CHAPTER XIV

XIV--AUNT MAY

The sun had set, but as yet the daylight was scarcely faded. Under

the trees the fowls muttered in subdued cluckings, and occasionally

one of them would flutter up into the lower branches with a squawk of

effort and then settle herself with a great fluttering and swelling

of feathers, and all the suggestion of a fussy matron preparing for

the night--preparing only, for these early roosters sat open-eyed

and watchful, as if they knew that there was no chance of sleep for

them until every member of that careless crowd below had found its

appointed place in the dormitory.

"We put 'em inside in the winter," remarked Aunt May, as she and

Blanche paused, "but they prefer the trees. We haven't any foxes here,

but I've noticed that the wild things seem to be coming back."

Blanche nodded. She was thinking how much there was to learn concerning

those matters which appertained to the production of food.

"They're rather a poor lot," Aunt May continued, "but they have to

forage for themselves, except for the few bits of vegetable and such

things we can spare them. We've no corn or flour or meal of any kind

for ourselves yet. But a farmer's wife about a mile from here has got

a few acres of wheat and barley coming on, and we shall help her to

harvest and take our share later. We shall be rich then," she added,

with a smile.

"I'm town-bred, you know," said Blanche. "We've got an awful lot to

learn, Millie and me."

"You'll learn quickly enough," was the answer. "You'll have to."

"I suppose," returned Blanche.

At the end of the orchard through which they had been passing they came

to a knoll, crowned by a great elm. Round the trunk of the elm a rough

seat had been fixed, and here Aunt May sat down with a sigh of relief.

"It's a blessed thing to earn your own bread day by day," she

said. "It's a beautiful thing to live near the earth and feel

physically tired at night. It's delightful to be primitive and

agricultural, and I love it. But I have a civilized vice, Blanche. I

have a store of cigarettes I stole from a shop in Harrow, and every

night when it's fine I come out here after supper and smoke three;

and when it's wet I smoke 'em in my own bedroom, and--I dream. But

to-night I'm going to talk to you, because you want help."

She produced a cigarette case and matches from a side pocket of

her jacket, lit a cigarette, inhaled the smoke with a long gasp of

intensest enjoyment, and then said: "Men weren't fools, my dear;

they had pockets in their coats."

"Yes?" said Blanche. She felt puzzled and a little awkward. She knew

that this woman was a friend, but the girl's town-bred, objective

mind was critical and embarrassed.

"Do you smoke?" asked Aunt May. "I can spare you a cigarette, though

I know the time must come when there won't be any more. Still, it's

a long way off yet. Bless the clever man who invented air-tight tins!"

"No, I don't smoke, thanks," replied Blanche, conventionally; and,

try as she would, she could not keep some hint of stiffness out of

her voice. Modern manners take a long time to influence suburban

homes of the Wisteria Grove type.

"Ah! well, you miss a lot!" said Aunt May; "but you're better without

it, especially now, when tobacco isn't easy to get, and will soon

be impossible."

"But do you think," asked Blanche, drawing her eyebrows together,

"that this sort of thing is going on always?"

"I dare say. Don't ask me, my dear; the problem's beyond me. What

we poor women have got to do is to keep ourselves alive in the

meantime. And that's what we've come out here to talk about. What

about your mother and you two girls? Where are you going? And what

are you proposing to do?"

"I don't know," said Blanche. "I--I've been trying to think."

"Good!" remarked Aunt May. "I believe you'll do. I'm doubtful about

your sister."

"We'll have to work on a farm, I suppose."

"It's the only way to live."

"Only where?"

"That's what I've been trying to worry out," said Aunt May. "We do

get news here, of a sort. Our girls work in Mrs Jordan's fields, and

meet girls and women who come from Pinner, and the Pinner people hear

news from Northwood, and the Northwood people from somewhere else;

and so we get into touch with half a county. But, coming to your

affairs; you see, we here are just the innermost circle. Most of

the women who came from London missed this place and passed us by,

thanks be!... Now, that poor unfortunate Miss Grant, down the road,

had to defend herself with weapons. Fortunately she's strong."

"Is Miss Grant the awful woman with the broomstick?" asked Blanche.

"She's not really awful, my dear," said Aunt May, smiling; "she's

a very good sort. A little rough in her manners, perhaps, and quite

mad about the uselessness of the creatures we used to know as men,

but a fine, generous, unselfish woman, if she does boast of her three

murders. Did she tell you that, by the way?"

Blanche nodded.

"She would, of course; and I believe it's true; but her theory was

to defend her own people. She said they'd all have died if she

hadn't. I'm not sure about the ethic, but I know dear old Sally

Grant meant well. However, I'm wandering--I often do when I talk

like this. The point was that just this little circle here, close

to London, is very thickly populated, and there's precious little

food ready to be got any way; but you'll have to pass through the

country beyond Pinner before you'll find a place where they'll give

you work and keep you. There's a surplus in the next ring, I gather,

too much labour and too little to grow. You'll have to push out into

the Chilterns, out to Amersham at the nearest. It's all on the main

road, of course, which is bad in a general way, because that's the

road they all took. But I think if you'll cut across towards Wycombe

you might, perhaps, find a place of some sort, though whether they'll

feed your mother free gratis I can't say. Women are of all sorts, but

this plague hasn't made 'em more friendly to one another, or perhaps

it is we notice it more, and the worst of the lot are the farmers'

wives and daughters who've got the land. They get turned out, though,

sometimes. We hear about it. The London women have made raids; only,

you see, the poor dears don't know what to do with the land when they

get it, so they have to keep the few who do know to teach 'em--when

they're sensible enough--the raiders, I mean. They aren't always."

"It'll be an adventure," remarked Blanche.

Aunt May threw away the very short end of her second cigarette and

lighted her third. "Adventure will do you good," she said.

It was nearly dark under the elm. The things of the night were coming

out. Occasionally a cockchafer would go humming past them, the bats

were flitting swiftly and silently about the orchard, and presently

an owl swept by in one great stride of soundless flight.

"How they are all coming back!" murmured Aunt May. "All the wild

things. I never saw an owl here before this year."

"I should be frightened if you weren't here," said Blanche.

"Nothing to be frightened of, yet."

"Yet?"

"In a few years' time, perhaps. I don't know. We killed a wild cat

who came after the chickens a few days ago. The cats have gone back

already, and the dogs aren't so respectful as they used to be. The

dogs'll interbreed, I suppose, and evolve a common form--strike some

kind of average in a beast which will be somewhere near the ancestral

type, smaller, probably, I don't know. It's a wonderful world, and

very interesting. I could almost wish man wouldn't return for twenty

years or so--just to see how much of his handiwork Nature could undo

in the interval. I often think about it out here in the evenings."

"I wish I knew more about it," said Blanche timidly. "Are there any

books, do you know, that----"

"You won't want books, my dear. Keep your eyes open and think."

They lapsed into silence again. The third cigarette was finished,

but Aunt May gave no indication of a desire to get back to the house,

and Blanche's mind was so excited with all the new ideas which were

pouring in upon her that she had forgotten her tiredness.

"It's awfully interesting," she said at last. "It's all so

different. Mother and Millie hate it, and they'd like all the old

things back; but I don't think I would."

"You're all right. You'll do," replied her companion. "You're one of

the new sort, though you might never have found it out if it hadn't

been for the plague. Now, your sister will do one of two things,

in my opinion; either she'll stop in some place where there's a

man--there's one at Wycombe, by the way--and have children, or she'll

turn religious."

Blanche was about to ask a question, but Aunt May stopped her. "Never

mind about the man, my dear," she said. "You'll learn quickly

enough. It's like Heaven now, you see--no marrying or giving in

marriage. With one man to every thousand women or so, what can you

expect? It's no good kicking against it. It's got to be. That's

where Fanny----" She broke off suddenly, with a little snort of

impatience. "I think to-night's an exception," she went on. "I like

talking to you, and one simply can't talk to Allie yet, so just

to-night I'll have one more." She took out her cigarette case with

a touch of impatience.

It was dark under the elm now, and she had to hold up her cigarette

case close to her face in order to see the contents. "Two more,"

she announced. "It's a festival, and for once I can speak my mind

to some one. An imprudence, perhaps, like this habit of smoking,

but I shall probably never see you again, and I'm sure you won't tell."

"Oh, no!" interposed Blanche eagerly.

"You're not tired? You don't want to go to bed?"

"Not a bit. I love being out here."

"I can't see you, but I know you're speaking the truth," said Aunt May,

after a pause. "In the darkness and silence of the night I will make a

confession. I look weather-worn and fifty, I know, but I feel absurdly

romantic, only there's no man in this case. I used to write novels,

my dear--an absurd thing for any spinster to do, but they paid, and

I've got the itch for self-expression. That's the one outlet I miss

in this new world of ours. Sally Grant and I can't agree, and, in any

case, she wants to do all the talking. And sometimes I'm idiot enough

to go on writing little bits even now when I have become a capable,

practical woman with at least four lives dependent upon me. Well,

it shows, anyhow, that we writing women weren't all fools...." She

hung on that for a moment or two, and then continued.

"Are you religious?"

"I don't know--I suppose so. We always went to Church at home," said

Blanche. "I thought every one was, almost. Not quite like Mrs Pollard,

of course."

