The Ladies of Lyndon

By Margaret Kennedy

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Title: The Ladies of Lyndon

Author: Margaret Kennedy

Release date: September 3, 2026 [eBook #79505]

Language: English

Original publication: Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1925

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79505

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADIES OF LYNDON ***

[Cover Illustration]

THE
LADIES OF LYNDON

BY
MARGARET KENNEDY

AUTHOR OF
“THE CONSTANT NYMPH”

[Illustration]

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1925

TO
MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE VIRTUOUS STEPMOTHER 1

CHAPTER II
THE FLORENTINE 55

CHAPTER III
THE KIND COMPANIONS 105

CHAPTER IV
THE BRAXHALL FRESCOES 154

CHAPTER V
THE FOOLS’ PROGRESS 240

THE LADIES OF LYNDON

CHAPTER I
THE VIRTUOUS STEPMOTHER

In the first decades of the twentieth century, London contained quite a
number of distinguished, gray-headed bachelors who owed their celibacy
to Mrs. Varden Cocks. In her youth she had refused offers of marriage
from most of them, and they found themselves unable to choose again when
she tardily but finally dashed their several ambitions by selecting
Varden. Indeed, they almost gloried in their shackles, for this lady had
reached, at forty-seven, the very zenith of her attractions. She was
excessively handsome in the liberal style of the First Empire, and
endowed with a wit in keeping with her appearance. She talked a great
deal, in a rich, temperamental contralto, and had fine eyes which spoke
for her in her rare silences. Her photographs were seldom successful,
since few of her friends were acquainted with her face in repose.

The fatigued erudition of her husband set off her animation with an
especial piquancy. He had been a distinguished scholar when she married
him and was, subsequently, never heard to speak. At intervals she would
discuss with her friends the advantages of a political career for him,
but his views on the subject were not known. He was, fortunately, very
tolerably well off.

They had one child, a beautiful but silent daughter, who accompanied
them to most places of entertainment, and whose wardrobe was a perpetual
testimony to a mother’s taste. It was generally believed that Agatha
Cocks was a very nice girl and everyone was pleased when she became
engaged, a few months after her introduction, to an entirely suitable
young man, a baronet, wealthy, and devotedly attached. Mrs. Cocks, who
believed in early marriages for young women, was overjoyed. The
bridegroom had an additional advantage; he possessed a most exceptional
stepmother. Mrs. Cocks was accustomed to point out that a
stepmother-in-law, of the right kind, is so much easier for a young
bride to get on with than the usual mother-in-law. She is less likely to
interfere; she has fewer claims. The dowager Lady Clewer was this kind
of stepmother. She was a perfect monument of tact. “I had thought,” Mrs.
Cocks would say, in her rapid, vibrant voice, “I had thought it to be
impossible for a widow and a widower, each with children, to marry and
produce a third family without a certain amount of storm and stress. But
the Clewers have undoubtedly done it! There they all are, his sons and
her daughter, and their child (I forget its sex), living together in
perfect peace and amity. But then, of course, she is unique . . . and he
died pretty soon. . . .” One evening, about ten days before the wedding,
this paragon gave a dinner party to which Mrs. Cocks took her family.
None of the trio anticipated a very pleasant evening, but only Mrs.
Cocks said so, since she alone could talk audibly and without discomfort
while driving through London traffic. Her gloomy forebodings enlivened
the entire journey from South Kensington to Eaton Square. This sort of
party, she said, was apt to be trying. “It isn’t as if you didn’t know
all your in-laws already,” she complained. “You’ve met them all by now,
haven’t you? Except the mentally deficient one. To go on meeting in this
way is quite unnecessary. I don’t gather that any one will be there in
the least congenial to me. Or to your father. Only Clewer relations, I
expect. I shouldn’t wonder if there aren’t enough men to go round.
That’s what people generally mean when they call a dinner ‘quite
informal.’ I hate a superfluity of women. Even dull men are better than
none.”

Agatha sighed. She was disturbed by the tinge of petulance in these
remarks. She had never supposed that the vogue of John’s stepmother
would last for ever, since Mrs. Cocks was very variable in her
friendships and, before the engagement, had been accustomed to remember
that Lady Clewer’s first husband had been some kind of successful
Northern manufacturer, that the upholstered prosperity which her money
had brought to Lyndon gave it a very odd look, and that Lois Martin, the
manufacturer’s daughter, was rather a second-rate little person. All
this she had, for the moment, comfortably forgotten, but Agatha had
little doubt but that the Martin vulgarity must be, eventually,
disinterred. Only she had hoped for fair weather until after the
wedding, and she sighed because she feared that a dull dinner at this
point would be most inopportune.

It was, unfortunately, very dull indeed. Besides Varden there were but
two men present—Sir John Clewer, the host and bridegroom, and a sadly
stolid Major Talbot, his uncle. These failed to inspire the ladies with
any sort of liveliness. Depression, like a murky fog, hung over the
tasteful brilliance of Lady Clewer’s table and barely lifted with the
appearance of dessert, when the company rallied a little, sustained by
the prospect of release. Mrs. Cocks, with some show of animation,
embarked upon the conquest of Major Talbot, and was soon discoursing
fluently to him about the government of India. At the other end of the
table old Mrs. Gordon Clewer, John’s great-aunt, was making her
neighbours laugh. Her butt was probably the rising generation, a topic
upon which she was in the habit of being funny in the epigrammatic style
of the early ’nineties. The sulky face of little Lois Martin suggested
that some shaft had gone home. Lois did not know what to make of Mrs.
Gordon Clewer. Against old ladies who were not thus entirely surrendered
to age she had the weapons of youth and personal attraction. But this
small, terrifying woman, with her sharp tongue, her arrogant dowdiness,
and her quaint curled fringe, was invulnerable. She was securely
entrenched in the past and made Lois feel disconcertingly raw: mere
prettiness went for nothing with her, she had seen so much of it in her
time. Her high incisive tones rang out in a sudden pause while Mrs.
Cocks was eating a _marron glacé_:

“. . . a whole roomful, I assure you, all dancing in this concentrated,
painstaking way; all with this stupefied air. No conversation, you
understand; almost like convicts taking exercise. ‘Good heavens, my
dear!’ I said to Lady Peel. ‘What has happened to them all? Surely the
ventilation is insufficient? The children appear to me positively
_abrutis_! And why do they never change their partners?’ ‘Oh,’ she said,
‘it isn’t the ventilation. They always look like that now somehow. And
they can’t change their partners. You know it’s this new American dance,
the—the Tango, and it’s very difficult.’”

Lois decided that Youth must speak; an attack like this could not be
endured in silence. She leant across the table and inquired rather
aggressively, in a voice loud enough to be generally heard:

“I say, Agatha, don’t you think those old Victorian times, when they
danced nothing but stupid old waltzes, must have been perfectly
beastly?”

“Perfectly beastly!” murmured Mrs. Gordon Clewer joyfully, as though
committing the phrase to memory for some future narrative.

It was an unhappy expression: everyone was acutely aware of its stark
unsuitability. Poor Lady Clewer, crimson with mortification, was but too
sure of the manner in which Mrs. Gordon Clewer would tell the tale:

“. . . That Martin child, Marian Clewer’s daughter by her first
marriage. A really horrid memorial of poor Marian’s remoter past. One
wonders so what the father was like. Of course, one always thinks,
looking at the girl, that Martin isn’t a Jewish name. Marian is so
clever with her—dressing her rather inconspicuously in pale pink, don’t
you know? But what was it she said? Oh yes! ‘Perfectly beastly!’”

The unhappy mother plunged into a general discourse upon dancing in a
vain attempt to cover her daughter’s lapse. Was it true that the Queen
disapproved of these new American dances? But Mrs. Gordon Clewer was too
much pleased with the situation to destroy it.

“Well, child?” she demanded sharply of Agatha. “What do you think? Do
you consider the customs of your elders—er—perfectly beastly?”

The entire table waited to hear the young bride’s opinion.

Agatha hesitated, not liking her position. Under her mother’s quelling
eye she dared not agree with Lois. But to disagree would be a sorry
course and hardly sincere in a person of her years. With all the
courtesy due to John’s great-aunt she must make a stand for her own
generation. So she smiled very prettily at Mrs. Gordon Clewer and said:

“You know, I can never quite make out what the customs of my elders were
exactly. There are such discrepancies in the accounts one gets. This
matter of partners, for instance! I’ve been told that nice girls never
danced more than three times with the same man. But—I find it very
difficult to believe. Because once I was tidying an old bureau for my
mother, and I came upon some of her dance programmes. . . .”

“Never tell me I danced the whole evening with one man!” broke in Mrs.
Cocks.

“No, Mother! With two.”

They laughed, and she felt that she had not done badly. She had been a
little impertinent, but they apparently forgave her for it. Catching the
sparkle of approval in her lover’s eye, she felt her heart leap with
pleasure.

“No good, Mrs. Cocks,” Major Talbot was saying to her protesting mother,
“you should have burnt ’em, y’know.”

Lady Clewer, however, did not look pleased. Scarcely recovered from the
irritation of her daughter’s exposure, she found nothing soothing in the
spectacle of Agatha’s discretion. Ill-temper was written clearly upon
her smooth, fresh face, furrowing her still youthful brow, and
emphasizing the massiveness of her jaw. She had the air of rehearsing to
herself all the caustic reproofs which Lois should hear when the company
departed. She glanced round the room, preparatory to rising, and her
little blue eyes were ominous—hard as pebbles. The five women left the
dining room in an atmosphere of heavy displeasure.

Upstairs they found Cynthia, the youngest of the Clewers. This was the
solitary child of Marian’s second marriage. At fourteen she did not dine
downstairs but came into the drawing room for a short time after her
schoolroom supper. She was an exquisite creature, slim but well grown,
with a mane of shining hair the colour of honey. She had her mother’s
flawless skin, but her sharp eyes were dark and set rather close
together in the creamy oval of her face. She advanced and made her
civilities to the guests with cool self-possession. Lady Clewer
immediately demanded, with unconcealed impatience, where James might be.
Cynthia replied that he would not come, though Miss Barrington had said
that he ought. Lady Clewer’s jaw became grim and she was preparing to
send for James on the instant when Cynthia demurely added that he had
gone to bed. He had further threatened to come down in his pajamas if
any one bothered him. Lady Clewer sharply bade her daughter to have
done, and Cynthia was silent, her keen eyes flitting from face to face.
She secretly enjoyed these trying situations invariably created by
James; they gave variety to a monotonous life.

The guests were embarrassed at this exposure of the family skeleton.
James, the younger brother of John, was supposed to be a little queer in
the head. This was due to nothing “in the family,” as his stepmother had
carefully explained to Mrs. Cocks when the engagement was pending. She
believed that she had traced it to an injury to the brain received by
James at the age of seven months. The first Lady Clewer had died at his
birth, and he had not acquired a stepmother until he was almost six
years old; it must have been during the period when he lacked a mother’s
care that the harm was done. The servants who had tended him could at
first remember no accident and indignantly denied Marian’s accusations
of neglect. But under her astute cross-examination they contradicted
themselves and each other, and it became established that there had been
a fall. Marian, who had thought the child alarmingly backward,
discovered that her worst fears were confirmed. She consulted a
specialist immediately; he looked grave but would say nothing save that
the child was abnormal. This abnormality became more marked as James
grew older. Nothing, it seemed, could be done. At twenty-one he could
not be depended upon sufficiently, in the matter of table manners, to
dine with the family. He shared Cynthia’s schoolroom meals, and his
stepmother, always anxious to make the best of him, had decreed that he
should be in the drawing room every evening after dinner.

He had but recently come up to town with Cynthia and the governess, and
Agatha had hitherto escaped the introduction. She dreaded it, fearing
that she would find him very disagreeable. His future was, she knew,
uncertain. Hitherto the whole family had lived at Lyndon, John’s
property in Oxfordshire. But, upon his marriage, the dowager intended to
settle with her daughters in the Eaton Square house which had been left
to her by her second husband. She had offered to warehouse James for a
time until the young couple, comfortably settled at Lyndon, could make
up their minds what to do with him. Agatha had a secret fear that they
might have to invite him to live with them.

She had never seen Lyndon, but she understood it to be an imposing
mid-Georgian affair, well stocked with the proper sort of furniture and
portraits. Sometimes she wondered whether Marian had been able to impose
as much of her essential mediocrity there as in Eaton Square. She had
such a faculty for making nice things look insignificant; to all her
possessions she seemed able to impart a hard, shining newness. Old
things looked quite modern when she got hold of them. And her rooms were
always so very full of chesterfields; they had struck Agatha’s attention
when calling in Eaton Square for the first time, and were all she could
remember of the drawing room when she was not in it, save perhaps a
portrait of the mother of James and John which hung over the fireplace.

