For a time she was hysterical.

Blanche coming down from the floor above found her sister tearing at

her hair.

"Good heavens, Mill, what's up?" she asked.

Millie had passed through the worst stages of her seizure by then,

and she dropped her hands. "I dunno," she said. "It's this beastly

mill, I suppose."

"I like it," returned Blanche.

"Oh, you," said Millie, full of scorn for Blanche's frigidity. "You

ought to have been a man, you ought."

"I dunno what's come to you," was Blanche's comment.

3

It was maturity that had come to Millie. Her new life of air and

physical exercise had set the blood running in her veins. In the

Wisteria Grove days she had had an anæmic tendency; the limited

routine of her existence and all the suppressions of her narrow life

had retarded her development. Now she was suddenly ripe. Two months

of sun and air had brought superabundant vitality, and the surplus

had become the most important factor in her existence. She found no

outlet for her new vigour in the work of the mill. Something within

her was crying out for joy. She wanted to find expression.

There were many other young women in Marlow that autumn in similar

case, and a rumour was current among them that this was a favourable

time for crossing the hill. It was said that the lord of Wycombe was

seeking new favourites.

Millie heard the rumour and tossed her head superciliously.

"Let him come here. I'd give him a piece of my mind," she said.

"He doesn't come 'ere," returned the gossip. "'E's afeard of our

Mr Thrale."

"Oh! Jasper Thrale!" said Millie. "That fellow from Wycombe could

knock his head off in no time."

The gossip was doubtful.

Millie was incapable of formulating a plan in this connexion, but she

was seized with a desire for spending the still September evenings in

the open air, and always something drew her towards the hill at Handy

Cross. That way lay interest and excitement. There was a wonderful

fascination in going as far as the top of the descent into Wycombe.

Usually she joined one or two other young women in these excursions. It

was understood between them that they went "for fun," and they

would laugh and scream when they reached the dip past the farm,

pretend to push each other down the slope, and cry out suddenly:

"He's coming! Run!"

But one afternoon, some ten days after Jasper Thrale had threatened

her with the turnip field, Millie went alone.

She had left work early. The rain had not come yet, and Thrale was

becoming anxious with regard to the shortage of water. He had the

sluices of Marlow and Hedsor weirs closed, and had opened the sluices

of the weirs above as far as Hambledon, but so little water was coming

down that he decided to work shorter hours for the present.

Blanche had stayed on at the mill to help with repairs. She was

rapidly developing into a capable engineer. So Millie, whose only

service was that of machine minder, found herself alone and unoccupied.

Every one else seemed to be working. Her friends of the evening

excursions were mostly in the fields on the Henley side of the town.

Millie decided she would lie down on the bed and go to sleep for a bit;

but even before she came to the cottage she changed her mind. It was

a deliciously warm, still afternoon.

Almost automatically she took the road towards Little Marlow; a desire

for adventure had overtaken her. Why, she argued, shouldn't she go

into Wycombe? There were plenty of other women there. She would be

quite safe. She only wanted to see what the place was like.

Her consciousness of perfect rectitude lasted until she reached

the dip beyond Handy Cross. Farther than this she had not ventured

before. Some mystery lay beyond the turn of the road.

She sat down in the grass by the wayside and called herself a fool,

but she was afraid to go further. She and those friends of hers had

made this place the entrance to a terrible and fascinating beyond. She

remembered how they had feared to stay there in the failing light,

daring each other to remain there alone after sunset. There was

nothing to be afraid of, she said to herself; and yet she was afraid.

She was hot with her long climb, and the place was quite deserted. She

decided to take down her hair to cool herself.

Curiously, she looked upon this simple act as deliciously daring and

in some way wicked. She cast half-fearful glances at the green girt

shadows of the descending road, as she shook out the masses of her

hair. "If anyone should come!" she thought. "If he should come...!"

She giggled nervously, and shivered.

But as time passed, and no one came, she began to lose her fear,

and presently she lay full length on the grass, and stared up into

the pale blue dome of the sky until her eyes ached and she had to

close them. The deep hush of the still afternoon enveloped her in a

great calm.

For a time she slept peacefully, and then she dreamed that she was

rushing through the air, and that some one chased her. She wanted

desperately to be captured, but it was ordained that she must fly, and

she flew incredibly fast. She flew through the sunlight into darkness,

and awoke to find that some one was standing between her and the sun.

She lay still, paralysed with terror. She bitterly regretted her

coming. She would have given ten years of life to be safe home

in Marlow.

"Now, where've I seen you before?" asked Sam Evans....

It was nearly dark when Blanche accosted a knot of women in the

High Street with a question as to whether they had seen anything of

her sister.

One of the women laughed sneeringly. "Ah! She went over the hill

this afternoon," she said. "We were in the fields that side, and saw

her go."

Blanche's face burned. "She hasn't! I know she hasn't!" she blurted

out. "She isn't one of that sort."

The woman laughed again.

"She's one of the lucky ones," another woman remarked. "You can expect

her back in a week or two's time."

4

On the same evening that Millie crossed the hill, Lady Eileen Ferrar

encountered the spirit of passion in another shape.

The thought of a lonely bathe tempted her, and she crossed the river,

made her way through deserted Bisham, and back to the stream along

a narrow, overhung lane beyond Bisham Abbey.

The sun had set, but when she came out from the trees there was

light in the sky and on the water. Overhead a few wisps of cirrus,

sailing in the far heights of air, still caught the direct rays of the

sun. Eileen paused on the bank, rejoicing in the glow of colour about

her; but as she gazed, the little fleet of salmon-tinted clouds were

engulfed in the great earth-shadow, and the delicate crisp rose-leaves

were transfigured into flat stipples of steel grey.

A slight chill had come into the air, but the water was deliciously

soft and warm. Eileen swam a couple of hundred yards up-stream,

towards the gloom of shadows that obscured the course of the river. The

after-glow was fading now, and though the surface of the water seemed

to catch some reflection of light from an unknown source, the near

distance loomed dark and mysterious. She trod water for a few moments,

but could not decide whether the river turned to right or left. To

all appearances, it terminated abruptly fifty yards ahead....

A new sound was forcing itself upon her attention--a low, steady

booming. She stopped swimming, and, keeping herself afloat by

slow, silent movements of hands and feet under water, she listened

attentively. The dull boom seemed changed into a low, ceaseless moan.

She remembered then the recently opened sluices of Temple Weir, but

quite suddenly she was aware of fear. She thought she saw a movement

among the reeds by the bank. She thought she heard laughter and the

thin pipe of a flute.

Were the old gods coming back to witness the death of man, as they

had witnessed his birth? Now that machinery and civilization were

being re-absorbed into the nature-spirit from which they had been

wrung by the force of man's devilish and alien intelligence, were the

old things returning for one mad revel before the creatures of their

sport disappeared for ever, these representatives of a species which

had failed to hold its own in the struggle for existence?

Night was coming up like a shadow, and in the east a red, enormous

moon was rising, coming not to dissipate, but to enhance the mysteries

of the dark, coming to countenance the wild and blind the eyes of man.

Eileen, almost motionless, was floating down with the drift of the

sluggish stream. She was afraid to intrude upon the natural sounds of

the night, the stealthy trickle of the river, and the furtive rustle

of secret movement whose origin she could not guess. And again she

thought that she heard the trembling reed of a distant flute.

She touched bottom near her landing-place, and waded out of the river,

crouching, afraid even in the black shadow of the trees to exhibit

the white column of her slim body. She dried and dressed hastily,

and when she felt again the touch of her familiar clothes about her,

she knew that she was safe from the wiles of nymph or satyr. She had

come out of the half-world that interposes between man and Nature;

her clothes made her invisible to the earth-gods, and hid them from

her knowledge.

But she was still trembling and afraid. The flesh had terrors great

as those of the spirit.

A little uncertain wind was coming out of the south-west, and the

trees were stirred now and again into hushed whisperings. A dead leaf

brushed her face in falling, and she started back, thrusting at an

imaginary enemy with nervously agitated hands.

The thought of her remoteness from life terrified her. She was alone,

face to face with implacable, brutal Nature. Man, the boastful, full

of foolish pride, was vanishing from the earth. He had been an alien,

ever out of place, defiling and corrupting the order of growth. Now he

was beaten and a fugitive. All around her, the representative of this

vile destructive species, was the slow, persistent hatred of the earth,

which longed to be at peace again. There was no god favourable to man,

now that he was dying; the gods of man's creation would perish with

him. Only a few women were left to realize that they were strangers

in the world of Nature which hated them. The world was not theirs,

had never been theirs; they were only some horrible, unnatural fungus

that had disfigured the Earth for a time....

She moved cautiously and slowly under the darkness of the trees,

and even when she came back to the road she could not shake off

her fear. On her right she could see the black cliff of the woods

transfigured by the light of the moon. In the day she knew them for

woods; now they were strange and threatening; they menaced her with

invasion. She knew that they would march down from the hills and swarm

across the valley. In a hundred, two hundred years, Marlow would be

a few heaps of brick and stone lost in the heart of the forest.

Ashamed of her race, she hurried on stealthily towards the bridge.

But before she reached it, she heard the sound of a firm, defiant

step coming towards her. She paused and listened, and her fear fell

from her. In the old days she would have feared man more than Nature,

feared robbery or assault, but now, man was united in a common cause;

the sound of humanity was the sound of a friend.

"Hullo!" she called, and the voice of Jasper Thrale

answered. "Hullo! Who's that?" he said.

"Me--Eileen," she replied. "I've been for a bathe."