"Oh, well!" said Aunt May. "There's no harm and a lot of good in

being religious, if you go about it in the right way. I don't want to

change your opinions, my dear. It's just a question to me of the right

way. And I can't see that Fanny's way is right. Here we are, and we've

got to make the best of it; and to my mind that means facing life,

and not shutting yourself into one room with a Bible and spending half

your time on your knees. Fanny never was good for much. She brought

up Alfred--my nephew, you know--with only one idea, and she stuffed

him so full of holiness that the English Church couldn't hold him,

and he had to work some of it off by going over to Rome. He thought

he'd have better chances of saintship there. He was a poor, pale thing,

anyway. Of course, that was anathema to Fanny. She might have forgiven

him for committing a murder, but to become a Roman Catholic----! Oh,

Lord! She's been praying for him ever since. And, my dear, what

difference can it make? Alfred's apostasy, I mean. Do you think it

matters what particular form of worship or pettifogging details of

belief you adopt? Why can't the Churches take each other for granted,

and be generous enough to suppose that all roads lead to Heaven, which

is, according to all accounts, a much better place than Rome? But,

oh! above all, if you have a religion, do be practical! Come out and

do your work, instead of sighing and psalm-singing, and wearying dumb

Heaven with fulsome praise and lamentations of your unworthiness,

as if you were trying to propitiate a rich customer!

"There, my dear, I won't say any more. My last cigarette's done,

and wasted, because I was too excited to enjoy it. I know I've been

disloyal; but it's my temperament. I could slap Fanny sometimes. And

she shan't have Allie.... It's the night that has affected

me. To-morrow I shall be just as practical as ever, and you'll forget

that you've seen this side of me. Come along. We must go to bed."

"This is the greatest night of my life," thought Blanche as they

walked back in silence to the house.

Even when she was in bed, she did not go to sleep at once. She lay

and listened to the heavy breathing of her mother and Millie, and

she wondered. Everything, indeed, was different, but everybody was

just the same, only, in some curious way, individualities seemed

more pronounced.

Could it be that everybody was more natural, that there was less

restraint?

Blanche was not introspective. She did not test the theory on

herself. She thought of the women she had met that day, and of her

mother and Millie.

She fell asleep, determined to be more like Aunt May.

XV--FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE

1

Allie knocked on the Goslings' door at sunrise the next morning, and

Blanche, who had come to bed two hours after her mother and sister,

was the only one to respond. She woke with the feeling that she

had something important to do, and that the affair was in some way

pleasant and inspiring.

Millie was not easily roused. She had slept heavily, and did not

approve the suggestion that she should get up and dress herself.

"All right, B., all right!" she mumbled, and cuddled down under the

bedclothes like a dormouse into its straw.

"Oh! do get up!" urged Blanche, impatiently, and at last resorted to

physical force.

"What is the matter?" snapped Millie, struggling to maintain her hold

of the blankets. "Why can't you leave me alone?"

"Because it's time to get up, lazy!" said Blanche, continuing the

struggle.

"Well, I said I'd get up in a minute."

"Well, get up then."

"In a minute."

"No--now!"

"Oh, bother!" said Millie.

Blanche succeeded at last in obtaining possession of the blankets.

"You'll wake mother!" was Millie's last, desperate shaft.

"I'm going to try," replied Blanche.

Millie sat up in the bed and wondered vaguely where she was. These

scenes had often been enacted at Wisteria Grove, and her mind had

gone back to those delightful days of peace and security. When full

consciousness returned to her, she was half inclined to cry, and more

than half inclined to go to sleep again.

Mrs Gosling was quite as difficult.

"What's the time?" was her first question.

"I don't know," said Blanche.

"I'm sure it's not seven," murmured Mrs Gosling.

Millie, still sitting on the bed, wondered whether Blanche would

let her get to the blankets which were tumbled on the floor a few

feet away.

"No, you don't!" exclaimed Blanche, anticipating the attempt.

Finally she lost her temper and shook her mother vigorously.

At that, Mrs Gosling sat up suddenly and stared at her. "What in

'eaven's name's wrong, gel?" she asked. Her instinct told her with

absolute certainty that it was still the middle of the night by

Wisteria Grove standards.

"Oh! my goodness! I'm going to have my hands full with you two!" broke

out Blanche impatiently. Her imagination pictured for her in that

instant how great the trouble would be. She would never be able to

wake them up....

They took the road before eight o'clock. Aunt May was generous in

the matter of eggs and fruit, and she left her many urgent duties to

point the way for the inexperienced explorers.

"Get right out as far as you can," was her parting word of advice.

They did not see Mrs Pollard again. She was still in bed when they

set out.

2

Despite the promise of another cloudless day, none of the three

travellers set out in high spirits. To all of them, even to Blanche,

it seemed a return to weariness and pain to start out once more

pushing that abominable truck. That truck represented all their

troubles. It had become associated with all the discomforts they

had endured since they left the Putney house. It indicated the

paucity of their possessions, and yet it was intolerably heavy to

push. After their brief return to the comfort and stability of a home

and natural food, this adventuring out into the inhospitable country

appeared more hopeless than ever. If they could have gone without the

truck, they might, at least, have avoided that feeling of horrible

certainty. They might have cheated themselves into the belief that

they would return. The truck was the brand of their vagabondage.

Mrs Gosling did not spare her lamentations concerning the hopelessness

of their endeavour, and gave it as her opinion that they had been

most heartlessly treated by Aunt May.

"Turning out a woman of my age into the roads," she grumbled. "She

might 'ave kept us a day or two, I should 'ave thought. It ain't as

if we were beggars. We could 'ave paid for what we 'ad."

She had, indeed, made the suggestion and been repulsed. Aunt May had

firmly put the offer on one side without explanation. She understood

that explanations would be wasted on Mrs Gosling.

Millie was inclined to agree with her mother.

Blanche, at the handle, did not interrupt the statement of their

grievances. She was occupied with the problem of the future, trying

to think out some plan in her own confused inconsecutive way.

Their progress was tediously slow. Against the combined brake of

the truck and Mrs Gosling, they did not average two miles an hour;

and even before they came to Pinner it was becoming obvious to the

two girls that they might as well let their mother ride on the trolly

as allow her to lean her weight upon it as she walked.

They took the road through Wealdstone to avoid the hill and found that

they were still in the track of one wing of the foraging army which

had preceded them. That first rush of emigrants had ravaged the stores

and houses as locusts will ravage a stretch of country. The suburb

of regular villas and prim shops had been completely looted. Doors

stood open and windows were smashed; the spread of ugly houses lay

among the fields like an unwholesome eruption, awaiting the healing

process of Nature. Wealdstone also was deserted by humanity. The

flood had swept on towards the open country.

But as they approached Pinner the signs of devastation and desertion

began to give way. Here and there women could be seen working in

the fields; one or two children scuttled away before the approach

of the Goslings and hid in the hedges, children who had evidently

grown furtive and suspicious, intimidated by the experiences of the

past two months; and when the outlying houses were reached--detached

suburban villas, once occupied by relatively wealthy middle-class

employers--it was evident that efforts were being made to restore

the wreckage of kitchen gardens.

The Goslings had reached the point at which the wave had broken

after its great initial energy was spent. Somewhere about this

fifteen-mile limit, varying somewhat according to local conditions,

the real disintegration of the crowd had begun. As the numerous tokens

of the road had shown, a great number of women and children--possibly

one-fifth of the whole crowd--had died of starvation and disease before

any harbour was reached. From this fifteen-mile circle outwards, an

increasing number had been stayed in their flight by the opportunities

of obtaining food. Work was urgently demanded for the future, but the

determining factor was the present supply of food, and the constriction

of immediate supply had decided the question of how great a proportion

of the women and children should remain. Here, about Pinner, was more

land than the limited number of workers could till, but little of it

was arable, and this year there would be almost no harvest of grain.

Vaguely, Blanche realized this. She remembered Aunt May's advice to

keep her eyes open, and looking about her as she walked she found

little promise of security in the grass fields and the rare signs of

human activity.

Mrs Gosling, eager to find some home at any price, expressed her usual

optimistic opinion with regard to the value of money. She saw signs of

life again, at last, conditions familiar to her. She thought that they

were returning once more to some kind of recognizable civilization,

and began, with some renewal of her old vigour, to advise that they

should find an hotel or inn and take "a good look round" before going

any further.

Millie, heartened by her mother's belief, was of much the same opinion,

and Blanche was summoned from the pole to listen to the proposition.

She shook her head stubbornly.

"I'm not going to argue it out all over again," she said. "You can

just look round and see for yourselves that there's no food to be

got here. We must get further out."

Mrs Gosling refused to be convinced, and advanced her superior

knowledge of the world to support her judgment of the case.

"Oh! very well," said Blanche, at last. "Come on to the inn and see

for yourselves."

The inn, however, was deserted. All its available supply of food,

solid and liquid, had long been exhausted, and the gardenless house had

offered no particular attractions as a residence. Houses were cheap

in that place, the whole population of Pinner, including children,

did not exceed three hundred persons.

They found a woman working in a garden near by, and she, with perhaps

unnecessary harshness, warned them that they could not stay in the

village. "There's not enough food for us as it is," she said, and

made some reference to "silly Londoners."

That was an expression with which the Goslings were to become very

familiar in the near future.

The appeal for pity fell on deaf ears. Mrs Gosling learned that she

was only one of many thousands who had made the same appeal.

The sun was high in the sky as they trudged out of Pinner on the

road towards Northwood. It was then Blanche suggested that her mother

should always ride on the trolly, except when they were facing a hill;

and after a few weak protestations the suggestion was accepted. The

trolly was lightened of various useless articles of furniture--a

grudging sacrifice on the part of Mrs Gosling--and the party pushed

on at a slightly improved pace.

After her disappointment in Pinner, Mrs Gosling's interest in life

began rapidly to decline. Seated in her truck, she fell into long

fits of brooding on the past. She was too old and too stereotyped

to change, the future held no hope for her, and as the meaning and

purpose of her existence faded, the life forces within her surely and

ever more rapidly ebbed. Reality to her became the discomfort of the

sun's heat, the dust of the road, the creak and scream of the trolly

wheels. She was incapable of relating herself to the great scheme of

life, her consciousness was limited, as it had always been limited,

to her immediate surroundings. She saw herself as a woman outrageously

used by fate, but to fate she gave no name; the very idea, indeed,

was too abstract to be appreciated by her. Blanche, Millie and that

horrible truck were all that was left of her world, and in spirit

she still moved in the beloved, familiar places of her suburban home.