This picture had interested her. The sheen of the green velvet gown, cut
in the æsthetic style of the ’eighties, toned well with the green Sèvres
on the chimneypiece and was painted with unquestionable ability. The
brooding peevishness of the face, however, gave food for reflection. It
was a discordant note in a complacent room, suggesting a hidden, bygone
rebellion, beyond the power of time to cancel. Glancing toward it,
Agatha perceived with surprise that it was gone. A large looking-glass
hung in its place. Lady Clewer, observing the direction of her eyes,
became extremely benevolent and important:

“Ah, the portrait! Yes, it’s gone. I’ve sent it down to Lyndon. Oh, yes,
it’s always hung here. But I thought . . . John’s mother . . . he ought
to have it.”

Everyone felt how right this was and Mrs. Cocks warmly said so. Marian,
beaming, said that it must hang in John’s study. Agatha murmured
something pretty, but she privately believed that John would not want it
in his study. She happened to know that he hated it. He had a
photograph, which he much preferred, in which his mother was wearing the
clothes he best remembered: a little sailor hat, a blouse with full
sleeves and a broad, tight belt. She was sitting on the south terrace at
Lyndon between two dogs. The portrait was certainly less cheerful.

Mrs. Gordon Clewer, who had been clucking to herself, now startled
Agatha by observing:

“If John takes after his father he won’t want it. My poor nephew
couldn’t do with it at all. That’s why he wouldn’t have it at Lyndon. It
was a great deal too good. And that gown was symbolical of so much in
poor Mary that he couldn’t abide. She got the greeny-yallery craze very
badly and would go about looking like an invertebrate Burne-Jones.
That’s a little trying, you know, for a man who likes his wife to be
well corseted. Smart women in those days had waists. Nowadays we condemn
waists as artificial; but a man like John appreciates a certain amount
of artificiality in a woman as a tribute to civilization, you
understand. And, if I’m not mistaken, his son takes after him.”

She shot a glance at Agatha.

“The portrait has always been considered a very good one,” said Marian,
in an offended tone.

“Oh, very clever! Undeniably clever!” agreed Mrs. Gordon Clewer. “It was
a very clever young man who painted it. A protégé of one of Mary’s
peculiar artistic friends. Rather _du peuple_, you know, but that was
really what gave him distinction. The other artists of the period were
mostly gentlemen, or, at any rate, cultured. He came down to Lyndon to
paint her, I remember, and if you met him about the house you were apt
to mistake him for some tubercular under-gardener or something, come in
to water the plants. It’s a pity he died so young. He would have
distinguished himself. As it was, John would never believe that he
really had talent. He used to ask Mary why she must bring such people
into the house and why she couldn’t get the thing done by somebody
really good. Poor Mary! How furious she used to be!”

“Cynthia! Isn’t it your bedtime?” inquired Marian with meaning.

It was not, and she knew it, but Mrs. Gordon Clewer must really be
reminded that poor John was Cynthia’s father. She was going a little too
far, even for an old lady. Perhaps she felt so herself, for, after a few
seconds, she added sweetly:

“Of course it’s wonderful of you to have given it up, my dear Marian.
And so like you! You have a positive _flair_ for this sort of thing.”

Lady Clewer was not quite sure in her own mind what a _flair_ was, but
she took the remark as a compliment, as it was undoubtedly meant.

Lois at the piano did much to relieve the languors of the evening. It
was an employment in which she always appeared to advantage, having good
hands and arms. Her mother, fully sensible of this, encouraged her
music. She had a little talent and a great deal of
temperament—qualities which urged her toward musical composition. She
had written several “Tone Cycles,” which sounded very effective when she
sang them. To-night, however, she larded these more intellectual items
in her repertoire with a few simple love songs out of compliment to John
and Agatha, who were sitting together on a distant sofa looking at
photographs of Lyndon. Cynthia, who never relaxed a sidelong
surveillance, was forced to decide that they were dull lovers. They
were, indeed, far too well bred to betray themselves by any form of
public endearment; their very conversation, though pitched too low to
reach the others, was pointedly impersonal.

John appreciated immensely this discreet semi-privacy; it was symbolical
of his entire courtship. He had chosen his bride for her gravity and for
the sedate composure of her manner, enchanted to find so much reserve
and dignity in anything so young. He did not generally care for girls,
disliking their vivacity and finding no recondite charms in
inexperience. He had always looked forward to marriage as a duty,
inevitable, but infinitely boring and to be postponed if possible.

He had not danced above two or three times with the silent Miss Cocks,
however, before he began to be aware that duty can be agreeably
reinforced by inclination. Here at last was a girl, beautiful and
innocent, yet possessed of a delicate and deliberate assurance; she
sampled life discriminately, never losing her poise and never permitting
herself to be engulfed. He was vastly pleased to find that he could be
so completely in love.

The brevity of their courtship had given them few opportunities for
intimate conversation, but he had seen all that he wanted. He suspected
that she might be naturally cold in temperament, but this, in a wife,
did not displease him. He had no great opinion of fond women, for he had
encountered too many of them. Agatha was like none of her predecessors.
He could almost enjoy the barriers put upon their intercourse. These
decorous weeks, with their wealth of social functions, were like a
prologue to the bridal day when, veiled and mysterious, she should be
given entirely into his possession. The prolonged privacy of the
honeymoon would give him leisure enough in which to contemplate and
examine his prize. He was content meanwhile just to watch her as she
bent over his photographs and to mark, with a recurrent shock of
pleasure, the still pose of her little head. Though she seldom raised
her eyes, he was quite sure that she knew all about the admiration in
his regard. She had, in such matters, an intuition which she had
probably inherited from her mother.

For that mother he had the warmest admiration, since to her training and
experience he ascribed many of his bride’s perfections. His good opinion
was amply returned. Mrs. Cocks could not praise him enough to Mrs.
Gordon Clewer; he was an ideal son-in-law. The two ladies sat on an
enormous chesterfield in the middle of the room, conversing in
undertones because of the music. Mrs. Gordon Clewer nodded and chuckled.
She, too, had a good opinion of John. He was her favourite great-nephew.
The boy had taste. She had always prophesied that he would choose well.

“And your girl, too,” she added, “I remember saying at the beginning of
the Season that you wouldn’t have her on your hands for long.”

“I’m very glad she’s marrying so promptly,” said Mrs. Cocks. “I do
believe in girls marrying young. Of course, she’s very young; only just
eighteen. But it’s so much easier and wiser for them to marry before
they form their tastes too much, don’t you think?”

“Dear me, yes! They get such decided opinions once they are past twenty,
that there’s no doing anything with them.”

The old lady took a good look at the unformed Agatha through a small
quizzing glass, adding:

“She’s being so pretty behaved over those photographs, it’s quite a
pleasure to watch them. I’ve known you long enough, haven’t I, to say
without impertinence that her manners are quite charming?”

“And even if she is young,” pursued the mother, looking gratified, “he
is twelve years older. Old enough to look after her properly.”

“A sensible age,” said the old lady tranquilly. “Just the age for
settling down. And quite time, too! In fact, Marian was getting rather
anxious. Poor Marian! Always so conscientious! So determined that we are
never to forget that John is the head of the family. She couldn’t have
taken his position more seriously if he’d been her own son. Her feudal
instincts are really amazing. And for some months she’s been greatly put
about because she thought he wasn’t going to do his duty and take a
wife; so this engagement is an immense relief to her. She has such a
sense of responsibility, you know; I really believe she had persuaded
herself that she was in some way to blame because he was evidently
enjoying his bachelorhood. And lately I fancy she caught wind of an
establishment which . . . but I expect I’m being indiscreet.”

She paused for a moment, to discover, perhaps, whether her reference had
been news to her companion. It apparently was not, for Mrs. Cocks made a
little sound of assent. Mrs. Gordon Clewer continued:

“Ah, well! I daresay you’ve heard as much about that coil as I have.
Marian was very funny about it. She won’t see when things are really
best ignored.”

There was a short silence, and then Mrs. Cocks said gravely: “I think
John is very sensible, don’t you? I mean, I think he’ll make a sensible
husband.”

“Of course he will, my dear. Men of his type generally do. They marry
late, very often, but then they choose well and carefully.”

“I’m so glad you think so,” exclaimed Mrs. Cocks. “Not everyone upholds
me on that point.”

And she glanced across the room at her husband who, seated beside Lady
Clewer, was sleeping with painful obviousness. His faint objections to
the match had been, for a day or two, an inconvenience to her.
Mercifully they had soon wilted before her own overpowering common
sense. She listened complacently to Lois, who was singing: “Glad did I
live and gladly die!” to an accompaniment of consecutive fifths. Mrs.
Cocks was not musical, but she had been to enough concerts to mistake
the piece for Grieg. Lois was perfectly scarlet with pleasure as she set
her right.

“It seems that she composed the thing herself,” observed the lady to her
family on the way home. “She’s my friend for life.”

Varden woke up for a few minutes in order to make some strong remarks
about the music they had been hearing. He spoke at unusual length and
with extraordinary venom. Mrs. Cocks defended Lois, maintaining that the
evening would have been very much worse without her.

“And you can’t have heard much, Varden,” she added, “for you slept the
whole evening.”

“Not nearly as well as I could have wished.”

“She looks nice playing,” observed Agatha.

“Yes. It’s a pity she has her mother’s little blue eyes. They don’t go
well with that rather Jewish colouring. And that clumsy mouth! But she’s
not bad looking. Personally I’m rather sorry for her. I expect she’s
catching it now. At dinner I felt Lady Clewer was just saving it up
until we’d gone. Didn’t she look fierce? For all the world like a wax
doll in a tantrum.”

“She was rather tempersome about James, too, I thought.”

“Oh,” cried Mrs. Cocks, “weren’t you disappointed not to see James? I
was. I’m dying to see how he has grown up. I remember him as a little
boy, of course; about nine, I should think. When we stayed at Lyndon
once. He was queer then, wasn’t he, Varden?”

“I don’t recollect him, my dear.”

“Well, we didn’t see much of him. But he came into the drawing room one
evening with the little girls. Cynthia was quite a baby; it was very
soon before Sir John died. Lois was very nicely behaved—came and shook
hands with us quite as she should. But nothing would induce James to
look at us. He crawled away and hid himself under a sofa. Such an ugly
little boy, too, with this enormous head and very gappy teeth. Children
like that are always very slow getting their second teeth, I believe.
It’s a great sign. She was so good with him, not apologizing
particularly, you know, but just saying: ‘Oh, James is rather shy
to-day, I’m afraid.’ She really has been wonderful with him.”

It occurred to Agatha that the wisest course would have been to put
James under some special training. But she did not say this, as she had
no wish to criticize Lady Clewer if she could help it. Varden, however,
said it for her.

“Well, she thought it over,” explained Mrs. Cocks, “and felt that it
would really be very cruel to send him away to school. He is so shy and
sensitive, and at home they understand him and don’t tease him. She felt
that his own mother would not turn him out. And, of course, after his
father’s death she had all the responsibility for him.”

“But surely there are specially trained governesses. . . .”

“Oh, but Miss Barrington has been so splendid! So patient! Lady Clewer
was telling me about her the other day. She is really Cynthia’s
governess, you know, but she has taken the greatest pains with James.
She taught him to read after a fearful struggle. He would not fix his
attention. And Lady Clewer hasn’t neglected the question of special
training, I can assure you. She’s gone into all this manual training,
which is so important where deficients are concerned. Getting him very
good drawing lessons. She says he has quite a turn that way.”

Varden gave it up. His wife was evidently determined to see no flaws in
Lady Clewer’s stepmotherhood. He went to sleep again and they finished
their journey in an unaccustomed silence. It occurred to the bride, with
a slight shock, that this was one of the last of their little family
expeditions. Very soon she would travel back from parties alone with her
husband. This was an odd idea, for she was hardly ever permitted to
drive alone with John. It had only happened three times—each of them a
most glowing adventure. She was sure she would never get used to the
notion of being alone with him as a matter of course. She did not know
that she wanted to get used to it. In a way, being engaged was probably
nicer than being married. It was more exciting. She ascribed her faint
reluctance to regret at parting with her parents. She was convinced that
she would miss her mother dreadfully, but she could not manage to feel
very strongly over the loss of her father. He never seemed quite like a
real person, somehow, though he had given her pearls for a wedding
present.

