to think that his going would

make it all right. He had just realized--he had only just, after six days

of it, mind you, realized--that he had compromised her. I said I supposed

he realized it after Withers had seen them?

He said, No, it had come over him before that. Neither of them really

cared a damn about Withers. Who was going to care what a beast like

Withers thought or said? It had come over him that he oughtn't to have

brought her here. He wished he'd hung himself before he'd thought

of it, but the fact was that he didn't think. He just felt when he got

out here himself that it would be a jolly thing for her to come too; it

would do her good to cut everything--all the mimsy tosh she'd been

brought up in and hated--to get out of it all--just to do one splendid

bunk. That, he said, was all it amounted to.

We talked it over, sitting up in his little bedroom under the roof, the

cheapest room in the hotel. You may wonder how I could have endured to

talk to him instead of wringing his horrid little neck for him; but there

wasn't anything else to be done. After all, it wouldn't have done Viola

or me any good if I had wrung his neck. It was, in fact, to save

precisely that sort of violent scandal that I had come out here. I had

realized so well what wringing Jevons's neck would mean to Viola that I

was determined to get at him before Reggie Thesiger could.

Besides I doubt very much if you could have wrung the neck of anybody so

abjectly penitent as Jevons was that evening. I felt as if I were shut up

with a criminal in the condemned cell, and Jevons no doubt felt as if

he had murdered Viola.

And yet, sitting there on his bed, leaning forward with his head in his

hands and his eyes staring, staring at the horror he had raised round

her, he asserted persistently his innocence.

"Practically," he said, "I brought her out to look at Bruges--the

Belfry."

I said: "Good God! Couldn't she look at the Belfry without _you_?"

He shook his head and replied very gravely: "Not in the same way,

Furnival. Not in the same way. It wouldn't have been the same thing at

all."

"You mean it wouldn't have been the same for you, you little bounder."

"It wouldn't have been the same thing for _her_. I wasn't thinking only

of myself. Who does?"

It was as if he had said: "Who that loves as I love thinks only of

himself?" But I missed that. I was too angry.

At least I suppose I was too angry. I must have been. Jevons's offence

was unspeakable, or seemed so. He had outraged all decencies. He had done

_me_ about the worst injury that one man can do to another--at any rate,

I wasn't sure that he hadn't. How could I have been sure! Every

appearance was against him. Even his funny candour left me with a ghastly

doubt. It was preposterous, his candour. His innocence was preposterous.

But it is impossible to write about this singular adventure as it must

have appeared to me at the time. I am saturated with Jevons's point of

view. I have had to live so long with his innocence and I have forgiven

him so thoroughly any wrong he ever did to me. All this is bound to

colour my record and confuse me. I have impression upon impression of

Jevons piled in my memory; I cannot dig down deep enough to recover the

original; I cannot get back to that anger of mine, that passion of

violent integrity, that simple abhorrence of Jevons that I must have

felt.

He didn't care a rap about me and my abhorrence. He asked me what I

thought I was doing when I came out here? He simply smiled when I told

him I'd come out to send Viola back to her people before Reggie Thesiger

got hold of him and thrashed him within an inch of his life, not because

I in the least objected to his being thrashed within an inch of his

life--far from it--but because advertisement in these affairs was

undesirable. I didn't want Viola's family or anybody else to know about

this instance. It was to be hushed up on her account and on their account

alone.

He replied pensively (almost too pensively) that he had supposed that was

the line I would take. It was his little meditative pose that made me

call him a thundering scallywag and accuse him of having calculated on

the line that would be taken.

He said quietly, "The word thundering is singularly inappropriate.

There's nothing thundering about me. I haven't calculated anything. As

for hushing it up, I'm hushing it up myself, thank you. Haven't I told

you I'm going to-morrow? Can't you see that I'm packing?"

He had evidently been trying to pack.

"And what," I asked, "is Miss Thesiger doing?"

"She's staying on here by herself a bit. In the _pension_. As if she'd

come by herself."

He seemed entirely satisfied with his plan.

I said, "Look here, Jevons, that won't do. It's no good _your_ going.

You've been seen here. You're supposed to be staying in this hotel

together. If you go and she stays--in that _pension_--you've deserted

her. You've seduced her. You're tired of her--in five days--and you've

left her."

"You don't suppose I have _really_?" said Jevons.

"I don't suppose anything. I don't know what you've done. I don't think

I want to know. That's what it'll look like. Do, for God's sake, remember

you've been _seen_."

He gathered a portion of his cheek into his mouth and sucked it.

"I suppose," he said, "it _would_ look like that."

I said of course it would. And he asked me then, quite humbly, what I

thought he'd better do.

I said I thought he'd better do exactly what I told him. He was to stay

here till Captain Thesiger had sailed for India (I wasn't going to let

him get back to England till Reggie was out of it). Miss Thesiger was to

go back to her people to-morrow, and he was not to see her or write to

her before she went.

He asked me was I thinking of taking her back myself?

I said I wasn't. Miss Thesiger had behaved as if she had disappeared.

There was no good in my behaving as if she had disappeared with _me_.

That seemed to pacify him.

I said I should take her to Ostend to-morrow and put her on board the

boat. I could see that he didn't at all care about this part of the

programme, but his intelligence accepted the whole as the best thing that

could be done in the circumstances.

Then I left him to his misery and went round to the _pension_ to see

Viola.

All my instincts revolted against what I had to do.

* * * * *

She has since told me that I did it beautifully. I don't, of course,

believe her, and it doesn't matter. The wonder is how I did it at all.

To begin with I was afraid of seeing her, because I conceived that she

would be afraid of seeing me. I felt as if I had hunted her down and

caught her in a trap. I didn't want the bright, defiant creature to

crouch and flinch before me in her corner. And, as I tried to realize

our encounter, that was how I saw her--crouching and flinching in a

corner. It wouldn't have been quite so awful if the man had been any

other man but Jevons. I could not imagine a worse position for a girl

like Viola Thesiger than to be caught running off to Belgium, or

anywhere, with Jevons, and told to leave him and go home. Put brutally,

that was what I had to tell her.

The only way to do it was to ignore the unspeakable element in the

affair--to ignore Jevons. To behave as if I'd never heard of him; as if

she were just travelling in Belgium on her own account and staying in

Bruges alone.

And that--if she had only let me--was what I tried to do.

I remember vividly everything that passed in that interview, but I do not

know how to reproduce it, how to give anything like an impression of the

marvellous thing it was, or that it turned into under her hands. It

ought, you see, to have been so ugly, so humiliating, so absolutely

intolerable for both of us. And it wasn't. She took it from me, at the

end, and held it up, as it were a little way out of my grasp; and before

I knew where I was, with some sudden twist or turn she had brought beauty

out of it. Clear and exquisite beauty.

I found her in her room at the _pension_. It was at the back, on the

ground floor; and had long windows opening into a little high-walled

garden. The room, I remember, was rather dingy and stuffed up with

furniture. Large Flemish pieces, bureaus, chests and cabinets stood

against the walls. There was a bed behind the door; she had put her

travelling-rug over it. And there was a washstand in an alcove with a

curtain hung across it; and some of her coats and gowns hung behind

another curtain in a corner, and some were on hooks on the door. And her

little trunk was on the floor by the foot of the bed. And her shoes stood

by the stove.

Somehow, when I saw these things--especially the shoes--my heart melted

inside me with a tenderness that was infinitely more painful than the

rather austere disapproval of her which I had relied on for support.

I was prepared, as I said, for a cowed and frightened Viola, or for Viola

in a mood at least in keeping with the poignant and somewhat humbling

pathos of her surroundings; but not for the Viola I found.

The _garçon_ of the _pension_ closed the door of this room in my face as

he went in with my card to inquire whether she would receive me. I

thought, "If she refuses I shall have to insist; and that will be

unpleasant."

But she didn't refuse. On the other side of the door I heard a subdued,

but curiously reassuring cry.

She had been sitting outside the open window. Her chair was on the

flagged path of the garden. As I came in she had risen and was standing

in the window, with the intense blue darkness of the garden behind her

and the light of the room on her face. She was smiling in a serene and

candid joy. For one second I imagined that she had not read the name on

the card and that she thought I was Jevons. And then I must have looked

away quite steadily so as not to see her shock of recognition; for her

voice recalled me.

"Wally--how ripping! However _did_ you get here?"

I don't know what I said. I probably didn't say anything. The sheer

surprise of it so staggered me that I must have muttered or grunted or

choked instead. But I know I took her hand and did my best to smile back

at her with the stiff mouth she noticed later.

She went on: "I _am_ glad to see you. Have you had any dinner?"

I said I had.

"Then," she said, "let's sit in the garden."

I took her hat off a chair and stuck it on a bust on the bureau (Viola

laughed). I set the chair on the flagged path of the garden.