3

As the Goslings trudged out into the Chilterns they came into new

conditions. Soon they found over-crowding in place of desolation. The

harvest was ripening and in a month's time the demand for labour

would almost equal the supply, for the labour offered was quite

absurdly unskilled and ten women would be required to perform the

work of one man equipped with machines. But at the end of July the

surplus of women, almost exclusively Londoners, had no employment

and little food, and many were living on grass, nettles, leaves,

any green stuff they could boil and eat, together with such scraps

of meat and vegetables as they could steal or beg. Their experiments

with wild green stuffs often resulted in some form of poisoning,

and dysentery and starvation were rapidly increasing the mortality

among them. Nevertheless, in Rickmansworth houses were still at a

premium, and many of those who camped perforce in fields or by the

roadside were too enfeebled by town-life to stand the exposure of the

occasional cold, wet nights. The majority of the women in this ring

were those who had been too weak to struggle on. They represented the

class least fitted to adapt themselves to the new conditions. The

stronger and more capable had persisted, and left these congested

areas behind them; and it was evident that in a very few months a

balance between labour and supply would be struck by the relentless

extermination of the weakest by starvation and disease.

Blanche, if she was unable to grasp the problem which was being so

inevitably solved by the forces of natural law, was at least able

to recognize clearly enough that she and her two dependents must not

linger in the district to which they had now come. Aunt May had warned

her that she must push out as far as Amersham at the nearest, but

Millie was too tired and footsore to go much further than Rickmansworth

that night, and after a fruitless search for shelter they camped out

half a mile from the town in the direction of Chorley Wood.

They made some kind of a shield from the weather by emptying and

tilting the trolly, and they hid their supply of food behind them

at the lowest point of this species of lean-to roof. The two girls

had realized that that supply would soon be raided if the fact of

its existence were to become known. They had been the object of

much scrutiny as they passed, and their appearance of well-being

had prompted endless demands for food, from that pitiful crowd of

emaciated women and children. It had been a demand quickly put on

one side by lying. Their applicants found it only too easy to believe

that the Goslings had no food hidden in the truck.

"I hated to refuse some of 'em," Blanche said as they carefully

hid what food was left to them, before turning in for the night,

"but what good would our little bit have done among all that lot? It

would have been gone in half a jiff."

"Well, of course," agreed Millie.

Mrs Gosling had taken little notice of the starving crowd. "We've got

nothin' to give you," was her one form of reply. She might have been

dealing with hawkers in Wisteria Grove.

She was curiously apathetic all that afternoon and evening, and

raised only the feeblest protestation against the necessity for

sleeping in the open air. But she was very restless during the night,

her limbs twitched and she moved continually, muttering and sometimes

crying out. And as the three women were all huddled together, partly

to make the most of their somewhat insufficient lean-to, and partly

because they were afraid of the terrors of the open air, both Blanche

and Millie were constantly aroused by their mother's movements. Once

they heard her calling urgently for "George."

"Mother's odd, isn't she?" whispered Blanche after one such

disturbance. "Do you think she's going to be ill?"

"Shouldn't wonder," muttered Millie. "Who wouldn't be?"

In the morning Blanche was very careful with their food. For breakfast

they ate only part of a tin of condensed beef between them--Mrs Gosling

indeed ate hardly anything. The eggs which they had brought from

Sudbury they reserved, chiefly because they had neither water nor fire.

They drank from a stream, later, and at midday Blanche and Millie

each ate one of the eggs raw. Mrs Gosling refused all food on this

occasion. She had been very quiet all the morning, and had made little

complaint when she had been forced to walk the many hills which they

were now encountering.

Blanche was uneasy and tried to induce her mother to talk. "Do you

feel bad, mother?" she asked continually.

"I wish I could get 'ome," was all the reply she received.

"She'll be all right when we can get settled somewhere," grumbled

Millie. "If such a time ever comes."

4

They came to Amersham in the afternoon. The signs of misery and

starvation were here less marked. They were approaching the outer

edge of this ring of compression, having passed through the node at

Rickmansworth. The faint relief of pressure was evidenced to some

extent in the attitude of the people they addressed. It is true that

no immediate hope of food and employment were held out to them, but

on the one hand Blanche's inquiries were answered with less acerbity

and on the other they were less besieged by importunate demands for

charity. Blanche gave an egg to one precocious girl of thirteen or

so, who insisted on helping them to push the truck uphill, and she

and Millie watched the deft way in which the child broke the shell

at one end and sucked out the contents. Their own methods had been

both unclean and wasteful.

They turned off the Aylesbury Road, towards High Wycombe late in the

afternoon and about a mile from Amersham came to a farm where they

made their last inquiry that day.

Blanche saw signs of life in the outbuildings and went to investigate,

leaving Millie and her mother to guard the truck. She found three

women and a girl of fourteen or so milking. For some minutes she stood

watching them, the women, after one glance at her, proceeding with

their work without paying her any further attention. But, at last,

the eldest of the three rose from her stool with a sigh of relief,

picked up her wooden bucket of milk, gave the cow a resounding slap

on the side, and then, turning to Blanche, said, "Well, my gal,

what's for you?"

"Will you change two pints of milk for a small tin of tongue?" asked

Blanche. It was the first time she had offered any of their precious

tinned meats in exchange for other food, but she wanted milk for her

mother, who had hardly eaten anything that day.

The two other women and the girl looked round and regarded Blanche

with the first signs of interest they had shown.

"Tongue, eh?" said the older woman. "Where from did you get tongue,

my gal?"

"London," replied Blanche tersely.

"When did you leave there?" asked the woman, and then Blanche was

engaged in a series of searching questions respecting the country

she had passed through.

"You can have the milk if you've anything to put it in," said the

woman at last, and Blanche went to fetch the tongue and the two

bottles that they had had from Aunt May.

The bottles had to be scalded, a precaution that had not occurred

to Blanche, and one of the other women was sent to carry out the

operation.

"Well, your tale don't tell us much," said the woman of the farm,

"but we always pass the news here, now. Where are you going to sleep

to-night?"

Blanche shrugged her shoulders.

"You can sleep here in the outhouses, if you've a mind to," said the

woman, "but I warn you we get a crowd. Silly Londoners like yourself

for the most part, but we find a use for 'em somehow, though I'd give

the lot for three labourers."

She paused and twisted her mouth on one side reflectively. "Ah! well,"

she went on with a sigh, "no use grieving over them that's gone;

all I was goin' to say was, if you sleep here you'd better keep an

eye on what food you've got with you. My lot'll have it before you

can say knife, if they get half a chance."

"It isn't us girls, me and my sister," explained Blanche. "It's

my mother. She's bad, I'm afraid. If she could sleep in your

kitchen...? She wouldn't steal anything."

After a short hesitation the woman consented.

Yet neither the glory of being once more within the four walls of a

house, nor the refreshment of the milk which she drank readily enough,

seemed appreciably to rouse Mrs Gosling's spirits.

The woman of the farm, a kindly enough creature, plied the old lady

with questions, but received few and confused answers in reply. Mrs

Gosling seemed dazed and stupid. "A touch of the sun," the farmer's

widow thought.

"The sun's been cruel strong the past week," she said, "but she'll

be all right in a day or two, get her to shelter."

"Ah! that's the trouble," said Blanche.

That night the farmer's widow said no more on that subject. She

allowed the three Goslings to sleep in an upstair room, in which

there was one small bed for the mother, and the two girls slept on

the floor. Exchanging confidence for confidence, they brought their

truck into the kitchen; and then the farmer's widow proceeded to lock

up for the night, an elaborate business, which included the fastening

of all ground-floor windows and shutters.

"It's a thievin' crowd we've got about here," she explained, "and

you can't blame them or anyone when there ain't enough food to go

round. But we have to be careful for 'em. Let 'em go their own way

and they'd eat up everything in a week and then starve. It looks

like you're being hard on 'em, but it's for their own good. There's

some, of course," she went on, "as you have got to get shut of. Only

yesterday I had to send one of 'em packing. A Jew woman she was,

called 'erself Mrs Isaacson or something. She was a caution."

Blanche wondered idly if this were the same Mrs Isaacson who had

stayed too long with Aunt May.

The woman of the farm roused the Goslings at sunrise, and she, like

Aunt May, had a brisk, practical, morning manner.

She gave the travellers no more food, but when they were nearly ready

to take the road again she gave them one valuable piece of information.

"If I was you," she said, "I'd make through Wycombe straight along the

road here, and go up over the hill to Marlow. Mind you, they won't

let every one stop there. But you look two healthy gals enough and

it's getting on towards harvest when there'll be work as you can do."

"Marlow?" repeated Blanche, fixing the name in her memory.

The farmer's widow nodded. "There's a man there," she said. "A queer

sort, by all accounts. Not like Sam Evans, the butcher at Wycombe,

he ain't. Seems as this Marlow chap don't have no truck with gals,

except setting 'em to work. However, time'll show. He may change his

mind yet."

They had some difficulty with Mrs Gosling. She refused feebly to

leave the house. "I ain't fit to go out," she complained, and when

they insisted she asked if they were going home.

"Best say 'yes,'" whispered the woman of the farm. "The sun's got to

her head a bit. She'll be all right when you get her to Marlow."

Blanche accepted the suggestion, and by this subterfuge Mrs Gosling

was persuaded into the truck. The girl found the ruins of an umbrella,

which they rigged up to protect her from the sun.