Struck by an unusual contrition, she kissed him good-night very kindly
in the hall before going up to bed. Varden looked a little surprised,
but had the presence of mind to pat her shoulder with a creditable
appearance of tenderness.

“Well, well, well!” she heard him mutter. “That’s a very handsome young
sprig you’ve got hold of. Very handsome! I shouldn’t wonder if it turned
out quite a success.”

And he shuffled off to dream over books that smelt of dust, crouching
all night beside his green-shaded lamp. He looked very withered and old,
with his bent shoulders and sharp, yellow face. He was fumbling with the
handle of his library door as she climbed the stairs; a strange, dim
figure, centuries removed from her own vital youthfulness. She thought
that years alone had flung this gulf between them; she could not guess
that he was already sundered from his kind by the recognized shadow of
approaching death. He knew that his days were short and looked at the
rest of humanity as across the unbridgeable abyss of the grave. There
was not very much time, now, for this father and daughter to know each
other better.

Arrived in the seclusion of her bedroom she sat down before a
looking-glass and studied herself carefully for a few minutes. She
decided happily that fatigue was not unbecoming to her; it merely
invested her with an interesting pallor. To these meditations she was
impelled by no personal vanity, but by a conscientious and painstaking
sense of duty. It was with some difficulty that she had learnt to be
concerned over her appearance; for she was naturally indifferent to it.
Since her engagement, however, she had made real efforts, aware of the
power of her loveliness over John.

Her cousin, Gerald Blair, who had loved her first, was different. He
took very little account of her beauty; indeed, she had reason to
suppose that he scarcely regarded it at all. But then she had not seen
him for two years; not since that undignified episode at Canverley Fair.

She felt herself beginning to blush and saw that the pale person in the
glass had got quite pink. The memory of that afternoon was a constant
humiliation to her, for she knew that she had been very vulgar. She had
conducted herself as no lady should, and a most unladylike retribution
had overtaken her. Instigated and abetted by her graceless cousin she
had done a lot of low things; she rode in swing-boats, and sucked
Dorchester Rock in long pink sticks, and, finally, insisted upon having
a look at the Fat Lady. This sight, so unexpectedly horrid, had hastened
her doom. She had felt a little sick, she remembered, as she entered the
Fat Lady’s stuffy booth; its occupant had been a _coup de grâce_.
Gerald, who was at that time a medical student, supported her manfully
to a fairly private spot behind some caravans. To her gasping apologies
he replied that he was used to much worse things in hospital.

Mrs. Cocks took a stormy view of the event and was unappeased when the
totally ineligible Gerald announced, with some show of penitence, that
he and Agatha were engaged. He was promptly eliminated from the horizon
and Agatha was sent to school in Paris, where she soon learnt to be
ashamed of herself. But, in a mood of self-discipline, she had preserved
a memento of her escapade, a wonderful photograph of the pair of them,
taken, developed and framed, all in five minutes, by a machine on the
fair ground. The proprietor merely had to pull a handle and the
photograph came out in “Brooch, Locket or Tie Pin, As Suits Lady Or
Gent, Price One Shilling.” They had purchased one apiece upon entering
the fair, which, as the shameless Gerald remarked, was a good thing, for
they were in no condition to be photographed when they departed.

She thought of him now a little shyly. He was away in America, working
with a friend in some very new kind of hospital. She wondered if he had
forgotten all this; it would be most convenient if he had. Anyhow, when
she met him again she would be married and very dignified. As the Lady
of Lyndon she could surely manage to live down the past. Gerald would
come to stay with them, and she would be extremely nice to him, but
matronly. These speculations were interrupted by her mother who,
entering briskly, demanded why she was not in bed.

“I brought you home early especially in order that you might get your
proper night’s rest. I don’t want you to be over-tired and in bad looks
next week. Hurry up, dear!”

Agatha obediently began to hurry and her mother sat on the bed as if for
conversation.

“Not a bad man, Major Talbot, when you come to talk to him. But
uncommonly little to say for himself. What is that mark on your
shoulder, child? Is it a little spot? Come into the light and let me
look! Oh, it’s only where a hook has rubbed you. Tell Andrews to sew it
down. What was I saying? Oh, yes! About Mrs. Gordon Clewer.”

“You began about Major Talbot.”

“Did I? Oh, well, I’d finished about him. Mrs. Gordon Clewer said such
nice things about you, my dear. I was so pleased. I felt I must tell
you. For she’s not a person who likes people easily. She thinks your
manners are so nice.”

Agatha shook herself free from the clinging softness of her clothes and
strolled away to the wash-hand stand. At intervals, while she splashed
the warm water into her face and over her ears, she heard fragments of
her mother’s dissertation on good manners: “. . . the longer one lives
the more one sees the importance . . . especially in marriage . . . at
the bottom of all these horrid scandals and divorces . . . ill breeding,
pure and simple, is nine tenths of the trouble . . . among decent people
such things really don’t occur. . . .”

Mrs. Cocks broke off suddenly to descant upon trousseau lingerie as
Agatha slipped into a nightdress. She had, after all, countermanded
those sets in embroidered lawn that Agatha had wanted. Silk was so much
more serviceable. Agatha, reflecting that, once married, she could have
as many lawn nightdresses as she pleased, assented and jumped into bed.
Mrs. Cocks continued gravely:

“I expect you think all my remarks about manners and marriage are beside
the point. Perhaps they are, now. You are in love for the time being and
I daresay it’s all very nice. Of course, while that lasts it’s all plain
sailing. And, my darling, I don’t see why it shouldn’t last, in your
case. For a very long time, at all events. It’s such a suitable
marriage. But, in case of accidents, a really well-mannered husband is a
great stand-by. You’ll know what I mean someday, if you don’t now.”

She kissed her daughter and departed. Agatha was not at all disturbed by
all this talk of love lasting or not lasting. It was unthinkable that
John should cease to desire her while she remained beautiful. And, at
eighteen, she could expect to be that for years and years. Thirty years
at least, since she took after her mother. She would possess all the
aids to beauty which wealth can supply. There would be no hardships to
dim her fairness or slacken her hold on him. Nothing else could shatter
love’s illusion save the dallying years. She could very tolerably endure
the idea that at sixty his ardour might begin to cool a little. She
herself would be forty-eight, and everyone has to get old sometime.

Then, as her mother had said, there would always be beautiful manners.
These would perpetually adorn his passionate demands and her own guarded
compliance. They would dignify the late season of love’s decay. This
sentiment reminded her of something she had lately read. She turned to
the shelf by her bed, where the carefully chosen books of her girlhood
stood in well-dusted rows. Pulling out “Mansfield Park,” she sought
through it for a passage dimly remembered. It was something, surely,
said by Mary Crawford when she was congratulating her brother on his
attachment to Fanny Price:

“I know that a wife you loved would be the happiest of women;
and that even when you ceased to love she would yet find in you
the liberality and good breeding of a gentleman!”

Three days later Agatha met James Clewer, the strange brother-in-law of
whom she had heard so much. Her first impression was not pleasing, but
she was very tired, having spent the afternoon with her mother at a
dressmaker’s. There they encountered Lady Clewer and Lois, who was
trying on a bridesmaid’s frock and looking very sulky. Agatha perceived
that she did not like the dress at all, and seized a moment when the
matrons were discussing shoes to whisper anxiously:

“Do you like it?”

“Quite,” said Lois, without enthusiasm.

“But you don’t! Please say! Is there anything you’d like altered?”

“Not unless you altered the entire dress,” burst out Lois. “It’s so
. . . dull!”

“Plain white is always rather nice, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t. It suits you, that style. But it makes me look like a
mincing missie. And it’s so smug. Almost like a confirmation dress!”

“We did think of orange sashes shot with gold and bouquets of
orange-lilies to match. Do you think that would improve it?”

“Why, yes! That would be original. If you’ll excuse me, I think pale
pink carnations are frightfully ordinary for a bouquet. Why did you give
up the idea?”

“My mother—your—our mothers—decided, I think, that it would be
unsuitable for the younger bridesmaids.”

“Our mothers! It’s not their wedding!”

“Isn’t it?” Agatha’s eyes danced. “I’m not so sure. But—I’ll see what I
can do.”

When she could gain her mother’s ear she asked politely:

“We’ve quite decided, then, against the orange scarves and flowers?”

“Yes, quite,” said Mrs. Cocks. “As Lady Clewer says, they would be much
too conspicuous.”

“It’s a pity you didn’t decide before your gown was ordered, Mother.
You’re bound to have an orange-tawny bouquet with it and it will clash
so with the pink and white bridesmaids.”

“Oh, do you think it will?” Mrs. Cocks looked distressed. “How tiresome!
In that case the bridesmaids must have orange bouquets.”

“A little pointless without the sashes, don’t you think?”

“The sash could always be taken off afterward if Mam’selle wanted to
wear plain white,” put in the dressmaker, who was all for the more
striking effect.

Lady Clewer’s face cleared and she conceded:

“That is so. We can take it off after.”

“Not if I know it,” was the unspoken comment of the two young women.

They exchanged triumphant glances but said nothing until they were left
together in the car while their mothers paid a short call, later in the
afternoon. Lois dropped the slightly hostile manner which she had
formerly adopted toward Agatha and said, with confidential friendliness:

“You managed that very well. Do you always get your own way like that?”

“Very seldom. It’s too much trouble.”

“I do hate my clothes. They are so disgustingly _jeune fille_. I wonder
if I shall ever be allowed to choose my own things! It’s the limit! I’ve
been out two years, and I’m less free than I was in the schoolroom. I’m
chaperoned all over the place, and have to read Italian with Miss
Barrington, and can’t buy so much as a pair of stockings for myself.
Other girls aren’t treated like this; not so badly! You are two years
younger than I and after next week you’ll be absolutely free and allowed
to buy what clothes you please, just because you’re married. It’s simply
silly.”

“You must hurry up and get married too, Lois.”

“How am I to get married, I should like to know? There is literally no
one. All the boys Mother makes me dance with are so stupid. I couldn’t
marry anybody but a clever man that I had something in common with. And
I’d never be allowed to, because clever men are nearly always poor.
Anyhow, I’ve only met one man I could ever marry, and”—with a stifled
giggle—“I’m afraid he’s quite impossible. I don’t know what Mother
would say if she knew I was in love with him.”

Agatha looked very much embarrassed.

“Were you ever in love before you met John?”

“No.”

There was a distinct chilliness in Agatha’s voice. She had been brought
up to regard this sort of conversation as extremely ill-bred. Her
courteous priggishness infuriated Lois, who would have given the world
not to have giggled. After an uncomfortable pause Agatha made an attempt
at conciliation. She said:

“You’ll be allowed to come and stay with us at Lyndon, won’t you? I’ll
invite entire house parties of clever men to meet you. I’ll have all the
intellect of Oxford to tea every afternoon.”

Before so glorious a prospect Lois softened.

“Oh, Agatha, that will be fun! Will you really? You may laugh, but you
don’t know how much the idea of any sort of escape appeals to me. My
mother is so much worse than yours, if you’ll excuse me saying so. She
treats me sometimes as if I had no more sense than James.”

“Do you know, I haven’t met James yet.”

“Haven’t you? Well, you have got a treat coming! It’s a good thing you
didn’t see him before you accepted John. It might have scared you off.”

“You alarm me.”

“I’m only preparing you. You know, Mother doesn’t see that she only
makes him worse, the way she goes on.”

“But how, Lois?”

“Oh, well—though he’s so quiet he’s really very sensitive. And he minds
frightfully when she treats him like a baby. He understands quite enough
to feel the indignity. It’s that, more than anything, which makes him so
shy. He’s got perfectly awful now. He won’t go anywhere. And he’s always
worse if she’s there.”

“But he was always shy, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, yes. He never would go to parties or anything, even when he was a
little boy. And when other children came to play with us he always hid.
Sometimes he came with us to tea at the rectory, but that was the most
he would do.”

“Shyness grows on people so.”

“Yes, I know. And he’s just terrified of meeting you. He’s been lectured
so tremendously about being civil and saying the right thing. If you
come back to tea with us to-day, you will see him.”

“Am I to come back with you?”

“John said we were to bring you because he will be in. Then he can take
you home if your mother can’t come.”

“A drive with John! A drive with John!” sang Agatha’s heart.

Lois was saying:

“If you do come, please be nice to James and help him out if he puts his
foot in it. You know, I sort of understand him, as far as any one can.
We used to back each other up a good bit in the schoolroom days. And I
know how much he minds things. She shouldn’t speak to him, in front of
people, as if he wasn’t all there.”

“But—frankly—is he?”