"Have you had coffee?" she said then.

I had.

"So have I. But I haven't had it in the garden. We'll have some more."

I rang for coffee.

We sat down and faced each other. She was smiling again as if the delight

of seeing me fairly bubbled out of her. One thing struck me then, that at

this rate it would be easy enough to ignore Jevons. In fact, if Jevons

hadn't given Viola away just now I should have thought that she _was_

travelling in Belgium on her own account and that his being here in the

same town with her was a coincidence, an accident. I could have got over

Withers and his story.

Then she said, "Have you come across Mr. Jevons yet? He's here."

I answered, with what I knew to be a very stiff mouth, "We're staying in

the same hotel."

"You might have brought him along with you," she said.

I said I didn't want to bring him along with me.

She raised her eyebrows in delicate reproof of my rudeness and said, "Why

not?"

"Because," I said, "I want to talk to you."

"Oh--" I don't think I imagined the faint embarrassment in her tone. But

it was very faint.

"_And_" I went on, "I don't want to talk about Jevons."

She looked at me then steadily. The look held me, then defied me to pass

beyond a certain limit. I understood now the terms of our encounter. As

long as I met her on the ground of a friendship that recognized and

included Jevons she was glad to treat with me; but any attitude that

repudiated Jevons, or merely ignored him, was a hostile attitude that she

was prepared to resent.

"What has he done?" she said.

"I don't know what he's done." I paused. "Why drag in Jevons?"

"Because," she said, "it's his last night. He's going to-morrow."

I said, "And it's my first night. And as it happens he isn't going

to-morrow. He's arranged to stay here another fortnight."

Her face softened. "Then it's all right," she said.

I had to dash her down from _that_ ground and I did it at once.

I said, "I saw your brother the other day."

I could see her face darken then with a flush of pain. We were sitting

close to the window, and the light from the room inside showed me all the

changes of her face.

She asked, "What day?"

"Let me see. This is Friday. It must have been Monday. I came over that

night, as soon as I'd seen him."

"What did you go and see him for?"

"I didn't go. He came to see me."

She looked at me again, if possible, more steadily than before, but

without defiance. It was as if she were measuring the extent of my

loyalty before she committed herself again to speech.

"Why did he come?" she asked presently.

"He wanted to know if I knew where you were."

"You didn't know," she said.

"I didn't or I wouldn't have lost three days in looking for you. But I

made a good shot, anyhow, when I came to Bruges."

Even in her anguish--for she was in anguish--she smiled at the wonder of

my shot.

"What made you think of Bruges?"

"I don't know."

I couldn't tell her what had made me think of it. I couldn't tell her

that I had tracked her down through Jevons. I was going to keep him out

of it, if she would only let me. But she wouldn't.

"I suppose," she meditated gently, "he must have told you."

I answered quite sternly this time, to impress on her the propriety of

keeping Jevons out of it:

"He didn't tell me anything."

"Then"--she was still puzzled--"what made you come?"

"You."

"Me?"

"Your brother, if you like."

"He should have come himself."

"That," I said, "is what I'm trying to prevent. He doesn't know

you're here. I want to get you back to England before he does know.

Besides--he's sailing for India next week."

Then she broke down; that's to say, she lowered her flags. Her head sank

to her breast; her eyes stared at the stone path; their lids reddened and

swelled with the springing of tears that would not fall.

"Didn't you know?" I said.

"I suppose I must have known--once."

Up till this moment she had not said one word, she had not made one sign,

that had really given her away. And nothing could have given her away

more completely than the thing she had said now. She had confessed to a

passion so dominating and so blind as to be unaware of anything but

itself. It was not so much that it had swept before it all the codes and

traditions she had been brought up in--codes and traditions might well

have been nothing to Viola--it had struck at her strongest affection and

her memory. She adored her brother. He was sailing for India next week;

she must have known it; and she had forgotten it.

Her confession was not made to me (she had forgotten _my_ existence

utterly); it was made to herself--the old self that had adored Reggie;

that at this evocation of him arose and sat in judgment on the strange,

perverted, monstrous self that could forget him. I've called it a

confession; but it wasn't a confession. It was a cry, a muttering,

rather, of secret, agonized discovery.

"He wants to see you before he goes," I said.

Her eyelids spilled their tears at that; but only those they had

gathered; no more came. Her self-control was admirable.

"It's all right," I said. "You've heaps of time. I'm going to take you to

Ostend in the morning. You'll be in Canterbury to-morrow night."

"Is that what you came for?"

"Yes."

"It was awfully nice of you."

"There was nothing else," I said, "to do."

"You're coming with me to Canterbury." She stated it.

"No, my dear child," I said, "I am not. You don't want them to think you

went to Bruges with _me_."

This was by implication a reference to Jevons. It was as near as I had

let myself get to him.

She said, "What are you going to do, then?"

"I'm going to put you on the boat at Ostend, and then I'm coming back

here."

It must have been at this point that the _garçon_ brought the coffee. For

I remember our sitting out there and drinking it amicably until the aroma

of it gave Viola an idea.

"What time shall we have to start to-morrow?"

I said, "First thing in the morning."

"Then," she said, "it does seem a pity not to send for Jimmy."

I could see now that there was some deadly purpose in her persistence.

But this time I couldn't bear it, and I lost my temper.

I said, "Send for him. Send for him, if you can't live ten minutes

without him."

I was sorry even at the time; I have been ashamed since. For, so far from

resenting my abominable rudeness--as, under any conclusion, she had a

perfect right to--she merely said, "I'm only thinking that if I've got to

go so soon to-morrow it'll be horribly lonely for him over there."

"He doesn't expect to see you. We arranged all that."

She pondered it, still with that curious absence of resentment. It was as

if, recognizing the danger of the situation, she submitted to any steps,

however disagreeable, that were necessary for her safety. It was clear

that she trusted me; less clear that she trusted Jevons.

One thing remained mysterious to her.

"What are you coming back here for?" she asked.

I let her have it straight: "To look after Jevons."

"What do you suppose he'd do?"

"He might get into England before your brother got out of it."

She smiled. _"What do you suppose, then, Reggie'd do?"_

I said I knew what I'd do if I were Reggie.

She smiled again. "I see. You're saving him from Reggie."

"I'm not thinking of him, I can assure you."

At that she said, "Dear Wally, so you think you're saving me."

"I'm trying to," I said. "As far as your people are concerned. You don't

want them to know you've been here. If you'll only leave it to me, they

won't know."

"I'm not going to lie about it. I shall tell them if they ask me."

"Not Reggie," I said.

"Yes, Reggie. If he asks me. Reggie's the very last person I should think

of lying to."

It was this attitude of hers that first shook me in my conclusions. For

I'm afraid I'd come to certain very definite conclusions.

Why, I asked her, hadn't she told them before she came?

"Because," she said, "there's no use worrying them. They'd have tried to

stop me. You can't imagine what an awful fuss they'd have made. I daresay

I might never have got off at all."

What I couldn't understand was her attitude. I mean I couldn't reconcile

the secrecy she had practised with her amazing frankness now.

Her manner was supremely assured.

It wasn't, mind you, the brazen assurance of a woman who has been found

out and flings up the game; it was a curiously tranquil and patient

candour, with something mysterious about it, as if she had knowledge that

I couldn't have, and bore with me through all my ignorance and

blundering. In fact, from beginning to end, except for the one moment

when I upset her by telling her about Reggie's sailing, she showed an

extraordinary tranquillity.

But as I couldn't understand her I simply said, "I wish you hadn't got

off."

She said in that same quiet way, "I had to."

"Because," I said, "he made you."

Since she had dragged Jevons in she should have him in. I wasn't going to

keep him out now to spare her. I had a right to know the truth. She had

shaken my conclusions. She had left me in a doubt more unbearable than

any certainty, and I considered that I had a right to know. I was

determined to know now and end it. That shows that I must have trusted

her; that I knew she wouldn't lie to me.

"But," she said, with the least perceptible surprise, "he didn't make

me."

"He told me he did."

"He told you?--What did he say exactly?"

"He said--if you must know--that he hadn't brought you, but that he had

made you come."

"He didn't. He didn't really. But supposing he had--what then?"

"You _want_ me to tell you what I think of it?"

"Yes."

"I think it was a beastly thing to make you do. He couldn't have done

it--you _know_ he couldn't have done it--if he hadn't been a bit of a

blackguard."

I was going to say, "as well as a bounder"; but I didn't want to rub that

in. I judged that when the poor child came to her senses her cup would be

full enough without my pouring.

"But, you see," she said, still peaceably, "he didn't do it. He only

_said_ he did. That was his niceness. He wanted to save me."