Blanche and Millie were quite convinced now that their mother was

suffering from a slight attack of sunstroke.

Both the girls were still footsore, and one of Millie's boots had worn

into a hole, but they had a definite objective at last, and only some

ten or twelve miles to travel before reaching it.

"We shall be there by midday," said Blanche, hopefully.

Unconsciously, every one was using a new measure of time.

XVI--THE YOUNG BUTCHER OF HIGH WYCOMBE

1

Near Wycombe a woman rose from under the hedge as the Goslings

approached, and came out into the middle of the road. She was a

stout, florid woman, whose age might have been anything between forty

and fifty. Her gait and the droop of her shoulders, rather than the

flaccidity of her rather loose skin, gave her the appearance of being

past middle age.

"Goot morning," she said as the Goslings came up. "If it iss no

inconvenience I would like to come with you." She spoke with a foreign

accent, thickening her final consonants and giving a different value

to some of her vowels.

"Where to?" asked Blanche curtly.

"Ah! that! what does it matter?" returned the woman. "I have been

living with a farmer's wife further back along the road there. But

she was not company for me. She was common. Now I see that you and

your mother are not common. And I do not care to live with farmers'

wives. But where we go? Does it matter? We all go to find work in the

fields--aristocrat as much as peasant. But iss it not better that we

who are not peasants should go together?"

Millie giggled surreptitiously, and Mrs Gosling appeared conscious

of the fact that some one was addressing them.

"We're goin' 'ome," she remarked, and Millie gently prodded her in

the back.

"Goin' 'ome," repeated Mrs Gosling firmly.

"Ach! You are lucky. There are few that have homes now," replied the

strange woman. "I had a home, once, how long ago. Now, during two

months, I have no home." She was evidently on the verge of tears.

"Mother's got a touch of the sun," Blanche said in a low voice, "and

we have to pretend we're going home. You needn't tell her we're not."

"Have no fear," replied the stranger. "I am all that is most discreet,

yes."

Blanche hardened her heart. This woman took too much for granted. "I

don't see it's any use your coming with us," she said.

"Ach! we others, we should cling together," said the stranger, with

a large gesture.

"We're nobody," replied Blanche, curtly.

"It iss well to say that. I know. There iss good reason. I, too,

must tell the common people that I am a nobody, I call myself, even,

Mrs Isaacson. But between us there iss no need to say what iss not

true. I can see what you are. Although I am not English, I have lived

many years already in England, and I can see. It iss well that we

cling together? Yes?"

"Oh!" burst out Blanche. "You're Mrs Isaacson, are you? I've heard

of you."

For one moment Mrs Isaacson's fine eyes seemed to look inwards in

an instantaneous review of her past. "Ach! so! Then we are friends

already," she said cautiously.

"I heard of you from Aunt May," said Blanche, and the faint air of

respect with which she pronounced the name did not escape the notice

of the alert Jewess.

"Ach! the so dear and so clever Auntie May," she said. "But she iss

too kind, and work so hard while her sister do always nothing. See,

I will help you to draw your poor mother who has a touch of the

sun. You and I at the handle and your beautiful sister to push,

while we talk a little of the clever Auntie May. Yes?"

Blanche had been forewarned. She could only put one construction on

the little she had heard of Mrs Isaacson. But the Jewess's manner no

less than her conversation was subtly flattering. Moreover, she had

made no appeal for help; finally there was a certain urgency about

her, a force of will which Blanche found it difficult to resist. And

as the girl still hesitated Mrs Isaacson bravely seized her side of

the trolly handle and the procession moved on.

The Goslings found a use for her when they came to the drop of Amersham

Hill, going down into High Wycombe. Blanche proposed that Mrs Gosling

should walk down, but the old lady did not seem to understand her. She

looked perplexed and kept saying, "I don't remember this road. Are

you sure we're goin' right, Blanche?"

"Ah! she must not walk in this heat," put in Mrs Isaacson. "We three

can manage very well." And, indeed, although she manifestly suffered

greatly from the exertion, the Jewess was of very great assistance

in retarding the speed of the trolly as they made the perilous descent.

After that there could be no question of calmly telling her to go

her own way.

By the time they had crossed the almost deserted town--at that hour

nearly all the women were either in their houses or working in gardens

and fields--and had found their way to the Marlow road, Mrs Isaacson

had quite become one of the party, and by no means the least energetic.

"We'll have something to eat and some milk, when we get through the

town," said Blanche as they faced the long hill up to Handy Cross.

"Presently, presently," replied the heaving Mrs Isaacson, as though

food were of little importance to her, but accepting the admission

that she had earned the right to share equally with the others.

Their first burst of energy after they had faced the ascent brought

them to the gates of Wycombe Abbey, and there they decided to rest

and lunch, blissfully ignorant of the long climb which lay before them.

"It will be nice and quiet here in the shade," suggested Mrs Isaacson.

2

The old conventions would not have suffered them to sit and eat thus

under the walls, at the very gates of Wycombe Abbey. Their clothes and

their boots were wearing badly, and Mrs Isaacson, at least, was not

too clean. It was noticeable, however, that, despite the dryness of

the weather, little dust clung to them. The surface of the roads had

not been pounded and crushed into powder during the past six weeks

by the constant passage of wheeled traffic, and even in the tracks

frequented by farm carts the roads were stained with green. Indeed,

everything was greener than in the old days, everything was more

vigorous. Whether because the year had been favourable, or because

it was relieved from the burden of choking dust which it had had to

endure in other years from May onwards, the vegetation in hedges and

by the wayside appeared to grow more strongly and with a greater

self-assertion. And by contrast with this vigour and cleanness of

plant life, the four women in their tumbled clothes and untidy hats,

feeble and unsightly remnants of forgotten fashion, were as much out

of place as if they had been set down in ancient Greece. The dowdy

foolishness of their apparel marked them out from every other living

thing about them, they were intruders, despoilers of beauty.

Some dim consciousness of this came to Blanche.

They had spoken little as they ate--Mrs Gosling would touch nothing

but milk, and Mrs Isaacson strove desperately and with some success

to control the greed that showed in the concentrated eagerness of her

eyes and the grasping crook of her fingers--and when they had finished,

lingering in the relief of the shade, they were still silent. It seemed

as if the first word spoken must necessarily hasten the continuation

of their journey.

"Oh! bother this old hat," said Blanche at last. "I'm going to take

mine off," and she drew out the solitary pin which remained to her

and cast the hat into the ditch.

"That won't do it any good," remarked Millie but she, too, took off

her hat with a sigh of relief.

"I'm going to chuck hats," said Blanche. "What's the good of 'em?"

Mrs Isaacson looked doubtful. "They are a protection from the sun,"

she said.

"Allie never wore a hat, and she didn't come to any harm," returned

Blanche.

"No?" said Mrs Isaacson, and looked thoughtful.

Millie was running her fingers through the masses of her red-brown

hair, loosening it and lifting it from her head.

"It is a relief," she remarked. "My head gets so hot."

"Ah!" said Mrs Isaacson, "and what beautiful hair! It does not seem

right to hide it. I haf a comb in my bag. It is almost all I haf

left. Let me now comb your beautiful hair for you."

"Oh! don't you bother," said Millie sheepishly, but she allowed

herself to be persuaded. "Don't lose the hair-pins," she warned her

newly-found lady's maid.

"It seems so funny out here in the open road," giggled Millie.

Mrs Isaacson's praise was fulsome.

Blanche watched without comment. Mrs Gosling was plunged in

meditation. She was involved in an immense problem relating to the

housekeeping at Wisteria Grove. She was debating whether the lace

curtains at the front windows could be washed at home when they

went back.

Suddenly the attention of the three younger women was caught by

unnatural sounds that came from the further side of the wall against

which they were leaning--sounds of voices, laughing and singing,

the crunch of wheels and the stamping of horses.

The two girls jumped to their feet. Mrs Isaacson rose more

deliberately, with a grunt of expostulation. Mrs Gosling was in a

world far removed and continued to debate her problem.

Millie's hands were fumbling at her hair, and Blanche was first at

the gate.

"Oh! my!" she exclaimed. "Why, whatever...."

"Goody!" squealed Millie, still struggling with her loose mane.

3

The centre and object of the curious crowd which moved slowly down

the drive was a landau and pair. The horses were decorated as if

for a May-day fête, grotesquely, foolishly decorated with roses,

syringa and buttercups made into shapeless bunches and tied to the

harness. Three or four women walked at the horses' heads, leading

them with absurdly beflowered ropes.

Round the landau a dozen girls and young women were dancing,

chattering, singing, laughing; constantly turning to the occupant

of the carriage, for whose benefit the whole performance was being

conducted. Some of them had their necks and breasts bare, and all

appeared to be frankly shameless. They twisted and danced with

clumsy eagerness, threw themselves about, screamed and shrieked,

unaware of any observer but the one whose notice they were seeking

to attract. They were graceless, civilized savages; Bacchantes who

had never known the beauty of unconscious abandonment. There was the

ugliness of conscious purpose in their every attitude, and no trace

of the freedom that comes from careless rapture.

In the carriage a man and a woman were sitting side by side. The

man was young, with strong claims to physical beauty--tall,

broad-shouldered, swarthy, with boldly modelled features and heavily

lidded eyes. But his skin was coarse; the bulk of his body was too

gross for clean, muscular strength; his curly, well-oiled hair was

thinning at the temples; his loose mouth leered and gaped. He was

dressed in a suit of broadly-patterned tweed, his great red fingers

were covered with rings, he wore a heavy gold bangle on each thick,

round wrist, and a sweet, frail rose was thrust into his black and

greasy hair.