“I suppose not, if it comes to the point. But he’s got more sense than
she thinks.”

“She” here reappeared, having obtained leave to bring Agatha back to
Eaton Square for tea. On the way there Agatha found the prospect of
meeting James was quite unnerving her. She told herself that he could be
no shyer than she was.

As they climbed the stairs a strange figure bolted suddenly from the
drawing room and made for the upper floor. Lady Clewer raised her voice
to an unusually raucous pitch and bawled after the fugitive:

“James! James! Where are you going? Come down and be introduced to your
new sister!”

James hesitated, lurking in the obscurity beyond the turn of the stairs.
Then he came down and followed them into the drawing room.

Agatha had been prepared to find him strange looking, but he was a
greater shock than she had expected. She immediately thought him the
most hideous creature she had ever encountered. But, on a second glance,
it struck her that there was not quite the vacuity she had feared to
see. Those sad eyes were too observant, the lines of the young face too
severe to suggest imbecility. His build was massive, though short, and
very uncouth by reason of his stooping shoulders and the immense length
of his arms. His head was rather too big, and his large, pale face, with
its prominent cheekbones, was unrelieved by the faintest suggestion of
eyebrow. This was the more noticeable since his brow was spacious and
heavily constructed, especially in the region immediately above his
light, sorrowful eyes. Sparse sandy hair grew far back upon his
splendid, thoughtful forehead. His expression was one of discomfort and
terror.

He advanced, smiling nervously, and shook with enthusiasm the hand which
she gave him. She was most anxious to be nice to him, but she could
think of nothing to say. What sort of thing did he talk about? What
remark on her part would penetrate that amazing skull and convey to him
her cordial intentions? An awful little pause ensued. She was aware that
the whole Clewer family were trembling with anxiety to see how she took
him. At last she bethought herself to say that he must have disliked
leaving the country at so lovely a time of year.

“Lyndon is beautiful in June, isn’t it?” she asked.

He took no notice of the question. He was plainly labouring with some
form of utterance. From Lady Clewer’s prompting glances it was obvious
that he had been coached beforehand in the civilities of the occasion.

“I must congratulate you,” he pronounced at length, “upon our
approaching relationship.”

This, it seemed, was not quite right. He thought it over and then tried
again:

“It is a great pleasure to meet you.” Then with a sudden glibness: “John
is a very lucky man. Indeed, we are all very lucky to have you in the
family. We are quite pleased, I can assure you.”

This was obviously very nearly what he had been told to say. She thanked
him gravely. But he did not appear to think that he had done his full
duty, though he was visibly perspiring with the effort. He babbled on:

“I wish you both every happiness. I—er—hope——” He stuck for a moment
and then got it triumphantly: “I hope the marriage will be blest——”

“That will do, James!” exclaimed Lady Clewer.

She spoke with a luckless promptitude which could emphasize the
unfortunate phrase but never obliterate it. He took her words, however,
as a literal intimation that his task had been performed to her
satisfaction, and relapsed into smiling silence. Agatha, glancing from
Lois’s crimson blush to John’s bland vacancy, had much ado not to laugh.
It occurred to her that James was going to be very much more of a trial
if the Clewers would insist upon taking him seriously. They were all
ridiculously put out, and began discomposedly to hand plates of bread
and butter and teacups to each other. Lady Clewer became vehement upon
the beauties of a silver rose bowl which the Lyndon tenants had
presented to John. It would be so nice for large white roses; she did
hope Agatha would use it constantly.

“You like flowers, dear? Ah, you’ll enjoy the Lyndon roses. I am a great
gardener myself.”

Marian had not always been a great gardener. She had acquired the taste,
with others, upon her second marriage. As mistress of the well-laid-out
Martin “pleasure grounds,” she had never thought of admitting to a close
acquaintance with her garden. That was the affair of the hirelings who
tended it. At Lyndon, however, she realized that every lady in the
country is a great gardener. The country dames who now called on her
inquired tenderly after her herbaceous borders. They made nothing of
asking each other for a root of this or that, which was apparently by
way of being a compliment, though Marian thought it a very odd habit.
She was a woman who could conform rapidly to any type, so she promptly
provided herself with a large straw hat, leather gloves, and a pair of
scissors. She took to spending her afternoons among the roses and learnt
to talk of daphne cneorum, romneya, hepatica, arenaria, baultheria, and
berberis darwiniæ. She flung a few of these exotic names about the
drawing room now, and Agatha, duly impressed, wondered whether she, too,
would be transmuted into a great gardener when she was established in
Lyndon.

“But I don’t like weeding,” she confessed. “When I used to stay with my
godmother in the country she used to make me weed. It was so hot and
stoopy.”

“Oh, weeding!” Lady Clewer was amused. “I don’t do that, naturally.”

John began to laugh at the idea of his frail bride wrestling with docks
and thistles. Cynthia looked a trifle disdainful. “We have some sort of
an old woman to do that,” she said.

“Griselda Pyewacket,” said James unexpectedly.

“What?”

Everyone was startled.

“Griselda Pyewacket. That’s her name.”

“Really? I didn’t know,” said Lady Clewer, looking repressively at
James. “I thought it was a little boy.”

“It’s rather a nice name,” said Agatha thoughtfully.

“Isn’t it?” agreed James. “Her husband was called Pyramus Pyewacket.
There was a little boy. He was her grandson. But he couldn’t weed
because he got a whitlow on his thumb.”

“Indeed! Just hand me Agatha’s cup, please, James!”

He rose with anxious alacrity, became entangled with the cake stand, and
scattered several platefuls of macaroons and cress sandwiches over the
floor. Agatha was very sorry for his discomfiture; she longed to laugh
and help him to pick up the fragments. But under Lady Clewer’s uneasy
glances she dared not. A bell was rung and they sat uncomfortably
ignoring the food at their feet until menials had come and removed it.

The meal wore on and Agatha was glad to escape early. The strain of the
afternoon, following upon the fatigues of the dressmaker, had almost
overpowered her. As she took her leave she was aware of John’s hardly
repressed impatience. She knew that he had joined them at tea merely in
order to earn the brief bliss of escorting her home. It was a prospect
which had sustained them both. Knowing this she became more
punctiliously deliberate in her parting civilities, a reaction which her
lover perfectly understood and which moved him to a restive approval.

“Are you sure,” said he, when they were at last in their taxi, “are you
sure that this fellow isn’t taking the corners too quickly? You are
looking quite pale! Let me tell him to go slower.”

“No, thank you!” she said, in some surprise. “I don’t call this fast.
There is no traffic.”

“Personally, I don’t like this pace at all,” he said gravely.

He seized the speaking tube and gave an order, whereupon the fellow not
only crawled but adopted a strangely circuitous route.

“Well, and what do you make of old James?” he asked.

“Oh, I was so sorry for him. It’s always difficult to congratulate a
bride-elect, even for a person who isn’t shy.”

“I know. One’s tendency is to be too much surprised, which isn’t really
complimentary. And he always has had a knack of saying exactly the wrong
thing, don’t you know.”

He slid a glance at her where she sat, withdrawn and tranquil in her
corner of the car. She met his eyes with candid gravity and asked:

“Do you think he will live at Lyndon in the future?”

“Not unless you want him, darling. But as a matter of fact I don’t know
at all what’s to be done with him unless he does. I should think he’ll
always have to be with people who will keep an eye on him. But enough of
James! He’s no topic for a _tête-à-tête_, do you think, Agatha?”

The fond pair passed to points of greater interest to them, conversing
always with sufficient decorum but never without a disturbing
suggestion, on his part, of ardour temporarily restrained. As they crept
into Agatha’s street, however, she reverted to James:

“He seems to be very good-tempered,” she said.

“Oh, yes, quite. In a way. He’s perfectly harmless. I don’t think he’ll
give us any real trouble. I take it he’ll fall in with any plans we make
for him. He’s got no particular views of his own, you see.”

John was mistaken. In after life it seemed to Agatha that the whole of
her wedding day had been filled with commotions about James and his
inconvenient, unexpected views. It was entirely typical of him that he
should have seized such a moment to launch them on his family. Wind of
the trouble came to South Kensington the night before the wedding, when
a note from Lois was brought in to Agatha:

“My mother forgot to say to yours that a large slice of wedding
cake and a photograph of you and John ought to be sent to:

Mrs. Job Kell,
Old Forge Cottage,
Little Baverstock,
Tiverton.

“She’s a superannuated housekeeper or something, who ran Lyndon
in the interval between John’s mother and mine, and J. is the
apple of her eye. Incidentally, I may add that James is even
more of an apple, she having ‘reared him from a babby,’ when
even his own nurse had given him up. Indeed, she will never
admit that there is anything the matter with him! Fact!!!

“_Apropos_ of James, we are all in such a way about him. Nothing
very unusual in that, you’ll say; but wait till you hear! This
is something quite new and too appallingly funny and unexpected.
He has got the most extraordinary idea in the world into his
head. I, for one, sympathize with him entirely. But, then, you
know I often do. No time to tell you now, but I will to-morrow
if I get the chance. . . .

“(Almost) your affectionate sister,
“LOIS.”

Agatha showed this letter to her mother, who was interested and
perplexed.

“I do hope he hasn’t had any kind of a fit,” she said. “But anyway, it’s
better to-day than to-morrow.”

“Lois says an extraordinary idea. That doesn’t sound like an illness of
any kind.”

“Oh, dear!” complained Mrs. Cocks. “They have James on the brain. You
mustn’t catch the habit when you are one of the family.”

“He’s rather dreadful, but I think he’s much nicer when he isn’t trying
to conform to their ideals of good manners. When he is on his best
behaviour he is so painfully nervous and makes such dreadful faces that
it’s almost unendurable. When he’s left to himself he isn’t at all bad.
He has a wonderful smile, when he’s really smiling and not grinning. I
must say I don’t think Lady Clewer does very well with him.”

“You are the first person I’ve met who thought so. I remember, when Sir
John died, everyone used to say: ‘Poor Lady Clewer! So good and kind,
and so nice to that peculiar little stepson! She’s quite
broken-hearted.’ It was almost a catchword.”

“But he isn’t little any more,” argued Agatha. “That is where she is
mistaken. I should like very much to know what Gerald would make of
him.”

She said this with a splendid detachment. If she could not mention
Gerald on the eve of her marriage with John, when could she? Mrs. Cocks,
not to be outdone, took this once dangerous name with the utmost calm.
She replied easily:

“I thought Gerald was studying nerves rather than mental cases. Hasn’t
he gone to America especially to study nerves?”

“Yes. But Aunt Hilda says that his next move will be to Paris to work in
a clinic for mentally deficient children.”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Cocks, “all this special study must be very
interesting, and will get him a better position in the end, I suppose.
But he seems to be taking a very long time about it. I never knew a
young man so slow in getting started. It’s a pity, in a way, that he has
independent means. What he has isn’t enough to be any good, though it’s
enough for him just to live on. He might have done better if he’d had to
support himself.”

Agatha, who knew that having “enough to be any good” was a periphrasis
for matrimonial eligibility, was moved to protest:

“But specialists are badly needed. And it’s seldom possible for a man to
specialize who hasn’t got private means.”

“I know, dear. But I feel he might have done better for himself in
another career. But perhaps America may do him good. He may acquire a
more commercial spirit.”

Agatha tried to think of Gerald with a more commercial spirit. She was
unable. Instead, she stumbled dismayingly upon a vivid recollection of
his old self—of the friend whose love she had once accepted. She
thought of his quick, clever hands, the nervous composure of his
gestures, and remembered how eagerly and brilliantly he had talked. She
saw afresh his incongruities, his storms and indecisions, and recalled
the tenderness which they had awakened in her.

And, remembering this, she was invaded by a tide of devastating,
insupportable sorrow. To ease herself she rose and moved about the room,
tormented by an anguish so sharp, so sudden, that she almost groaned
aloud. Mrs. Cocks, placid and handsome upon the sofa, continued her
friendly conversation:

“You don’t realize your luck, child, living in an age when girls are
sensibly brought up.”

“Don’t I?” asked Agatha inattentively.

“Oh, my dear! If you only knew what one used to have to put up with. I
remember the night before I was married I had a most gruesome interview
with my old step-aunt, my mother being dead. She came into my room, just
when I was getting sleepy, and said the most upsetting things. It was
done in her day. Fortunately she said nothing which I did not expect.
Girls weren’t such fools as they were supposed to be, even in those
days. And I wasn’t so very young, either. But it was all most
disagreeable and you can’t think how I resented it. What’s the matter?
Have you got toothache?”

“No.”