He paused opposite her, and they looked at one another.

"Jolly night," he remarked.

"I've seen the great god Pan," said Eileen. "Those sailors in the

Ionian Sea were misinformed. He's not dead."

"Why should Pan die and Dionysus live?" returned Thrale. "I hear that

Dionysus has claimed one of our hands, by the way."

"Millie?"

"Yes."

"Are you angry?"

"Yes. Not with Millie. If you saw Pan, why shouldn't she see

Dionysus? No, I'm angry with the Jenkyn woman. She's saying that we

ought not to have Millie back if she wants to come."

"How silly!" commented Eileen.

"Oh! if that were all!" replied Thrale. "The real trouble is that the

Jenkyn woman is proselytizing. She wants to revive Church services and

Sunday observances. We're going to have a split before the winter's

over, and all the old misunderstandings and antagonisms back again."

"Why, of course we are," returned Eileen, after a pause. "We are

going to divide into those that are afraid and those that aren't. It's

fear that's got hold of us, now we've time to think. It's all about

us to-night; I've seen it, and Millie has seen it; and Clara Jenkyn

and all those who are going with her have seen it; and we've all got

to find our own way out." She hesitated for a moment, and then said:

"And what about you? Have you seen it?"

"Yes, for the first time. Within the last ten minutes," said Thrale.

The moon was above the trees now, and she could see his face

clearly. "Have you?" she asked. "I can't picture it. It can't be Pan

or Dionysus, or fear of the Earth or of humanity. No; and it can't be

the most terrible of all, the fear of an idea. What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid of you," said Thrale, and he turned away quickly and

hurried on in the direction of the river.

"I did see Pan," affirmed Eileen, as she returned, happy and unafraid,

towards Marlow.

5

That mood of the night had suggested to Eileen the idea of a single

cause which seemed sufficient to account for the revivalist tendencies

of Miss Jenkyn and certain other women in Marlow. Fear was presented as

a simple explanation, and Eileen, like many other philosophers who had

preceded her, was too eager for the simple and inclusive explanation.

At first the revivalist tendency was feeble and circumscribed. Twenty

or thirty women met in the schoolroom and talked and prayed by

the light of a single, tenderly nursed oil-lamp. The absence of any

minister kept them back at first; the less earnest needed some concrete

embodiment of religion in the form of a black coat and white tie.

But when the rain came in early October, came and persisted; when the

beeches, instead of flaring into scarlet, grew sodden and dead; when

the threat of flood grew even more imminent, and the distraction of

physical toil almost ceased, this little nucleus of women was joined

by many new recruits, and their comparatively harmless prostrations,

lamentations and worshippings of the abstract, developed into an

attempt to enforce a moral law upon the community.

Millie Gosling, returning to Marlow in mid-October, gave the

religionists splendid opportunity for a first demonstration.

Millie returned with a bold face and a shrinking heart. She had fled

from Wycombe because she could not meet the taunts of the women who

had so lately envied her as she rode, prime favourite for a time,

in the Dionysian landau. A great loneliness had come over her after

she was dethroned; she needed sympathy, and she hoped that Blanche

might be made to understand. Millie came back from over the hill

prepared with a long tale of excuses.

She found her sister perfectly complacent.

Blanche was a fervent disciple of Jasper Thrale and machinery, and

Thrale had anticipated Millie's return and in some ways prepared

for it. At odd moments he had preached the new gospel, the tenets of

which Blanche had begun to formulate for herself.

"It's no good going back to the old morality for a precedent," had

been the essential argument used by Thrale; "we have to face new

conditions. If a man is only to have one wife now, the race will

decline, probably perish. It is a woman's duty to bear children."

Eileen, Blanche and a few other young women had wondered that he made

no application of the argument to his own case, but his opinion carried

more weight by reason of his continence. Even Miss Jenkyn could not

urge that his opinion was framed to defend his own mode of life,

and, failing that casuistical support, she had to fall back on the

second alternative of her kind, namely, to assert that this preacher

of antagonistic opinions was either the devil in person or possessed

by him--a line of defence which took longer to establish than the

simple accusation of expediency.

So Millie, returning one wet October afternoon, found that no excuses

were required of her. Blanche welcomed her and asked no questions,

and Jasper Thrale and Eileen came to the little cottage in St

Peter's Street at sunset and treated the prodigal Millie with a new

and altogether delightful friendliness. It was understood that she

would return at once to her work in the Mill. But in the school-house

opposite another reception was being prepared for her.

The more advanced of the Jenkynites were for taking immediate

action. Prayer, worship, and the acknowledgment of personal sin fell

into the background that evening, Millie appeared not as a brand

to be saved from the burning, but as an abandoned and evil creature

who must be thrust out of the community if any member of it was to

save her soul alive. Every one of these furious religionists could

stand up and declare that she was innocent of the commission of this

particular sin of Millie's, and every one was willing and anxious to

cast the first stone.

The meeting simmered, and at last boiled over into St Peter's Street. A

band of more than a dozen rigidly virtuous and ecstatically Christian

women beat at the door of the Goslings' cottage. They had come to

denounce sin and thrust the sinner out of the community with physical

violence. Each of them in her own heart thought of herself as the

bride of Christ.

The door was opened to them by Jasper Thrale.

"We have come to cast out the evil one!" cried Miss Jenkyn in a high

emotional voice.

"What are you talking about?" asked Thrale.

"She shall be cast forth from our midst!" shrilled Miss Jenkyn;

and her supporters raised a horrible screaming cry of agreement.

"Cast her forth!" they cried, finding full justification for their

high pitch of emotion in the use of Biblical phrase.

"Cast forth your grandmother!" replied Thrale calmly. "Get back to

your homes, and don't be foolish."

"He is possessed of the devil!" chanted Miss Jenkyn. "The Lord has

called upon us to vindicate his honour and glory. This man, too,

must not be suffered to dwell in the congregation."

"Down with him! down with him!" assented the little crowd, now so

exalted with the glory of their common purpose that they were ready

for martyrdom.

Miss Jenkyn was an undersized, withered little spinster of forty-five,

and physically impotent; but, drunk with the fervour of her emotion,

and encouraged by the sympathy of her followers and the fury of her

own voice, she flung herself fiercely upon the calm figure of Jasper

Thrale. Her thwarted self-expression had found an outlet. She desired

the blood of Millie Gosling and Jasper Thrale with the same intensity

that women had once desired a useless vote.

Jasper Thrale put out a careless hand and pushed her back into the arms

of the women behind her; but she was up again instantly, and, backed

by the crowd, who, encouraging themselves by shrill screams of "Cast

them forth!" were now thrusting forward into the narrow doorway, she

renewed the assault with all the fierce energy of a struggling kitten.

"I shall lose my temper in a minute," said Thrale, as he took a step

forward and, bracing himself against the door frame, drove the women

back with vigorous thrusts of his powerful arms.

To lose his temper, indeed, seemed the only way of escape; to give way

to berserk rage, and so to injure these muscularly feeble creatures

that they would be unable to continue the struggle. But the babble of

screaming voices was bringing other helpers to his aid, chief among

them Lady Durham, and her cold, clear voice fell on the hysterical

Jenkynites like a douche of cold water.

"Clara Jenkyn, what are you doing?" asked Elsie Durham.

"Millie Gosling must be cast forth," wavered the little dishevelled

woman; but this time there was no reponse from her disciples.

"That is a question for the committee," replied Elsie Durham. "Now,

please go to your homes, all of you."

Miss Jenkyn tried to explain.

Elsie Durham walked into the cottage and shut the door.

Inside, Eileen and Blanche were trying to reassure the trembling

Millie. Outside, the Jenkynites were suffering a more brutal martyrdom

than that they had sought. The tongues of the new arrivals, the

fuller-blooded, more physically vigorous members of the community,

were making sport of these brides of Christ.

6

But the women of Marlow were to learn afresh the old lesson

that religious enthusiasm is not to be killed by ridicule or

oppression. Jasper Thrale understood and appreciated that fact,

but the policy he suggested could not be approved by the committee.

"This emotion is a fundamental thing," he said to Lady Durham,

"and history will show you that persecution will intensify it to

the point of martyrdom. There is only one way to combat it. Give it

room. Let them do as they will. The heat of the fire is too fierce

for you to damp it down; you only supply more fuel. Fan it, throw it

open to the air, and it will burn itself harmlessly out."

Elsie Durham shrugged her shoulders. "That's all very well," she

said. "I believe it's perfectly true. But they make you the bone of

contention. If it were only Millie Gosling--well--she might go. We

could find a place for her--at Fingest, perhaps. But we can't spare

you."

"I don't know why not," returned Thrale. "I never intended to stay

indefinitely. You can carry on now without me, and I can fulfil my

original intention and push on into the West."

"My dear man! we can't, and we won't!" said Elsie Durham. "You are

indispensable."

"No one is indispensable," replied Thrale.

"Bother your metaphysics, Jasper!" was the answer. "We are not

going to let you go. 'We' is the majority of Marlow, not only the

committee. We'll fight the fanatics somehow."