The woman beside him was the typical courtesan of the ages, low-browed

and full-lipped. Her eyes were eloquent with the subtleties of love,

with invitation, retreat, fear and desire. Had she been dressed

becomingly she would have been beautiful; but she was English and

modern, and her great meaningless hat and senseless garments were

of the fashion that had been in vogue just before the plague. This

reigning sultana and her lover were more incongruous in that setting

than the two dishevelled, travel-worn girls, who retreated timidly

to let the landau pass out between the great iron gates.

The Bacchantes eyed the Goslings with obvious disfavour, but the

beauty in the landau seemed unaware of their presence until her lord's

attention was attracted by the sight of Millie's hair--it was all

down again, rippling and spreading to her waist.

The young butcher had been lolling back in a corner of his carriage,

magnificently indolent, sure of worship; but his satiety was pierced by

the sight of that flaming mane. He sat up and looked at Millie with

the experienced eyes which had served him so well in his judgment

of cattle.

"'Ere, 'alf a jiff," he commanded the nymphs at his horses' bridles,

and the carriage was stopped.

Millie, covered with shame, shrank back, and cowered behind Blanche,

who threw up her chin and met the butcher's eyes with all the contempt

of which she was capable--little enough, perhaps, for she, too, was

weak with unreasoning terror. Behind their backs the Jewess grimaced

her scorn of them.

"You needn't be afraid of me--I ain't goin' to 'urt yer----" began

the butcher, but his lady interrupted him.

Her fine eyes grew bright with anger. "If you stop here, I shall get

out," she said, and her inflexion was not that of the people.

The butcher visibly hesitated. It may be that this chain had held

him too long and was beginning to gall him, but he looked at her

and wavered.

"No 'arm in stoppin'," he muttered. "Pass the news an' that."

"Are you going on?" demanded the beauty fiercely.

"All right, all right," he returned sullenly. "You needen' get so

blasted 'uffy about it, old gal. Oh, gow on, you!" he added to the

nymphs. "Wot the 'ell are yer starin' at?"

As the landau moved on, he looked back once at Millie.

4

"What a brute," said Blanche when the procession had passed on down

the hill towards Wycombe.

"How he stared at my hair," said Millie, with a giggle. "I did try

to get it up, but it's that stubborn with the heat or something."

"Lucky for us he had that creature with him," commented Blanche.

Millie assented without fervour. She was bold enough now the danger

had passed.

Mrs Isaacson looked from one to the other and attempted no criticism

of the adventure.

"You must let me do up your beautiful hair," she said to the simpering

Millie.

Millie was grateful. "It is kind of you, Mrs Isaacson, I'm sure,"

she said. "My hair is a trouble. I sometimes think I'll cut it all

off and be done with it...."

She appeared excited and chatted incessantly while the hair-dressing

continued, and Blanche restored the remains of their meal to the

trolly.

With some difficulty they succeeded in getting Mrs Gosling back

into her carriage. She had taken no notice of the procession, but

as they were starting again she awoke from her abstraction to ask:

"When d'you expect we'll be 'ome, Blanche? I've been thinkin' about

them curtains in the drawin'-room...."

"We'll be home in an hour or two, now," Blanche said, reassuringly. She

did not know what a struggle awaited them before they should top the

hill at Handy Cross.

Mrs Isaacson had forsaken her place at the pole. "I shall be able to

push more strongly behind," she had said, but despite the theoretical

gain in mechanical advantage obtained by the new arrangement, the hill

seemed never-ending. They had to rest continually, and always they

looked with increasing irritation at the quiet figure in the trolly,

chief cause of their distress.

"I believe she could walk all right," Millie broke out at last.

"If it was for a little way, it would help," commented Mrs Isaacson.

But when Blanche put the proposition to her mother, Mrs Gosling

seemed unable to comprehend it, and pity influenced them to renew

the struggle.

So they toiled on with growing impatience until they reached level

ground again; and presently, looking down over the long slope of the

valley, saw, two miles and a half away, the spire of Marlow Church.

They rested under a hedge for a time, and when they started again

Millie followed her sister's example and discarded her hat. Blanche,

with a certain courage of opinion, had left hers under the walls of

Wycombe Abbey, but Millie's hat found a place in the trolly.

The ease of the long descent permitted a renewal of conversation,

and Mrs Isaacson and Millie talked in undertones as they made their

way down towards Marlow. Blanche took little notice of them; she

was struggling perplexedly with the problems of life. Mrs Gosling's

presence was negligible.

"That was a very handsome fellow in the carriage," remarked Mrs

Isaacson suddenly, "I think you do well not to go near that place

again." Her fine eyes fixedly regarded the broad, rusty back of Mrs

Gosling and the broken ribs of her umbrella.

Millie simpered. "Oh! I should be safe enough. His wife'd see to that."

"She was not his wife," returned Mrs Isaacson. "Men would not marry

now that they are so few."

"Well! there's a thing to say!" exclaimed Millie on a note of

expostulation, interested nevertheless.

"It iss true," continued Mrs Isaacson. "I haf heard of this handsome

young fellow. He iss a butcher, and he goes every day to kill the

sheep and cows, because the women do not like that work. And he iss

very strong, and clever also. He teach a few of the women how to cut

up the sheep and the cows. And he iss much admired, it iss of course,

by all the young women; but he does not marry because he is one man

among so many women, and it would not be right that he should love

only one, for so there would be so few children and the world would

die. Yes! But he has for a time one who iss favourite, for another time

another favourite. And that iss why I warn you not to return. Because

I see that he admire your so beautiful hair. And I see that if you

had not been so modest and so good, and hide behind your sister, he

would have come down from his carriage and put you up there beside

him. And he would have said to that bold ugly woman. 'Go, I tire of

you, I will haf beside me this one who iss young and beautiful and

has hair of gold.' It iss not safe for you, there."

"Oh! I say," commented Millie.

"It iss true," nodded Mrs Isaacson, with intensest conviction.

"Oh! well, thank goodness, I'm not one of that sort," said Millie,

warm in the knowledge of her virtue.

"Truly not," assented Mrs Isaacson. "You must not be displeased that

I warn you. It iss not your goodness that I doubt. It iss that this

man iss so powerful. He iss able to do what he wishes. He iss a king."

"Goody!" was the mark of surprise with which Millie punctuated this

remarkable piece of information, and for several yards they trudged

on in silence.

But Millie soon revived this fascinating subject by saying

thoughtfully, "Well, you don't catch me over there again."

"Truly not. It iss not wise," agreed Mrs Isaacson, and proceeded to

enlarge upon Millie's dangerous beauty.

It was a topic entirely new to Millie. She simpered and giggled,

disclaimed her attractions, protested that Mrs Isaacson was "getting

at" her, and became so absorbed in the fascination of her disavowal

that she forgot her weariness, her tender feet--naked to the road

in two places--and all her discouragements. She walked with a more

conscious air, straightening her back and lifting her head. The blood

moved more freely in her veins, and she presently became so vivacious

in her replies that Blanche was aroused to a sense of something

unfamiliar. She checked the trolly and looked back at her sister,

past the quiet brooding figure of Mrs Gosling.

"What is it, Mill?" she asked.

"Oh! nothing!" replied Millie. "We were just talking."

"Seem to be enjoying yourselves," said Blanche.

"We were saying that we shall soon now arrive at some place where we

can rest. Yes?" put in Mrs Isaacson, and thus established a ground

of confidence between herself and Millie.

"P'raps. I dunno!" returned Blanche. She sighed and looked round her.

In the fields between them and Marlow they could see here and there

little figures stooping and straightening.

"Ooh!" exclaimed Millie, suddenly.

"What?" asked Blanche.

"There's another man," said Millie, pointing. "We'd better scoot!"

But they made no attempt to put such an impossible plan into

action. The man had evidently seen them. He was coming towards

them across one of the fields, shouting to attract their

attention. "Hi! wait a minute!" they thought he was saying.

"Mill!" exclaimed Blanche, with extraordinary emphasis.

"What?" asked Millie, nervously. She was flushed and trembling.

"Do you see who it is?"

"It isn't the one out of the carriage...." hesitated Millie.

"No! Silly. It's that young fellow who used to live with us, our Mr

Fastidious. What was his name? Thrale! You remember."

"Goody!" said Millie. She was conscious of a quite inexplicable

feeling of disappointment.

"He iss a friend? Yes?" asked Mrs Isaacson.

BOOK III

WOMANKIND IN THE MAKING

XVII--LONDON TO MARLOW

1

The history of mankind is the history of human law. The larger

ordinances of the universe are commonly referred to some superior

lawgiver, under such names as God and physico-chemical action; names

which appear mutually subversive only to the bigot, whether theologian

or biologist. These larger ordinances sometimes appear inflexible,

as in the domain of physics and chemistry, sometimes empirical as in

the development of species, but we may believe that if they change at

all, the period of change is so great as to be outside any possibility

of observation by a few thousand generations of mankind.

Human law, on the other hand, is tentative, without sound precedent

and in its very nature mutable. In our miserably limited record of

history, that paltry ten thousand years which is but a single tick of

the cosmic watch, we have been unable to formulate any overruling law

to which other laws are subject. Climate, race and condition impose

certain limitations, and within that enceinte civilizations have

developed a system of rules, increasing always in complexity, and have

then failed to maintain their place in the competitive struggle. It

has been rashly suggested that the overriding law of laws is that

rigidity is fatal to the nation. An analogy has been found in the

growth of the child. Here and there some bold spirit has ventured

the daring hypothesis that if a young child be confined within a

perfectly fitting iron shell he will not grow. Such speculations,

however, do not appeal to mankind as a whole. Perhaps the truth of

the matter is that nothing appals us so much as the idea that man

is capable of growth. Is it not inconceivable that any race of men

could be wiser, more perfect than ourselves?