Agatha had almost subdued her trouble and sat down by her mother,
saying:

“I can quite imagine how you resented it. You’d find me very chilly,
Mother dear, if you tried any treatment of the kind on me.”

“But you have got toothache! You are perfectly green!”

“I had just one sharp stab, but it’s gone now.”

It had. But she was feeling strangely exhausted.

“You’d better go to bed. If you look like this to-morrow I shall go
distracted. As stony as a gorgon!”

“The gorgons weren’t stony. It was the other people——”

“They were very plain, and so are you at the moment. But, _apropos_ of
what I was saying of my step-aunt, there is nothing I ought to say to
you, is there?”

“Nothing, thank you!” replied Agatha hastily. “You’ve given me solid
good advice for the last six weeks. I couldn’t absorb any more.”

“That is so,” agreed Mrs. Cocks placidly. “But I wouldn’t like to feel I
hadn’t done my duty by you.”

To the bride the future yawned like a precipice almost at her feet.
Light cast by her mother’s experience upon the abyss could but
disincline her for the inevitable plunge. She clung rather to the
reflection that, by every standard known in her world, she was marrying
a man whom she loved. The plunge ought not, in these circumstances, to
turn out so very bad.

Mrs. Cocks kissed her tenderly and bade her good-night. “I shall let you
sleep late to-morrow,” she said, “and you shall have your breakfast
before you get up. Come to me if you have any return of that toothache
in the night, and I’ll give you something for it.”

Then, with a recollection of the sentiment due to such a moment:

“Have you said good-night to your father?”

Agatha shook her head.

“I don’t think I’d better. I never do. And it might disturb him.”

“Perhaps it would look rather silly.”

“After dinner I played that Scarlatti he likes. I thought it would be
rather touching on my last night at home. But he went away in the
middle.”

“Did he? Oh, well. . . .”

* * * * *

The underground trains, passing the end of the garden, punctuated the
night with their intermittent rumbling. Agatha lay awake listening to
them and awaiting repose. Her feverish fatigue held sleep away from her
and she was still frightened and shaken by that violent, intolerable
pang which had rent her when she thought of Gerald Blair.

It was terrible, to know that her heart still concealed such weapons,
for she was almost certain, now, that she had never loved her cousin.
His wooing, though it had moved her at the time, had been a boyish,
inexperienced affair. It was John who had roused her to the
possibilities of emotion; from him she had learnt the subtleties of
guarded speech, the contagious fire which can lie hidden in a glance.
For him her heart beat quicker.

She had never known any of these things before. Gerald had been no more
than a friend; but a friend in whose company she had found,
inexplicably, perfect happiness. It was not for him but for the memory
of this contentment that regret assailed her. She believed that she
yearned after a mental completeness, once captured and then lost for
ever. There had been an intensity of sensation, a full current of life
transcending the sorry measure of normal existence. For a little time
she had perceived creation as a unity. It had been this abounding of the
spirit, this marvellous clarity of mood, this apprehension of profound
significance in everything which had driven her to her career of folly
at Canverley Fair. She had escaped, for a moment, from the isolation
which binds us; she was no longer a detached figure upon an unfocussed
background, but part of a gay and simple pattern.

This exaltation had vanished soon enough, but the memory could still
hurt her when she thought of it, or when she thought of Gerald who had
shared it with her. She knew that she could never hope to find it again
in the conscious, deliberate life upon which she was embarking.

For her consolation, in this endless oppressive night, she turned to the
image of her lover. But he evaded her; he was blurred by the mists of
romance. She wanted to see him sharply and clearly, as she had seen her
cousin, but she could only recall, vaguely, the brief ecstasy of her
interviews with him. She began, in despair, to catalogue his qualities;
he was dark, he was prosperous, he was experienced and determined.
Everything, in fact, that poor Gerald was not.

At last, when London sparrows chirped to the dawn in the plane trees and
milk carts rattled in the street below, she fell asleep, to dream
neither of John nor of Gerald, but of the frightening, mysterious James.
He pursued her through countless, shifting scenes, led her to the altar,
and climbed snowy mountains with her. They were lost in the endless
glare of blinding glaciers. And when, still in her dream, she rose and
leant from her window for air, his large face grinned up at her from a
menacing street, all empty and heavy with a strange gray dawn. The
vision so terrified her that she could not shake off the horror of it
when she woke. The day took on the vague, poignant qualities of a
nightmare in which nothing seemed real save the sense of impending doom.
She did what she was told, listened to her mother’s rapid, authoritative
voice, ate an intolerable number of small meals brought to her on trays,
and submitted to an excited toilet. The silence in which she drove with
her father to church was lovely and comforting.

John, handsome and competent as ever, waited for her at the chancel
steps, and at the sight of his cheerful self-possession she became more
collected. While the clergyman was haranguing them about those carnal
lusts of which the bride is supposed to know nothing, she reflected
composedly that John ought really to be married as often as possible, he
did it so well. He was obviously enjoying himself. She was aware that he
had deliberately removed his thoughts from her in order to be able to
concentrate on his part. This was the right way to do it; being married
was, after all, a duty to one’s neighbour and not a personal affair.
Fired by his high standard of social exertion she threw herself into the
business with energy and gave a very pleasing and stately performance.
By the unusual stillness of the church behind them she divined that they
were getting it across. As she returned down the aisle Mendelssohn’s
triumph seemed to epitomize her own satisfaction in her beautiful
behaviour. She had quitted the maiden state becomingly.

They were no sooner bestowed in the car than John burst out: “Have you
heard about James?”

“Not in any detail. Lois said there was trouble in a note last night.
But she didn’t say what it was.”

“It’s the most extraordinary affair. Desperately annoying, just when we
are going away. They’ll have to settle it without us, that’s all. We
can’t be bothered.”

“But what’s the matter with him?”

“It’s unheard of! The fellow wants to go to Paris. Says he is going, in
fact.”

“Paris! Paris!”

“Yes. Paris, my child!”

“But—oh—why?”

“Heaven knows! To work at his painting, he says. He has quite an
obsession for that kind of thing, you know. He always had, even when he
was a kid.”

“But does he want to be an artist?”

“God knows what he wants! He seems to have got the idea from someone
who’s been teaching him drawing. It would be funny if it wasn’t so
idiotic. James going to Paris! Good Lord!”

“But does he draw well? How well does he draw?”

“Not so badly. He caricatures rather well.” There was an irritable
reminiscence in John’s tone. “Mamma got him jolly good lessons when she
saw he was keen on it. I believe it’s not uncommon for that sort of chap
to have a purely mechanical turn of the kind, don’t you know. But it’s
not as if any one was stopping him from doing it here. He can do it all
day for all we care. We don’t interfere with him.”

“Poor James!”

“Poor James, does she say? Poor James be —— well, perhaps I’d better
not say it till I’ve been married a little longer. It would be rather
shocking on one’s wedding journey. But, do you know, Agatha, we can’t
really stop him going if he wants to. It sounds incredible, but there it
is. He’s of age, and he has a small independent income, inherited from
our mother. Of course, we’ve always taken it for granted that he’ll be
guided by us. But now . . .”

“Surely you can do something?”

“Oh, if the worse comes to the worst, we could, I imagine, get a
doctor’s certificate or something. But it would be very awkward. We
ought to have done it before. You see he can behave so sensibly when he
likes; and if, just to spite us, he showed up at his best with the
doctor, we might have quite a job to get him certified. Still, he can’t
be allowed to go.”

“Would it really be impossible if he wants to very much?”

“Why just think of it! James in Paris! A place like Paris!”

“It isn’t so different from any other place.”

“No, but he is different from any other person. There’s no knowing what
mischief he mightn’t get up to. It all comes from taking this scrubbing
and daubing too seriously. I was against it from the first. But Mamma
had all these ideas about manual education. However! I’ve told him I
won’t sanction it. As head of the family I’ve put my foot down. And he
needn’t think I’ll help him if he gets into difficulties.”

“What did he say to that?”

“Nothing. He’s as obstinate as a mule. . . . Hullo! Here we are!”

They had drawn up before the Cocks’s door, triumphant with its gala
awning and crimson carpet. It was flung wide by beaming maidservants,
and John handed Agatha and her lilies, her pearls, her satin train and
lace veil, out of the car. In the hall the bride dispensed a little of
her mild sweetness to her father’s servants. She was already rather
tired of hearing her new name. She had been called Lady Clewer a hundred
times in the vestry while she signed herself, for the last time, as
Agatha Cocks. But she submitted smilingly and had pleased, happy glances
for everyone.

John began to grow impatient. He liked watching his wife do the right
thing, but he was unwilling that she should waste too much time among
sooty cook-maids. She knew that he was fidgeting on the stairs behind
her, and turned to join him. They had scarcely reached the drawing room
before other taxis were heard outside, and there were voices in the
hall. John twitched her train into becoming folds round her feet and
assumed the posture of happy groom at her side. She felt that she quite
hated James for spoiling the romance of her wedding drive. It was the
first expedition she had ever made with John that had no flavour of
adventure. They had been all absorbed in domestic discussion. It was
very disappointing, for they could never be married again. This unique
occasion was gone—lost!

“I’ve not crushed your flowers,” he murmured in her ear as a bevy of
bridesmaids flocked into the room. “Isn’t that exemplary in a
bridegroom?”

This interesting point was immediately marked by the youngest of the
Clewers. There was only one quality which Cynthia found admirable in her
sister-in-law, and that was her exquisite neatness. Mrs. Cocks also
recorded with pleasure the immaculate freshness of Agatha’s lilies, and
added another mark to John’s credit. She might have known he would take
care; there never was a man who knew better what was expected of him in
a public position.

The outer world poured in, flooding the house of Cocks with a jubilant
tide. Agatha gave herself to the embraces of countless women and heard
them congratulating her mother upon getting rid of her. In the midst of
all this clamour the sight of the troublesome James advancing to greet
her had a calming effect. She decided that his new ambitions became him,
however impossible they might be in themselves. He wore a look of sulky
obstinacy which was a great improvement upon his earlier manner. His
very walk was more purposeful. He shook hands with her and scowled at
John. Cynthia, however, who had followed him, was determined to exhibit
him a little.

“Why don’t you kiss her, James?” she drawled. “You ought to. She’s your
sister now, you know.”

He remained cool.

“I’d better not,” he said to Agatha. “You wouldn’t like it and I
shouldn’t like it.”

“Oh, what a gentleman!” mocked Cynthia. “You’ll have to learn better
manners before you go to France. Did you know James was going to France,
Agatha?”

“I had heard something of it.”

“Did John tell you about it in the car coming back from church?”
demanded James with interest.

“Er—yes.”

“There, then!” He nodded at Cynthia, and explained: “She wondered what
you would talk about. I said it would be me.”

“You do think a lot of yourself, don’t you?” retorted she. “He’ll have
to hurry up and learn French, won’t he?”

“I know French,” he asserted.

This was true, for he had shared several French governesses with Lois
and Cynthia and had become quite as articulate in the tongue of these
poor ladies as in his own.

“It doesn’t make much difference,” said Cynthia, tired of baiting him.
“John says you aren’t to go, so you won’t be allowed to.”

They all looked at John, who was ably defending himself against the
congratulations of an hysterical old lady.

“I don’t mind what John says.”

“He’ll have to mind, won’t he, Agatha?”

“I really don’t know what will be settled,” replied Agatha coldly.

She disliked Cynthia.

James turned away to one of the windows where he spent the remainder of
the reception absorbed in the constant arrival and departure of taxis in
the street below. Agatha noticed that the other window was occupied by
another solitary watcher—her father. He was looking extremely small and
shrunken and was making no attempt to fulfil his duties as a host. The
isolated bleakness of these two figures, withdrawn amidst the babble,
struck her strangely. They brooded in the background like skeletons at
the feast.

An hour later, when she came downstairs erect and slim in her blue
travelling suit, she glanced into the drawing room to see if they were
still there. Varden Cocks was gone, but James was at his post. Sunlight
and emptiness filled the room, and a great clamour of conversation, an
enormous rattling of spoons and forks in the dining room below
proclaimed the whereabouts of the wedding guests. Anew she felt most
anxious to be nice to poor James; to bring balm to that lonely,
mutilated mind. She felt indignant with the Clewers for scorning him. It
was as if they were all determined to deny to him that dignity and
self-respect which is the birthright of the lowest. His sorrowful eyes
turned upon her were an accusation.

She advanced into the room.

“They are all downstairs eating ices,” he told her.

“I know. Aren’t you coming?”

“No! I don’t like them.”

“Well, James, it’s good-bye for the present, then. You’ll come and pay
us a long visit, won’t you, when we get back from Norway.”

