CHAPTER I

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THE SIXTH SENSE

A Novel

by

STEPHEN McKENNA

Author of "The Reluctant Lovers" "Sheila Intervenes"

"The World is a Comedy to those that think, a tragedy

to those who feel."

_Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann._

London

Chapman & Hall, Ltd.

1915

À L'INTROUVABLE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PROLOGUE. LONDON AFTER TWENTY YEARS 1

I. WAR À OUTRANCE 25

II. SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC 46

III. BRANDON COURT 62

IV. THE FIRST ROUND 84

V. COMMEMORATION 103

VI. THE SECOND ROUND 123

VII. A CAUSE CÉLÈBRE 140

VIII. HENLEY--AND AFTER 160

IX. THE THIRD ROUND 178

X. THE ZEAL THAT OUTRUNS DISCRETION 197

XI. THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE 214

XII. THE SIXTH SENSE 232

XIII. OR THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE 247

XIV. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 263

XV. THE RAID 279

XVI. RIMINI 296

EPILOGUE 308

THE SIXTH SENSE

PROLOGUE

LONDON AFTER TWENTY YEARS

"As when a traveller, bound from North to South,

Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?

In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?

In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!

Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,

A superfluity at Timbuctoo.

When, through his journey was the fool at ease?

I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,

I take and like its way of life; I think

My brothers who administer the means,

Live better for my comfort--that's good too;

And God, if he pronounce upon such life,

Approves my service, which is better still."

ROBERT BROWNING: "Bishop Blougram's Apology."

I paused, with my foot on the lowest step of the Club, to mark the

changes that had overtaken Pall Mall during my twenty years' absence

from England.

The old War Office, of course, was gone; some of the shops on the

north side were being demolished; and the Automobile Club was new and

unassimilated. In my day, too, the Athenæum had not been painted

Wedgwood-green. Compared, however, with the Strand or Mall, Piccadilly

or Whitehall, marvellously little change had taken place. I made an

exception in favour of the character and velocity of the traffic: the

bicycle boom was in its infancy when I left England: I returned to

find the horse practically extinct, and the streets of London as

dangerous as the railway stations of America.

I wondered how long it would take me to get used to the London of

1913.... Then I wondered if I should find anything to keep me long

enough to grow acclimatised. Chance had brought me back to England,

chance and the "wandering foot" might as easily bear me away again. It

has always been a matter of indifference to me where I live, what I

do, whom I meet. If I never seem to get bored, it is perhaps because I

am never long enough in one place or at one occupation. There was no

reason why England should not keep me amused....

A man crossed the road and sold me a _Westminster Gazette_. I opened

it to see what was engaging the England of 1913, remembering as I did

so that the _Westminster_ was the last paper of importance to be

published before I went abroad. As I glanced at the headlines, twenty

years seemed to drop out of my life. Another Home Rule Bill was being

acclaimed as the herald of the Millennium; Ulster was being told to

fight and be right: the Welsh Church was once more being

disestablished, while in foreign politics a confederation of Balkan

States was spending its blood and treasure in clearing Europe of the

Turk, to a faint echoing accompaniment of Gladstone's "bag and

baggage" trumpet call. At home and abroad, English politics repeated

themselves with curiously dull monotony.

Then I turned to the middle page, and saw I had spoken too hastily.

"Suffragette Outrages" seemed to fill three columns of the paper. My

return to England had synchronised with a political campaign more

ruthless, intransigeant and unyielding than anything since the Fenian

outrages of my childhood. I read of unique fifteenth-century houses

burnt to the ground, interrupted meetings, assaults on Ministers,

sabotage in public buildings, and the demolition of plate-glass

windows at the hands of an uncompromising, fearless and diabolically

ingenious army of destroyers. On the other side of the account were

entered long sentences, hunger-strikes, forcible feeding and something

that was called "A Cat and Mouse Act." I was to hear more of that

later: it was indeed the political parent of the "New Militant

Campaign" whose life coincided with my own residence in England. I

fancy the supporters of the bill like Roden, Rawnsley or Jefferson

genuinely believed they had killed hunger-striking--and with it the

spirit of militancy--when the Government assumed the power of

imprisoning, releasing and re-imprisoning at will. The event proved

that they had only driven militancy into a fresh channel....

It is curious to reflect that as I at last mounted the steps and

entered the Club, I was wondering where it would be possible to meet

the resolute, indomitable women who formed the Council of War to the

militant army. It would be a new, alluring experience. I was so

occupied with my thoughts that I hardly noticed the hall porter

confronting me with the offer of the New Members' Address Book.

"Surely a new porter?" I suggested. At ten guineas a year for twenty

years, it was costing me two hundred and ten pounds to enter the

Club, and I did not care to have my expensive right challenged.

"Seventeen years, sir," he answered with the gruff, repellent

stiffness of the English official.

"I must have been before your time, then," I said.

Of course he disbelieved me, on the score of age if for no other

reason; and the page boy who dogged my steps into the Cloak Room, was

sent--I have no doubt--to act as custodian of the umbrellas. My age is

forty-two, but I have never succeeded in looking more than about eight

and twenty: perhaps I have never tried, as I find that a world of

personal exertion and trouble is saved by allowing other people to do

my trying, thinking, arranging for me ... whatever I am, others have

made me.

There was not a single familiar face in the hall, and I passed into

the Morning Room, like a ghost ascending from Hades to call on Æneas.

Around me in arm-chair groups by the fire, or quarrelsome knots

suspended over the day's bill of fare, were sleek, full-bodied

creatures of dignified girth and portentous gravity--fathers of

families, successes in life. These--I told myself--were my

contemporaries; their faces were for the most part unknown, but this

was hardly surprising as many of my friends are dead and most of the

survivors are to be found at the Bar. A barrister with anything of a

practice cannot afford time to lunch in the spacious atmosphere of

Pall Mall, and the smaller the practice, the greater his anxiety to

conceal his leisure. For a moment I felt painfully insignificant,

lonely and unfriended.

I was walking towards the Coffee Room when a heavy hand descended on

my shoulder and an incredulous voice gasped out----

"Toby, by Gad!"

No one had called me by that name for fifteen years, and I turned to

find a stout, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and a red face

extending a diffident palm.

"I beg your pardon," he added hastily, as he saw my expression of

surprise. "I thought for a moment...."

"You were right," I interrupted.

"Toby Merivale," he said with profound deliberation. "I thought you

were dead."

The same remark had already been made to me four times that morning.

"That's not original," I objected.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked.

"You used to be Arthur Roden in the old days when I knew you. That was

before they made you a Privy Councillor and His Majesty's

Attorney-General."

"By Gad, I can hardly believe it!" he exclaimed, shaking my hand a

second time and carrying me off to luncheon. "What have you been doing

with yourself? Where have you been? Why did you go away?"

"As Dr. Johnson once remarked...." I began.

"'Questioning is not a mode of conversation among gentlemen,'" he

interrupted. "I know; but if you drop out of the civilised world for

the third of a lifetime...."

"You've not ordered yourself any lunch."

"Oh, hang lunch!"

"But you haven't ordered any for me, either."