The majority referred to by Elsie Durham was fairly compact in

relation to this issue of retaining Jasper Thrale, and included the two

greater of the three recognizable parties in the community. Of these

three, the greatest was the moderate party, made up of Episcopalians,

Nonconformists and a few Roman Catholics, who found relief for their

emotion one day in seven either in the Town Hall or Marlow Church,

in which places services and meetings were held--the former by

certain approved individuals, notably Elsie Durham and the widow

of the late Rector of Marlow. The second party in order of size

included all those who either denied the Divine revelation or were

careless of all religious matters. The third party--the Jenkynites,

as they were dubbed by their opponents--had drawn their numbers from

every old denomination. The Jenkynites were differentiated from the

other two parties by certain physical differences. For instance, the

Jenkynites numbered few members under the age of thirty-five; very

few of them were fat, and very few of them were capable field workers;

they were hungry-eyed, and had a certain air of disappointed eagerness

about them; they looked as though they had for ever sought something,

and, finding it, had remained unsatisfied. In all, there were some

seventeen women who might have been regarded as quite true to type,

and about this vivid nucleus were clustered nearly a hundred other

women, many of whom exhibited some characteristic mark of the same

type, while the remainder, perhaps 40 per cent of the whole body,

had joined the party out of bravado, to seek excitement, or for some

purpose of expediency.

Among the last was Mrs Isaacson, who was the ultimate cause of the

Jenkynite defeat.

Ever since she had passed her examination in farm supervision,

Mrs Isaacson had exhibited an increasing tendency to rest on her

laurels. She had grown very stout again during her stay in Marlow,

and complained of severe heart trouble. The least exertion brought on

violent palpitation accompanied by the most alarming symptoms. The

poor lady would gasp for breath, press her hands convulsively to

a spot just below her left breast, and roll up her eyes till they

presented only a terrifying repulsive rim of blood-streaked white, if

the least exertion were demanded from her, and yet she would persist

in the effort until absolutely on the verge of collapse. "No, no! I

must work!" she would insist. "It iss not fair to the others that I

do no work. I will try once more. It iss only fair."

At times they had to insist that she should return home and rest.

And as the winter closed in, Mrs Isaacson's rests became more and

more protracted. Jasper Thrale grinned and said: "I suppose we've

got to keep her"; but there was a feeling among the other members of

the committee that they were creating an undesirable precedent. Mrs

Isaacson's example was being followed by other women who preferred

rest to work.

Heart weakness was becoming endemic in Marlow.

Then came the news that Mrs Isaacson had joined the Jenkynites. The

seventeen received her somewhat doubtfully at first, but the body of

the sect were in favour of her reception. Possibly they were rather

proud of counting one more fat woman among them; the average member

was so noticeably thin.

Even the seventeen were satisfied within a fortnight of Mrs Isaacson's

conversion. She had a wonderful fluency, and she said the right and

proper things in her own peculiar English--a form of speech which

had a certain piquancy and interest and afforded relief and variety

after the somewhat stereotyped formulas of the seventeen.

But early in December, before the floods came, Mrs Isaacson was

convicted of a serious offence against the community. One of

the committee's first works had been to store certain priceless

valuables. Tea, coffee, sugar, soap, candles, salt, baking powder,

wine and other irreplaceable commodities had been locked up in one

of the bank premises. In all, they had a fairly large store, upon

which they had hardly drawn as yet. It was not intended to hoard these

luxuries indefinitely. After harvest a dole had been made to all the

workers as acknowledgment of their services, and it had been decided

to hold another festival on Christmas Day.

Mrs Isaacson, with unsuspected energy, had burglariously entered this

storehouse of wealth. She had found an accessible window at the rear,

which she had succeeded in forcing, and, despite her bulk and the

delicate state of her heart, she had effected an entrance and stolen

tea, sugar, candles and whisky.

She was, indeed, finally caught in the act; but her thefts would

probably have escaped notice--she worked after dark, and with a cunning

and caution that would have placed her high in the profession before

the plague--had it not been for Blanche.

7

It seems that Mrs Isaacson had formed the habit of staying up in the

evening. She pleaded that she could not sleep during the early hours

of the night, which was not surprising in view of the fact that she

slept much during the day; and as she was diligent in picking up or

begging sufficient wood to maintain the fire, there was no reason why

Blanche and Millie should offer any objection. Thrale had rigged up

a dynamo at the mill now to provide artificial light, and the girls'

hours of work were so prolonged that they were glad to get to bed

at half-past seven. By eight o'clock Mrs Isaacson evidently counted

herself safe from all interruption.

She might have continued her enjoyment of luxury undiscovered

throughout the winter if Blanche had not suffered from toothache.

She had been in bed and asleep nearly two hours when her dreams of

discomfort merged into a consciousness of actual pain. She sighed

and pressed her cheek into the pillows, made agonizing exploration

with her tongue, and tried to go to sleep again. Possibly she might

have succeeded had not that unaccountable smell of whisky obtruded

itself upon her senses.

At first she thought the house was on fire. That had always been her

one fear in leaving Mrs Isaacson alone; and she sat up in bed and

sniffed vigorously. "Funny," she murmured; "it smells like--like plum

pudding." The analogy was probably suggested to her by the odour of

burning brandy.

She got up and opened the door of the bedroom.

Mrs Isaacson slept on a sort of glorified landing, and when Blanche

stepped outside her own door she could see at once by the light of

a watery full moon that her lodger had not yet come to bed.

The smell of the spirit was stronger on the landing, and Blanche,

forgetting her toothache in the excitement of the moment, stole

quietly down the short flight of crooked stairs. The door giving

on to the living-room was latched, but there were two convenient

knot-holes, and through one of them she saw Mrs Isaacson seated by

the fire drinking hot tea. On the table stood an open whisky bottle

and two lighted wax candles.

Blanche was thunderstruck. Tea, whisky and candles were inexplicable

things. The thought of witchcraft obtruded itself, and so fascinated

her that she stood on the stairs gazing through the knothole until

a sudden rigour reminded her that she was deadly cold.

She did not interrupt the orgy. She crept back to bed, and after much

difficulty awakened Millie.

The sound of their voices must have alarmed Mrs Isaacson, for the

girls presently heard her stumbling upstairs. They stopped their

discussion then, and Blanche's toothache being mysteriously cured by

her excitement, they were soon asleep again.

Neither of the girls spoke of their discovery to anyone the next

day, but Blanche returned to the cottage at half-past four, when Mrs

Isaacson was at a meeting over the way, and explored her bedroom. She

found a small store of tea, sugar and candles under the mattress--the

whisky bottle had disappeared--and so came to an understanding of

Mrs Isaacson's self-sacrificing insistence that she should perform

all work connected with her own sleeping-place--it could hardly be

called a room.

After consultation with Millie, Blanche decided that she must inform

Jasper Thrale of the contraband.

"She's been stealing, of course," he said. "I suppose we shall have

to bring it home to her." But he laughed at Blanche's indignation.

"She's stealing from us!" said Blanche, who had developed a fine

sense of her duty towards and interest in the community.

"Oh, yes! you're quite right," said Thrale. "I'll inform the

committee--at least, the non-Jenkynites."

The five non-Jenkynites were furious.

"We must make an example," Elsie Durham said. "It isn't that we

shall miss what the Isaacson woman has taken--or will take. It's the

question of precedent. This is where we are facing the beginning of

law--isn't it? Somebody has to protect the members of the community

against themselves. If one steals and goes unpunished, another will

steal. We shall have the women divided into stealers and workers."

"What are you going to do with her?" asked Thrale.

"Turn her out," replied Elsie Durham.

"The Jenkynites won't let her go," said Thrale raising the larger

question.

"We shall see," said Elsie Durham, "But that reminds me that we must

catch the woman flagrante delicto; we must have no quibbles about

the facts."

Thrale agreed with the wisdom of this policy, but refused to

take any part in either the detection or the prosecution of Mrs

Isaacson. "They'll say its a put-up job if I have anything to do with

it," he argued.

8

The Jenkynites blazed when Rebecca Isaacson was finally caught and

denounced. The culprit, when caught in the act of entering the bank

premises had made a slight error of judgment, and pleaded the excuse

that she was a sleepwalker and quite unconscious of what she was

doing; but she afterwards adopted a sounder line of defence. She made

full confession to the seventeen, pleaded extravagant penitence with

all the necessary references to the blood of the Lamb, and displayed

all the well-known signs that she would become fervent in well-doing

after the ensanguined ablutions had been metaphorically performed.

The Jenkynites were enraptured with so real a case of sin. They had

been compelled to content themselves with so many minor failures from

grace that the performances were becoming slightly monotonous.

The "Sister Rebecca" case was refreshingly real and genuine, and they

meant to make the most of it. Also, this case gave them occasion to

assert themselves once more against the opinions of the community.

It must not be supposed that the seventeen deliberately adopted a

practical and apparently promising policy. They were not consciously

seeking to obtain civil power as were the priests of the old days

before the plague. The seventeen had no sense of the State as

represented by the community; they were without question perfectly

sincere in their beliefs and actions. Their fault, if it can be

so described, was their inability to adapt themselves to their

conditions. They were as unchangeable as the old lady who had died

sooner than be permanently separated from the glories of a house in

Wisteria Grove. She and the seventeen and many other women in Marlow

were demonstrating that rigidity of opinion is detrimental to the

interests of the growing State. The same proposition had been clearly

demonstrated by a few exceptional individuals in the old days, but

progress was so slow, the property owners so content, and the average

of mankind so intensely conservative, that their arguments received

no attention. For every man who believed in the broad principle of

maintaining an open mind, there were ten thousand who were quite

incapable of putting the principle into practice. With these women

in Marlow the conditions were completely changed. Moreover, women

are by nature more broad-minded than men in practical affairs. Where

intuition rather than the hard-and-fast methods of an intellectual

logic is being brought into play, new and wonderful possibilities of

adaptation may enter the domain of politics.