“I shall be in Paris then,” he stated.

Without conscious readjustment she began to accept his point of view. Of
course he would be in Paris. How stupid they all were!

“We may be stopping in Paris before the end of our honeymoon,” she said.
“If you are there, we must meet and go about to things.”

“What things?”

“Oh—theatres and things.”

“But I’m going to paint,” he objected.

“But you don’t want to paint all the time, surely? You’ll go round and
see the sights, I suppose?”

He thought it over and then said conclusively:

“I don’t here.”

She felt baffled and wondered what else she could say. There were fresh
sounds of a car in the street, and he looked out of the window.

“It’s yours,” he said. “They are putting your luggage on to it.”

Agatha yawned.

“What are you yawning for?” he asked sympathetically.

“I don’t know. I keep on doing it. It’s silly. I can’t help it.”

“I know,” he averred.

There were cries for her downstairs, and she thought she heard John’s
voice. She stood still, gaping. James, surprised at her rigidity, looked
into her face exclaiming:

“Here! What are you frightened of?”

Turning to rebuff his foolishness, she was silenced by his expression.
In that ugly countenance she perceived so much gravity, indignation, and
concern that she was mute.

“Look—you woman—Agatha,” he said urgently, “—don’t go if you don’t
want to!”

“Agatha! Are you ready? Agatha!”

People were coming upstairs.

“Don’t listen to them,” muttered James, catching her arm. “I don’t. They
are very silly, you know. You shouldn’t let them——”

A shrill laugh wrenched itself out of her throat. She shook off his hand
and admonished him:

“Don’t talk like that! It’s you who are silly, James!”

For a moment he stood as if barring her way. Then the horrified
penetration died out of his eyes and he let her go, indifferently. She
ran down to her husband.

Marian Clewer prided herself upon the regularity with which she
conducted her household. There was no variation in her iron laws.
Immediately after the wedding, therefore, she flogged her family back
into the routine of everyday life, sternly checking any attempt to
prolong the feast. Upon the return of the Clewers to Eaton Square she
demanded whether Lois had read Italian with Miss Barrington. Lois, who
resented her Italian lessons more deeply than any of her other shackles,
replied sulkily that she had not. She had supposed that John’s wedding
would be a holiday.

“That has nothing to do with it,” replied Lady Clewer coldly. “Go and
take off your frock and give it to Peters to put away for you. Put on
your green dress and go into the schoolroom for your reading. You can
have your tea there to-day as I want to talk business with Major Talbot
and Mrs. Cocks.”

The schoolroom was a nice sunny place at the top of the house, well
equipped with all the paraphernalia of modern education. Miss
Barrington, the notable woman who had succeeded in teaching James to
read, was sitting comfortably in a rocking-chair by the window. She also
had hoped for a holiday and was engaged upon one of those endless
letters to her cousins at Cape Town which occupied her infrequent
leisure hours. But when she saw Lois she sprang to her feet with an
eager display of activity such as Marian liked to see in her
subordinates. She was a sensible, apple-cheeked young woman, with high
academic qualifications, a morbid conscience, and great personal
humility: an ideal governess for the Clewer household. She belonged to
that type of energetic worker for which Marian had a positive cult.
There were squads of them down at Lyndon; secretaries, lady gardeners,
dairywomen, and the like. Lady Clewer was uniformly generous to them,
bullied them, nursed them when they were ill, paid for their false
teeth, kept them continually on the run in her employ, and, in short,
scarcely allowed them to call their souls their own. All that she
required in return was loyalty.

Miss Barrington was very loyal. She even thought it necessary to display
enthusiasm over the mild pages of “I Promessi Sposi,” which book it was
her duty to read with Miss Martin. She said sometimes that she thought
it an interesting story. She looked very unhappy when Lois exclaimed:

“I suppose it’s because Mother can’t even speak her own language
properly that she thinks I ought to know four!”

“She has a very high ideal of education,” said the governess.

“Most people idealize what they haven’t got.”

“Lois!”

“Well? I was only generalizing. Where’s the wretched book? Let’s get it
over!”

“Lois! You know quite well that you oughtn’t to talk like that.”

“I can’t help it. It’s too irritating. Here’s Agatha, two years younger
than me, allowed to go to Norway with a strange man she hardly
knows——”

“Let me see! Where did we leave off?” said Miss Barrington hastily.

“I don’t want to be married, goodness knows,” stormed Lois. “Except to
get a little peace and freedom and quietness. But I never shall, anyway.
I never get the chance. I never see any man to speak to.”

“You go to balls and things. You’ve been presented,” put in Cynthia from
the sofa.

“What earthly good does being presented do? I’m not going to marry the
Prince of Wales. And as for dances, Mother scares away any man who
attempts to be at all friendly. I never get the chances other girls do.”

“Lois! I’ve found the place!”

“Well, why didn’t you marry John?” asked Cynthia. “I should have, in
your position. You could, you know. You aren’t really related. And
you’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

Lois, to whom this was a new idea, gasped. So did Miss Barrington.

“Well, but John didn’t want to marry me.”

“That’s your fault. You could have made him. I think you missed an
excellent chance. Just think what fun it would have been taking Lyndon
out of Mother’s hands!”

“Cynthia! I can’t have you talking like that. It isn’t very nice,”
exclaimed the agonized Miss Barrington.

The two girls laughed.

“How do you mean, I could have made him?” pursued Lois.

“Oh, well! If you don’t know that much!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You couldn’t, at your age.
Why, you’ve not even been confirmed!”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“It shows what a baby you are.”

Cynthia needed occasional repression, but it seldom had any effect on
her. She smiled mysteriously and examined the ends of her finger-nails.

“Well, all things considered,” she said, “I think I’ll get married
before I come out.”

“Nonsense! You won’t be allowed to. Nobody does.”

“Well, I expect I shall. You see! As for you. . . . There’s still James.
You’d better take him.”

James, seated at the table, was drawing in a small sketch-book. He was,
as usual, absorbed in his work, and did not look up when his name was
mentioned. Lois could not avoid an expressive grimace at the idea of
marrying him.

“Lois and Cynthia! You really mustn’t talk in this way. Not in the
schoolroom. Cynthia, get something to do! Your mother thinks you are too
indolent. It’s nonsense to lie on the sofa doing nothing in the middle
of the afternoon.”

“I’m not doing nothing. I’m polishing my nails.”

“Lois! Hadn’t you better get on with your Italian?”

The two girls took no notice and calmly continued their argument. Under
the eye of their mother they were civil to their governess, but not
otherwise. They had, naturally, no idea of obligatory courtesy toward
dependents. Marian’s own demeanour to her subordinates, for all her
benevolence and generosity, was not calculated to instil such a
principle into their budding minds. Lois, who prided herself upon her
interest in James’s work, leant over his shoulder to inspect the
drawing. It was, she perceived, a pencil study of the Cocks family,
presented with the unpleasing bleakness of outline peculiar to James.
Mrs. Cocks, seated in a magnificent amplitude, more than suggested Mrs.
Siddons as the Tragic Muse. Behind her chair hovered two shadowy
creatures, types of death and despair. Executed by any one else, the
intention of the piece must have been deliberately malicious. But Lois,
from long experience, had come to believe that James was incapable of
malice. He had too little grasp of situation; too little comprehension
of human character. Sketches which looked like caricatures were, for
him, a simple exposition of the subject as he saw it.

“I like the way you’ve put Mr. Cocks and Agatha in the background,” she
commented. “But you’ve made them too tragic. Agatha does look a little
_triste_ sometimes, but in quite a placid way. She never has that
crucified sort of look. And Mr. Cocks may be ill, but he isn’t dying.”

“Isn’t he?” asked James.

“Not that I know of.” Lois began to wonder why she had been so sure
about it. “It may be because his wife looks so lively,” she concluded.
“What a splendid creature she is! And just like Mrs. Siddons. I love it
when she piles up all her hair on that coronet comb. You’ve done it
justice, James!”

“You’d better show it to her,” advised Cynthia. “It may make her speak
for you this afternoon.”

“What’s that?” exclaimed Lois.

“Well, she’s having tea in the drawing room this minute with Major
Talbot and Aunt Edith. That’s why you aren’t allowed there. They are
settling what’s to be done with James.”

“But how do you know?”

“She listened at the door,” James asserted.

Miss Barrington exclaimed, but Cynthia only laughed. Lois became
impassioned:

“Oh, isn’t it too bad? They’ve no right to do it. No right at all. When
you aren’t there! As if you were a child!”

“It makes no difference,” said James calmly.

“But suppose they say you aren’t to go?”

“Well, they can. I shall go all the same.”

“It’s doing it behind your back which is so disgusting. They ought to
let you speak for yourself.”

“James isn’t much of a speaker,” observed Cynthia. “Why don’t you do it
for him?”

“I’ve a good mind to. Shall I, James?”

“You can if you like,” agreed James absently, as he returned to his
drawing.

Lois bounced out of the room and burst like a whirlwind upon the
astonished party in the drawing room.

“It’s very unfair of you to decide about James without consulting him,”
she stormed. “Why should you insult him like that? If you don’t take
care he’ll go just to spite you.”

Lady Clewer became crimson.

“I never heard such a thing in my life!” she cried. “Considering that
for sixteen years I’ve done nothing but study his welfare——”

“You don’t study his feelings.”

“Will you hold your tongue, Lois?”

“You’ve no right to discuss him when he can’t speak for himself!”

“How did you know we were discussing him, my dear?”

The high drawl of Mrs. Gordon Clewer cut into the dispute with deadly
power. The shrill, angry tones of the mother and daughter subsided.
Marian had been so furious that she had overlooked this obvious retort.
She now proceeded to make use of it, in her own thorough way, speaking
about an octave lower.

“Yes! You young people think yourselves so important, don’t you? You
can’t imagine that we ever have anything else to discuss, can you? But,
my dear Lois, when we do discuss James we sha’n’t ask your advice. We
may summon him, but we won’t need to consult you. Have you finished your
Italian reading?”

“No.”

“Well, then, pray go and do so.”

“All the same,” exploded Major Talbot, when Lois had retired in
disorder, “something’s got to be done about the lad, I suppose.”

He spoke so seldom that the three ladies jumped.

“We’d better settle it, one way or the other,” he went on. “How,
exactly, do you stand, Lady Clewer? I mean, how much legal control have
you over his movements?”

“That’s the difficulty. He’s of age: twenty-one three weeks ago. He
seems to have had this extraordinary plan for two years. But he kept it
to himself because he had got it into his head that he could do as he
liked as soon as he was twenty-one. I don’t know who can have told him
that.”

“Then this isn’t a new idea, this Paris scheme?”

“It’s the first we’ve heard of it. But he says that he always meant to
go when he was twenty-one. It’s been very deceitful of him. And then he
has this money of your sister’s. About £400 a year, doesn’t it come to?”

“But have you—er—no medical certificate?”

“No. Nothing that really quite justifies——”

“When did he last see a doctor?”

“When he was about fifteen, I think,” said Marian, after reflection.
“They all had measles, and I suppose he saw one then.”

“He hasn’t been having special medical treatment?” asked Mrs. Cocks, in
surprise.

“There was no call for it. Physically he was always very strong and
healthy. I took him to a specialist when he was very little, of course.
He said that the child was very abnormal.”

“Quite!” said Major Talbot judicially. “And I suppose from time to time
some qualified doctor has had a look at him?”

“N-no. Where was the use?” said Lady Clewer in distress. “So little can
be done for that sort of thing when once you’ve accepted it.”

“D’ye mean to say you’ve never definitely established what’s wrong with
the boy?” cried Major Talbot.

“Really!” Marian became flustered. “I should have thought it was obvious
to any one looking at him. It always has been. Directly, the first time
I saw him, I guessed that there was something very wrong. But, of
course, I never foresaw that he would get these foolish ideas into his
head, or I would have been more careful to get the whole thing cut and
dried before he came of age. Only I shrank from it. Having these things
in the family is so awkward. It’s so painful! I’m not accustomed to it.”

“Poor Marian!” murmured Mrs. Gordon Clewer.

“Of course, if you think I’ve been mistaken, I’ve no more to say. I
acted for the best, as I thought. It hasn’t been easy; I don’t expect
you can realize what a difficulty it’s been. He didn’t even learn to
read properly till he was past sixteen. It’s been impossible to teach
him civil manners. We couldn’t send him to an ordinary school, or even
let him be very much with other children.”

“Oh, quite! Quite! Quite!” soothed Major Talbot, who was overwhelmed by
this flow of rhetoric.