"My dear child, if it's saving you to bring you out here without your

people knowing anything about it, and to let you be seen with him

everywhere--"

"He didn't bring me. He said he wished I could come with him. And I said

I wished I could. I almost asked him to take me; and he said he couldn't.

Then he went off by himself. He was all right till he got to Bruges. Then

he wrote and said that the beauty of it hurt him, that it was awful being

here without me, and that he was coming back at the end of the week

without seeing any more of it, because he couldn't bear to know what I

was missing. He was going to keep the other places till we could see them

together. So I wired to say I was coming, and I came."

"What did you do it for, Viola?"

"Wally, I asked myself that as soon as I got into the train. And it

wasn't till I was half across the Channel that I knew why."

She stopped and stared as if at the wonder of herself explained.

"I did it to burn my boats."

I suppose _I_ stared at that. For she expounded:

"To make it impossible to go back."

I said, "My dear child, that was very reckless of you."

She said she wanted to be reckless. I asked her if it didn't occur to her

that some day she might want her boats?

She said: No. It was just her boats that she was afraid of. She didn't

really want them. She didn't want--really--to go back.

Then she looked at me and said, "You know Jimmy wants to marry me." And

then, "Did you know?"

I said I was not in Jevons's confidence, but I had guessed as much. I

said, "Do you want to marry him?"

She said, "Yes. I want to marry him more than anything. I don't want to

marry anybody else. I never shall marry anybody else. Most of me wants to

marry Jimmy. But there's a little bit of me that doesn't. It's mean and

snobbish--and dreadful, and it's afraid to marry him. And, you see, if I

were to go to my people and say, 'I'm not going to marry Mr. Furnival;

I'm going to marry Mr. Jevons,' and I were to show Jimmy to them, they'd

all get up and side with that horrid and shameful little bit of me.

Reggie would, too. It wouldn't be in the least horrid or snobbish of

them, you know, because they wouldn't know what Jimmy's really like.

They're just very fastidious and correct. But it's simply awful of me,

because I do know."

"It isn't awful. It simply means that he isn't your sort. _You_'re

fastidious and correct. You _can't_ marry him, and you know it. You won't

be able to bear it. He'll make you shudder all down your spine."

"All that doesn't prevent my caring for him. I care for him more than for

anything on earth, even Reggie. That's why I've burned my boats. So that

I may have what I care for without their tearing me to pieces over it."

So far was I from understanding her that it struck me that what she was

telling me was as ugly a thing as could be told in words; that she was

confessing that, being too weak to stand up against her family, she had

deliberately compromised herself with Jevons so that she might marry him

without their opposition; just as I was sure that Jevons had compromised

her so that he could marry her without opposition from herself.

"But--what you are saying is horrible," I said. "I don't believe you know

how horrible it is."

So far was she from understanding _me_ that she answered: "Yes, it is

horrible. But it was only a little bit of me. And it's all over. Burned

away, Wally. I burned it when I burned my boats. Don't think of me as if

I were really like that."

You see? We had been talking about different things. My mind had been

fastened on an external incident, ugly in itself, ugly in its apparent

purpose, ugly in its consequences, ugly every way you looked at it. Hers

had been concentrated on the event that had happened in her soul, an

event to her altogether beautiful--the destruction of the cowardice that

would have brought her back, that shrank from taking the risk that her

soul dared.

This, she seemed to say, is how I deal with cowardice.

That she had compromised herself by dealing with it in this way had

simply never occurred to her. It couldn't. She didn't know and wouldn't

have believed it possible that people did these things.

What had frightened her, she said, was Jimmy's saying that about keeping

the other places till they could see them together. He meant, you see,

till they were married. It brought it so home to her. And it brought home

to her what it meant to him. Because he couldn't afford to marry yet for

ages.

If she'd gone back, she said, it would have been so cruel to him. And it

would have been so cruel to herself, too.

Then she told me what they had done together. Heavens! How she must have

trusted him. She joined him here in Bruges. And they'd gone to Antwerp,

then to Ghent, then back to Bruges. (I had followed close on their

traces, a day behind them at each city.)

And it had all been so beautiful. She simply couldn't tell me how

beautiful it had been. It was as if she had never seen anything properly

before.

Jimmy had made her see things. "I can understand," she said, "what he

meant when he said that the beauty of this place hurt him. It hurts

_me_."

I reminded her that Jimmy had said it hurt him because she wasn't there.

She looked up and smiled. "He isn't here _now_, Furny."

I took her to Ostend first thing in the morning and saw her on to the

boat. I advised her to remove the foreign labels from her trunk at Dover,

and to contrive so that she shouldn't be seen arriving by the up platform

at Canterbury.

"Oh," she said. "You have to take _some_ risk!"

We were on the gangway, saying good-bye. And from the boat's gunwale she

flung me buoyantly, "If I'm caught I'll say it was _you_ I went off with.

They won't mind that half so much."

I went back to Bruges the same day and found Jevons disconsolate where I

had left him in his hotel. I took him to Brussels in the hope of finding

Withers there and confusing him in his ideas. We didn't find him. He had

gone on into Germany, carrying with him his impression of Viola and

Jevons staying together at Bruges in the same hotel.

It was at Bruges that I said to Jevons, "By the way, Miss Thesiger says

you _didn't_ make her come. She proposed coming herself."

He flushed furiously and denied it. "Of course I made her come. It wasn't

likely she'd propose a thing like that."

His chivalry was up in arms to defend her. But I could see also that his

vanity wasn't going to relinquish the manly role of having made her come

to him.

Well, I suppose in a sense he _had_ made her.

IV

We didn't stay in Brussels more than a day or two. Jevons didn't like it.

He had become sentimentally attached to Bruges, and he wasn't happy till

I took him back there. I can't say he was exactly happy then except in so

far as he may have enjoyed his own suicidal gloom. I wasn't very happy

either. All my recollections of Bruges are poisoned by Jevons's gloom and

by my own miserable business of looking after him and seeing that he

didn't walk gloomily into any of the canals. As for seeing Bruges, I

don't know to this day whether the Belfry is beautiful or not. I only

know that it stood there in the grey sky like an immense monument to the

melancholy of Jevons. He made me horribly uneasy. I thought every day

that if he didn't walk into a canal he'd have another fit of jaundice.

He seemed to be suffering chiefly from remorse, and oddly enough it was

this remorse of his that gave me the measure of his essential innocence,

as if Viola hadn't given it me already.

It was in his dejection that he showed his tact. He had, for our

remarkable circumstances, the right manner. If Jevons had been jaunty; if

he had tried to brazen it out, I should have hated him. As it was, his

misery might be poisonous, but it was most disarming. So was his trust

in me. He realized that he had got Viola into the devil of a mess, and he

looked, intelligently, to me to get her out of it. And with the same

confiding simplicity he put himself into my hands now. The adventure had

shaken his nerve and he was afraid of himself, afraid of doing some

supremely foolish thing like following Viola to Canterbury. I believe he

would have consented to stay in Bruges long after the term I had imposed

if I had told him it was necessary.

I said I took him to Brussels and brought him back to Bruges. He

submitted to be brought and taken; to be banged about in trains and

omnibuses, to be fetched and carried like a parcel. He let me feel in the

most touching manner that my presence was a comfort to him, while he

recognized that his might be anything but a comfort to me. I know I had

nothing to do with Jevons's melancholy. The fat proprietor and his wife

(who smiled at us by way of encouragement in our passages to and fro

before their bureau), these thralls of Jevons's odd fascination, had

confided to me that he had been much worse the day before I came. The

poor gentleman could neither eat nor sleep; other guests in the hotel had

come upon him wandering by himself at strange hours on the quays. (There

were a good many English in Bruges that spring.)

I was greatly relieved by these disclosures; they testified to the fact

that Jevons, at any rate on Viola's last day, had been seen very much by

himself.

We had not spoken of Viola since the day when I had come back from Ostend

after seeing her off. I can't recall much of what we did talk about, but

I remember that Jevons's remarks were always interesting, and that in his

lucid intervals he laid himself out to be amusing. In one respect only he

had deteriorated. Jevons's strong language was no longer strong. It came,

if it came at all, in brief spurts, never with the passionate rush, the

gorgeous colour, the sustained crescendo of his first runnings. It was a

thing of feeble _clichés_ that might have passed in any drawing-room.

We didn't, then, talk about Viola. But I know that he heard from her and

that I didn't.

The first week of Jevons's fortnight was up when I got a wire from

Canterbury. It said: "Reggie sailed yesterday. Trouble. Can you come

Canterbury at once. Viola."

Of course the word that stuck out of it was "Trouble." For the rest it

was ambiguous. I couldn't tell, neither could Jevons, whether the trouble

was connected somehow with Reggie's sailing, or whether in announcing his

departure she meant to intimate that Jevons might now return to England;

the coast was clear. Jevons, I may say, took this view of it and I did

not. It was I and not Jevons who was asked to come at once. Jevons, for

Viola's present purposes, was ignored.