Nevertheless, out of all vague speculation one deliciously certain

axiom presents itself, namely that mankind cannot live without law

of some kind. The most primitive savage has his ordinances. The

least primary concussion of individuals develops a rule of practice,

whether it takes such diverse forms as "hit first," or "present the

other cheek"; although the latter rule has not yet been developed

beyond the stage of theory.

In the unprecedented year of the new plague, the old rules were thrown

into the melting pot, but within three months humanity was evolving

precedents for a new statute book. The concussions of these three

months were fierce and destructive. Women, in the face of death, killed

and stole in the old primitive ways, unhampered now by the necessity

to kill and steal according to the tedious rules of twentieth-century

civilization, rules that women had never been foolish enough to

reverence in the letter. All those complex and incomprehensible laws

had been made by men for men, and after the plague there was none

to administer them, for no women and few men had ever had the least

idea what the law was. Even the lawgivers themselves had had to wait

for the pronouncement of some prejudiced or unprejudiced judge. Women

had long known what our Bumbles can only learn by bitter experience,

inspired to vision in some moment of fury or desolation.

But within three months of the first great exodus of women from the

town, one dominant law was being brought to birth. It was not written

on tables of stone, nor incorporated in any swollen, dyspeptic book of

statutes; it was not formulated by logic, nor was it the outcome of

serious thought by any individual or by a solemn committee. The law

rose into recognition because it was a necessity for the life of the

majority, and although that majority was not compact, had no common

deliberate purpose, and had never formulated their demand in precise

language, the new law came into being before harvest and was accepted

by all but a small resentful minority of aristocrats and landowners,

as a supreme ordinance, indisputably just.

This law was that every woman had a right to her share in the bounty

of Nature, and the corollary was that she earned her right by labour.

In those days the justice of the principle was perfectly obvious;

so obvious, indeed, that the law came to birth without the obstetric

skill of any parliament whatever.

2

It is now impossible to say why such different types of male humanity

as Jasper Thrale, George Gosling or the Bacchus of Wycombe Abbey

escaped the plague. The bacillus (surely a strangely individual

type, it must have been) was never isolated, nor the pathology of

the disease investigated. The germ was some new unprecedented growth

which ran through a fierce cycle of development within a few months,

changed its nature as it swarmed into every corner of the earth,

and finally expired more quickly than it had come into being.

If the male survivors in Europe and the East had been of one type,

some theory might be formulated to account for their immunity; but

so far as science can pronounce an opinion, the living male residue

can only be explained by the doctrine of chances. A few escaped,

by accident. In the British Isles there may have been 1,500 men who

thus survived. In the whole of Europe, besides, there were less than

a thousand. It seems probable that even before Scotland was attacked

the climax had been reached; by the time the plague reached England

the first faint evidences of a decline in virulence may be marked....

From the first, Jasper Thrale ventured his life without an

afterthought. He was fearless by nature. He did not lack those powers

of imagination which are commonly supposed to add so greatly to the

terror of death, he simply lacked the feeling of fear. In all his life

he had never experienced that sickness of apprehension which dissolves

our fibre into a quivering jelly--as though the spirit had already

withdrawn from the trembling inertia of the flesh. Perhaps Thrale's

spirit was too dominant for such retreat, was more completely master

of its material than is the spirit of the common man. For the spirit

cannot know bodily fear, it is the apprehensive flesh that wilts and

curdles at the approach of danger. And it is worthy of notice that

in the old days, up to the early twentieth century, these rare cases

of fearlessness in individuals were more often found among women than

among men.

Thrale, with his perfectly careless courage, found plenty of work for

himself in London during May and early June. He acted as a scavenger,

and still went far afield with his burial cart long after every trace

of living male humanity had disappeared from the streets of London.

Then one day, at the end of June, he realized that his task was

futile, and it came to him that there was work awaiting him of more

importance than this purification of streets which might never again

echo to the traffic of humanity.

So he chose the best bicycle he could find in Holborn Viaduct,

stripped a relay of four tyres from other machines, and with these

and a reserve of food made into a somewhat cumbrous parcel, he set

out to explore the new world.

He took the Bath Road, intending to make exploration of the fertile

West Country. He had Cornish blood in his veins, and his ultimate

goal was the county which had almost escaped urbanization. As he then

visualized the problem, it appeared that life would offer greater

possibilities in such places.

But before he reached Colnbrook, he had recognized that work was

required of him nearer home. The exodus was then in progress. He came

through armies of helpless women and children flying from starvation;

women who had no object in view save that of escape to the country;

"Silly Londoners" with no knowledge of how food was to be obtained

when their goal was reached.

He did not stay there, however. He was beginning to see the outline of

his plan, and at the same time the limitation of his own powers. He

saw that enough food could not be raised near London to support the

multitude, that the death of the many was demanded by the needs of

the few if any were to survive, and that communities must be formed

with the common purpose of tilling the land and excluding those who

could not earn their right to support. In such a catastrophe as this,

charity became a crime.

He intended even then to push on beyond Reading, but in Maidenhead

he met a woman who influenced him to a nearer goal.

3

She stepped into the road and held up her hand.

Thrale stopped; he thought she was about to make the familiar demand

either for food or a direction.

"Well?" he said curtly.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "To find room," he said.

"There is room for you near here," said the woman, "if you'll work."

"At what?" he asked.

"Machinery, harvesting machinery, agricultural machinery of all sorts."

"Where?" asked Thrale.

She dropped her voice and looked about her. "Marlow," she

said. "It--it's an eddy. Off the main roads and by the river. There

are less than a thousand women there at present, and we are keeping

the others out; at least until after harvest. There is plenty of land

about, and we're keeping ourselves at present. Only we do want a man

for the machines. Will you come and help us?"

"I'll come and see what I can do," said Thrale "I won't promise

to stay."

"Aren't there any other men, there?" he added after a moment's

hesitation.

"One at Wycombe," said the women. "He's a butcher, but----"

"I understand," said Thrale.

"And meanwhile you might help me," said the woman. "I come over here

with a horse and cart to raid the seedsmen's shops. If we leave them

the women would eat all the beans and peas and things, you know;

enough to feed us for the winter gone in a week, and no one any the

better. Isn't it awful how careless we are?"

4

She was a fair, clear-eyed girl, with the figure and complexion of

one who had devoted considerable attention to outdoor sports. She

was wearing a man's Norfolk jacket (men's clothing was so plentiful),

and a skirt that barely reached her knees, and did not entirely hide

cloth knickerbockers which might also have been adapted from a man's

garment. Below the knickerbockers she displayed thick stockings and

sandals. Her splendid fair hair furnished sufficient protection for

her head, and she had dressed a pillow of it into the nape of her

neck as a shield for the sun.

Thrale looked at her with a frank curiosity as they made their way up

the town to a seedsman's shop. She had left the horse and cart there,

she explained, while she explored other streets of the town.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Eileen, of Marlow," she said. "There doesn't seem to be another

Eileen there, so one name's enough."

"Is that how your community feel about it?" he asked.

She smiled. "We're beginning," she said.

He pondered that for a time, and then asked, "Who were you?"

"Does it matter?" was the answer.

"Not in the least," said Thrale. "Never did much so far as I was

concerned, but I have a memory of having seen your photographs in

the illustrated papers. I was wondering whether you had been actress,

peeress, scandal; or perhaps all three."

She laughed. "I'm the eldest daughter of the late Duke of Hertford,"

she said, "the ci-devant Lady Eileen Ferrar, citizen."

"Oh, was that it?" replied Thrale carelessly. "Where's this shop

of yours?"

The loot was heavier than Eileen had anticipated. The shop had been

ransacked, but they found an untouched store, containing such valuables

as beans, potatoes and a few small sacks of turnip seed at the bottom

of a yard. When these had been placed in the cart, they decided that

the load was sufficient for one horse.

They took the longer road to Marlow, through Bourne End, to avoid

the hill. Eileen walked at the horse's head, with Thrale beside her

wheeling his bicycle, and during those two hours he learnt much of

the little community which he proposed to serve for a time.

It seemed that in Marlow--and the same thing must have happened in

a hundred other small towns throughout the country--a few women had

taken control of the community. These women were of all classes and

the committee included an Earl's widow, a national schoolmistress,

a small green-grocer, and an unmarried woman of property living

half a mile out of the town. These women had worked together in an

eminently practical way; at first to relieve distress, and then to

plan the future. They had wasted little time in discussions among

themselves--none of them had the parliamentary sense of the uses

of debate. When they had disagreed, they had had plenty of scope to

carry out varying methods within their own spheres of influence.

Their first and most difficult task had been to teach the members

of their community to work for the common good, and that task was

by no means perfected as yet. Co-operation was agreeable enough to

those who had nothing to lose, but the women in temporary possession

of the sources of food supply were not so easily convinced. In many

instances the committee's arguments had been suddenly clenched by an

exposition of force majeure, and property owners had discovered to

their amazement that they had no remedy.

But the head and leader of Marlow was a farmer's daughter of

nineteen, a certain Carrie Oliver. Her father had had a small farm

in the Chilterns not far from Fingest. He had been a lazy, drunken

creature, and from the time Carrie had left the national school she

had practically carried on the work of the farm single handed. She

liked the work; the interest of it absorbed her.

The Marlow schoolmistress had remembered her when the committee had

first faced the daunting task of providing for the future. They had

been more or less capable of organizing a majority of the women,

but no member of the committee knew the secrets of agriculture and

stock-breeding, and in all Marlow and the neighbourhood no woman

had been found who was capable of instructing them in all that was

necessary.

A deputation of three had been sent to Fingest, and had discovered

Miss Oliver in the midst of plenty, cultivating her farm in comfort

now that she had been relieved of her father's unwelcome presence.