My poor story--for what it was worth--started with the plovers' eggs,

and finished neck-to-neck with the cheese. I told him how I had gone

down to the docks twenty years before to see young Handgrove off to

India, and how at the last moment he had cajoled me into accompanying

him.... Arthur came with me in spirit from India to the diamond mines

of South Africa where I made my money, took part with me in the

Jameson Raid, and kept me company during those silent, discreet months

when we all lay _perdus_ wondering what course the Government was

going to pursue towards the Raiders. Then I sketched my share in the

war, and made him laugh by saying I had been three times mentioned in

despatches. My experience of blackwater fever was sandwiched in

between the settlement of South Africa, and my departure to the scene

of the Russo-Japanese war: last of all came the years of vegetation,

during which I had idled round the Moorish fringe of the Desert or

sauntered from one Mediterranean port to another.

"What brings you home now?" he asked.

"Home? Oh, to England. I've a young friend stationed out at Malta, and

when I was out there three weeks ago I found his wife down with a

touch of fever. He wanted her brought to London, couldn't come

himself, so suggested I should take charge. _J'y suis_...."

I hesitated.

"Well?"

"I don't know, Arthur. I've no plans. If you have any suggestions to

make...."

"Come and spend Whitsun with me in Hampshire."

"Done."

"You're not married?"

"'Sir,'" I said in words Sir James Murray believes Dr. Johnson ought

to have used, "'in order to be facetious it is not necessary to be

indecent.'"

"And never will be, I suppose."

"I've no plans. You, of course...."

I paused delicately, in part because I was sure he wanted to tell me

all about himself, in part because I could not for the life of me

remember what had come of the domestic side of his career during my

absence abroad. He was married, and the father of a certain number of

children before I left England; I had no idea how far the

ramifications went.

It appeared that his wife--who was still living--had presented him

with Philip, now aged twenty-six, his father's private secretary and

member for some Scotch borough; Sylvia, aged twenty-four, and

unmarried; Robin, aged twenty-one, and in his last year at Oxford; and

Michael, an _enfant terrible_ of sixteen still at Winchester. I fancy

there were no more; these were certainly all I ever met, either in

Cadogan Square or Brandon Court.

In his public life I suppose Arthur Roden would be called a successful

man. I remember him during the barren first few years of practice, but

soon after my departure from England reports used to reach me showing

the increasing volume of his work, until he became one of the busiest

juniors on the Common Law side, reading briefs at four in the morning,

and sending a clerk out to buy his new clothes. After taking silk at

an early age, he had entered the House and been made Attorney-General

in 1912.

"I was appointed the same day your brother was raised to the Bench,"

he told me.

"I should think he makes a pretty bad Judge," I suggested.

"Resolute," said Arthur. "We want firmness."

I knew what that meant. According to unsympathetic papers, Mr. Justice

Merivale had conducted a Bloody Assize among the Militants of the

Suffrage Army. When Roden prosecuted in person, there was short shrift

indeed.

"We've killed militancy between us," he boasted.

"And I understand you're burnt together in effigy."

His face grew suddenly stern.

"They haven't stopped at that. There've been two attempts to fire

Brandon Court, and one wing of your brother's house was burnt down a

few weeks ago. I expect you found him rather shaken."

"I haven't seen him yet."

Arthur looked surprised.

"Oh, you ought to," he said. "I'm afraid he won't be able to last out

the rest of the term without a change. It's got on his nerves. Got on

his wife's nerves, too. Your niece is the only one who doesn't seem to

care; but then I think girls have very little imagination. It's the

same with Sylvia. By the way, I suppose you know you've got a niece?"

We paid our bills, and walked upstairs to the Smoking Room.

"What'll be their next move?" I asked.

"I don't think there will be a next move," he answered slowly. "What

can they do?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I'm only an onlooker, but d'you believe this Cat and Mouse Act is

going to stop them? My knowledge is mere newspaper knowledge, but to

be beaten by a device like that--it isn't in keeping with the

character of the women who've organised the Militant Campaign so far."

"What _can_ they do?" he repeated.

"I don't know."

"They don't either. One or two of the most determined law breakers are

in reality spies; they've kept us posted in the successive steps of

the campaign up to the present. Now they report that there's no plan

for the future. They know it would be futile to start assassination;

if they go on burning and breaking, a proportion of them get caught

and punished. Hunger striking's been killed by the Cat and Mouse Act.

Well, militancy's dead, Toby. If you come down to the House to-night,

you'll be present at the funeral."

"What's happening?"

"It's the division on the Suffrage amendment to the Electoral Reform

Bill. Hullo! here's Philip. Let me introduce my eldest son."

I made friends with Philip as we crossed the Park and entered the

House. He was curiously like the Arthur I had known twenty years

before--tall, dark-haired, clean-featured, with an exuberant zest for

life tempered to an almost imperceptible degree by the reserve of the

responsible public man. The physical and mental vigour of father and

son left me silently admiring; as they hurried along at a swinging

five miles an hour, I took stock of their powerful, untiring frames,

quick movements, and crisp, machine-made speech. They were hard,

business-like, unimaginative, with the qualities of those defects and

the defects of those qualities; trained, taught, and equipped to play

the midwife to any of the bureaucratic social reforms that have been

brought into the English political world the last few years, but

helpless and impotently perplexed in face of an idea outside their

normal ken. They were highly efficient average English politicians.

Either or both would reform you the Poor Law, nationalise a railway,

or disestablish a Church; but send Philip to India, set Arthur to

carry out Cromer's work in Egypt, and you would see English dominion

driven from two continents as speedily as North drove it from America.

It was one of the paradoxes of English politics that Arthur should

have been entrusted with the problem of Suffrage militancy, a paradox

of the same order as that whereby Strafford grappled with the problem

of a parliamentary system.

"You'll stay a few minutes," Philip urged as I abandoned him to Empire

and wandered off to pay my belated respects to my brother.

I glanced round me and shook my head. I would not grow old all at

once, and yet--Gladstone was Prime Minister when I left England: his

statue now dominated the public lobby. And Salisbury, Harcourt,

Chamberlain, Parnell, Labby--their voices were sunk in the great

silence. In my day Committee Room Number Fifteen used to be an object

of historic interest....

"They say the lion and the lizard keep

The Halls where Jamshyd gloried, and drank deep:

And Bahram, the great hunter, the wild ass

Stamps o'er his head, and he lies fast asleep."

I quoted the lines to Philip apologetically, reminding him that the

Omar Khayyam vogue had not come in when I left England. "I shall see

you at Brandon Court," I added.

"What are you going to do till then?" he asked.

"Heaven knows! I never make arrangements. Things just happen to me. I

always contrive to be in the thick of whatever's going on. I don't

know how long I shall stay in England, or where I shall go to

afterwards. But whether it's a railway strike or a coronation, I shall

be there. I don't like it, I'm a peaceful man by nature, but I can't

help it. I always get dragged into these things."

Philip scratched his chin thoughtfully.

"I don't know that we've got any great sensations at the present

time," he said.

"Something will turn up," I answered in the words of one greater than

myself, as I waved my hand in farewell and started back in the

direction of the Club.

I knew my brother would not leave Court till at least four o'clock, so

I had to dispose of an hour before it was time to call round in Pont

Street. The Club had emptied since luncheon, and I drew blank in one

place after another until fate directed my steps to the Card Room.