With his usual intelligence he saw my point. We made out that the message

suggested trouble with Viola's family, and he agreed heartily that he was

not precisely the person to deal with that.

Oh yes, he trusted me. He gave me his word of honour that he would stay

in Bruges until I either sent for him or came back to fetch him.

Before I left I had a straight talk with him.

I pointed out to him (what he said he knew as well as I did) that on the

most lenient view of his case he had compromised Miss Thesiger very

seriously. But, I said, he would have had to have compromised her more

seriously still before her people would consent to her marrying him. He

must see that, with what he had done, by stopping short of what he

might have done, he had made himself, if anything, more unacceptable

than he was to begin with. She might--she probably would in her present

mood--insist on marrying him without their consent. On the other hand,

she just mightn't. And it wasn't as if he could afford to marry her at

once, while her present mood was on.

He said, No. But in six months he could afford it. He gave himself six

months.

I said, Anything might happen in six months. Miss Thesiger's present mood

(which, I put it to him, was very much made up of old Flemish glamour)

might change. And if it did, it was just conceivable that she might marry

_me_. He was determined to marry Miss Thesiger if he got the chance. _I_

was determined to marry Miss Thesiger if _I_ got the chance. At the

present most of the chances, I owned, were in his favour. But there was

just the off-chance in mine.

And that off-chance, I told him plainly, I meant to make the most of. I

wouldn't be human if I didn't. I wasn't taking any unfair advantage of

him, considering the tremendous innings he had had in Flanders, with the

Flemish atmosphere to help him. If I could make any running in

Canterbury, with the Canterbury atmosphere to help _me_ (he owned very

handsomely that it would help me, that I'd be "in it" quite beautifully)

why, I'd make it.

Had he anything to say?

He looked at me very straight, with just the least perceptible twinkle,

and he said, "All right, old man, cut in, and take your chance. I'll risk

it."

I got to Canterbury in the early evening and went straight from my

Fifteenth Century hotel to the Thesigers' house in the Close. I spotted

it at once. It was all old red brick and grey stone like the Tudor houses

in John's and Margaret's Quad.

I asked for Miss Viola Thesiger and was shown into the Canon's library.

To my great relief the Canon wasn't in his library. It looked out on to a

perfect garden with a thick green lawn, and an old red-brick wall, very

high, all round it, and tall elms topping the wall, and long beds of

wallflowers and tulips blazing away underneath it. I said to myself, "If

I want atmosphere I've got it. Bruges is nothing to the Thesigers' garden

in Canterbury Close." I'd time to take it all in, for Viola kept me

waiting.

I was glad of the peace of the garden, for I'd taken in more atmosphere

than I wanted already as I came through the house. You went upstairs to

the Canon's library, and along a narrow black-oak corridor. And in

passing I was aware of a peculiar quietness everywhere. It wasn't simply

the quietness and laziness of the Cathedral Close. It was something in

the house. I felt it as I crossed the threshold and the hall. It was the

sum of slight but definite impressions: the sudden silence of voices

that were talking somewhere when I came in; the shutting of a door that

stood ajar; the withdrawal of footsteps approaching on the landing.

It was as if there had been a death in the house; as if its people shrank

and hid themselves in their bereavement. I might have been the undertaker

called in to help them to bury their dead.

The trouble was strictly confined to the Thesigers' house. From the

tennis-lawns under the high walls of other gardens there came shouts of

girls and of young men at play.

Presently Viola came to me. She held her head if anything higher than

usual, and the expression of her face was out of keeping with the trouble

in the air. But as she came nearer I saw that this gay face was white,

its tissue had a sort of sick smoothness, and there were dark smears

under her eyes.

The poor child had paid her tribute to the Trouble.

She said, "It _is_ good of you to come. Did you mind awfully?"

I said, of course I didn't. She smiled again, the little white, blank

smile she had for me in those days, and I asked her what had happened.

She said, "Everything's happened. It's been awful."

Her smile took on significance--the whole wild irony of disaster. Then

she said, "They know."

"All of them? Your brother?"

"No. Not Reggie. He got away in time. They won't tell him. They won't

even tell Bertie. They'll never talk about it. But they know."

I said, "Supposing they _do_ know--as long as other people don't--"

"But, Wally, that's just it. Everybody does know."

I couldn't take her quite seriously yet. I asked her: Was it the labels?

and she said, No, she'd picked all the foreign ones off at Dover, and she

got the Dover ones off in the cab coming home, and she'd had Heaven's own

luck at the station, nobody'd seen her on the up platform, and her people

thought she'd come from London. Of course they all asked her where she'd

been, and she told them she wasn't going to let on just yet, that it

wasn't good for them to know too much, and that if they behaved

themselves they'd know some day. She meant to tell them as soon as ever

Reggie'd gone. "Really and truly, Wally, I meant to tell them."

"And do you know," she said, "they thought I was rotting them, that I'd

been in some stuffy place in the country all the time."

"Then how on earth," I said, "did they find out?"

"They didn't. They never do find out things. They heard--last night.

Somebody saw us."

"Withers?" I said. I'd thought of Withers at once. But he didn't seem

likely. He wasn't back yet.

"No. Not Withers. Some women who knew my uncle, General Thesiger. They

were in your hotel in Bruges, and they knew some other women staying in

the _pension_. They saw my name in the visitors' book and it excited

them. It all comes, you see, of my uncle being so beastly distinguished,

so that they _had_ to say they knew him. And then of course the other

people chipped in and told them all they knew about _me_. Can't you see

them doing it?"

I could indeed.

"I never thought the _pension_ was a good scheme," she said; "but poor

Jimmy _would_ make me go to it. He said it was safe. You see how safe it

was."

I wasn't quite clear yet as to where Jevons came in.

"You say these people saw you. You mean they saw you and Jevons?"

She smiled more than ever. "No, Wally. It was _you_ they saw."

I don't know whether I was glad or sorry. I believe I was both. I was

glad that Jevons--the ugly element--was disposed of. I was sorry--sorry,

indeed, is hardly the word for what I felt--when I thought of the

impression Viola's family had of me _now_; of the terms on which I should

be received into it if I were received into it at all. I couldn't clear

myself entirely, you see, without dragging in Jevons, and for Viola's

sake Jevons had at any cost to be suppressed.

"What on earth," I said, "must your people think of me?"

She said surprisingly, "They think you a perfect dear."

"What, for carrying you off to Belgium? That's what I seem to have done.

I don't quite see how I'm to get out of it unless we can persuade them

that we met by accident."

"Oh," she said, "_I_ got you out of it all right."

I asked her, "How?"

She said, "I told them the truth. I said it wasn't you; it was Jimmy."

"What did you do that for?"

"Because it _was_ Jimmy I went off with. You're all right. They _know_

it's Jimmy."

I groaned. "That's precisely what I've been trying to prevent them

knowing."

"They know that, _too_. I told them that you came out to look for

me--like a lamb, to save me--and that you made me come back. They

think that was dear of you."

She paused on it with a tenderness that touched me.

"You see," she said, "I've saved you."

I could only say, "My dear child--have you saved _yourself_?"

She was visibly troubled.

"I think--I _think_ they believe me. They say they do. But they don't

understand. That's why I sent for you. I want you to make them see."

"Make them see what?" I said. (It was clumsy of me.)

"What it really was," she said.

I asked her if they knew I was there. She said, Yes, they were coming in

to see me.

"They want to see you. They want to know."

I saw then what my work was to be. I was not only to witness to her

innocence and Jevons's--if they doubted it; I was to show them what she

had shown me in the garden at Bruges, the beauty of the whole thing as it

appeared to her. I was to show them Jevons's beauty.

Well, I thought, it'll take some showing.

"Do they," I asked her, "at all realize Jevons?"

"Yes. They asked me if he was the man Reggie met at my rooms. Of course I

had to say he was. It's almost a pity Reggie met him. That's what's

frightened them. You see, he only saw the funny part of him."

(I could imagine what Reggie's description of the funny part of Jevons

had been.)

I said she was asking me to do a rather difficult thing.

She said, "Yes. And I've made it worse by telling them I'm going to marry

Jimmy."

"And I'm to persuade them that that's the best thing you can do, am I?"

She said, Yes--if I could do that--

I said I couldn't. I couldn't persuade myself. How could I, when I was

convinced that the best thing she could do was to marry _me_?

She said she'd forgotten that and that I could leave the marrying part of

it to her. "It's about Bruges," she said, "that I want you to tell them."

"I can't very well if they don't ask me," I expounded.

"Oh, but," she said, "they _will_ ask you. At least Daddy will."