“I kept him at home with my girls. It’s often been a little trying for
them. But I thought he would be happier. If you think he should have
been sent to some institution, I’ve nothing more to——”

“Oh, no, indeed!” protested Major Talbot. “I’m sure you did all that was
best. It’s only the question of preventing him from making a fool of
himself now. This idea of going to Paris! What’s to be done about it?”

“Of course,” suggested Mrs. Cocks, “I suppose it would be better for him
to have something to do? Something that really interests him, and gives
him an object in life.”

“Oh, yes! That’s why I have done everything in my power to encourage his
drawing. But why Paris? Why not here?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Gordon Clewer, “I think it might have been very much
worse. It’s quite respectable to want to draw in Paris. He might have
wanted to draw battle-ships and sections of salmon in crayon on the
pavement.”

“But Paris is such an impossible place.”

“He’ll have to be looked after wherever he goes, won’t he?” asked Mrs.
Cocks. “If you gave in on the essential point, and let him go, perhaps
you could induce him to stay with people who would look after him a
certain amount.”

“Exactly, Mrs. Cocks,” exclaimed Major Talbot. “Exactly! I quite agree
with you. It would be much easier to let him go, under proper
supervision, than to get a medical certificate to prevent it. Doctors
are uncommonly careful who they certify, you know, especially when
there’s any money in the case.”

“Then you all think I should let him go?” asked Lady Clewer dubiously.

The general opinion seemed to be that James should go if a suitable
establishment could be found for him. Presently an idea occurred to Lady
Clewer.

“Somebody now . . . who was it? . . . Somebody told me the other day of
a family who takes paying guests. Young girls, generally, and there is a
certain amount of chaperonage. An old lady and her daughters I think it
was. I wonder if they would take a young man! And they were strict
Protestants.”

“French Protestants are always strict,” said Mrs. Gordon Clewer. “But
it’s a point. We don’t want our James going over to Rome. If he did, he
would undoubtedly want to become a Trappist monk, and I don’t know but
what the vocation wouldn’t suit him.”

“It was Mrs. Temple told me,” recollected Lady Clewer. “I was wondering
if a little time in Paris wouldn’t be nice for Cynthia. But I rather
gathered that these people were a little”—_bourgeois_ had been the word
used by Mrs. Temple, but Marian shied at it and substituted:
“middle-class.” “So I did not think it would quite do.”

“It would be a pity for Cynthia’s tone to be contaminated,” said Mrs.
Gordon Clewer sententiously.

“Yes,” agreed Cynthia’s mother. “She’s at such an impressionable age. I
wouldn’t like to send her among second-rate people. But it would be
different for James. Mrs. Temple says they often have girls who are
studying music or art, and they will take them about to their lessons. I
daresay they would take James every day to the studio, or wherever it is
he will work.”

“But would that quite do, in this case?” protested Mrs. Cocks. “I mean,
a young man can’t be escorted quite like a girl can. It puts him in such
a ridiculous position.”

Mrs. Gordon Clewer shot an amused look at Major Talbot, but he had
evidently failed to find anything ludicrous in the prospect of James
under daily escort to the Latin Quarter. Concealing her joy, she
innocently remarked:

“But in France, you know, Mrs. Cocks, things are very different. You see
quite big boys taken to school by _bonnes_ in white aprons.”

Marian took this in perfectly good faith. She rejoined tranquilly:

“Yes. France is quite different.”

“But you can’t!” Mrs. Cocks was beginning to think that Agatha had been
right. “The thing’s impossible! Can’t you see? You can’t treat the poor
boy like that! It’s cruel! Think how he will be laughed at, taken about
by a nursery maid!”

“But,” urged Marian, “he must have somebody to look after him.”

“Well, then, don’t let him go at all. But don’t expose him to the
universal derision of every boy of his own age!”

“Don’t you see, Mrs. Cocks,” said Major Talbot, “it’s a rash step
letting him go at all? It doesn’t alter the fact that he can’t look
after himself. He must go under peculiar conditions.”

“He can choose,” said Marian. “He can go if he will accept the
arrangements we make for him. If he doesn’t like them, he needn’t go. Of
course,” she conceded, “it needn’t be a nursery maid. No! That would
look foolish. But there must be someone.”

Mrs. Gordon Clewer rose, preparing to depart. She kissed Marian on both
cheeks with the utmost affection.

“Good-bye, my dear,” she said. “I’m glad you’ve come to so satisfactory
a conclusion. You are inimitable; you never disappoint me. But I’m very
much afraid you are only at the beginning of your troubles. You’ll never
find that he really settles down. Never! It’s heredity, my dear;
environment is so much overrated. You’ve done what you can, I’m sure,
but you’ll never alter his heredity. With those parents he is bound to
give trouble.”

“I never met his mother,” said Marian in some surprise. “But from what I
know of his parents, I should have thought——”

“You knew neither of them, my dear,” said the old lady unexpectedly.

Everyone felt that she must have forgotten that Marian had been married
to James’s father for two years. Old age was beginning to tell upon Mrs.
Gordon Clewer. She sometimes said these odd, disconcerting things. She
nodded thrice, very emphatically, clucked at them and ambled away under
the attentive escort of Major Talbot.

Mrs. Cocks took her leave, hoping that the unfortunate James would have
the sense to give up the Paris idea. She underrated his tenacity. James
never wasted energy over non-essentials. Provided that he might go to
Paris and paint he agreed calmly to any arrangements his stepmother
might like to make. Lois, however, felt for him all the indignation that
was proper.

It was a fine evening, and Mrs. Cocks walked most of the way to South
Kensington. As she turned into her own street she saw a taxi drawn up
before the awning and crimson carpet which still decorated her door.
Upon the steps was a young man, talking to the parlourmaid. Before she
could make out who he was, he ran down again, jumped into the taxi and
drove off.

“Who was that, Meadowes?” she asked.

“It was Mr. Blair, madam.”

“Oh! I didn’t know he was in England. Did he want to see me?”

“No, madam. He asked for Miss Agatha. Lady Clewer, I mean. He said he’d
only got back from America this morning. He didn’t seem to know that she
had been married to-day.”

“Oh. Did he say he’d come again?”

Mrs. Cocks had no objection, now, to seeing her young kinsman about the
house.

“No, madam. When he heard Miss Agatha was gone out of town on her
honeymoon, he said he wouldn’t wait. He said he was just going to
France.”

“Oh! Oh, yes!”

“If you please, madam, Mr. Cocks has gone to bed and sent for the
doctor. I thought I’d better tell you at once.”

“Gone to bed? I’d better go up. Thank you, Meadowes.”

As she climbed the stairs, Mrs. Cocks reflected that her husband’s
collapse was not very surprising. He had been looking ill all day, and
she had meant to take him in hand as soon as the wedding was over.

This visit of Gerald’s was very odd, and just like him. An invitation to
the wedding had been sent to him in America, in case he should return to
England in time for it. But it must have missed him. On the whole, she
was not sorry that it had. Agatha was now safe.

Mrs. Cocks smiled a little grimly, remembering his hasty departure from
her house along the crimson carpet spread for his successful rival.

CHAPTER II
THE FLORENTINE

Mr. Hubert Ervine accomplished the five miles from Oxford to Lyndon in a
disordered frame of mind. Elation and misgiving possessed him
alternately. It seemed to him, as his car spun over the long flat road,
that he was arriving too quickly. He would be at Lyndon, confronted with
his fate, before he should be ready for it.

He strove to become a deliberate and composed individual, summoning to
his aid his entire stock of self-esteem, which was not small. His
mission was certainly delicate. He hoped to find Miss Martin at Lyndon,
and he intended to propose marriage to her in the course of his
fortnight there. Nor did he expect her to deny him. They had met many
times in London during the winter, and she had always been kind. He
rather thought that she would have him, if her relations did not
dissuade her.

It was these Clewers, with their strange, complicated family ties, who
made him uneasy. He was afraid they might not like him. They might not
provide him with the field in which he could most happily display
himself before the admiring eyes of his lady. He liked opportunities for
being clever. No piece of cultural gymnastic could frighten him. He
could discuss Chaucer before breakfast, and improvise operatic charades
in the afternoon, and hold his own in that kind of brilliant
conversation which is apt to spring up about midnight. He could write
witty parodies, imitate most literary styles, and was personally
acquainted with a sufficient number of live artists to pass in most
places as a critic of their works.

All this, however, might not impress the Clewers. He did not suppose
that they were very intellectual. His few encounters with them had only
led him to reflect upon the strangeness of discovering the so different
Lois in such a gallery. The promise of her intelligence was admirable,
but he was blest if he knew where it came from. Lyndon, though so near
to Oxford, was not an academic centre. It was known that a man stood or
fell there according to his power to divert and entertain the lady of
the house, and the most learned dons had to leave their erudition behind
them if they wanted to be invited a second time.

Hubert admired young Lady Clewer immensely, of course, but he was
decidedly afraid of her. He knew that he must go warily in any attempt
to display himself. She would listen readily enough to interesting
conversation and could discuss anything with anybody provided that she
was amused. She was very far from being a fool. But she was known to
have a positive horror of persons who tended to become instructive.
Moreover, she never saw him at his best. Like most men, he was a little
in love with her, and that upset him.

He was seized with a tremor of panic as his car turned off the high
road, with its flanking hedges and telegraph poles, through lodge gates
into Lyndon Park. It was the first time in his life that he had ever
felt shy, and he did not like it at all. He tried to key himself into
the temper of a bold and daring raider snatching a bride from a hostile
stronghold. This descent upon Lyndon ought to have a sort of “Young
Lochinvar” swoop in it. But the illusion was destroyed by his slow and
spasmodic progress down the park. The swoop was barred by innumerable
gates, for Sir John, who bred pedigree cattle, had divided the park into
a series of fields. At each gate the car stopped and Hubert began to
grow impatient. Eager now to have arrived, he sat well forward as the
car slid along as though his urgent attitude might increase their pace.
The road lay slightly downhill, for Lyndon, like many houses of its
period, was built in a hole. The park was really a long, tree-studded
slope, ending in water meadows.

In the last field he perceived the approach of two young women, and
identified one of them with a start of pleasure. It was not too much to
believe that she had come to meet him. As for her companion, a slender
person in white, she was probably his hostess. He was only a little in
love with Lady Clewer. As the car drew nearer he set up a delighted grin
while he was yet some way off, but, realizing how foolish this must
appear by the time he reached them, he banished it from his features and
only allowed it to light up again when the car stopped beside them. Out
he bounded in a torrent of polite greetings and shook their
self-possessed hands. The car, with his luggage, slipped off again
toward the cluster of trees which hid Lyndon, and he was left in the
midst of solitary pastures with his two companions.

The insignificant other was not Lady Clewer, he discovered, but one
Cynthia, a half-sister. He knew her by sight, having admired her beauty
from a barge at the “Eights,” but he had never been formally introduced.
She was, apparently, not out, since her hair still hung down her back.
She greeted him with a demureness suitable to her situation, flashed one
disturbing look out of her dark eyes, and immediately veiled them with
the longest lashes he had ever seen. In a becoming silence she walked
home upon his left hand.

All his attention was given to Lois, who was looking brilliant and happy
in her yellow dress. She was obviously delighted to see him;
friendliness beamed in her little blue eyes and bade him welcome.
Walking in that green field he thought her like some sturdy, shining
spring flower—a marsh marigold, perhaps.

“Nobody else is staying with us,” she said, “except a cousin of
Mother’s, Sir Thomas Bragge. He’s come to advise her about some
investments or something. He’s rather an awful old gentleman, but quite
harmless really. He has made a lot of money, I forget how, and is going
to build a house. He’ll tell you about it. Then a cousin of Agatha’s, a
brilliant young doctor, is expected shortly on a rest cure from
overwork.”

Hubert, who was on the look out for possible rivals, felt a little
apprehensive. His spirits, which had soared when he heard Sir Thomas
called an awful old gentleman, came to the ground at the mention of the
brilliant young doctor. But he reflected that the fellow might possibly
be married. Doctors often marry young and married men often overwork.

“Then,” said Lois, “there is John’s brother, James. Have you met him?”

“I don’t think so. He wasn’t with you in town, was he?”

“No. He was in Paris. He’s just come back. He’s been there for three
years. He’s an artist, you know.”

“No. No, I didn’t know. An artist?”

Hubert had some difficulty in digesting the idea of an artist among the
Clewers.

“Yes. And I’m anxious to know what you think of his work. I rather like
some of it. But of course,” she added modestly, “I’m no judge.”