There were two men playing bézique, one of them poor Tom Wilding whom

I had left lame and returned to find half paralysed and three parts

blind. The other--who played with a wonderful patience, calling the

names of the cards--I recognised as my young friend Lambert Aintree

who had parted from me in Morocco five years before. I reminded them

both of my identity, and we sat gossiping till an attendant arrived to

wheel poor Wilding away for his afternoon drive.

Leaving the card-table, Aintree joined me on the window-seat and

subjected my face, clothes and general appearance to a rapid scrutiny.

It was the practised, comprehensive glance of an old physician in

making diagnosis, and I waited for him to pronounce on my case. Five

years ago in Morocco he had exhibited a disconcerting and almost

uncanny skill in reading character and observing little forgotten

points that every one else missed. The results of his observation were

usually shrouded in the densest veils of uncommunicativeness: I

sometimes wonder if I have ever met a more silent man. When you could

get him to talk, he was usually worth hearing: for the most part,

however, talking like every other form of activity seemed too much of

an exertion. I understand him now better than I did, but I am not so

foolish as to pretend that I understand him completely. I am a man of

three dimensions: Aintree, I am convinced, was endowed with the

privilege of a fourth.

"Well?" I said invitingly, as he brought his examination to an end and

looked out of the window.

His answer was to throw me over a cigarette and light one himself.

"Take an interest in me," I said plaintively. "Say you thought I was

dead...."

"Everyone's said that."

"True," I admitted.

"And they've all asked you when you landed, and how long you were

staying, and what brought you to England."

"It would be rather friendly if you did the same."

"You couldn't tell me--any more than you could tell them."

"But I could. It was Sunday morning."

"About then. I knew that. You've been here long enough to get English

clothes, and," he gave me another rapid look, "to have them made for

you. How long you're here for--you don't know."

"Not to a day," I conceded. "Well, why did I come?"

"You don't know."

"Pardon me." I told him of my visit to Malta and the charitable

guardianship of my friend's convalescent wife.

"But that wasn't the real reason."

"It was the only reason."

"The only one you thought of at the time."

I was amazed at the certainty of his tone.

"My dear fellow," I said. "I am a more or less rational creature, a

reason comes along and compels me to do a thing. If I were a woman, no

doubt I should do a thing and find reasons for it afterwards."

"Don't you ever do a thing on impulse, instinctively? And analyse your

motives afterwards to see what prompted you?"

"Oh, possibly. But not on this occasion."

"You're sure?"

"What are you driving at?" I asked.

"You'll find out in time."

"I should like to know now."

Aintree inhaled the smoke of his cigarette and answered with eyes

half-closed.

"Most men of your age wake up one morning to find they've turned

forty. They feel it would be good to renew their youth, they play with

the idea of getting married."

"Is this to my address?" I asked.

"D'you feel it applies to your case?"

"I can solemnly assure you that such an idea never crossed my mind."

"Not consciously."

"Nor unconsciously."

"What do you know of the unconscious ideas in your own mind?"

"Hang it," I said, "what do _you_ know of the unconscious ideas in

my--or any one else's mind?"

"I'm interested in them," he answered quietly. "Tell me if you ever

feel my prophecy coming true."

"You shall be best man," I promised him. "Married! One doesn't marry

at my age."

It was a glorious spring afternoon, and I suggested that he should

accompany me part of my way to Pont Street.

"Tell me what you've been doing with yourself since you stayed with me

five years ago," I said as we stepped into Pall Mall.

He seemed to shiver and retreat into his shell as soon as the

conversation became focussed on himself.

"I've done nothing," he answered briefly, and relapsed into one of his

wonted spells of silence.

In the blazing afternoon sunlight I returned him the compliment of a

careful scrutiny. He had come to Morocco five years before as a boy of

one-and-twenty just down from Oxford. A girl to whom he had been

engaged had died of consumption a few months before, and he was

straying into the Desert, broken, unnerved, and hopeless, to forget

her. I must have seemed sympathetic, or he would not have unburdened

himself of the whole pitiful little tragedy. At twenty-one you feel

these things more keenly perhaps than in after life; there were

moments when I feared he was going to follow her....

Five years may have healed the wound, but they left him listless,

dispirited, and sore. He was more richly endowed with nerves than any

man or woman I know, and all the energy of his being seemed

requisitioned to keep them under control. Less through love of mystery

than for fear of self-betrayal his face wore the expressionless mask

of a sphynx. He was fair, thin, and pale, with large frightened eyes,

sapphire blue in colour, and troubled with the vague, tired

restlessness that you see in overwrought, sensitive women. The nose

and mouth were delicate and almost ineffeminate, with lips tightly

closed as though he feared to reveal emotion in opening them. You see

women and children with mouths set in that thin, hard line when they

know a wickering lip or catch in the breath will give the lie to their

brave front. And there were nerves, nerves, nerves everywhere, never

so much present as when the voice was lazily drawling, the hands

steady, and the eyes dreamily half-closed. I wonder if anything ever

escaped those watchful, restless eyes; his entire soul seemed stored

up and shining out of them; and I wonder what was the process of

deduction in his curious, quick, feminine brain. Before I left England

I tried to evolve a formula that would fit him; "a woman's senses and

intuition in a man's body" was the best I could devise, and I am

prepared at once to admit the inadequacy of the label. For one thing

his intuition transcended that of any woman I have ever known.

As he would not talk about himself, I started to wile away the time by

telling him of my meeting with the Rodens, and their invitation to

Hampshire.

"I was asked too," he told me. "I shan't go."

"But why not?"

"Unsociability, I suppose. I don't go out much."

"It's a bachelor's party, I understand."

"That's the best thing I've heard about it. Did they say who'd be

there? If you're not careful you'll have politics to eat, politics to

drink, and politics to smoke."

"Come and create a diversion," I suggested.

"I'll think about it. Is Phil going to be there? Oh, then it won't be

a bachelor party. I could name one young woman who will be there for

certain, only I mustn't make mischief. Did you find Roden much

changed?"

I tried to sort out my impressions of Arthur.

"Harder than he used to be. I shouldn't care to be a militant

prosecuted by him."

Aintree raised his eyebrows slightly.

"I don't think they mind him; they can look after themselves."

"I've never met one."

"Would you like to?"

"Who is she?"

"Joyce Davenant, the queen bee of the swarm. Dine with me to-night at

the Ritz; seven o'clock, I'm afraid, but we are going to a first

night."

"Is she a daughter of old Jasper Davenant? I used to shoot with him."

"The younger daughter. Do you know her sister, Mrs. Wylton? She's

coming too. You'd better meet her," he went on with a touch of acidity

in his tone, "you'll hear her name so much during the next few months

that it will be something to say you've seen her in the flesh."

I only remembered Elsie Wylton as a young girl with her hair down her

back. Of her husband, Arnold Wylton, I suppose every one has heard; he

enjoys the reputation of being a man who literally cannot be flogged

past a petticoat. How such a girl came to marry such a man no rational

person has ever been able to explain; and it never sweetens the

amenities of debate to talk vaguely of marriages being made in heaven.

I met Wylton twice, and on both occasions he was living in retirement

abroad. I have no wish to meet him a third time.