* * * * *

It was at this point (when, I must say, we had thrashed it out pretty

thoroughly) that Mrs. Thesiger came in. Viola left me to her.

I noticed that, except for the moment of Viola's formal introduction of

me, neither of them spoke to or looked at the other.

I have said that Mrs. Thesiger was a charming woman. I may have said

other things that imply she was not so charming; those things, if I

really said them, I take back, now that I have come to my first meeting

with her. When I recall that ten minutes--it didn't last longer--I cannot

think of her as otherwise than perfect. It took perfection, of a sort, to

deal creditably with the situation. Nothing could well have been more

painful for Mrs. Thesiger. I, an utter stranger, was supposed to know all

about her daughter, to know more than she or any of them knew. I held the

secret of those dubious seven days in Belgium. That the days would be

dubious I must have known when I set out to bring Viola back from

Belgium. I must, the poor lady probably said to herself, have known

Viola. And my knowledge of her, so dreadful and so intimate, was a thing

she was afraid of; she didn't want to come too near it. But it was also a

thing that must be exceedingly painful to me. She conceived that I would

dread her approach every bit as much as she dreaded mine.

And so--and so Mrs. Thesiger ignored my knowledge; she ignored the

situation. Beautifully and consistently, from the beginning to the end of

my stay in Canterbury, she ignored it.

She had come in now to bring me her invitation, and her husband's

invitation, to stay. Her husband, she said, expected me. He was out; he

had had to go to a Diocesan Meeting--but it would be over by now, the

tiresome meeting, and he would be here in a few minutes.

I protested. I had taken rooms at my Fifteenth Century hotel.

She insisted. They could make that all right. They knew the hotel-keeper.

He was used to having people taken from him at the last minute. They

would send round for my things. My room was waiting for me.

I said, Really?--But they were too kind--

She said, No. It was the least they could do.

This, with its faint suggestion of indebtedness, was as near as she got

to the situation.

She must have sighted it in the distance, for she slanted away from it

with a perilous and graceful sweep. She had heard so much about me from

her daughter. She had wanted to make my acquaintance. She was glad of

this opportunity--

(We smiled at each other to show that there was nothing to wince at in

her phrase.)

I said I was glad of it too, and what a charming garden they had.

Wasn't it? And did I know Canterbury? I wished I did. Well--I would know

it now. And if I didn't mind ringing the bell the butler would fetch my

things over from the "Tabard." And so on, charmingly, till the Canon came

in and relieved her.

She had done very well.

He, dear, charming man, did the same thing, and did it even better.

That's to say, he had a beautiful voice and he was happier in his

phrases. He could ignore with the greater ease because he wouldn't have

to keep it up so long.

He kept it up till dinner-time. Only now and then his kind, keen look at

me told me that he was going to have it out with me, and that he was

measuring the man with whom he would have to do.

But before dinner they had taken me to my room. They hoped I wouldn't

mind having Bertie's room. The house was full; all the girls were at

home, so they had had to give me Bertie's room.

As I dressed in Bertie's room (the drawback of it was that it looked bang

out on to the Cathedral Tower and was fairly raked by the chimes), with

the Cathedral Tower before my eyes and the Cathedral chimes in my ears,

and Canon Thesiger's beautiful voice and Mrs. Thesiger's beautiful face

and the beautiful manners of both of them in my memory, it came over me

with renewed conviction that Jevons was impossible; that Viola's people

knew and felt he was impossible; that Viola knew and felt he was

impossible herself; and that in the face of all this impossibility I had

a chance. Bruges might back Jevons, but Canterbury would never back him;

whereas it was quite evident that Canterbury was backing me.

I was in the drawing-room ten minutes before dinner-time. They were

all there: the Canon and Mrs. Thesiger and their five unmarried

daughters--Victoria, the eldest, Millicent, the High School teacher,

Mildred, the nurse, Viola, the youngest but one, and Norah, the youngest.

They were all there, the whole seven of them. And they were all silent

until I appeared. As I went down the stairs and through the hall I

noticed that the door was open and that no sounds came through it. I

caught sight of Viola standing by the window with her back to her family;

the others sat or stood in attitudes averted from her and from each

other.

When they heard me they all stirred and began talking. And as I came into

the room I found the girls drawn together (even Viola had turned from her

window).

I see them now: Canon Thesiger standing on the hearthrug, looking

handsome; and Mrs. Thesiger beside him, looking handsome, too, in grey

silk and a little flushed. I hadn't realized in our first meeting _how_

handsome they both were, and how brilliantly unlike. He was well-built,

slender, aquiline, clean-cut and clean-shaven; he had thin, beautiful

lips that he held in stiffly; he had dark eyes like his son Reggie's, and

dark hair parted correctly in the middle, hair that waved. He had tried

to depress and subdue it by hard brushing with a wet brush, but it

continued to wave in spite of him, and the crests of the waves were

silver, which accentuated them.

Mrs. Thesiger was tall and at the same time plump. She was fair and

blue-eyed and still delicately florid; she had perfect little features,

with mutinous upward curves in the plumpness. I say mutinous, because

Mrs. Thesiger's way of being handsome was in revolt against her

husband's. Her light-brown hair waved, too, and to a discreet extent she

encouraged its waving. This sounds as if Mrs. Thesiger's appearance was

frivolous. But it was not. All these florid plumpnesses and the upward

curves were held in tight, like Canon Thesiger's mouth. Their intentions

were denied and frustrated, the original design was altered to harmonize

with his. Herein you saw the superior restraint, the superior plasticity,

the superior _art_ of Mrs. Thesiger.

It was all very well for him to be correct when his features were formed

that way, but this was the very triumph of correctness.

And she was, if anything, braver than her husband. He could only just

smile with his stiff lip; she could laugh over the business of presenting

me to the four unmarried daughters whom (she emphasized it) I _didn't_

know.

And they--the four daughters--I'm not sure that they weren't the most

gallant of this gallant family.

I suppose that it was the violent dissimilarity in their parents' beauty

that had produced the engaging irregularity of their features. Not one of

those five little faces was correct. Victoria's had tried hard for

correctness in her father's manner, but her mother's irrepressible

plumpness had made her miss it, poor girl, just as (I was soon to learn)

she had missed everything.

Millicent's face, the face of the one who had been at Girton, hadn't

tried for it; it had achieved a plainness I admired because it was oddly

like Viola's face, only that Millicent was sallow and thin and dry and

wore pince-nez.

Mildred, the nurse, was frankly plump and fair and florid like her

mother; her face would have been pretty if her father's nose hadn't

stepped in and struggled with her mother's and so spoilt it for her.

Norah, the youngest, was pretty--and odd. She was Viola all over again,

but more slender and coloured differently, coloured all wrong. I didn't

take to Norah all at once. I wasn't prepared for a Viola with blue eyes

and pink cheeks and light hair, and the figure of a young foal. Besides,

her hair was outrageous; it waved too much; it was all crinkles, and she

hadn't found out yet how to keep it tidy.

She told me afterwards it was "up" that evening for the first time. When

it came to her turn, she said: "There are such a dreadful lot of us,

aren't there?"

There certainly was. And as I looked at them I thought: Viola has done an

irreparable injury to her family, to all these charming people. She has

hurt her father and mother in their beauty and their dignity and their

honour. As for her sisters, she has ruined what they are much too

well-bred to call their "chances." The story of the going off to Belgium

with Jevons is spreading through the Close, and through the High School

where Millicent teaches, and through the garrison. They will try to hush

it up, but they won't be able to; it will reach Chatham and Dover. If

they go up to town it will follow them there. Wherever they go it will

ultimately follow them. She has struck at the solidarity of the family.

To be sure, it was the solidarity of the family that drove her to strike

at it. But if you were to tell Canon and Mrs. Thesiger that they had

driven her, that they had tied her up too tight, they wouldn't see it.

They would say: "We never stopped her going off to London. But that

wasn't enough for her. She must go off to Belgium with that man Jevons.

She must ruin us."

And Viola knew that she had ruined them.

And there they were, all holding themselves well, and all well

dressed--the two youngest in white, the elders in light colours on a

scale that deepened to Victoria's old rose. I remember them, even to what

they wore and the pathos of their wearing it; they stood out so against

the black panelling of the old room. It was full of oak chests and

bureaus and Chinese cabinets, and Madonnas in Italian frames, and red and

white ivory chessmen, and little bookcases with books in white vellum

with scarlet title-pieces, and family portraits, and saints in triptychs

on golden backgrounds, and murderous assegais and the skins and horns of

animals. And the leaves of the old elms stuffed up the low, mullioned

windows looking on the garden.

And somehow you were aware of great streams of empire and of race,

streams of august tradition; of sanctity and heroism and honour, and

beautiful looks and gentle ways and breeding, all meeting there.