The Jenkynites and such individuals as the late Mrs Gosling became

suddenly conspicuous in the new conditions. The type that they

represent cannot persist. They are the bonds on a vigorous and

increasing growth; the tree will grow and burst away all inflexible

restraints.

In Marlow the new and vigorous growth was the sense of the

community. The majority of the women were realizing, consciously

or unconsciously, that they must work with and for each other. The

Jenkynite affair served the committee as a valuable object-lesson.

Mrs Isaacson was free to do as she would while the discussion

raged. Imprisonment would have been utterly futile. The committee

did not wish to punish her for her offence against common property,

they merely wished to rid themselves of an undesirable member and to

make public announcement that they would in like manner exclude any

other member who proved herself a burden to the community.

The Jenkynites were characteristically unable to comprehend this

argument. They had their own definitions of heinous and venial sins,

definitions based on ancient precedent, and they counted the fault

of Millie Gosling in the former and that of Rebecca Isaacson in the

latter category. They were not susceptible to argument. As they saw

the problem, no argument was admissible. They had the old law and the

old prophets on their side, and maintained that what was true once

was true for all time. In their opinion, changed conditions did not

affect morality.

If the need for labour had been great, the affair might have been

shelved for a time as of less importance than the dominant economic

demand which takes precedence of all other problems. But although

the floods had not yet come, there was not enough work for all the

members of the community, and this comparative idleness reacted upon

the importance of the Isaacson case in another and probably more

influential direction than the abstract consideration of justice

and humanity.

The women had time to talk, and a new and fascinating subject was

given them to discuss. And they talked; and their talk ripened into

action. The affair Isaacson, which included also the affair Jenkyns,

was brought to a climax at a mass meeting in the Town Hall.

It was decided, noisily, but with considerable emphasis, that for

the good of the community the Jenkynites must go. The seventeen were

specifically indicated, but it was understood that certain of their

more advanced adherents would go with them.

The Jenkynites accepted the decision in the spirit of their

belief. They were martyrs in a great cause. They would leave this

accursed city (their terminology was always Biblical) and cast off

its dust from their feet--although the roads were deep in mud at the

time. They would go forth to regenerate the world, upheld by their

love of truth and their zeal for the Word.

Only Mrs Isaacson dissented, but she was compelled to go with them.

They went forth in the rain, thirty-nine of them in all, exalted

with conscious righteousness and faint with enthusiasm. The women

of Marlow were kind to them. They turned out and jeered the little

procession as it marched out of the town by the Henley Road.

"'Oo stole the tea?" was the most popular taunt, and no doubt the

exiles would have preferred that the taunts should have been cast

at their faith rather than at the social misdemeanour of an obscure

convert. But any form of martyrdom was better than none, and they held

their heads high and sang "Glory! glory!" with magnificent fervour.

"I'm sure we've done right," commented Elsie Durham. "But we should

never have had all the women with us if there had been no offence

against property. That touched them--communal property. I'm not sure

that it isn't become almost dearer than personal property."

XIX--ON THE FLOOD

1

From the middle of November onwards, the river had been running

nearly bank-high, and so much power was available that Thrale had been

considering the possibility of lighting some of the nearer houses by

electricity. He had made three journeys to London, and with half a

dozen assistants he had rifled two dynamos from the power station just

outside Paddington, and had brought back twenty truck-loads of coal.

The dynamos, however, were still in the truck, covered by

tarpaulin. Thrale had decided that the luxury of artificial lighting

could not be provided until all the grain had been thrashed and

milled. The end of that work was now in sight, and the accumulated

wealth of flour in Marlow was calculated to be sufficient to last the

community for at least twelve months. But before the lighting scheme

could be put in hand, a new trouble had threatened.

During the first week of December there was almost continuous rain,

and the river began to top its banks, spreading itself over the

meadowland below the lock and creeping up the end of St Peter's

Street. No serious matter as yet, and a short spell of frost and

clear skies followed; but before Christmas heavy rains came again,

and Thrale began to grow anxious.

"The weirs down-stream ought to be opened," he explained to

Eileen. "They are probably all up; we need never be afraid of shortage

here; if we close our own weir we can always hold up all the water

we want."

"Is it serious?" she asked.

"Not yet, but it may be," he said, looking up at the sky. "All Marlow

might be flooded."

And still the rain fell, and soon the girls had to wade through a

foot of water to reach the mill.

"I must go down-stream and open all the weirs," Thrale announced

on Christmas Eve. "I've been looking at a steam launch over at the

boat-house; it's in quite good condition. I shall bring it up to the

town landing-stage to-morrow and get enough coal and food aboard to

last a week."

"You're not going alone?" said Eileen.

"No! I must take some one to work the engine and the locks," returned

Thrale.

"I'll come!" announced Eileen, with glee.

Thrale shook his head. "You'll have to run this place," he said.

Since that night in September no reference had been made by either of

them to his strange revelation of fear. They had worked together as

two men might have worked. Neither of them had exhibited the least

consciousness of sex. Thrale believed that he had put the fear away

from him, and Eileen was content to wait. She was barely twenty.

"Blanche could run the mill," she suggested. "There isn't much to

do now."

Thrale turned away from her with a touch of impatience. "Blanche had

better come with me," he said.

"I want to come," pleaded Eileen.

"Why?" he asked.

"It'll be sport."

"I don't care to trust Blanche with the mill," he persisted.

"She's every bit as good as I am," was her reply.

He shook his head.

"Oh, look here," said Eileen, "you might let me come, or are you--are

you afraid of--of what the women will say?" She was standing by one

of the flour-encrusted mill windows and she began to scratch a clean

place on it with her nail.

Thrale did not answer for a moment and then he came and stood near

her. "What is it?" he asked. "Are you sick of your work here?"

"I shouldn't mind a change," she said, intent on enlarging her

peep-hole.

"One forgets that you are women," said Thrale. "I suppose women are

never content with work for work's sake."

"If you like," returned Eileen inconsequently. "I can see out now. Why

don't we have these windows cleaned sometimes?"

"You can have them done while I'm away," he suggested.

"I'm coming with you," said Eileen.

"Oh! you can come if you like," he said. He thought he was perfectly

safe, despite this unusual display of femininity.

"You'll have to run the engine," he concluded.

"Oh! I'll run the engine," she agreed and looked down at her capable,

frankly dirty little hands.

2

The weirs at Marlow and Hedsor had been roaring open-mouthed for ten

days before Thrale and Eileen began their journey; but the water

had been piling up from below and the floods were working back up

river. The fact that none of the weirs above Henley was closed had

served to protect Marlow in some degree. There were great floods

above Sonning, and from Goring to Culham the country was a vast sheet

of water. This water, however, only came down comparatively slowly

owing to the dammed condition of the main channel, and a greater

proportion of it was absorbed. If the upper weirs had been open,

Marlow would have been under water by the middle of December.

Not until the launch had been manoeuvred with some difficulty through

Boulter's Lock did Thrale begin to realize the full significance of

the situation.

He had had very great difficulty first in reaching and second in

raising the paddles of the Taplow weir. In one place the force of

the flood had broken away the structure, but even with the relief

this passage had afforded the pressure of water on the paddles was

so great that he had been working for more than two hours before the

last valve was opened.

Eileen had been waiting for him with the launch warped up just below

the lock where the force of the stream was not so great.

"I don't know whether we shall be able to carry out this job,"

remarked Thrale when he rejoined her.

"Oh, but we must," she expostulated.

"Do you see what has happened?" he explained. "All the water is piled

up below us. We shall probably find the next locks flood-high, which

means that we sha'n't be able to open them."

"We must navigate," said Eileen. "Steam round them; shoot the weirs."

"Oh, well," said Thrale, "I'm wondering how far our responsibility

goes. If we don't open the river right down to Richmond, we shall only

be increasing the flood in the lower reaches, and there may be women

living there. After all, Marlow isn't the only place on the river. And

there is another thing; we may never get back. It's a risky thing we

are proposing to do. No one could swim against this current. If we

were upset and carried into a weir, we should be smashed to pieces

in no time. Do you think the community can spare us?"

"Bother the community!" replied Eileen.

The community and its activities were already in the background of

her mind. Marlow had receded into a little distant place with which

she was no longer connected. The world of adventure and romance lay

open before her. She wanted only to explore this turbulent river,

widened now into a miniature Amazon, from which arose the islands of

half-submerged houses and trees that composed the strange archipelago

of Maidenhead.

"Oh, well," said Thrale again. "We'll try. It's no use waiting for

the stream to go down. We'd better go on now."

"Shall I cast off?" asked Eileen.

"Steady, steady," Thrale warned her. "The next quarter of a mile

is simply a rapid. You must be ready to get the engines going full

ahead the moment we start, or I sha'n't be able to steer her. And,

now, we must both cast off together or we shall be across the stream

in two ticks. Just loosen the rope round the cleats and let go, and

then start the engine. Let the loose end of the rope drag till we've

time to pick it up. Are you ready? All right--cast off!"

The little launch swept out into the current with a bound the instant

she was released from her moorings, and almost before the engines

began to revolve she was caught in the rapids that surged down from

the newly-opened weir. She was only a light draught pleasure-boat,

designed to navigate the placid surface of the summer Thames, and

when she entered the curling broken water below the island she threw

up her nose and plunged like a nervous mare.

"Full steam ahead," shouted Thrale at the toy wheel. Eileen nodded,

crouching over her little engine; the roar of the stream had drowned

Thrale's voice, but she guessed his order.