"How did she ever come to marry a fellow like that?" I asked.

Aintree shrugged his shoulders.

"Her father was dead, or he'd have stopped it. Nobody else felt it

their business to interfere, and it wouldn't have made the slightest

difference if they had. You know what the Davenants are like--or

perhaps you don't. Nothing shakes them when they've made up their

minds to do a thing."

"But didn't she know the man's reputation?" I persisted.

"I don't suppose so. Wylton had never been mixed up in any overt

scandal, so the women wouldn't know; and it's always a tall order for

a man to lay information against another man when a girl's engaged to

marry him. She just walked into it with her eyes shut."

"And now she's divorcing him at last?"

"The other way about."

I felt sure I could not have heard him correctly.

"The other way about," he repeated deliberately. "Oh, she'd have got

rid of him years ago if he'd given her the chance! Wylton was too

clever; he knew the divorce law inside out; he was alive to all its

little technicalities. He's sailed close to the wind a number of

times, but never close enough to be in danger."

"And what's happening now?" I asked.

"She's forced his hand--gone to some trouble to compromise herself.

She couldn't divorce him, it was the only way, she's making him

divorce her. Rather a burlesque of justice, isn't it? Elsie Wylton,

the respondent in an undefended action! The daughter of Jasper

Davenant--one of the finest, cleanest, bravest women I know. And the

successful petitioner will be Arnold Wylton, who ought to have been

thrashed out of half the houses and clubs in London. Who ought to have

been cited as a co-respondent half a dozen times over if he hadn't

been so clever in covering up his tracks. I wonder if he's got

sufficient humour to appreciate the delicate irony of _his_ coming

sanctimoniously into court to divorce _her_. It's a sickening

business, we won't discuss it--but it will be the one topic of

conversation in a few weeks' time."

We walked in silence for a few yards.

"Was the man any one of note?" I asked. "The co-respondent?"

"Fellow in the Indian Army," Aintree answered. "I don't suppose you

know him. It was a bogus case; he just lent his name."

I sniffed incredulously.

"The world won't believe _that_," I said.

"Elsie's going to make it."

I shook my head.

"She can't. Would you?"

"Most certainly. So will you when you've met her. You knew the father

well? She's her father's own daughter."

The gospel of Jasper Davenant was simple and sound. Never pull a

horse, never forge a cheque, never get involved in the meshes of

married women. Apart from that, nothing mattered: though to be his

true disciple, you must never lose your head, never lose your temper,

never be afraid of man or woman, brute or devil. He was the North

American Indian of chivalrous romance, transplanted to Cumberland with

little loss of essential characteristics.

"I look forward to meeting them both," I said as we parted at

Buckingham Gate. "Seven o'clock? I'll try not to be late."

Walking on alone through Sloane Square, something set me thinking of

my boast to Philip Roden. Within three hours I was apparently going to

meet one woman whose name was mixed up with the most prominent _cause

célèbre_ of the year, and another who was a _cause célèbre_ in

herself--the redoubtable Miss Joyce Davenant of the Militant Suffrage

Union. That my introduction should come from the peace-loving,

nerve-ridden Aintree, was in accordance with the best ironical

traditions of life. I was not surprised then: I should have still less

reason to be surprised now. In the last six months he has placed me

under obligations which I shall never be able to meet: in all

probability he expects no repayment; the active side of his unhappy,

fatalistic temperament is seen in his passionate desire to make life

less barren and melancholy for others. Tom Wilding can testify to this

at the bézique table: Elsie and Joyce and I can endorse the testimony

in a hundred ways and half a hundred places.

As I turned into Pont Street a private car was drawn up by the kerb

opposite my brother's house. I dawdled for a few steps while a pretty,

brown-eyed, black-haired girl said good-bye to a friend at the door

and drove away. It was no more than a glimpse that I caught, but the

smiling, small-featured face attracted me. I wondered who she was, and

who was the girl with auburn hair who persisted in standing on my

brother's top step long after the car was out of sight, instead of

retiring indoors and leaving me an unembarrassed entry.

I pretended not to see her as I mounted the steps, but the pretence

was torn away when I heard her addressing me as "Uncle Simon."

"You must be Gladys," I said, wondering if I looked as sheepish as I

felt. "How did you recognise me?"

"By your photograph," she said. "You haven't altered a bit."

On the whole I carried it off fairly well, though I was glad Arthur

Roden was not present after my implied familiarity with my niece's

existence. Of course I knew I had a niece, and that her birthday

fell--like the Bastille--on July 14th. Usually I remembered the date

and sent her some little trifle, and she would write me a friendly

letter of thanks. If I had kept count of the number of birthdays, I

should have known she was now nineteen, but then one never does keep

count of these things. Frankly, I had imagined her to be about seven

or eight, and her handwriting--by becoming steadily more unformed and

sporadic the older she grew--did nothing to dispel the illusion.

Instead of curious little pieces of jewellery I might easily have sent

her a doll....

"Where's the Judge?" I asked as she kissed me and led the way upstairs

to her room.

"He's not home yet," she answered to my relief.

"And your mother?"

But my sister-in-law also was out, and I reconciled myself without

difficulty to the prospect of taking tea alone with my niece. Possibly

as a romantic reaction from her father, possibly with her mother Eve's

morbid craving for forbidden fruit, Gladys had elevated me into a

Tradition. The whole of her pretty, sun-splashed room seemed hung with

absurd curios I had sent her from out-of-the-way parts of the world,

while on a table by the window stood a framed photograph of myself in

tweeds that only an undergraduate would have worn, and a tie loosely

arranged in a vast sailor's knot after the unsightly fashion of the

early 'nineties. My hair was unduly long, and at my feet lay a large

dog; it must have been a property borrowed for the purpose, as I hate

and have always hated dogs.

"A wasted, unsatisfactory life, Gladys," I said as my tour of

inspection concluded itself in front of my own portrait. "I wish I'd

known about you before. I'd have asked Brian to let me adopt you."

"Would you like to now?"

In the East a complimentary speech is not usually interpreted so

literally or promptly.

"I'm afraid it's too late," I answered regretfully.

"Afraid?"

"Your father and mother...."

"Would you if I were left an orphan?"

"Of course I would, but you mustn't say things like that even in

joke."

Gladys poured me out a cup of tea and extended a cream jug at a

menacing angle.

"Not for worlds if it's China," I exclaimed.

"It is. Uncle Toby...." She seemed to hesitate over the name, but I

prefer it to Simon and bowed encouragement, "I'm going to be an orphan

in three days' time. At least, it's that or very sea-sick."

I begged for an explanation. It appeared that Pont Street was in

domestic convulsion over the health of Mr. Justice Merivale. As Roden

had hinted, a succession of militant outrages directed against his

person and property, not to mention threatening letters and attempted

violence, had seriously shaken his nerve. Under doctor's orders he

was leaving England for a short sea cruise as soon as the Courts rose

at Whitsun.

"He's only going to Marseilles and back," she explained. "Mother's

going with him, and something's got to be done with me. I don't want

to make a nuisance of myself, but I should simply die if they tried to

take me through the Bay."

"Do you think they'd trust me?" I asked. From an early age my brother

has regarded me as the Black Sheep of an otherwise irreproachable

family of two.