She had been covered with confusion when requested to leave her retreat

and take command of a town and the surrounding twenty thousand acres

or so within reach of the new community.

"Oh! I can't," she had said, blushing and ducking her head. "It's

easy enough; I'll tell you if there's anything you want to know."

The deputation had then put the case very clearly before her, pointing

out that in Miss Oliver's hands lay the future of a thousand lives.

"Oh, dear. I dunno. What can I do?" Carrie had said, and when the

deputation had urged that she should return with them and take charge

forthwith, she had replied that that was quite impossible, that there

were the cows to milk, the calves, pigs and chickens to feed, and

goodness knew how many other necessary things to be done before sunset.

The deputation had said that cows, calves, horses, sheep, pigs and

chickens might and should be transferred forthwith to the neighbourhood

of Marlow.

It had taken three days to convince her, Eileen said, and added,

"But she's splendid, now. It's wonderful what a lot she knows; and

she rides about on a horse everywhere and sees to everything. The

difficulty is to stop her getting down and doing the work herself."

Thrale understood that, exceptional male as he was, his position in

Marlow would be subordinate to that of Miss Oliver.

"Does she understand agricultural machinery?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," returned Eileen. "But she hasn't time, you see, to attend

to all that, and it's so jolly difficult to learn. I've been doing a

bit. I'm better at it than most of 'em. But when I saw you it struck

me how ripping it would be if you'd come and take over that side. Men

are so jolly good at machinery. We shouldn't miss them much if it

weren't for that."

5

After a marked preliminary hesitation the committee appointed

Jasper Thrale chief mechanic of Marlow. The hesitation was

understandable. Their only experience of the ways of men in this

altered civilization had been drawn from observations of Mr Evans

at Wycombe. His manner of life appeared representative of what they

might expect. Nevertheless they did not openly condemn him, although

he proved an immediate source of trouble, even to these organizers

in Marlow. The youth of the place was apt to wander over the hill

in the evenings; "just for fun," they said. They went in twos and

threes, and occasionally one of them stayed behind. These evening

walks interfered with work. "Later on I shouldn't mind so much,"

Lady Durham had said, commenting on the loss of a young and active

worker, "but there is so much to do just now." Her comment showed

that even then the situation was being accepted, and that many women

were prepared to adapt their old opinions to new conditions. It also

showed why the committee hesitated to accept Thrale's services.

Thrale understood their difficulty, and went straight to the point.

"You are afraid that the young women will be wasting time, running

after me," he said. "Set your minds at rest. That won't last. And if

you give me pupils for my machinery I should prefer women over forty

in any case. I believe I shall find them more capable."

He was right in one way. When the excitement of his coming had

subsided, he was not the cause of much wasted time. He adopted a

manner with the younger women which did not encourage advances. He

was, in fact, quite brutally frank. When the young women devised all

kinds of impossible excuses to linger in his vicinity he sent them

away with hot indignant faces. Among those who sought their sterile

amusements in Wycombe it became the fashion openly to express hatred

and contempt for "that engine fellow." It was agreed that he "wasn't a

proper man." Another section, however, talked scandal, and hinted that

assistant-engineer Eileen was the cause of Thrale's pretended misogyny.

The committee found their work more complicated in some respects

after Thrale's coming.

Thrale, himself, was supremely indifferent to any scandal or expression

of hatred. He had his hands full, his hours of work were only limited

by daylight, and six hours sleep was all he asked for or desired. After

a very brief introduction to the intricacies of reaper and rake at

the hands of Miss Oliver--her father had never been able to afford

a binder, but the days of corn-harvest were still far ahead--he set

himself to learn the mysteries of all the agricultural machinery in the

neighbourhood; traction engines, steam ploughs and thrashing machines,

and to pass on the knowledge he gained to his pupils. He found them

stupid at first, but they were patient and willing for the most part.

Then, handicapped by the lack of coal, he rode over to Bourne End and

discovered two locomotives. One of them was standing on the line a

mile out of the station with a full complement of coaches attached,

the other was an unencumbered goods engine in a siding. He chose the

latter for his first experiment, and succeeded in driving it back

to Marlow. It groaned and screamed in a way that indicated serious

organic trouble, but after he had overhauled it, it proved capable

of taking him to Maidenhead, where he found a sound engine in a shed.

After that he devoted three days to getting a clear line to Paddington,

a tedious process which involved endless descents from the cab,

and mountings into signal boxes, experiments with levers and the

occasional necessity for pushing whole trains out of his path into

some siding. But at last he returned with magnificent loot of coal

from the almost untouched London yards beyond Ealing.

London was still the storehouse of certain valuable commodities.

His passage through the surrounding country was hailed with cries of

amazement and jubilant acclamation. The first railway surely excited

less astonishment than did Thrale on his solitary engine. Doubtless

the unfortunate women who saw him pass believed that the gods of

machinery had returned once more to bring relief from all the burden

of misery and unfamiliar work.

And once the points were set and the way open to London by rail he

could go and return with tools and many other necessaries that had

offered no temptation to the starving multitude who had fled from

the town.

Marlow was greatly blessed among the communities in those days.

6

The harvest was early that year, and Miss Oliver decided to cut

certain fields of barley at the end of July.

Thrale's energies were then diverted to the superintendence of the

reapers and binders, and he rode from field to field, overlooking

the work of his pupils or spending furious hours in struggle with

some refractory mechanism.

One Saturday, an hour or two after midday, he was returning from some

such struggle, when he saw a strange procession coming down that long

hill from Handy Cross, which some pious women regarded as the road

to hell.

Casual immigration had almost ceased by that time, but the sight

indicated the necessity for immediate action. The immigration laws

of Marlow, though not coded as yet, were strict; and only bona fide

workers were admitted, and even those were critically examined.

Thrale shouted to attract attention and the procession stopped.

When he came through the gate on to the road, he was accosted by name.

"Oh, Mr Thrale, fancy finding you," said the young woman at the pole

of the truck.

The meeting of Livingstone and Stanley was far less amazing.

An old woman perched on the truck and partly sheltered by the remains

of an umbrella, regarded his appearance with some show of displeasure.

"By rights 'e should 'ave written to me in the first place," she

muttered.

"Mother's got a touch of the sun," explained Blanche hurriedly.

Thrale had not yet spoken. He was considering the problem of whether

he owed any duty to these wanderers, which could override his duty

to Marlow.

"Where have you come from?" he asked.

Blanche and Millie explained volubly, by turns and together.

"You see, we don't let anyone stay here," said Thrale.

Blanche's eyebrows went up and she waved her too exuberant sister

aside. "We're willing to work," she said.

"And your mother?" queried Thrale. "And this other woman?"

"Ach! I work too," put in Mrs Isaacson. "I have learnt all that is

necessary for the farm. I milk and feed chickens and everything."

"You'll have to come before the committee," said Thrale.

"Anywhere out of the sun," replied Blanche, "and somewhere where we

can put mother. She's very bad, I'm afraid."

"You can stay to-night, anyway," returned Thrale.

Millie made a face at him behind his back, and whispered to Mrs

Isaacson, who pursed her mouth.

"Well, you do seem more civilized here," remarked Blanche as the

procession restarted towards Marlow. Thrale, with something of the

air of a policeman, was walking by the side of the pole.

"You've come at a good time," was his only comment.

Millie had another shock before they reached the town. She saw what

she thought was a second man, on horseback this time, coming towards

them. Marlow, she thought, was evidently a place to live in. But

the figure was only that of Miss Oliver in corduroy trousers,

riding astride.

7

Fate had dropped the Goslings into Buckinghamshire to fulfil their

destiny. They had been led to Marlow by a casual direction, here

and there, after the first propulsion of Blanche's instinct had sent

them into the country beyond Harrow. And fate, doubtless with some

incomprehensible purpose of its own in view, had quietly decided

that in Marlow they were to stay. They had been dropped at a season

when, for the first time in the long three months' history of the

community, there was a shortage of labour; and Blanche and Millie,

browned by exposure and generally improved by their first six days of

healthy life, were quite acceptable additions to the population at that

moment. As for Mrs Isaacson, a lady of sufficient initiative and force

of character to require no kindly interposition of Providence on her

behalf, she arranged her own future as an expert of farm management,

and incidentally as the Goslings' housemate. Mrs Isaacson was a burr

that would stick anywhere for a time. She displayed an unexpected

and highly specialized knowledge of the management of farms, when

confronted with the expert Miss Oliver who was far too embarrassed

to press her questions home. The casual remarks of Aunt May and her

helpers had been retained in Mrs Isaacson's brilliant memory and she

displayed her knowledge to the best possible advantage, filling the

gaps with irrelevant volubility, gesture and histrionic struggles

with the English language, which proved suddenly inadequate to the

expression of these recondities that the German would have so aptly

expressed. It was inferred that in her native Bavaria, Mrs Isaacson

had farmed in the grand style.

Only Mrs Gosling, useless and ineligible, remained for consideration,

and she for once took a firm line of her own, and defied the committee,

Marlow generally, and the negligible remainder of the cosmos, to

alter her determination.

The home at which they had finally arrived did not suit her. The

tiny cottage of three rooms in the little street that runs down to

the town landing stage had no lace curtains in the front window,

no suites of furniture, no hall to save the discreet caller from

stepping through the front door straight into the single living-room,

no accumulation of dustable ornaments, not even a strip of carpet

or linoleum to cover the nakedness of a bricked floor. It was not

civilized; it was not decent according to the refined standards of

Wisteria Grove; it was an impossible place for any respectable woman

to live in, and Mrs Gosling, with unexpected force of character,

chose the obvious alternative. She did not, however, make any

announcement of her determination; she was wrapped in a speculative

depression that found no relief in words. She had been so ordered,

hoisted, dragged and bumped through the detested country during the

past six days that all show of authority had been taken from her. It

may be that deep in her own mind she cherished a sullen and enduring

resentment against her daughters, and had vowed to take the last and

unanswerable revenge of which humanity is capable. But outwardly she

preserved that air of incomprehension which had marked her during the

last stages of their journey, and committed herself to no statement

of the enormous plan which must have been forming in her mind.