Her eyes were bright with excitement. She had no sense of fear. She

was exhilarated by the sense of rapid movement. The launch, indeed,

was travelling at a remarkable pace. In the narrow channel between the

islands and the town, the river must have been running at nearly ten

miles an hour, and the engines were probably adding another eight. In

the wide spaces of the ocean eighteen miles an hour may appear a safe

and controllable speed, but this little launch was running down hill,

she could not be stopped at command, and the restricted course was

beset with many and dangerous obstacles.

Thrale, handling the little brass wheel forward, was conscious of

uneasiness. The launch steered after a fashion, but he had little

control of her. The trees on the banks appeared to be flying upstream

at the pace of an express train, and ahead of him was the town bridge.

He decided instantly that they could not pass under it, and put the

wheel over, intending to shoot out of the stream into the calm of the

flood water over the new open bank. But as the launch turned and came

across, the current took her stern and turned her half round. For a

moment her lee rail was under water, and she trembled and rocked on

the verge of capsize. Then her engines drove her out of the stream and

she righted herself again and began to cut through the almost still,

shallow flood water.

"Stop her!" roared Thrale.

"I say, what's up?" replied Eileen, coolly, as she obeyed the order.

"No room to pass under the bridge," said Thrale. "I suppose we'll

have to navigate, as you call it. Go dead slow, and be prepared to

stop her at a moment's notice."

They spent over an hour in finding a passage round the approach to

the bridge. They had laboriously to pole the launch through the tops

of hedges, and in one place they were aground for ten minutes. But

after they had returned to the stream once more they had a rapid and

easy passage down to Bray. They shot the great arch of the Maidenhead

railway bridge triumphantly. Eileen said it was "glorious."

The weir at Bray proved even more difficult to negotiate than the

one above, and by the time it was fully opened the dull December

afternoon was closing in.

They spent that night moored to two of the elms that ring the isolated

little church in the meadows by Boveney.

"At this rate," remarked Thrale as they settled themselves for the

night, "it'll take us a week to get to Richmond. We've done two weirs

out of thirteen, so far."

3

Thrale's estimate proved excessive. They reached Richmond on the

fourth day out from Marlow, having opened another nine weirs--the

one at Old Windsor had been swept away, and the one below Richmond

Bridge Thrale opened that afternoon.

During those four days they had seen few signs of life. They had moved,

keeping to the main stream for the most part, in the midst of a wide

expanse of water; exploring a desolate and wasted country.

Once they had been hailed by three women, who looked out at them from

a house in Windsor, and shouted something they did not catch; and a

woman had been standing on Staines Bridge as they careered intrepidly

through the centre arch--they had no time even to distinguish her

dress. But with these exceptions they might have come through the land

of an extinct civilization, devoid of life; a land in which deserted

houses and church towers stood up from the silver sheet of a vast lake,

that was threaded by this one impetuous torrent of swelling river.

Richmond, also, was deserted. The emigrants had passed on over the

river or southwards to Petersham and so into Surrey.

"Well!" said Eileen, wiping her oil-blackened hands on a bunch of

cotton waste, "that job's done. We've fairly drawn the plug of the

cistern now. And how are we going to get back?"

"We'll find a couple of bicycles somewhere here," said Thrale.

It had been a clear day, and there was a suggestion of frost in the

air. The sun was setting very red and full behind the bare trees

across the river. Save for the gurgle and hiss of the eddying flood,

everything was very still. The little launch which had served them

so well, and bore the marks of its great adventure in broken rails

and bruised sides, was run aground by the side of the bridge. Thrale

was standing in the road, but Eileen still sat by her engine.

"I hate to leave the launch," she said, after a long pause.

"We can come back and fetch her up when the flood goes down,"

returned Thrale.

"We've done pretty well, the three of us."

"Yes, the three of us," he echoed.

"It has been great fun," sighed Eileen.

Thrale did not reply. He was thinking himself back into the past. He

saw a street in Melbourne on a burning December evening, and the

figure of a gaily-clad little brunette who spoke purest cockney

and asked him why he looked so glum. "We ain't goin' to a funeral,"

she had said. Yet afterwards he had believed that something had been

buried that night. He had faced his own passion and the sight of it had

disgusted him. He had seen the shadow of a demon who might master him,

and he had grappled with it; he believed that he had slain and buried

lust in Melbourne ten years ago. It had not risen up to confront him

when the plague had put a world of women at his command. He had not

been forced to fight, he was not tempted--surely the thing was dead

and buried. Only once, on that warm September night, had he felt a

sudden furious desire to take this girl into his arms and fly with

her into the woods. The desire had come and gone, he was master of

it, and in any case it bore no resemblance to the brutal thing he

had faced in Melbourne.

Nor, as he stood now by Richmond Bridge watching the vault of the

sky deepen to an intenser blue, did the feeling that possessed him

in any way resemble that old cruel passion which had flared up and

died--surely it had died. He could not analyse his feeling for this

brave, clear-eyed companion, who had faced with him all the dangers of

the past four days without a sign of fear. She had made no advances

to him, they were friends, she might have been some delightfully

clean, wholesome boy. And then his thought was pierced and broken by

a horrible suggestion.

A picture of the hill to Handy Cross flashed before him, and he saw

a little lonely figure creeping furtively away from Marlow. He drove

his nails into his palms and suddenly cried out.

"What's up?" said Eileen, turning round and looking up at him. "Have

you forgotten anything?"

He stepped into the boat and sat down beside her. "I want to know--I

must know," he said.

She looked at him and smiled. "All right, old man," she said. "Fire

away."

"I told you once that I was frightened of you," said Thrale. "I want

to know if you have ever been frightened of yourself--or of me?"

"I could never be frightened of you," she replied, and looked away

towards the rising darkness of the shadows across the hurrying river,

"and I haven't been afraid of myself--yet. I don't think----"

"Wouldn't you be frightened of me if I picked you up and ran shouting

into the woods?" he asked, fiercely.

Her eyes met his without reserve. "Dear old man," she said. "I

should love it. I'm so glad you understand. That was the one thing

that prevented our being real friends. I've wanted so much to be

frank and open with you. It's all these silly reserves that make love

abominable. Now we can be two jolly, clean human beings who understand

each other, can't we? And we shall be such ripping good friends always;

quite open and honest with each other."

He drew a deep, sighing breath and put his arms round her, drew

her close to him and laid his face against hers. "I've been such an

awful ass," he said. "I've always thought that love was unclean. I've

been like that Jenkyn woman. I've been prurient and suspicious and

evil-minded. I've been like the people who cover up statues. But

there was an excuse for me--and for them, too. I didn't know, because

there was no woman like you to teach me. All the women I've known have

been secretive and sly. They've fouled love for me by making it seem

a hidden, disreputable thing. Oh! we shall be ripping good friends,

little Eileen--magnificent friends."

"This is a jolly old boat, isn't it?" replied Eileen,

inconsequently. "Don't smother me, old man. And, I say, do you

think we'll be able to raid some soap from somewhere? Do look at

my hands! You couldn't be friends with a chap who had hands like

that!" ...

"There's one thing I'd like to remark," said Eileen the next

morning. There had been a frost in the night, and there was every

promise of an easy ride back to Marlow.

"Yes?" said Thrale, examining the deflated tyres of two bicycles they

had chosen from a shop in the High Street.

"We'd never have understood each other so well if we hadn't worked

together on the same job," said Eileen.

"Well, of course not," returned Thrale. His tone seemed to imply

that she had stated a truth that must always have been obvious to

sensible people.

"That and there being no footle about marriage," concluded Eileen.

4

A third factor that had contributed to the perfection of that complete

understanding was not realized by either until they were descending

the hill into Bisham.

"I rather wish we weren't going back," said Eileen. "Let's stop a

moment. I want to talk. We've never thought of what we're going to do."

"Do?" said Jasper, as he dismounted. "Well, we've just got to make an

announcement and that's the end of it. The Jenkyns lot have all gone."

"It isn't the end, it's the beginning," replied Eileen. "Don't you

see that we can't even explain?"

"We sha'n't try."

"We shall. We shall have to--in a way. It'll take years and years to

do it. But the point is that they won't understand, now, none of them,

not even Elsie Durham. We aren't free any longer."

"We aren't alone," she added, bringing the hitherto unacknowledged

factor into prominence.

Thrale frowned and looked up into the thin brightness of the frosty

sky. "Yes, I understand," he said. "It's public opinion that compels

one to regard love as shameful and secret. Alone together, free from

every suspicion, we hadn't a doubt. But now, we have to explain and we

can't explain, and we are forced against our wills to wonder whether

we can be right and all the rest of the world wrong."

"We are right," put in Eileen.

"Only we can't prove it to anyone but ourselves."

"And we shouldn't want to, if we hadn't got to live with them."

For a moment they looked at one another thoughtfully.

"No, we mustn't run away," Jasper said, with determination, after

a pause. "Look, the flood has begun to go down already. That's our

work. There's other work for us to do yet."

For a time they were silent, looking down on to Marlow and out over

the valley.

"We didn't go over that hill," said Eileen, at last, pointing to the

distant rise of Handy Cross.

"No," replied Jasper, and then, "we won't hide behind hills. Damn

public opinion."

"Oh, yes, damn public opinion," agreed Eileen. "But we won't stay in

Marlow always."