"They'd jump at it!" Irreverently I tried to visualise Brian jumping.

"The Rodens wanted me to go to them, but it wouldn't be fair on

Sylvia. She'd be tied to me the whole time."

"I can imagine worse fates."

"For her? or for me?"

"Either or both."

"I'll tell her. Did you see her driving away as you arrived? If you'll

adopt me, I'll introduce you."

"I've arranged that already. Whitsuntide will be spent at Brandon

Court improving my acquaintance with her."

Gladys regarded me with frank admiration.

"You haven't wasted much time. But if you're going there, you may just

as well adopt me. I shall be down there too, and if you're my

guardian...."

"It'll save all trouble with the luggage. Well, it's for your parents

to decide. You can guess my feelings."

I waited till after six in the hopes of seeing my brother, and was

then only allowed to depart on the plea of my engagement with Aintree

and a promise to dine and arrange details of my stewardship the

following night.

"Write it down!" Gladys implored me as I hastened downstairs. "You'll

only forget it if you don't. Eight-fifteen to-morrow. Haven't you got

a book?"

I explained that on the fringe of the desert where I had lived of

late, social engagements were not too numerous to be carried in the

head.

"That won't do for London," she said with much firmness, and I was

incontinently burdened with a leather pocket-diary.

Dressing for dinner that night, the little leather diary made me

reflective. As a very young man I used to keep a journal: it belonged

to a time when I was not too old to give myself unnecessary trouble,

nor too disillusioned to appreciate the unimportance of my impressions

or the ephemeral character of the names that figured in its pages. For

a single moment I played with the idea of recording my experiences in

England. Now that the last chapter is closed and the little diary is

one of the bare half-dozen memorials of my checkered sojourn in

England, I half wish I had not been too lazy to carry my idea into

effect. After a lapse of only seven months I find there are many minor

points already forgotten. The outline is clear enough in my memory,

but the details are blurred, and the dates are in riotous confusion.

It is fruitless to waste regrets over a lost opportunity, but I wish I

had started my journal on the day Gladys presented me with my now

shabby little note-book. I should have written "Prologue" against this

date--to commemorate my meetings with Roden and Joyce Davenant,

Aintree and Mrs. Wylton, Gladys and Philip. To commemorate, too, my

first glimpse of Sylvia....

Yes, I should have written "Prologue" against this date: and then

natural indolence would have tempted me to pack my bag and wander

abroad once more, if I could have foreseen for one moment the turmoil

and excitement of the following six months.

I can only add that I am extremely glad I did no such thing.

CHAPTER I

WAR À OUTRANCE

"RIDGEON: I have a curious aching; I dont know where; I

cant localise it. Sometimes I think it's my heart;

sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesn't exactly hurt me,

but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is

going to happen....

SIR PATRICK: You are sure there are no voices?

RIDGEON: Quite sure.

SIR PATRICK: Then it's only foolishness.

RIDGEON: Have you ever met anything like it before in your

practice?

SIR PATRICK: Oh yes. Often. It's very common between the

ages of seventeen and twenty-two. It sometimes comes on

again at forty or thereabouts. You're a bachelor, you see.

It's not serious--if you're careful.

RIDGEON: About my food?

SIR PATRICK: No; about your behaviour.... Youre not going

to die; but you may be going to make a fool of yourself."

BERNARD SHAW: "The Doctor's Dilemma."

I was a few minutes late for dinner, as a guest should be. Aintree had

quite properly arrived before me, and was standing in the lounge of

the Ritz talking to two slim, fair-haired women, with very white skin

and very blue eyes. I have spent so much of my time in the East and

South that this light colouring has almost faded from my memory. I

associated it exclusively with England, and in time began to fancy it

must be an imagination of my boyhood. The English blondes you meet

returning from India by P & O are usually so bleached and dried by

the sun that you find yourself doubting whether the truly golden hair

and forget-me-not eyes of your dreams are ever discoverable in real

life. But the fascination endures even when you suspect you are

cherishing an illusion.

I had been wondering, as I drove down, whether any trace survived of

the two dare-devil, fearless, riotous children I had seen by

flashlight glimpses, when an invitation from old Jasper Davenant

brought me to participate in one of his amazing Cumberland shoots. I

was twenty or twenty-one at the time; Elsie must have been seven, and

Joyce five. Mrs. Davenant was alive in those days, and Dick still

unborn. My memory of the two children is a misty confusion of cut

hands, broken knees, torn clothes, and daily whippings. Jasper wanted

to make fine animals of his children, and set them to swim as soon as

they could walk, and to hunt as soon as their fingers were large

enough to hold a rein.

When I was climbing with him in Trans-Caucasia, I asked how the young

draft was shaping. That was ten years later, and I gathered that Elsie

was beginning to be afraid of being described as a tomboy. On such a

subject Joyce was quite indifferent. She attended her first hunt ball

at twelve, against orders and under threat of castigation; half the

hunt broke their backs in bending down to dance with her, as soon as

they had got over the surprise of seeing a short-frocked,

golden-haired fairy marching into the ball-room and defying her father

to send her home. "You know the consequences?" he had said with

pathetic endeavour to preserve parental authority. "I think it's worth

it," was her answer. That night the Master interceded with old Jasper

to save Joyce her whipping, and the next morning saw an attempt to

establish order without recourse to the civil hand. "I'll let you off

this time," Jasper had said, "if you'll promise not to disobey me

again." "Not good enough," was Joyce's comment with grave deliberate

shake of the head. "Then I shall have to flog you." "I think you'd

better. You said you would, and you'd make me feel mean if you didn't.

I've had my fun."

The words might be taken for the Davenant motto, in substitution of

the present "Vita brevis." Gay and gallant, half savage, half

moss-rider, lawless and light-hearted, they would stick at nothing to

compass the whim of the moment, and come up for judgment with

uncomplaining faces on the day of inevitable retribution. Joyce had

run away from two schools because the Christmas term clashed with the

hunting. I never heard the reason why she was expelled from a third;

but I have no doubt it was adequate. She would ride anything that had

a back, drive anything that had a bit or steering-wheel, thrash a

poacher with her own hand, and take or offer a bet at any hour of the

day or night. That was the character her father gave her. I had seen

and heard little of the family since his death, Elsie's marriage and

Joyce's abrupt, marauding descent on Oxford, where she worked twelve

hours a day for three years, secured two firsts, and brought her name

before the public as a writer of political pamphlets, and a pioneer in

the suffrage agitation.

"We really oughtn't to need introduction," said Mrs. Wylton, as

Aintree brought me up to be presented. "I remember you quite well. I

shouldn't think you've altered a bit. How long is it?"

"Twenty years," I said. "You have--grown, rather."

She had grown staider and sadder, as well as older; but the bright

golden hair, white skin, and blue eyes were the same as I remembered

in Cumberland. A black dress clung closely to her slim, tall figure,

and a rope of pearls was her only adornment.