I looked at the Thesigers and I looked at all these things, and I thought

again of Jevons--of Jevons as absolutely impossible. You may say it was

pure snobbishness to think of him in that way, and I daresay it was; but

there wasn't any other way.

It wasn't their tradition, you see, that appealed to me so much as their

behaviour. I don't think I ever met people who knew so well how to

behave.

They kept it up. All evening they behaved like people under some heavy

calamity which they ignored for the comfort of their guest and for their

own dignity. And yet, even if I hadn't known of their calamity, I must

have felt it in the air. They knew that I knew it; but that was all the

more reason why they should ignore it; they wanted to remove from me the

oppression of my knowledge.

During dinner, perhaps, you felt the tension of the catastrophe; any

guest who knew as much as I did was bound to be aware of it. It was in

little sudden, momentary silences, in the hushed voices and half-scared

movements of the butler and the parlourmaid, in the stiffness of the

Canon's lip, and in some shade of the elder girls' manner to Viola.

I remember how, in one of those silences, Norah, who sat facing me,

leaned forward and addressed me. She said, "Mr. Furnival, you've come

from Belgium, haven't you? Do tell me about it! I can't get a word out of

Viola."

I supposed they hadn't told Norah. They had spared the youngest. She was

only seventeen.

The butler and the parlourmaid, standing rigid by the sideboard, looked

at each other in their fright. Mrs. Thesiger saw them and flushed. But

Canon Thesiger, who had his back to them, observed that Belgium was a

large order, and that Mr. Furnival would have to tell her about it

afterwards.

But there was never any afterwards for Norah. She said, "I believe

there's a joke about Belgium, and that Mr. Furnival's in it."

Viola laughed. It was, on the whole, the best thing she could do. If I'd

giggled, too, it might have helped, but I didn't dare to, sitting there

beside Mrs. Thesiger.

The Canon pushed a dish of chocolates in front of his youngest daughter

to keep her quiet, and then plunged like a hero into the tendencies of

modern music, which he deplored. He asked my opinion of Richard Strauss,

a composer of whom he was profoundly ignorant. Scarlatti and Corelli

tided us over dessert, and Purcell floated us tenderly into the

drawing-room and coffee. After coffee the Canon took me into the library

(he said) for a smoke.

I could see by the fuss he made about his cigarettes that he was nervous,

staving off the moment.

It came with the silence of the first cigarette. There were no

transitions. He simply settled himself a little deeper into his chair and

said, "I'm a little anxious about that girl of mine."

I said, "_Are_ you, sir?" as if I were surprised.

"Well"--he was evidently trying to steer between his decision to ignore

and his desire for knowledge--"you see, she's rather reckless and

impulsive."

I agreed. She was--a little.

"More than a little, I'm afraid. Do you know anything of this man Jevons

she talks about?"

That was masterly of the Canon, the subtle suggestion that Viola did no

more than talk about Jevons, the still more subtle implication that if

she _could_ talk about him all was well.

I said that Jevons was a very decent fellow, and added that Captain

Thesiger had met him.

It was mean of me to shovel the responsibility on to Reggie, but I wanted

to gain time, too.

The Canon remembered that Reggie had said something. And then suddenly he

discarded subtlety and told me straight out that Reggie had said Jevons

was a bit of a bounder, and he supposed he was.

I could see him watching me, trying to break down my defences.

I dodged him with "These things are comparative," and he floored me with

a sudden thrust:

"No, my dear boy, they are _not_."

He meditated. "What sort of age is he?"

I told him, "About thirty-one or two."

"Ah!"

And then: Did I know anything about the young man's morals?

I assured him I had never heard a word against them.

He looked at me keenly and I remembered the words of Withers which I

_had_ heard. Still, I knew nothing against Jevons's morals, and I said

they were all right for all I knew.

"Never mind what you _know_," he answered. "What do you think?"

I said I thought that Jevons had as clean a record as any man I knew.

"You mean," he said, "these things are comparative?"

I said I meant I only wished my morals were as clean. (I went as far as

that for Viola--to save her. Besides, there was Jevons to be thought of.

I was there to take a fair advantage of him, not an unfair one.)

He took another look at me that seemed to satisfy him, for he said:

"Thank you. That's all I want to know."

We smoked in silence. Presently we went into the drawing-room "for a

little music." Victoria played. The Canon and Mildred and Norah sang.

Millicent went upstairs to prepare a lecture.

When the music was over Viola and Mildred and Norah and I went into the

garden, and very soon Mildred and Norah drifted back into the house again

and left me with Viola.

She began at once, "Well--did you make him understand?"

I said I hadn't had much opportunity.

Did he ask me about Bruges? No, but he had asked me about Jevons. I told

her more or less how I had answered, and she said it was dear of me.

"But it's no use telling them anything about _me_, Wally."

I asked her, Had they said much?

She said, "No. It's what they think. Or rather, what they don't think.

They'll never think the same of me again. And they'll never trust me."

I said, Come, it wasn't so bad as all that.

But she stuck to it.

"There!" she said. "Didn't I tell you?"

Mrs. Thesiger from the drawing-room window was calling to us to come in.

The grass was damp.

"They won't trust me even with you."

I thought: "Poor little Viola--she's burned her boats with a vengeance."

Presently it was Bertie's room again, and moonlight, and the Cathedral

chimes. They kept me awake all night.

* * * * *

Of course I hadn't made them understand. How could I? The peculiar

awfulness of their calamity was that they knew so little about it. They

didn't know, after all, what had happened at Bruges; they didn't know

what lengths Viola had gone to. And though they evidently thought that I

knew, that wasn't any good to them. They couldn't ask me what had

happened at Bruges. They couldn't cross-question me about Viola's

"lengths." I couldn't tell them that, according to my lights, nothing

_had_ happened, that Viola's lengths were not likely to be very long.

Besides, even if I had come with the proofs of her innocence in my

hands, and removed their private sorrow, that wouldn't have repaired

their public wrong. Nobody was going to believe in Viola's innocence.

Appearances were dead against her.

It was awful for them every way they looked at it; awful if she married

Jevons just because she had to; awful even if she hadn't to, so long as

people thought she had; awful if she married him for any reason; more

awful if she didn't marry him at all. And supposing she married him. They

might go on ignoring for ever and ever, but who else would, with that

marriage staring them in the face and perpetuating the disgraceful

memory?

It struck me that Viola herself must see that there was only one way in

which I could make them understand, only one thing that I could do for

her, and that I had come to do it.

The next morning I asked Canon Thesiger if he could give me half an hour.

He gave it with a sort of sad alacrity. I didn't anticipate the smallest

difficulty with him or with any of Viola's family. They seemed to be

looking to me pathetically to save them. I had every reason to know that

my one chance was good, and that poor Jevons, with all his chances,

wasn't anywhere. In fact, I found in that half-hour with the Canon that

my very fairness to Jevons had worked against him to abase him, while it

raised me several points in the Canon's estimation. He had seen what I

had been driving at. The cleaner I made out Jevons's record to be, the

better I succeeded in shielding Viola. He expressed in the most moving

terms his admiration of my moral beauty.

And yet (I suppose I must have overdone it) it was my moral beauty that

dished me with the Canon. I had reckoned, you see, without his, without

Mrs. Thesiger's.

I told him straight out that if he and Mrs. Thesiger would allow me, I

meant to ask Viola to marry me. His lip stiffened.

I said I hoped it wouldn't be a violent shock to them--they must have had

some idea of what I had come for.

He said, Yes. They had been afraid I had come for that.

And then--oh, it was a terrible half-hour!

They had been afraid, and they had talked it over. He didn't tell me all

they'd said, but I could imagine most of it: how they had seen that my

marrying Viola was the one way out for them, the one way out for her, and

how it had occurred to them that perhaps I didn't know what I was doing,

and how they had decided--dear, simple, honourable people--that it would

be very wrong to deceive me, and that in any case they had no right to

accept so great a sacrifice, even if it _was_ the one way out. I daresay

they said to each other that they couldn't put such a burden on an

innocent young man; it was their child's doing and they must bear the

whole ghastly ruin and shame of it themselves. They even went further.

What Jevons had done to Viola (they'd made up their minds about him) was

devil's work. What Viola had done to them was in some way the

expression--the very singular and unintelligible and bizarre

expression--of God's will. It was the cross they had to bear. God, I

suppose, knew the kind of cross that would hurt them most.

A great deal of this he did say to me. He said it very simply, without

phrases.

Nothing, he said, would have pleased them better than that I should marry

Viola. But--he didn't think that he could let me do it. If I had only

come to him three weeks ago--

He hadn't been able--naturally--to talk about it last night. He had hoped

he wouldn't have to say anything about it at all, but I had forced him.

It couldn't have been worse if I'd seen him about to put a knife into his

breast. I tried to stop him, but he would do it, he _would_ put the knife

in.