XX--THE TERRORS OF SPRING

1

The frost gave way on the third night, and for ten days there

was a spell of mild weather with some rain. Carrie Oliver began to

contemplate the possibility of getting forward with such ploughing as

still remained to be done. She proposed to have an increased acreage

of arable that year, and less pasture, less hay and less turnips; the

arable was to include potatoes, beans and peas. For the community was

rapidly tending towards vegetarianism. They had no butcher in Marlow,

and the women revolted against the slaughter of cattle and sheep. They

were hesitating and clumsy in the attack, and so inflicted wounds which

were not fatal, they turned sick at the sight of the brute's agonies

and at the appalling spurts of blood, and finally when the animal was

at last mercifully dead, they bungled the dissection of the carcase.

"I'd sooner starve than do it again," was the invariable decision

pronounced by any new volunteer who had heroically offered to provide

Marlow with meat, and even Carrie Oliver admitted that it was a

"beastly dirty job."

"Only," she added "we'll 'ave to go on breeding calves or we won't

get no milk, an' what are we goin' to do with the bullocks?"

The committee wondered if some form of barter might not be

introduced. Wycombe and Henley might have something to offer

in exchange, or, failing that, might be urged to accept these

superfluous beasts as a present, returning the skins and horns,

for which there might be a use in the near future. Sheep must be

reared for their wool--the clothes of the community would not last

for ever. The subjects of tanning and weaving were being studied

by certain members of the now enlarged committee. Neither operation

presented insuperable difficulties.

Now that a certain supply of food was provided for, the community

was already turning its energy towards the industries. Many schemes

were being planned and debated. Marlow was well situated, with

such abundance of water and wood at its gates; and the question of

attracting desirable immigrants had been raised.

Time was afforded for the consideration of all these schemes by the

great frost which began on New Year's Day and lasted until the end

of February.

The frost came first from the south-west, and for three days the

country was changed into a fairy world built of sharp white crystals,

a world that was seen dimly through a magic veil of mist. Then followed

a black and bitter wind from the north-east, that bought a thin and

driving snow, and when the wind fell the country was locked in an

iron shell that was not relaxed for six weeks.

The flood had nearly subsided before the first frost came, but the

river was still high, and presently the water came down laden with

ice-floes, that jammed against the weir and the mill, and formed a

sheet of ice that gradually crept back towards the bridge.

All field and mill work was stopped, and Thrale and Eileen spent two

or three days a week making excursions to London, bringing back coal

and other forms of riches.

2

Their fear of being misunderstood had proved to have been an

exaggeration. In that exalted mood of theirs, which had risen to such

heights, after four days of adventurous solitude, they had come a

little too near the stars. In finding themselves they had lost touch

with the world.

Elsie Durham had smiled at their defensive announcement.

"My dear children," she had said, "don't be touchy about it. I am so

glad; and, of course, I've known for months that you would come to an

understanding. And there's no need to tell me that your--agreement,

did you say?--was entirely different to any other. I know. But be

human about it. Don't apologize for it by being superior to all of us."

"Oh, you're a dear," Eileen had said enthusiastically.

Nevertheless there were many women still left in Marlow who were less

spiritually-minded than Elsie Durham. Comparative idleness induced

gossip, and there was more than one party in the community which

regarded Thrale and Eileen with disfavour.

The old ruts had been worn too deep to be smoothed out in a few

months, however heavy had been the great roller of necessity. And,

strangely enough, the life of Sam Evans at High Wycombe was regarded

by many of the more bigoted with less displeasure than this perfectly

wholesome and desirable union of Thrale and Eileen. The prostitution

of Sam Evans was a new thing outside the experience of these women,

and it was accepted as an outcome of the new conditions. The other

affair was familiar in its associations, and was condemned on both

the old and the new precedents.

The mass of the women were quite unable to think out a new morality

for themselves....

3

Relief from all these foolish criticisms, gossipings and false emotions

came when the frost broke. A warm rain in the first week of March

released the soil from its bonds, and as the retarded spring began

to move impatiently into life there was a great call for labour.

But as the year ripened the temperament of the community exhibited

a new and alarming symptom.

There was a terrible spirit of depression abroad.

All Nature was warm with the movement of reproduction. Nature was

growing and propagating, thrusting out and taking a larger hold upon

life. Nature was coming to the fight with new reserves and allies,

a fruitful and increasing army, eager for the struggle against this

little decreasing band of sterile humanity. Nature was prolific and

these women were barren.

And in some inexplicable way the consciousness of futility had spread

through the Marlow community. Some posthumous children had been

born since the plague, a few young girls--Millie among them--were

pregnant, but death had been busier than life during the winter,

and from outside came stray reports that in other communities death

had been busier still.

What hope was there for that generation? They were too few to cope with

their task. Grass was growing in their streets, their houses were in

need of repair, and after their day's labour in the fields to provide

themselves with food, they had neither strength nor inclination to

take up the battle anew.

Moreover, the spice was gone from life. Some inherent need for

emulation was gone. They were ceasing to take any pride in their

persons, and in their clothes. They wore knickerbockers or trousers for

convenience in working, and suffered a strange loss of self-esteem in

consequence. Many of the younger women still returned in the evenings

to what skirts and ribbons they still possessed, but the habit was

declining. The uselessness of it was growing even more apparent. There

were no sex distinctions or class distinctions among them. Of what

account was it that one girl was prettier or better dressed than

her neighbour? What mattered was whether she was a stronger or more

intelligent worker.

Above all, the woman's need for love and admiration could find no

outlet. They realized that they were becoming hardened and unsexed,

and revolted against the coming change. Something within them rose

up and cried for expression, and when it was thwarted it turned to

a thing of evil....

The mind of the community was becoming distorted. Hysteria, sexual

perversions, and various forms of religious mania were rife. Young

women broke into futile and unsatisfying orgies of foolish dancing,

and middle-aged women became absorbed in the contemplation of a male

and human god.

Even the committee did not escape the influence of the growing

despair. They looked forward to a future when such machines and

tools as they possessed would be worn out, and they had no means of

replacing them.

Thrale had reported that the line to London was becoming unsafe for

the passage of his trucks. Rust was at work upon the rails; rain and

floods had weakened embankments; young growths were springing up

on the permanent way, and it was hopeless to contemplate any work

of repair. In the old days an army of men had been needed for that

work alone. The country roads needed re-metalling, and the houses

restoration; they had not the means or the labour to undertake half

the necessary work. There were breaches in the river bank and a large

and apparently permanent lake was forming in the low meadows towards

Bourne End. All about them Nature was so intensely busy in her own

regardless way, and they were helpless, now, to oppose her.

The age of iron and machinery was falling into a swift decline. All

that the community could look for in the future was a return to

primitive conditions and the fight for bare life. Every year their

tools and machines would grow less efficient, every year Nature would

return more powerful to the attack. In ten years they would be fighting

her with rude and tedious weapons of wood, grinding their scanty corn

between two stones, and living from hand to mouth. In the bountiful

South such a life might have its rewards, but how could they endure

it in this uncertain and cruel North?

So while the sun rose higher in the sky and the earth was wonderfully

reclothed, the women of Marlow fell deeper and deeper into the horrors

of mental depression. What had they to work for, and to hope for,

save this miserable possession of unsatisfied life?

XXI--SMOKE

1

One bright morning, at the end of April, Jasper and Eileen sat on

the cliffs at the Land's End and talked of the future.

Ten days before, they had left Marlow on bicycles to make

exploration. They intended to return; they had explained they would be

away for a month at the outside, but in view of the growing depression

and the loss of spirit shown by the community, they considered it

necessary to go out and discover what conditions obtained in other

parts of England. It might be, they urged, that the plague had been

less deadly in other districts.

"We should not know, here," Jasper had argued. "There may be many men

left elsewhere; but they might not have been able to communicate with

us yet. Their attention, like ours, would have been concentrated upon

local conditions for a time. Eileen and I will find out. Perhaps we

may be able to open up communication again. In any case we'll come

back within a month and report."

His natural instinct had taken him into the West Country.

They had left Elsie Durham slightly more cheerful. They had given

her a gleam of hope, given her something, at last, to which she might

look forward.

Their own hopes had quickly faded and died as they rode on into the

West. By the time they reached Plymouth they were thinking of Marlow

as a place peculiarly favoured by Providence.

At first they had passed through communities conducted on lines

resembling their own, greater or smaller groups of women working

more or less in co-operation. In many of these communities a single

man was living--in some cases two men--who viewed their duty towards

society in the same light as the Adonis of Wycombe.

But the unit grew steadily smaller as they progressed. It was no

longer the town or village community but the farm which was the

centre of activity, and the occupied farms grew more scattered. For

it appeared that here in the West the plague had attacked women as

well as men. Another curious fact they learned was that the men had

taken longer to die. One woman spoke of having nursed her husband

for two months before the paralysis proved fatal....

And if the depression in Marlow had been great, the travellers

soon learned that elsewhere it was greater still. The women worked

mechanically, drudgingly. They spoke in low, melancholy voices when

they were questioned, and save for a faint accession of interest in

Thrale's presence there, and the signs of some feeble flicker of hope

as they asked of conditions further north and east, they appeared to

have no thought beyond the instant necessity of sustaining the life to

which they clung so feebly. Thrale and Eileen rode on into Cornwall,

not because they still hoped, but because they both felt a vivid

desire to reach the Land's End and gaze out over the Atlantic. They

wanted to leave this desolate land behind them for a few hours,

and rest their minds in the presence of the unchangeable sea.

"Let us go on and forget for a few days," Eileen had said, and so

they had at last reached the furthest limit of land.

Cornwall had proved to be a land of the dead. Save for a few women

in the neighbourhood of St Austell, they had not seen a living human

being in the whole county.

And so, on this clear April morning, they sat upon this ultimate

cliff and talked of the future.