I turned and shook hands with Joyce, marvelling at the likeness

between the two sisters. There was no rope of pearls, only a thin band

of black velvet round the neck. Joyce was dressed in white silk, and

wore malmaisons at her waist. Those, you would say, were the only

differences--until time granted you a closer scrutiny, and you saw

that Elsie was a Joyce who had passed through the fire. Something of

her courage had been scorched and withered in the ordeal; my pity went

out to her as we met. Joyce demanded another quality than pity. I

hardly know what to call it--homage, allegiance, devotion. She

impressed me, as not half a dozen people have impressed me in this

life--Rhodes, Chamberlain, and one or two more--with the feeling that

I was under the dominion of one who had always had her way, and would

always have it; one who came armed with a plan and a purpose among

straying sheep who awaited her lead.... And with it all she was

twenty-eight, and looked less; smiling, soft and childlike; so slim

and fragile that you might snap her across your knee like a lath rod.

Aintree and Mrs. Wylton led the way into the dining-room.

"I can't honestly say I remember you," Joyce remarked as we prepared

to follow. "I was too young when you went away. I suppose we _did_

meet?"

"The last time I heard of you...." I began.

"Oh, don't!" she interrupted with a laugh. "You must have heard some

pretty bad things. You know, people won't meet me now. I'm a.... Wait

a bit--'A disgrace to my family,' 'a traitor to my class,' 'a reproach

to my upbringing!' I've 'drilled incendiary lawlessness into a

compact, organised force,' I'm 'an example of acute militant

hysteria.' Heaven knows what else! D'you still feel equal to dining at

the same table? It's brave of you; that boy in front--he's too good

for this world--he's the only non-political friend I've got. I'm

afraid you'll find me dreadfully changed--that is, if we ever did

meet."

"As I was saying...."

"Yes, and I interrupted! I'm so sorry. You drop into the habit of

interrupting if you're a militant. As you were saying, the last time

we met...."

"The last time we met, strictly speaking we didn't meet at all. I came

to say good-bye, but you'd just discovered that a pony was necessary

to your happiness. It was an _idée fixe_, you were a fanatic, you

broke half a Crown Derby dinner-service when you couldn't get it. When

I came to say good-bye, you were locked in the nursery with an

insufficient allowance of bread and water."

Joyce shook her head sadly.

"I was an awful child."

"Was?"

She looked up with reproach in her blue eyes.

"Haven't I improved?"

"You were a wonderfully pretty child."

"Oh, never mind looks!"

"But I do. They're the only things worth having."

"They're not enough."

"Leave that to be said by the women who haven't any."

"In any case they don't last."

"And while they do, you slight them."

"I? They're far too useful!" She paused at the door of the dining-room

to survey her reflection in the mirror; then turned to me with a slow,

childlike smile. "I think I'm looking rather nice to-night."

"You looked nice twenty years ago. Not content with that, you broke a

dinner-service to get a pony."

"Fancy your remembering that all these years!"

"I was reminded of it the moment I saw you. _Plus ça change, plus

c'est la même chose._ You are still not content with looking extremely

nice, you _must_ break a dinner-service now and again."

Joyce raised her eyebrows, and patiently stated a self-evident

proposition.

"I must have a thing if I think I've a right to it," she pouted.

"You were condemned to bread and water twenty years ago to convince

you of your error."

"I get condemned to that now."

"Dull eating, isn't it?"

"I don't know. I've never tried."

"You did then?"

"I threw it out of the window, plate and all."

We threaded our way through to a table at the far side of the room.

"Indeed you've not changed," I said. "You might still be that wilful

child of five that I remember so well."

"You've forgotten one thing about me," she answered.

"What's that?"

"I got the pony," she replied with a mischievous laugh.

How far the others enjoyed that dinner, I cannot say. Aintree was an

admirable host, and made a point of seeing that every one had too much

to eat and drink; to the conversation he contributed as little as Mrs.

Wylton. I did not know then how near the date of the divorce was

approaching. Both sat silent and reflective, one overshadowed by the

Past, the other by the Future: on the opposite side of the table,

living and absorbed in the Present, typifying it and luxuriating in

its every moment, was Joyce Davenant. I, too, contrive to live in the

present, if by that you mean squeezing the last drop of enjoyment out

of each sunny day's pleasure and troubling my head as little about the

future as the past....

I made Joyce tell me her version of the suffrage war; it was like

dipping into the memoirs of a prescribed Girondist. She had written

and spoken, debated and petitioned. When an obdurate Parliament told

her there was no real demand for the vote among women themselves, she

had organised great peaceful demonstrations and "marches past": when

sceptics belittled her processions and said you could persuade any one

to sign any petition in favour of anything, she had massed a

determined army in Parliament Square, raided the House and broken into

the Prime Minister's private room.

The raid was followed by short terms of imprisonment for the

ringleaders. Joyce came out of Holloway, blithe and unrepentant, and

hurried from a congratulatory luncheon to an afternoon meeting at the

Albert Hall, and from that to the first round of the heckling

campaign. For six months no Minister could address a meeting without

the certainty of persistent interruption, and no sooner had it been

decided first to admit only such women as were armed with tickets, and

then no women at all, than the country was flung into the throes of a

General Election, and the Militants sought out every uncertain

Ministerial constituency and threw the weight of their influence into

the scale of the Opposition candidate.

Joyce told me of the papers they had founded and the bills they had

promoted. The heckling of Ministers at unsuspected moments was reduced

to a fine art: the whole sphere of their activities seemed governed by

an almost diabolical ingenuity and resourcefulness. I heard of fresh

terms of imprisonment, growing longer as the public temper warmed; the

institution of the Hunger Strike, the counter move of Forcible

Feeding, a short deadlock, and at last the promulgation of the "Cat

and Mouse" Bill.

I was not surprised to hear some of the hardest fighting had been

against over-zealous, misdirected allies. It cannot be said too often

that Joyce herself would stick at nothing--fire, flood or dynamite--to

secure what she conceived to be her rights. But if vitriol had to be

thrown, she would see that it fell into the eyes of the right,

responsible person: in her view it was worse than useless to attempt

pressure on A by breaking B's windows. She had stood severely aloof

from the latter developments of militancy, and refused to lend her

countenance to the idly exasperating policy of injuring treasures of

art, interrupting public races, breaking non-combatants' windows and

burning down unique, priceless houses.

"Where do you stand now?" I asked as dinner drew to a close. "I

renewed my acquaintance with Arthur Roden to-day, and he invited me

down to the House to assist at the final obsequies of the Militant

movement."

Joyce shook her head dispassionately over the ingrained stupidity of

mankind.

"I think it's silly to talk like that before the battle's over. Don't

you?"

"He seemed quite certain of the result."

"Napoleon was so certain that he was going to invade England that he

had medals struck to commemorate the capture of London. I've got one

at home. I'd rather like to send it him, only it 'ud look flippant."

I reminded her that she had not answered my question.

"Roden says that the 'Cat and Mouse' Act has killed the law-breakers,"

I told her, "and to-night's division is going to kill the

constitutionalists. What are you going to do?"

Joyce turned to me with profound solemnity, sat for a moment with her

head on one side, and then allowed a smile to press its way through

the serious mask. As I watched the eyes softening and the cheeks

breaking into dimples, I appreciated the hopelessness of trying to be

serious with a fanatic who only made fun of her enemies.

"What would _you_ do?" she asked.

"Give it up," I answered. "Yield to _force majeure_. I've lived long

enough in the East to feel the beauty and usefulness of resignation."