When they took her into the small, brick-paved room and deposited

her temporarily on a wooden-seated chair, while they unpacked what

remained to them in the accursed trolly, Mrs Gosling took one brief

but comprehensive survey of her naked surroundings.

"She's a bit touched, isn't she?" whispered Millie to her sister. "Do

you think she understands where we are or what we're doing?"

Blanche shook her head. "I expect she'll be all right in a day or two,"

she ventured, "It's the sun."

The two girls, stirred to a new outlook on life by the extraordinary

experiences of the past months, were on the threshold of diverse

adventures. After the toil and anxiety of their tramp through

inhospitable country, and the hazard of the open air, this reception

into a community and settlement into a permanent shelter afforded a

relief which was too unexpected to be qualified as yet by criticism,

or any comparison with past glories. They were young and plastic,

and to each of them the future seemed to hold some promise; to them

the silence and immobility of their mother could only be evidence of

impaired faculties.

"We must get her to bed," said Blanche.

Even when Mrs Gosling asked with perfect relevance, "Are we going to

stop 'ere, Blanche?" they humoured her with evasive replies. "Well,

for a day or two, perhaps," and "Look here, don't you worry about

that. We're going to put you to bed."

Her head dropped again and she fell back into her moody

silence. Doubtless she meditated on the many wrongs her daughters

had done her, and wondered why she should have been brought out to

die in this wilderness?

During the nine days that elapsed before her plan matured, she made

no further comment on her surroundings. She lay in the upstairs room,

sleeping little, with no desire ever again to face the terror of a

world which demanded a new mode of thought. Unconsciously she had

adopted Blanche's phrase, "Everything's different," but to her the

message was one of doom, she could not live in a different world.

And Blanche on her side was puzzled at her mother's apathy and said,

"I can't understand it." Yet both the changed conditions and Mrs

Gosling's unchangeable habit were fundamental things.

XVIII--MODES OF EXPRESSION

1

In Marlow that year harvesting and thrashing were carried on

simultaneously. August was very dry, and the greater part of the corn

was never stacked at all. Thrale took his engines into the fields,

and the shocks were loaded on to carts and fed directly into the

thrasher. This method entailed some disadvantages, chief among them

the retarding of the actual harvest-work, but on the whole it probably

economized labour. The scheme would doubtless have been impracticable

in the days of small private ownership, but it worked well in this

instance, favoured as it was by the drought.

The saving of labour during those six weeks of furious toil was a

matter of the first importance. The work, indeed, was too heavy for

many of the women who were unable to stand the physical strain of

hoisting sheaves from the waggons into the thrasher; and the sacks

of grain proved so unmanageable that Thrale had to devise a makeshift

hoist for loading them into the carts. In Marlow, at least, machinery

was still triumphant, and the committee sighed their relief in the

sentence: "I don't know what we should have done without Jasper

Thrale." Nevertheless it is quite certain that they would have

done without him if it had not been for that fortuitous meeting

in Maidenhead.

For Thrale there was no rest possible, even when the last field had

been cleared and the last clumsily-built stack of straw or unthrashed

corn erected. Besides the necessity for some form of thatching--or,

failing efficiency in that direction, for completing the thrashing

operations--he had to turn his attention to the immensely difficult

problem of turning the grain into flour. He knew vaguely that the

grain ought to be cleaned and conditioned before grinding, and that

the actual separation of the constituents of the berry was a matter

of importance; but he had no practical knowledge of the various

operations, and in this matter Miss Oliver was quite unable to

help him.

The mill beside the lock presented itself as an intricate and

enormously detailed problem which must be solved by a concentrated

effort of induction. The only person who appeared to be of real

assistance to him was Eileen, and she was apt to tire and fall into

despair when the detail of involved and often concealed machinery

baffled them for hour after hour. Nevertheless Thrale solved this

problem also. His first concern was for a head of water. The weirs

had not been touched since the beginning of May, and the river was

very low, but by mid-September there was enough water to work for

a few hours every day, and, despite endless mistakes and setbacks,

the mill was turning out a sufficient supply of fairly respectable

looking flour.

Thrale had that wonderful masculine faculty for thus applying himself

to a mechanical problem, and, like his predecessors in mechanical

invention, it was the problem and not any promise of future reward

which interested him. He became absorbed for the time in that problem

of grinding corn, grudging the hours he was obliged to devote to

other activities; and when he felt the throb of life running through

the mill, saw the women he had taught attending each to their own

appointed task in the economy, and felt the touch of the fine, smooth

flour between his fingers, he needed no thanks from the committee

nor promise of independence to reward him for his labour. The sight

of this thing he had created was sufficient recompense. He loved this

beautiful efficient toy that changed wheat into flour, and oats into

meal, it was his to father and to fight for; the perfect child of

his ingenuity and toil.

But if Thrale's time was tremendously occupied the women found that

they had more opportunities for leisure after harvest. They were still

employed in field and garden, and there was still much to be done,

but their hours were shorter and the work seemed light in contrast

with the heroic labour that had been necessary at the harvest.

And with this first coming of comparative ease, this first

opportunity for reflection since the terrible plague had thrust upon

them the necessity for fierce and unremitting effort to produce the

essentials of life, women began to express themselves in their various

ways. Aspirations and emotions that had been crushed by the fatigues

of physical labour began to revive; personal inclinations, jealousies

and resentments became manifest in the detail of intercourse; old

prejudices, religious and social, once more assumed an aspect of

importance in the interactions of individuals. There was a faint stir

in the community, the first sign of a trouble which was steadily to

increase as winter laid its bond upon the storehouses of earth.

2

The two Goslings, working only six or seven hours a day in the

mill during the latter part of September, found plenty of time for

chatter and speculation. They, and more especially Blanche, had shown

themselves capable workers in the harvest field, but when hands had

been required in his mill Thrale had chosen the Goslings and those whom

he considered less adapted to field work; and among them Mrs Isaacson

and a member of the committee, Miss Jenkyn, the schoolmistress. (The

education problem was in abeyance for the time being. The children had

run wild for three months, and been subject only to the discipline

of their mothers, but it was understood that the children were to

receive attention when the winter brought opportunity.)

Blanche soon distinguished herself as a picked worker in this

sphere. Her intelligence was of a somewhat more masculine quality

in some respects than that of the average woman; she was slower,

more detailed, more logical in her methods. And now that those male

characteristics--so often deplored by women in the days before the

plague--had been withdrawn from the flux of life, it had become

evident that they had been an essential part of the whole, if only

a part. Masculine characteristics were at a premium in Marlow that

autumn, and as a natural consequence were being rated at an ever higher

value. There was a tendency among some women to become more male....

Millie, however, was not among the progressives. She was not gifted

intellectually; she had no swift intuitions--such as Eileen had--which

enabled her to comprehend her work; she was naturally indolent,

and all her emotions came to her through sensation.

When she was put to work in the mill she was secretly elated. She

did not believe the stories told of Jasper Thrale's insensibility to

feminine attractions, and if she believed those other stories which

coupled his name with that of Lady Eileen, Millie was of opinion that

such an entanglement was not necessarily final.

The first week of her association with Thrale in the work of the mill

brought disillusionment.

When she looked up from her work and caught his eye as he passed her,

he either stared coldly or stopped and asked in a businesslike, austere

voice whether she wanted assistance. Such intimations should have been

sufficient, but in this thing, at least, Millie was persistent. She

thought that he did not understand--men were proverbially stupid in

these matters. So she waited for an opportunity and within ten days

one was presented.

A hesitation in some of the machinery she overlooked provided

sufficient excuse for calling the head engineer. She looked down

the step-ladder which communicated with the floor below and called

hesitatingly, "Oh! Please. Mr Thrale."

He heard her and looked up, "What is it?" he asked.

"Something gone wrong," she said blushing, "I've stopped the rollers,

but I don't know----"

"All right, I'm coming," he returned, and presently joined her.

"By the way," he remarked as he began to examine the machine,

"we don't say 'Mister,' now. I thought you'd learnt that."

Millie simpered. "It sounds so familiar not to," she said.

"Rubbish," grunted Thrale. "You can call me 'engineer,' I suppose?"

"Now, look here," he continued, "do you see this hopper in here?"

She came close to him and peered into the machine.

"It gets clogged, do you see?" said Thrale, "and when the meal stutters

you've just got to put your hand in and clear it. Understand?"

"I think so," hesitated Millie. She was leaning against him and her

body was trembling with delicious excitement. Almost unconsciously

she pressed a little closer.

Thrale suddenly drew back. "Do you understand?" he said harshly.

"Ye-yes, I think so," returned Millie; and she straightened herself,

looked up at him for a moment and then dropped her eyes, blushing.

"Very well," said Thrale, "and here's another piece of advice for

you. If you want to stay in the mill keep your attention on your

work. You're a man now, for all intents and purposes; you've got a

man's work to do, and you must keep your mind on it. If there's any

foolishness you go out into the turnip fields. You won't have another

warning," he concluded as he turned and left her.

"Beast," muttered Millie when she was alone. She was shaken with

furious anger. "I hate you, you silly stuck up thing," she whispered

fiercely shaking with passion. "Oh, I wish you only knew how I hate

you. I won't touch your beastly machines again. I'd sooner a million

times be out in the turnip field than in the same mill with you,

you stuck up beast. I won't work, I won't do a thing, I'll--I'll----"