2

The water below them was delicately flecked with white. No long

rollers were riding in from the Atlantic, but the fresh April breeze

was flicking the crests of little waves into foam; and, above, an

ever-renewed drift of scattered white clouds threw coursing shadows

upon the blues and purples of the curdling sea.

Eileen and Thrale had walked southwards as far as Carn Voel to avoid

the obstruction to vision of the Longships, and on three sides they

looked out to an unbroken horizon of water, which on that bright

morning was clearly differentiated from the impending sky.

"One might forget--here," remarked Eileen, after a long silence.

"If it were better to forget," said Jasper.

Eileen drew up her knees until she could rest her chin upon them,

embracing them with her arms. "What can one do?" she asked. "What

good is it all, if there is no future?"

"Just to live out one's own life in the best way," was the answer.

She frowned over that for a time. "Do you really believe, dear,"

she said, when she had considered Jasper's suggestion, "do you really

believe that this is the end of humanity?"

"I don't know," he said. "I have changed my mind half a dozen times

in the last few days. There may be a race untouched somewhere--in

the archipelagos of the South Seas, perhaps--which will gradually

develop and repeople the world again."

"Or in Australia, or New Zealand," she prompted.

"We should have heard from them before this," he said. "We must have

heard before this."

"And is there no hope for us, here in England, in Marlow? There are a

few boys--infants born since the plague, you know--and there will be

more children in the future--Evans's children and those others. There

were two men in some places, you remember."

"Can they ever grow up? It seems to me that the women are

dying. They've nothing to live for. It's only a year since the

plague first came, and look at them now. What will they be like in

five years' time? They'll die of hopelessness, or commit suicide,

or simply starve from the lack of any purpose in living, because work

isn't worth while. And the others, the mothers, that have some object

in living, will fall back into savagery. They'll be so occupied in the

necessity for work, for forcing a living out of the ground somehow,

that they'll have neither time nor wish to teach their children. I

don't know, but it seems to me that we are faced with decrease,

gradually leading on to extinction.

"And I doubt," he continued, after a little hesitation, "I doubt

whether these sons of the new conditions will have much vitality. They

are the children of lust on the father's side, worse still, of tired

lust. It does make a difference. Perhaps if we were a young and

vigorous people like the old Jews the seed would be strong enough

to override any inherent weakness. But we are not, we are an old

civilization. Before the plague, we had come to a consideration of

eugenics. It had been forced upon us. A vital and growing people

does not spend its time on such a question as that. Eugenics was a

proposition that grew out of the necessity of the time. It was easy

enough to deny decadence, and to prove our fitness by apparently sound

argument, but, to me, it always seemed that this growing demand for

some form of artificial selection of parents, by restriction of the

palpably unfit, afforded the surest evidence. Things like that are

only produced if there is a need for them. Eugenics was a symptom."

Eileen sighed. "And what about us?" she asked.

"We're happy," replied Jasper. "Probably the happiest people in

the world at the present time. And we must try to give some of our

happiness to others. We must go back to Marlow and work for the

community. And I think we'll try in our limited way to do something

for the younger generation. Perhaps, it might be possible for us

to go north and try our hands at making steel, there are probably

women there who would help us. But I don't think it's worth while,

unless to preserve our knowledge and hand it on. We can only lessen

the difficulty in one little district for a time. As the pressure

of necessity grows, as it must grow, we shall be forced to abandon

manufacture. The need for food will outrun us. We are too few, and it

will be simpler and perhaps quicker to plough with a wooden plough

than to wait for our faulty and slowly-produced steel. The adult

population, small as it is, must decrease, and I'm afraid it will

decrease more rapidly than we anticipate, owing to these causes of

depression and lack of stimulus...."

"Oh, well," said Eileen at last, getting to her feet, "we're happy,

as you say, and our job seems pretty plain before us. To-morrow, I

suppose, we ought to be getting back, though I hate taking the news

to Elsie."

Jasper came and stood beside her, and put his arm across her

shoulders. "We, at any rate, must keep our spirits up," he said. "That,

before everything."

"I'm all right," said Eileen, brightly. "I've got you and, for the

moment, the sea. We'll come back here sometimes, if the roads don't

get too bad."

"Yes, if the roads don't get too bad."

"And, already, the briars are creeping across the road from hedge to

hedge. The forest is coming back."

"The forest and the wild."

He drew her a little closer and they stood looking out towards the

horizon.

3

In the south-west the clear line had been wiped out and what looked

like mist was sweeping towards them.

"There's a shower coming," said Thrale.

They stood quietly and let the sharp spatter of rain beat in their

faces, and then the shadow of the storm moved on and the horizon line

was clear again.

"That's a queer cloud out there," said Eileen. "Is it another shower?"

She pointed to a tiny blur on the far rim of the sea.

"It is queer," said Thrale. "It's so precisely like the smoke of

a steamer."

For a few seconds they gazed in intent silence.

"It's getting bigger," broke out Eileen, suddenly excited. "What is

it, Jasper?"

"I don't know. I can't make it out," he said. He moved away from her

and shaded his eyes from the glare of the momentarily cloudless sky.

"I can't make it out," he repeated mechanically.

The blur was widening into a grey-black smudge, into a vaguely diffused

smear with a darker centre.

"With the wind blowing towards us----" said Jasper, and broke off.

"Yes, yes--what?" asked Eileen, and then as he did not answer, she

gripped his arm and repeated importunately. "What? Jasper, what? With

the wind blowing towards us?"

"By God it is," he said in a low voice, disregarding her question. "By

God it is," he repeated, and then a third time, "It is."

"Oh! what, what? Do answer me! I can't see!" pleaded Eileen.

But still he did not answer. He stood like a rock and stared without

wavering at the growing cloud on the horizon.

And then the cloud began to grow more diffused, to die away, and

Eileen could see tiny indentations on the sky line, indentations

which pushed up and presently revealed themselves as attached to a

little black speck in the remotest distance.

"Oh, Jasper!" she cried, and her eyes filled with inexplicable tears,

so that she could see only a misty field of troubled blue.

"It's a liner," said Jasper at last, turning to her. He looked puzzled

and his eyes stared through her. "And its coming from America. Do

you suppose the American women----"

The boat was revealed now. They could see the shape of her, the high

deck, the two tall funnels and the three masts. She was passing across,

fifteen miles or so to the south of them, making up Channel.

For a moment they felt like shipwrecked sailors on a lonely island,

who see a vessel pass beyond hail.

"Oh, Jasper, what can it be?" Eileen besought him.

"It's a White Star boat," he said, and he still spoke as if his mind

was far away. "Is it possible, is it anyway possible that America

has survived? Is it possible that there is traffic between America

and Europe, and that they pass us by for fear of infection? How do

we know that vessels haven't been passing up the Channel for months

past? Why should we think that this is the first?"

"It is the first," proclaimed Eileen. "I feel it. Oh, let us hurry. Let

us ride and ride as fast as we can to Plymouth or Southampton. I

know they'll be coming to Plymouth or Southampton. Men, Jasper,

men! No women would dare to run a boat at that pace. See how fast

she is going. Oh hurry, hurry!"

He caught fire then. They ran back to find their bicycles. They ran,

and presently they rode in silence, with fierce intensity. They rode

at first as if they had but ten miles to go, and the lives of all

the women in England depended upon their speed.

And though they slackened after the first few miles they still rode

on with such eager determination that they reached Plymouth at sunset.

But they could see no sign of the liner in the waters about

Plymouth. They saw only the deserted hulks of a hundred vessels that

had ridden there untouched for twelve months, futile battleships and

destroyers among them; great, venomous, useless things that had become

void of all meaning in the struggle of humanity.

"It's not here. Let's go on!" said Eileen.

Jasper shrugged his shoulders. "It's well over a hundred miles to

Southampton," he said. "Nearer a hundred and fifty, I should say."

"But we must go on, we must," urged Eileen.

It was evident that Jasper, too, felt a compelling desire to go on. He

stood still with a look of intense concentration on his face. Eileen

had seen him look thus, when he had been momentarily frustrated by

some problem of mill machinery. She waited expectant for the solution

she was sure would presently emerge.

"A motor," he said, speaking in short disconnected sentences. "If

we can find paraffin and petrol and candles--light of some sort. The

engines wouldn't rust, but they'd clog. It must be paraffin. We daren't

clean with petrol by artificial light. It's possible. Let's try...."

That night Jasper did not sleep, but Eileen, as she sat beside him in

the softly moving motor, soon lost consciousness of the dim streak

of road and black river of hedge. The moon, in her third quarter,

had risen before midnight, and when they started was riding deep in

the sky, half veiled by a vast wing of dappled cirrus. And that, too,

merged into her dream. She thought she was driving out into the open

sea in a ship which became miraculously winged and soared up towards

an ever-approaching but unincreasing moon. She woke with a start to

find that it was broad daylight and that a thin misty rain was coming

up from the sea.

"The Solent," said Jasper, pointing to a distant gleam below them.

On the common they stopped and stood up in the car, watching a distant

smear of smoke that stained the thin mist.

"She'll be coming up Southampton Water with the lead going," said

Jasper, trying desperately to be calm.

EPILOGUE

THE GREAT PLAN

On the evening of that day Jasper and Eileen dined on board the

"Bombastic," that latest development of the old trans-Atlantic

competition in shipbuilding, the boat that had made her first journey

to New York carrying fugitives from England in the days when the

threat of the plague grew hourly more imminent. The "Bombastic"

had not justified her name, she had fled from Southampton without

ceremony, and she had not returned for over a year. The "Apologetic"

would have been more apt.