"But if we _won't_ give it up?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"What _can_ you do?"

"I'm inviting suggestions. You're a man, so I thought you'd be sure to

be helpful. Of course we've got our own plan, and when the

Amendment's rejected to-night, you'll be able to buy a copy of the

first number of a new paper to-morrow morning. It's called the _New

Militant_, only a penny, and really worth reading. I've written most

of it myself. And then we're going to start a fresh militant campaign,

rather ingenious, and directed against the real obstructionists. No

more window-breaking or house-burning, but real serious fighting, just

where it will hurt them most. Something must come of it," she

concluded. "I hope it may not be blood."

Aintree roused himself from his attitude of listless indifference.

"You'll gain nothing by militancy," he pronounced. "I've no axe to

grind, you may have the vote or go without it. You may take mine away,

or give me two. But your cause has gone back steadily, ever since you

adopted militant tactics."

"The Weary Seraph cares for none of these things," Joyce remarked. I

requested a moment's silence to ponder the exquisite fitness of the

name. Had I thought for a year I could not have found a better

description for the shy boy with the alert face and large frightened

eyes. "Every one calls him that," Joyce went on. "And he doesn't like

it. I should love to be called seraphic, but no one will; I'm too full

of original sin. Well, Seraph, you may disapprove of militancy if you

like, but you must suggest something to put in its place."

"I don't know that I can."

Joyce turned to her sister.

"These men-things aren't helpful, are they, Elsie?"

"I'm a good destructive critic," I said in self-justification.

"There are so many without you," Joyce answered, laying her hand on

my arm. "Listen, Mr. Merivale. You've probably noticed there's very

little argument about the suffrage; everything that can be said on

either side has already been said a thousand times. You're going to

refuse us the vote. Good. I should do the same in your place. There

are more of us than there are of you, and we shall swamp you if we all

get the vote. You can't give it to some of us and not others, because

the brain is not yet born that can think of a perfect partial

franchise. Will you give it to property and leave out the factory

workers? Will you give it to spinsters and leave out the women who

bear children to the nation? Will you give it to married women and

leave out the unprotected spinsters? It's all or none: I say all, you

say none. You say I'm not fit for a vote, I say I am. We reach an

impasse, and might argue till daybreak without getting an inch further

forward. We're fighting to swamp you, you're fighting to keep your

head above water. We're reduced to a trial of strength."

She leant back in her chair, and I presented her with a dish of salted

almonds, partly as a reward, partly because I never eat them myself.

"I admire your summary of the situation," I said. "You've only omitted

one point. In a trial of strength between man and woman, man is still

the stronger."

"And woman the more resourceful."

"Perhaps."

"She's certainly the more ruthless," Joyce answered, as she finished

her coffee and drew on her gloves.

"War _à outrance_," I commented as we left the dining-room. "And what

after the war?"

"When we've got the vote...." she began.

"Napoleon and the capture of London," I murmured.

"Oh well, you don't think I go in for a thing unless I'm going to win,

do you? When we get the vote, we shall work to secure as large a share

of public life as men enjoy, and we shall put women on an equality

with men in things like divorce," she added between closed teeth.

"Suppose for the sake of argument you're beaten? I imagine even Joyce

Davenant occasionally meets with little checks?"

"Oh yes. When Joyce was seven, she wanted to go skating, and her

father said the ice wouldn't bear and she mustn't go. Joyce went, and

fell in and nearly got drowned. And when she got home, her father was

very angry and whipped her with a crop."

"Well?"

"That's all. Only--he said afterwards that she took it rather well,

there was no crying."

I wondered then, as I have always wondered, whether she in any way

appreciated the seriousness of the warfare she was waging on society.

"A month in the second division at Holloway is one thing...." I began.

"It'll be seven years' penal servitude if I'm beaten," she

interrupted. Her tone was innocent alike of flippancy and bravado.

"Forty votes aren't worth that. I've got three, so I ought to know."

Joyce's eyes turned in the direction of her sister who was coming out

of the dining-room with Aintree.

"_She's_ worth some sacrifice."

"You couldn't make her lot easier if you had every vote in creation.

She's up against the existing divorce law, and that's buttressed by

every Church, and every dull married woman in the country. You're

starting conversation at the wrong end, Joyce."

Her little arched eyebrows raised themselves at the name.

"Joyce?" she repeated.

"You were Joyce when last we met."

"That was twenty years ago."

"It seems less. I should like to blot out those years."

"And have me back in nursery frocks and long hair?"

"Better than long convict frocks and short hair," I answered with

laborious antithesis.

"Then I haven't improved?"

"You're perfect--off duty, in private life."

"I have no private life."

"I've seen a glimpse of it to-night."

"An hour's holiday. I say good-bye to it for good this evening when I

say good-bye to you."

"But not for good?"

"You'll not want the burden of my friendship when war's declared. If

you like to come in as an ally...?"

"Do you think you could convert me?"

She looked at me closely.

"Yes."

I shook my head.

"What'd you bet?" she challenged me.

"It would be like robbing a child's money-box," I answered. "You're

dealing with the laziest man in the northern hemisphere."

"How long will you be in England?"

"I've no idea."

"Six months? In six months I'll make you the Prince Rupert of the

militant army. Then when we're sent to prison--Sir Arthur Roden's a

friend of yours--you can arrange for our cells to be side by side, and

we'll tap on the dividing wall."

I had an idea that our unsociable prison discipline insisted on

segregating male and female offenders. It was not the moment, however,

for captious criticism.

"If I stay six months," I said, "I'll undertake to divorce you from

your militant army."

"The laziest man in the northern hemisphere?"

"I've never found anything worth doing before."

"It's a poor ambition. And the militants want me."

"They haven't the monopoly of that."

Joyce smiled in spite of herself, and under her breath I caught the

word "Cheek!"

"I'm pledged to them," she said aloud. "Possession's nine points of

the law."

"I don't expect to hear _you_ calling the law and the prophets in

aid."

"It's a woman's privilege to make the best of both worlds," she

answered, as Elsie carried her off to fetch their cloaks.

"There is only one world," I called out as she left me. "This is it. I

am going to make the best of it."

"How?"

"By appropriating to myself whatever's worth having in it."

"How?" she repeated.

"I'll tell you in six months' time."

Aintree sauntered up with his coat under his arm as Joyce and her

sister vanished from sight.

"Rather wonderful, isn't she?" he remarked.

"Which?" I asked.

"Oh, really!" he exclaimed in disgusted protest.

"They are astonishingly alike," I said _à propos_ of nothing.

"They're often mistaken for each other."

"I can well believe it."

"It's a mistake you're not likely to make," he answered significantly.

I took hold of his shoulders, and made him look me in the eyes.

"What do you mean by that, Seraph?" I asked.

"Nothing," he answered. "What did I say? I really forget; I was

thinking what a wife Joyce would make for a man who likes having his

mind made up for him, and feels that his youth is slipping

imperceptibly away."

I made no answer, because I could not see what answer was possible.