"We don't know," he said, "what may have occurred at Bruges."

"Nothing occurred," I said, "nothing that you need mind."

He said, "That's what the child tells me."

And I, "Surely, sir, you believe her word?"

Of course--of course he believed her word. Viola, he said, might keep the

truth from them if (he smiled in spite of himself) if she thought it

would not be good for them to know it. But she had never told them an

untruth. Never. She was--essentially--truthful.

"Only," he said, "we don't know what she may have been driven to. She may

have been trying to shield that man Jevons."

I said I was convinced that, technically, Jevons was innocent. It looked

as if he had been criminally reckless and inconsiderate; but he seemed to

have honestly thought that there was no harm in Viola's joining him in

Bruges.

But the Canon didn't want to know what Jevons had thought, honestly or

otherwise. Or what Viola had thought. "It's what they've done," he said.

"You can't get over it."

I said what they'd done didn't amount to more than, looking at the

Belfry. I could very easily get over that.

He said that I was an Israelite indeed. But the world wasn't all

Belfries, and we must look at it like men of the world.

"They travelled together, Furnival. They travelled together."

I said, "Yes. And it wasn't till they'd got to Bruges the second time

that Jevons realized that they never ought to. As soon as he did realize

it, he cleared out."

He did that too late, the Canon insisted. It was no good my trying to

shield Jevons. It wasn't easy to believe that Jevons was as innocent as

Viola, and, as nobody was going to believe it, the injury the brute had

done her was irreparable.

"Not," I said, "if she marries me."

He said, "My dear boy, supposing--supposing it isn't all as innocent as

you think? You can't marry her."

I said that made no difference. It was all the more reason.

All the more reason, he insisted, for her marrying Jevons.

That, he said, was what they'd have to go into.

But there I took a high stand. I said it was for me to go into it, and if

I didn't, why should they? If I believed in Viola, surely they might? If

I knew that she could do nothing and feel nothing that was not beautiful,

wasn't my knowledge good enough for them? I said, "I shall go to her at

once and ask her to marry me."

He got up and laid his hand on my arm. "No," he said. "Not at once. Wait.

Far better wait."

I asked him, "How long?"

He said, "Till she's had time to get over him."

Mrs. Thesiger (I had half an hour with her, too) said the same thing.

"Wait," she said, "at any rate, another week."

She had given her, as Jevons would have said, a week.

* * * * *

I waited.

I stayed with the Thesigers a week. In fact, I stayed ten days. I got

used to the chimes and slept through them. I played chess with Mrs.

Thesiger; I played golf and tennis with the girls and the young

subalterns of the garrison; I played violent hockey with Mildred and

Norah; I walked with Viola and Victoria; I tried to talk to Millicent

(Millicent, I must own, was a bit beyond me); I played tennis again

(singles) against Norah, who was bent on beating me. We all went for

picnics with the subalterns into Romney Marshes and visited Winchelsea

and Rye. And in between I was taken by Canon and Mrs. Thesiger to lunch

or dinner or tea in the other Canons' houses, and was introduced to the

Dean and the Archbishop. I attended the Cathedral services to an extent

that provoked Viola to denounce me as a humbug.

I told her I did it in order to look at the finest spectacle of defiance

I had ever seen--the Canon in his stall in the chancel singing the solo

in the anthem with his beautiful voice, in the very teeth of disaster, as

if nothing had happened.

She said, "Daddy is beautiful, isn't he? He had a sore throat for a

fortnight after Aunt Vicky died. And he thinks this is far worse, but he

won't go back on me. So he sings."

I was sitting with her in the garden on the Sunday evening. I said to

her, "Viola, you were caught with the beauty of Bruges. Why can't you see

the beauty of all this?"

She looked at me with her great dark eyes (they were very young and

brilliant), and she answered, "Dear Walter, I've been seeing the beauty

of it all my life."

I was seeing it for the first time.

I made the most of it, of the Canterbury atmosphere. I sank into it and

felt it sinking into me. I was, as Jevons had said I should be, "in it."

And, as I made my running, I thought with some remorse of that

unfortunate one, languishing in Bruges on his parole. But Canterbury

would have been no use to Jevons if he had been there.

There's no doubt that I did something for the Thesigers in those ten

days. I had effaced Jevons's legend. I had even effaced my own legend

(for the scandal, if you remember, had begun with me). And the Thesigers

were tackling their catastrophe with dignity and courage and, I think,

considerable success. By having me there, by being charming to me, by

presenting me openly and honourably to all their friends, they gave

slander the most effective answer. People asked each other: Was it likely

that the Thesigers would receive young Furnival with open arms if young

Furnival had been the man they'd heard about?

At the end of my week the whole seven of them were almost merry. (I may

say Norah, the youngest, had been merry all the time.) My visit lapped

over into another week.

At the end of ten days my relations with Canon and Mrs. Thesiger became

so intimate that we could discuss the situation. They could even smile

when I reminded them that there was one good thing about it--Canterbury

didn't, and _couldn't_, realize Jevons.

They hoped devoutly that it never would.

And they thought it wouldn't. By this time, poor darlings, they believed

that I had saved them; that Jevons was an illness and that Viola had got

over him; that I had cured Viola of Jevons.

I believed it myself. She had avoided me most of the time; she had left

me to her sisters, particularly the youngest, Norah. And when I was alone

with her she was silent and embarrassed. I thought: "She is beginning to

be afraid of me. And that is an excellent sign."

The night before I left Canterbury I asked her, for the third time, to

marry me.

She said, "I know why you're asking me, and it's dear of you. But it's no

good. It can't be done. Not even that way."

V

The next day I went back to Bruges to release Jevons from his parole.

I found him sitting tight in his hotel in the Market-Place, waiting my

return with composure.

He had recovered in my absence and had been making the best of his

internment. He had written a series of articles on "The Old Cities of

Flanders." He worked them up afterwards into that little masterpiece of

his, "My Flemish Journal," which gave him his European celebrity (it must

have made delightful reading for the Thesigers). There was no delay, no

reverse, no calamity that Jevons couldn't turn into use and profit as it

came. Yes, I know, and into charm and beauty. Viola Thesiger lives in his

"Flemish Journal" with an enduring beauty and charm.

I said I was sorry for keeping him shut up in Bruges so long. He said it

didn't matter a bit. He had been very busy.

I thought it was his articles and his book (he had been dreaming of it)

that had made Jevons so happy. But I was mistaken.

We spent half the night in talking, sitting up in my big room on the

first floor for the sake of space and air.

Jevons went straight to the point by asking me how I had got on at

Canterbury.

I felt that I owed him a perfect frankness in return for the liberties I

had taken with him, so I told him how I had got on.

He said, "I'm not going to pretend to be astonished. But you can't say I

didn't play fair. I gave you your innings, didn't I?"

I said I'd had them, anyhow. We'd leave it at that.

He said, No. We couldn't leave it at that. He'd _given_ me my innings. He

could have stopped my having them any minute, but he'd made up his mind I

should have them. So that nobody should say afterwards he hadn't played

fair.

I remember perfectly everything that Jevons said to me that night. I am

putting it all down so that it may be clear that what the Thesigers

called the beauty of my behaviour was nothing to the beauty of his. Think

of him, shut up there in his hotel in Bruges, giving me my innings, when

he could have struck in and won the game without waiting those horrible

ten days.

Well, I suppose he knew that he had it in his hands all the time.

"You see," he went on, "I knew you'd got one chance, and I meant you to

have it. I meant you to make the most of it. There are things, Furnival,

I haven't got the hang of--yet--little, little things like breeding and

good looks, where you might get the pull of me still if you had a free

hand.

"Well, I gave you a free hand.

"You needn't thank me. I wasn't thinking of you so much. I was thinking

of Viola. I wanted to be perfectly fair to _her_. If there _was_ a chance

of her liking you better than she liked me, and being happier with you, I

wanted her to have her chance. I wanted, you see, to be rather more than

fair. If I was going to win this game I was going to win it hands over,

not just to sneak in on a doubtful point. I wanted Viola to know what she

was doing. I wanted her to see exactly what she was giving up if she

married me--to go home and see it all over again in case she had

forgotten.

"And of course I was thinking of myself too. I'm an egoist. For my own

sake I wanted her to be quite sure she hadn't any sort of hankering after

you."

I said if it was any comfort to him he could be. Viola hadn't any

hankering after me at all. This--if he cared to know it--was the third

time that I had proposed to her and been turned down.

He said he _did_ care to know it, very much. It was most important.

"I," he said, "have never proposed to her at all.

"That," he went on, "is just the one risk I wouldn't take.

"And there," he explained, "is where I've scored. I knew that Viola is

obstinate, and that if she starts by turning you down she'll keep it up

out of sheer cussedness.