And on this evening of her return, the demeanour of that crowd of

quiet serious men in the huge over-decorated saloon, gave no hint of

bombast. As they listened intently to the rapid story of their two

travel-stained and somewhat ragged guests, there was no hint of brag

or boast among them all. They came not as conquerors but as friends.

"But oh, it's your story we want to hear," broke in Eileen at last.

She had been strangely quiet so far, she had become suddenly conscious

of the defects of her dress. The old associations were swarming about

her. Eighteen months ago she had sat in just such another saloon

as this, courted and flattered, the daughter of a great aristocrat,

a creature on a remote and gorgeous pedestal. Now it seemed that she

was neither greater nor less than any man present. She was one of

them, not set apart. She looked down at her hands, still oil-stained

by her struggles with the motor on the previous night.

Jasper had been more patient. He was not less eager than Eileen to

hear the explanation of this wonderful visit, of the resurrection

of these twelve hundred men from a dead and silent world. But he had

restrained his impatience and told his story first. He knew that so

he would be more quickly satisfied. He would be able to listen to

men who were not tense with an anxiety to ask questions.

They were sitting now at one end of a long table in the saloon, after

eating a meal that had provided once more the longed-for satisfaction

of salt.

"Well," said an American at the head of the table, turning to Eileen

in answer to her protest, "we've maybe been selfish in putting all

these questions but we're looking ahead. We aren't forgetting that

we've a big work to do."

"But how did you get here?" asked Eileen impetuously. "How is it that

you're all alive?"

"Well, as to that, you'd better ask the doctor, there," replied the

American. "He's a countryman of yours, and he's been in the thick of

it and knows the life story of that plague microbe like the history

of England."

The doctor, a bearded, grave-eyed man, looked up and smiled.

"Hardly that," he said. "We shall never know now, I hope, the history

of the plague organism. It was never studied under the microscope--we

were too busy--and now we trust that the bacillus--if it were a

bacillus--has encompassed its own destruction. What interests you,

however, is that this sudden, miraculously sudden, development of its

deadly power as regards humanity ran through a determinable cycle

of evolution. From what you've told us, already, it seems clear, I

think, that even in England the bacillus was losing what I may call

its effectiveness. The men in the West Country you've described,

probably died from starvation and neglect."

He paused for a moment and then continued: "Now in America both men

and women were attacked. There was certainly a greater percentage of

male cases, but I suppose something like half the female population

was infected as well. As far as one can judge the bacillus was simply

losing power. But for all we know it may have developed, it may be

entering on a new stage of evolution, and in some apparently haphazard

way now be beneficial to man instead of deadly. Such things may be

happening every day below the reach of our knowledge. The little

world is hidden from us, even as the great world is hidden....

"However," he went on more briskly, "the thing we do know is that the

symptoms of the new plague in America differed materially from our

expectation of them, gathered from the accounts that had reached us

from the Old World. In England the paralysis lasted, I believe, some

forty-eight hours and ended in death. In America the paralysis rarely

ended fatally, but it lasted in some cases for six months. 'Paresis,'

we called it. The patient was perfectly conscious but practically

unable to move hand or foot."

"That paresis gave us time to do some very clear and consecutive

thinking, I may remark," put in an American. "I had four months to

study my ideas of life."

The doctor nodded thoughtfully. "America is no less changed than

England," he said, "but it is another change. Well, you understand

that we did not all get the plague over there; the thing was less

deadly in attack and about ten per cent of us were left to look after

the patients."

"And find food," interpolated one of the listeners.

"That was a time we won't ever forget," agreed another.

"Sure thing," said some one, and a general murmur of assent ran round

the table.

"And all the machines were idle, of course," continued the doctor,

"and even when the tide of recovery began to flow we had to turn our

attention first to the getting of food."

"If it hadn't been for that we'd have been here before this," said a

young man. "I feel we owe England and Europe some kind of an apology,

but we just had to get busy on food growing right away. We couldn't

spare a ship's crew till three weeks ago."

"And the others are hard at it over there still," put in another. "This

is just a pioneer party."

"It's all so comprehensible now," said Thrale after a silence, "but

we had no idea, we never thought there could be any one living in

America. We thought that somehow we must have heard. One forgets...."

"We tried to get on to you," said one of the party, "by cable and

wireless. We kept on tapping away for months, but we got no reply. We

thought you must be all dead too."

"Well, we guessed you were having a real bad time anyway," amended

another. "You see we knew the way that plague had taken Europe but

we kept hoping and trying to get on to you all the same."

"We've got a message for Elsie, after all," Eileen said to Jasper

the next day. "There's hope for us yet."

"Yes, there's hope," said Jasper.

They had been up at the town railway station assisting a party of

Americans to investigate the condition of the rolling stock and the

permanent way. Neither could be pronounced satisfactory. A few women

had come in from the neighbouring country that morning attracted by

the sight of an inexplicable pillar of smoke, and their report of

local conditions had been equally uninspiring. They had spoken of

famine and failure, but their faces had been lit by a new brightness

at the sight of this miraculous little army of men. There had been

hope in the faces and bearing of these toil-worn women, faith in the

promise of support and succour.

Now Jasper and Eileen stood looking down towards the harbour. The tide

was creeping in to efface the repulsive ugliness of the mud flats,

and the sluggish water rippled faintly against the foul sloping sides

of small boats that had lain anchored there for more than twelve

months. Behind them, across the line, was a row of unsightly houses,

hung with weather-slating.

"Oh, there's hope," repeated Jasper.

He was thinking of all the work that lay before them, and yet he

had faith that a new and better civilization would arise. "We must

get things going again," had been the Americans' phrase, and they

apparently faced the future without a qualm.

But Jasper's mind was perplexed with the detail of the mechanical

work that must be faced, detail so intricate and confused that he

was bewildered by its complexity. It appeared to him that the crux

of the whole problem lay in the North, in the counties of coal and

iron. Coal and steel were the first essentials, he thought. They must

begin there in however small a way, and America must send out more

men, continually more men. To-morrow he was going back in the motor,

with two experts, to the cable hut in Sennen Cove. They were going to

test the cable and hoped to re-establish communication with America,

and then more ships would come and more men, ever more men.

And, even so, they could do little at first, and beyond lay the whole

of Europe and still further the whole of Asia. Were women there, also,

maintaining the terrible fight against Nature in the awful struggle to

find food? Steel and coal we must have, was the burden of his thought,

and in his imagination he pictured the waking of factories and mines,

he had a vision of little engines running....

Eileen's thought had flown ahead. With one magnificent leap she had

passed from the contemplation of present necessity to a realization

of the dim future. And her thought found words.

"Hope, lots of hope," she said. "Hope of a new clean world. We've

got such a chance to begin all over again, and do it better. No

more sweated labour, Jasper, and no more living on the work of

others. We've just got to pull together and work for each other. If

we can get enough food, and we can now with all these dear men come

to help us, we can do such wonderful things afterwards. There'll be

lots of children growing up in a few years' time, and we shall teach

them the things we've had to learn by the force of necessity. They'll

begin so differently because, although we have had the experience

of all history, we sha'n't be bound by all the foolish conventions

that grew out of it. Such a silly incongruous growth, wasn't it? But

I suppose it couldn't be helped in one way. We were so penned in. We

all had our rotten little places to keep and that took all our time. We

never had a chance to consider the broad issues, the real fundamental

things. But you've got to consider the fundamental things when you

start clean away from a new beginning.

"And, oh! Jasper, surely we have all learnt certain things to avoid,

haven't we? I mean class distinctions and sex distinctions, and things

like that. Women won't trouble any more about titles and all that rot

now, and anyway there aren't any left to trouble about. And social

conditions will be so different now that there won't be any more

marriage. Marriage was a man's prerogative; he wanted to keep his

woman to himself, and keep his property for his children. It never

really protected women, and anyway they were capable of protecting

themselves if they'd been given a chance. I know the children were a

difficulty in the old days, but they won't be now. It'll be everybody's

business to see that the children get looked after, and a woman won't

starve just because she hasn't got a husband to keep her. She'll get

better wages than that. The women who have children will be the most

precious things we shall have. They'll live healthier lives, too, and

they won't be incapacitated as they used to be. They'll work and be

strong instead of spending all their time either in doing nothing or

pottering about the house in an eternal round of cleaning the stupid,

ugly things we used. We shall have to have all new houses, Jasper,

when we get things going again.

"Oh, it will be splendid," she broke out in a great burst of

enthusiasm, "and we begin to-day. We have begun."

Jasper nodded. "It's a wonderful opportunity," he said.

"Wonderful, wonderful," repeated Eileen. "We all, men and women, start

level again. Equality, Jasper, It's a beautiful word--Equality. Of

course I know how unequal we all are from one point of view, and

there must come a sort of aristocracy of intellect and efficiency. But

underneath there will be a true equality for all that, and we shall

see to it that no man or woman can abuse their powers by making

slaves again. What a world of slaves it used to be, and we weren't

even slaves to intellect and efficiency, only to wealth and to money,

and to some foolish idea of position and power."

"Well, we've got our work to do, here and now," said Jasper after a

long pause.

"Work? Of course, and I love it," returned Eileen, "and while we work

we've got to think and teach."

The tide was coming in steadily, and near them an old boat that had

been lying on the mud was now afloat once more and had taken on some

of its old dignity.

Eileen pointed to it. "We're afloat again," she remarked.

"Embarked on the greatest plan the world has ever known," added Jasper.

"Oh, it's all part of the great plan," concluded Eileen.

THE END