And, further, I was playing with a day-dream.... The Seraph

interrupted with some remark about her effect on a public meeting, and

my mind set itself to visualise the scene. I could imagine her easy

directness and gay self-confidence capturing the heart of her

audience; it mattered little how she spoke or what she ordered them to

do; the fascination lay in her happy, untroubled voice, and the

graceful movements of her slim, swaying body. Behind the careless

front they knew of her resolute, unwhimpering courage; she tossed the

laws of England in the air as a juggler tosses glass balls, and when

one fell to the ground and shivered in a thousand pieces she was ready

to pay the price with a smiling face, and a hand waving gay farewell.

It was the lighthearted recklessness of Sydney Carton or Rupert of

Hentzau, the one courage that touches the brutal, beef-fed English

imagination....

"Why the hell does she do it, Seraph?" I exclaimed.

"Why don't you stop her, if you don't like it?"

"What influence have _I_ got over her?"

"Some--not much. You can develop it. I? Good heavens, _I_'ve no

control. You've got the seeds.... No, you must just believe me when I

say it is so. You wouldn't understand if I told you the reason."

"It seems to me the more I see of you the less I do understand you," I

objected.

"Quite likely," he answered. "It isn't even worth trying."

The play which the Seraph was taking us to see was _The Heir-at-Law_,

and though we went on the first night, it was running throughout my

residence in England, and for anything I know to the contrary may

still be playing to crowded houses. It was the biggest dramatic

success of recent years, and for technical construction, subtlety of

characterization, and brilliance of dialogue, ranks deservedly as a

masterpiece. As a young man I used to do a good deal of theatre-going,

and attended most of the important first nights. Why, I hardly know;

possibly because there was a good deal of difficulty in getting seats,

possibly because at that age it amused us to pose as _virtuosi_, and

say we liked to form our own opinion of a play before the critics had

had time to tell us what to think of it. I remember the acting usually

had an appearance of being insufficiently rehearsed, the players were

often nervous and inaudible, and most of the plays themselves wanted

substantial cutting.

"The last things I saw in England," I told Mrs. Wylton, "were _The

Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, and _A Woman of No Importance_."

Dramatic history has developed apace since those days. I recollect we

thought Pinero the most daring dramatist since Ibsen; we talked sagely

of a revolution in the English theatre. There must have been many

revolutions since then! Even the wit of Wilde has grown a little

out-moded since '93. As we drove down to the Cornmarket I was given to

understand that the dramatic firmament had been many times disturbed

in twenty years; Shaw had followed a meteoric path, Barker burned with

fitful brilliance, while aloft in splendid isolation shone the

inexorable cold light of Galsworthy....

"Who's the new man you're taking us to see?" Joyce asked the Seraph.

"Gordon Tremayne," he answered.

"The man who wrote 'The Child of Misery'? I didn't know he wrote

plays."

"I believe this is his first. Do you know his books?"

"Forward and backward and upside down," I answered. "He's one of the

coming men."

I am not a great novel reader, and have no idea how I came across

Tremayne's first book, "The Marriage of Gretchen," but when once I had

read it, I watched the publisher's announcements for other books from

the same pen. The second one belonged still to the experimental stage:

then the whole literary world was convulsed by the first volume of his

"Child of Misery."

I suppose by now it is as well-known as that other strange masterpiece

of self-revelation--"Jean Christophe"--which in many ways it so

closely resembles. In one respect it shared the same immortality, and

"Jean Christophe's" future was not more eagerly watched in France than

"Rupert Chevasse's" in England. The hero--for want of a better

name--was torn from the pages of the book and invested by his readers

with flesh and blood reality. We all wanted to know how the theme

would develop, and none of us could guess. The first volume gave you

the childhood and upbringing of Rupert--and incidentally revealed to

my unimaginative mind what a hell life must be for an over-sensitive

boy at an English public school. The second opened with his marriage

to Kathleen, went on to her death and ended with the appalling mental

prostration of Rupert. I suppose every one had a different theory how

the third volume would shape....

"What sort of a fellow is this Tremayne?" I asked the Seraph.

"I've never met him," he answered, and closured my next question by

jumping up and helping Mrs. Wylton out of the taxi.

From our box we had an admirable view of both stage and house. One or

two critics and a sprinkling of confirmed first-nighters had survived

from the audiences I knew twenty years before, but the newcomers were

in the ascendant. It was a good house, and I recognised more than one

quondam acquaintance. Mrs. Rawnsley, the Prime Minister's wife, was

pointed out to me by Joyce: she was there with her daughter, and for a

moment I thought I ought to go and speak. When I recollected that we

had not met since her marriage, and thought of the voluminous

explanations that would be necessitated, I decided to sit on in the

box and talk to Joyce. Indeed, I only mention the fact of my seeing

mother and daughter there, because it sometimes strikes me as curious

that so large a part should have been played in my life by a girl of

nineteen with sandy hair and over-freckled face whom I saw on that

occasion for the first, last and only time.

_The Heir-at-Law_ went with a fine swing. There were calls at the end

of each act, and the lights were kept low after the final curtain

while the whole house rang from pit to gallery with a chorus of

"Author! Author!" The Seraph began looking for his coat as soon as the

curtain fell, but I wanted to see the great Gordon Tremayne.

"He won't appear," I was told when I refused to move.

"How do you know?"

Aintree hesitated, and then pointed to the stage, where the manager

had advanced to the footlights and was explaining that the author was

not in the house.

We struggled out into the passage and made our way into the hall.

"Where does one sup these times?" I asked the Seraph.

He suggested the Carlton and I handed on the suggestion to Mrs.

Wylton, not in any way as a reflection on his admirable dinner, but as

a precautionary measure against hunger in the night. Mrs. Wylton in

turn consulted her sister, who appeared by common consent to be

credited with the dominant mind of the party.

"I should love...." Joyce was beginning when something made her stop

short. I followed the direction of her eyes, and caught sight of a

wretched newspaper boy approaching with the last edition of an evening

paper. Against his legs flapped a flimsy newsbill, and on the bill

were four gigantic words:--

DEFEAT OF SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT.

Joyce met my eyes with a determined little smile.

"Not to-night, thanks," she said. "I've a lot of work to do before I

go to bed."

"When shall I see you again?" I asked.

She held out a small gloved hand.

"You won't. It's good-bye."

"But why?"

"It's war _à outrance_."

"That's no concern of mine."

"Exactly. Those that are not with me are against me."

I offered a bribe in the form of matches and a cigarette.

"Don't you have an armistice even for tea?" I asked.

She shook her head provokingly.

"Joyce," I said, "when you were five, I had every reason,

justification and opportunity for slapping you. I refrained. Now when

I think of my wasted chances...."

"You can come to tea any time. Seraph'll give you the address."

"That's a better frame of mind," I said, as I hailed a taxi and put

the two women inside it.

"It won't be an armistice," she called back over her shoulder.

"It'll have to be. I bring peace wherever I go."

"I shall convert you."

"If there's any conversion...."

"When are you coming?" she interrupted.

"Not for a day or two," I answered regretfully. "I'm spending Whitsun

with the Rodens."

Joyce shook my hand in silence through the window of the taxi, and

then abruptly congratulated me.

"What on?" I asked.

"Your week-end party. How perfectly glorious!"

"Why?"

"You're going to be in at the death," she answered, as the taxi jerked

itself epileptically away from the kerb.