"So I never let her start. Women," he generalized, "admire success. If I

were to give you your innings all over again, Furnival--and I will if you

like--you couldn't make anything of them with those three howlers to your

account. There isn't any record of failure against _me_. Good God! D'you

suppose _I_'d be such a damn fool as to muff it three times with the same

woman? Not me!"

I said he needn't rub it in.

He said he was rubbing it in for my good, so that I shouldn't go and do

the same thing next time.

"Because--_now_ we're coming to the point--there will be a next time for

you, Furnival. That's why I don't even pretend to be sorry for you.

There'll be other women. But there aren't any next times for me, and

there aren't any other women. This--I mean _she_--was my one chance. It

was pretty jumpy work, I can tell you, sitting tight and gambling with it

for ten blasted days. Any other man would have gone clean off his chump

with worrying over it. There've been times when I've felt like it myself.

It was infernal--when you think what I stood to lose."

I said that was all rot. It was his beastly egoism. He didn't stand to

lose more than I did.

He said it wasn't a question of more or less. And it wasn't his egoism.

It was his sweetness and his heart-rending humility. He'd stood to lose

everything. He'd be done for if Viola wouldn't have him. He couldn't look

at any other woman after her. And he put it to me: What other woman would

look at him? Whereas my resources were practically inexhaustible. Almost

any nice woman would know that I would give her what she wanted. And

almost any nice woman would give me what I wanted, too. When I insisted

that I didn't see it, he said I'd see it shortly. He gave me six months.

Viola, he declared, would never have given me what I wanted. I could

never give her what she wanted. And he could.

He said he admitted that it was odd that he should be able to succeed

where I failed; but so it was, and he went on to expound to me all the

reasons for my failure.

"To begin with, you're not her sort; or, rather, you're too much her

sort. You with your integrity are one of the beautiful works of God, and

she's been used to that sort of beauty all her life and she's tired of

it. But she isn't used to me. She never will be. She's never seen

anything in the least like me before, and she never will see anything

quite like me again as long as she lives. I'm the queer, unexpected thing

she wants and always will want.

"But let that pass.

"You couldn't get her because you didn't give your mind to it. You didn't

know how to get her and you didn't try to find out. You set about it the

wrong way. I told you ages ago that a man's a fool if he wants a thing

and doesn't find out how to get it. You should have begun by trying to

find out something about _her_. But you didn't try. With all your

opportunities you haven't found out anything. You don't know the least

thing about her. You don't know what she wants, you don't know what she's

thinking, or what she's feeling, or what she'll do--how she'll behave if

you propose to her three times running. She's told you things and you

haven't understood them or tried to understand. Because the whole blessed

time you were thinking about yourself, or what she was thinking about

you, or was going to think. Whereas I haven't been thinking about

anything but her--I've been studying her straight on end for ten months

and I've found out a little bit about her. At any rate, I jolly well know

what she wants and I jolly well know how to give it her.

"You see, I was determined to get her, and I left no stone unturned. I

took trouble."

I suggested that _I_'d taken trouble enough in all conscience. He

laughed.

"_You_ only took trouble to get her away, old man, when she wanted to be

here with me. What do you suppose I brought her here for? Would _you_

have ever thought of letting her come with you? Of giving her what she

wanted to that extent? Not you! You'd only have thought of shutting her

up and protecting her for your own wretched sake--which was the last

thing she wanted. She'd had about enough of that."

I replied that certainly I should have thought of protecting a young girl

before everything else; that it never would have occurred to me to

compromise her in order to marry her--even if I did find I couldn't marry

her in any other way.

I had hit him there. He was quiet for a little while after it. I didn't

look at him--I didn't want to look at him--but I could feel him there,

breathing hard from the shock of it, with his mouth a little open.

Presently he took the thing up again. He went on, placably, quietly

explaining. "I thought of protecting her too. Only I wasn't such an idiot

as to think of it before everything else."

"No. You were clever enough to think of it afterwards--when you'd got

what you wanted. When you had compromised her."

"I suppose you mean there was only one thing I wanted? There, Furnival,

you lie."

I said I only meant that she _was_ compromised. At any rate, that was

what it looked like to her people and to everybody to whom it mattered.

"If you will persist in taking the ugliest view of it, of course it'll

look like that. I can't help how it looks to a set of old ladies and

clergymen in Canterbury. Come to that, it matters a damned sight more to

_me_ than it can to any of you people."

I said he wouldn't say so if he knew how he had made them suffer.

He laughed out at that.

"Suffer? They haven't suffered a quarter as much as I have. Not a

hundredth part as much. They've suffered thinking of themselves--of their

precious respectability. I've suffered thinking of _her_.

"Suffer? I've been through all _that_. It wasn't right, Furnival, it

wasn't right for anybody to have to go through what I did. But I've come

out of it. You've been pretty hard on me with your infernal virtue; but

if you think you can make me suffer more, you can't. I'm past it."

I said I was sorry if I seemed too hard on him. But it would be well if

he tried to look at his really very outrageous behaviour as it was bound

to appear to other people.

"You admit, then," he said, "that it appears more outrageous than it is?"

I said, "You see, my dear fellow, I don't yet know what it is."

He asked me if I'd like to know what it was? And I told him that,

certainly, some sort of an account was owing and that he'd better perhaps

make a clean breast of it while he was about it.

Well--he made his clean breast.

He confessed that the sting of a great deal that I had said to him was in

its truth. I needn't be frightened. Nothing had happened. Nothing beyond

what I knew. But--there was a point, he said, when everything might have.

When he had meant that it should happen.

He hadn't meant it at first. Nothing had been further from him when he

let her come to Bruges. He had meant nothing--nothing beyond looking at

the Belfry. He had thought--as she did--that it would be quite possible

to be content with looking at the Belfry. That was where the damned folly

of the thing had come in. They began to be aware of the folly when they

found themselves going together to Antwerp. He wasn't aware even then of

what he meant. But he knew what he meant when he left Antwerp and took

her to Ghent.

Because he _did_ take her there. He meant--_then_--exactly what Viola's

father and her brother and her uncles and her male cousins would mean if

they took a woman to Ghent.

"I meant," he said, "to compromise her. But--here's where you went

wrong--I didn't mean to compromise her in order to marry her. I didn't

mean to marry her at all. There was a moment when I thought that marrying

me--tying herself up to me for ever--was a risk I ought not to let her

take. I thought--I thought I could make her happy without all that awful

risk. It seemed to me that after the risk we _had_ taken we had a right

to happiness. Certainly _she_ had. And I thought she thought the same.

"So I took her to Ghent.

"I say I thought she knew what I meant when I took her.

"I ought to tell you that we _did_ have rooms in the same hotel in

Antwerp and Ghent. There weren't any English there that mattered--nobody

that either of us knew.

"But when I'd got her to Ghent I couldn't--I don't know how it was--but

it came over me that I couldn't--I hadn't the courage. I think I found

out that she was afraid or something. We'd taken rooms in that hotel

you were in in the _Place d'Armes_. We were sitting together in the

lounge--you know that big lounge on the first floor with the glass

partition in it along the staircase--you can see people through it going

up and down stairs. She'd got up suddenly and stuck out her hand and said

good night. And there was a look in her eyes--Fright, a sort of fright.

"I saw her through the glass going up the stair. When she got to the

landing I saw her turn her head over her shoulder and look down into the

lounge, to make sure I was still there.

"She looked so helpless somehow--and so pretty--that for the life of me I

couldn't.

"No.

"I took her back to Bruges the next morning and put her in the _pension_

with those women."

I thought of the irony of it.

If Jevons had really been the blackguard he seemed we could have hushed

it up. If he hadn't repented, if he hadn't taken her back to Bruges and

put her in the _pension_ with those women, ten to one Withers wouldn't

have seen them and General Thesiger's friends wouldn't have heard of

them. I should have got her quietly away from Ghent without Canterbury

being a bit the wiser.

But I didn't tell Jevons that. I hadn't the heart to.

We stayed three days longer in Bruges. There were still some odd corners

of the city that he hadn't had time to look up.

Jevons was very kind to me all those three days.

After we got back to England Jevons's affairs picked up and went forward

with a rush. His novel came out at the end of May. In June he was made

sub-editor of _Sport_, and thus acquired a settled income. And one

morning in July I got a letter from Viola written at Quimpol in Brittany:

"MY DEAR WALTER:

"I married Jimmy five days ago. Nobody but Norah knew anything about it

till it was all over. But I wrote and told Daddy before we left England.

I'm afraid he's had a sore throat ever since. I wish you'd go down to

Canterbury and tell them that it's all right and that I'm ever so happy.

There really isn't any reason why Daddy shouldn't sing.

"As Norah says: 'It's his not singing that gives the show away.' Yours

ever,

"V. J."