His gallantry did not prompt him to contradict her. As a disciple she
was exquisite, but as a judge—no! Later on, perhaps, when she should be
a little more matured, he might temper this decision. But at present her
enthusiasms were too indiscriminate, though she evinced a tendency to
draw back and modify her opinions in deference to his experience which
pleased and touched him.

They passed through the last gate and proceeded up the avenue of elms
leading to the house. Lyndon, architectural and complacent, gleamed
whitely amid the sombre green of ilex and cedar. Its classical façade
stretched in ample wings to east and west. The grounds, originally laid
out by the famous “Capability Brown,” and improved upon by successive
generations of landscape gardeners, were admirably in keeping with the
dwelling house they guarded. They maintained its note of assured
artificiality: they belonged to an age when gentlemen of property owned
the earth and could do what they liked with it—an age which had not
read Wordsworth and which took for granted that Nature could be improved
upon. The measured, decorative mind of man was everywhere apparent. Upon
the knolls in the shrubberies were to be found pensive little temples to
Friendship and Solitude. A long stone terrace ran the whole length of
the south side of the house. This bordered on a vast lawn leading to
sloping rose gardens which descended to the Holmbrook, a tributary of
the Isis.

Lois led Hubert round to the lawn where the party was gathered for tea.
They walked slowly, conversing volubly as was their habit. Already he
was beginning to draw comparisons between the candid loquacity of Miss
Martin and the provocative silence of Miss Clewer. This Cynthia was a
piece of goods! Despite his preoccupation with her sister he had been
made aware of it. He could not quite make out how she had done it, for
she had said nothing during the whole of her short walk with them. He
rather wanted to hear her speak. It would perhaps be polite to address a
remark to her.

“Do you know, when I first saw you, I thought you were Lady Clewer.”

He had not meant to say this. But there was something about the girl
that provoked one to personalities.

“Oh, Agatha? She would never walk as far as this. She never goes
anywhere except in a car, you know.”

There was an undercurrent of contempt in her voice and he surmised that
she disliked her sister-in-law. Nor could he be surprised when he caught
sight of his hostess in the distance and felt anew all the shock of her
beauty. She sat under an enormous cedar tree in the middle of the lawn,
presiding over her guests with unhurried grace, and as he approached he
knew that she must be a galling chaperon for Cynthia. Lois suffered
less. She had vitality, the charm of eager interests, and a lively mind.
Even at Lady Clewer’s side she must have her appeal. She could never be
completely overlooked. Hubert, for instance, preferred her infinitely.
But the unfortunate Cynthia was doomed to a perpetual eclipse, since she
was of the same type as her senior and not nearly so effective. Both
were sirens—lovely, indolent, and exotic; both had achieved that air of
expensive fragility which is beauty’s most precious setting. But Lady
Clewer with her cool, witty assurance, her youthful maturity, possessed
unfair advantages. As a married woman she could wear richer clothing.
She, too, was clad in white this afternoon, but of some clear,
silky-soft material, matching her pearls and bestowed about her with a
sort of subtle amplitude, while Cynthia had to put up with the harsh,
maidenly lines of starched _piqué_.

The guests under the tree were mostly very young men who had come out
from Oxford for tennis, and games were still in progress on the raised
courts at either side of the lawn. Also there was Sir Thomas Bragge, an
important and rubicund-looking person. Lois had called him old but he
really was not: it was his grossness which had created the illusion of
age in her fastidious mind. Certainly he was awful. He sat sunk deeply
in a deck chair at Lady Clewer’s right hand, his portly stomach bulging
gently upward and heaving with his occasional rumbling guffaws. Never
for a moment did he remove from his hostess a gaze of unqualified
admiration, devouring her with small, unabashed eyes.

Behind her chair, dominating the background, hovered the master of the
house. He was pleasant and attentive, more silent than most of the
throng, but obviously the host.

Lois and Hubert crossed the brilliant turf a little nervously and
advanced into the middle of the group. The guest was greeted with a
cordiality which cheered him. Lady Clewer gave him an unmistakably kind
glance; it told him that she was his ally and his heart warmed to her.
Sympathy, he instantly decided, was the secret of her charm. Her beauty
was but the symbol of a generous temper and she deserved all the homage
she got. With new courage he turned to greet the formidable dowager who
was approaching briskly from the house with the air of having concluded
competently some very important business. She ran her sharp eyes
critically over the company, and he found himself beginning to wilt
again under her appraising looks. He doubted whether she would ever
think him good enough for Lois and began feverishly to rehearse to
himself a statement of his income. This reassured him, for he really had
quite a lot of money. He was able to control his surprise when the
dowager said, in her heavy, uncoloured voice:

“I have a favour to ask of you, Mr. Ervine.”

He almost bounded from his chair in his eagerness to serve her, but he
was a little dashed when he heard what the favour was. It appeared that
Lyndon possessed a Village Reading Union, patronized by the aristocracy;
an institution whereby culture was administered in small doses to
deserving rustics and contingents of the Lyndon housemaids.

“We meet on Friday evenings,” said the lady, fixing him with an
uncompromising regard. “And, whenever we can, we get kind people to read
us papers on literary subjects. Now, I’m sure you . . .”

“Oh, well,” he murmured, “literature isn’t my . . .”

“It’s Modern Art, your subject, isn’t it?” said she wisely.

All the young men in white flannels left off eating their tea to look at
the fellow whose subject was Modern Art. Or so it seemed to him. In
desperation he threw an appealing glance at James, the artist, who
should surely have helped him out. But no assistance was coming from
that quarter. James was not going to talk. Seated on the edge of the
group, as it were, he was eating up his tea with a quick despatch and
paying no attention to the conversation. Hubert was disgusted and
decided that James was probably a cubist. Anyhow, he was a very ugly
brute.

“I’m afraid,” said his tormentor, “that Modern Art wouldn’t be quite
suitable—just a little beyond us at present. It’s only simple village
folk, Mr. Ervine. No! But I was wondering if you could manage to give us
a paper on Dante. That would be a splendid subject!”

“Dante! But, my dear lady, I know nothing about him.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do! All people interested in art must. Such a subject
for great pictures. . . . Burne-Jones, you know . . . and all those. And
you’ve lived in Italy so much. I’m sure you could tell us a great deal
which we do not know.”

Hubert wondered if he looked as ill as he felt. In a sickish voice he
protested. He said he knew nothing about Italy before the Renaissance.
He offered to lecture upon modern Italian novels if she liked. But Lady
Clewer, who was a little suspicious of all continental novels, stuck to
Dante. She would have nothing else. She bore him down, and he dropped
the subject until he could argue it out in a less public place. He was
deeply disturbed, and felt that she must have done it on purpose. She
could have hit upon no surer means of making a fool of him and his
intellect, which was very hard when he could be clever in so many ways.
He wondered miserably whether he could entreat Lois not to come and
listen to him, supposing he was forced to read this wretched paper. He
looked at her and caught a glance of amused sympathy. Directing her
regard to her mother, she assumed, for an instant, an expression of
despair. This confidential by-play relieved him and he began to hope
that he might carry the thing off creditably.

The meal drew to an end, and some of the players returned to the courts.
James, the artist, having finished his substantial tea, brought his cup
and plate and placed them on the tray in front of his sister-in-law. She
greeted this ceremony with a smile and a murmur of thanks.

“Are you going to work, this lovely evening?” she asked with some
commiseration.

He nodded and shambled off toward the house.

“He works too hard,” she said, turning to Hubert. “I’ve never seen any
one work so. He uses an attic with a large north window, and he simply
lives up there. He should take more exercise. But Lady Clewer,” with a
nod at the dowager, “finds a good many energetic little things for him
to do.”

“What’s his line?” asked Hubert. “In Paris, wasn’t he? Who did he work
with?”

Lady Clewer considered for a moment and then recollected a name which
galvanized Hubert slightly.

“Oh! He can draw then,” he stated thoughtfully.

“Can he?”

Lady Clewer looked amused.

“Who? James?” cried the dowager, who had been busy telling Sir Thomas
that he must lecture on Blake at her Reading Union. “Oh, yes! James can
draw. He could draw when he was quite little, couldn’t you, James? Where
is he? Has he gone? How tiresome! I wanted him to take a note down to
the village for me. And now he will be up all those stairs. Miss
Barrington, kindly run up to his studio and tell him to come and speak
to me, please. In my sitting room.”

She hastened into the house, driving her secretary before her. Sir
Thomas turned to his hostess with renewed gusto. Hubert felt a faint
distaste at seeing them side by side. So fair a nymph and so foul a
satyr were too striking an essay in contrast. These blatant tributes of
admiration should have sickened her, but they obviously did not. She
looked at Sir Thomas with palpable amusement, as though she perceived in
his regard something to which she was but too well accustomed, and
which, in him, diverted her by its obviousness. The same amusement was
reflected upon the face of her husband as he strolled away toward the
house a moment later. Hubert surmised that the possessor of such a wife
must get used to a good deal.

“All the same,” he said to himself, “I’d put my foot down if any man
looked at my wife like that. But I suppose Clewer knows his own
business.”

A short sojourn in that household proved to him that Clewer knew his own
business perfectly well. That very evening he routed Sir Thomas
completely in the matter of a canoe. The night was exceptionally warm,
and after dinner it was agreed that a turn on the river would be
pleasant. Lady Clewer and Sir Thomas led the way to the lowest terrace
of the rose garden, where a small landing stage had been put up. A punt
and a canoe strained gently at their moorings and Sir Thomas, with
crackling shirt front and many stertorous breathings, stooped at once to
the latter and began to pile it with gay cushions. The proceeding took
some time, since the current continually carried the frail craft beyond
his reach. Lady Clewer, on the landing stage, watched in brooding
silence the last streaks of sunset smouldering on the edge of the water
meadow. At length her cavalier, having prepared a resting place for her,
straightened himself for the delicate, delicious business of placing her
in the canoe. There was no lady. Her husband, joining them, had with
silent determination handed her into the punt, upon the deck of which he
now stood, arrogantly wielding a pole. Sir Thomas made a chagrined
attempt to plant himself upon the cushions at her side but was
frustrated by the dowager.

Marian was not intending to accompany them, as she had important letters
to write. But she had pursued them thus far expressly, so Hubert
believed, to wreck his chances of an interview with Lois. She drove Sir
Thomas back to the canoe and gave him Cynthia by way of consolation.
Lois and Hubert were put into the punt, and the party pushed off into
midstream, leaving the matron upon the rose terrace. Her voice boomed
down the dusky reaches after them, warning them not to stay out if the
dew was heavy.

They slipped between green banks, sniffing the new-mown hay in wide,
silent fields. Far ahead the canoe, with its ill-assorted freight,
disappeared into the gloaming beneath some tall trees which overhung the
stream. Wild roses, close to the water’s edge, splashed the darkness
like little moons, their faint sweetness lost in the rich savour of Sir
John’s cigar. Lady Clewer talked to Hubert in a voice pitched low to
match the space and leisure of the night.

“Do you know,” she said, “we have something rather terrible to break to
you. I’m afraid it will be a shock. You will have to lecture on Dante at
the Village Room next Friday, for it has been already billed.”

“What! Since tea?”

“No! The bills were up before you came.”

“It’s a little way she has,” observed Lois. “I expect she’ll make Mr.
Blair give a lecture.”

“If she’ll let him lecture on neurosis I’m sure he won’t mind, for he
can talk of nothing else.”

“Oh, is he a nerve specialist?” asked Hubert.

“More or less; though he seems to dabble in diseases of the brain. I can
never remember quite what his official line is. It’s all so modern.”

“Quite young, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yes. Young as they go, I suppose.”

“Very young to have got so far as he has, Agatha,” put in Sir John.

“Married?” asked Hubert carelessly.

The lady started slightly and paused a second before saying: “No. Not
married.”

They fell silent, pushing through a reedy backwater, while far off,
across the flat, mysterious fields, the bells of Oxford rang down the
evening. When at last they returned to the landing stage, they found the
dowager wandering impatiently in the gathering night.

“I came to call Cynthia,” she cried. “There’s a heavy dew and she has
only that thin muslin. Where is she? What? Somewhere in the canoe with
Sir Thomas? How tiresome of them to be so late!”

“Poor Cynthia,” whispered Lois to Hubert, as they walked up through the
garden. “How awful to spend this heavenly evening alone in a canoe with
Sir Thomas!”

Hubert’s execution on the pianoforte was energetic and skilful. He could
go on playing, rapidly and accurately, for a long time. Lois, as she
listened to him, was glad that he had not heard her Sussex Cycle. She
knew now that he would see through it. He would be very polite and tell
her that her work was effective, an adjective which, three weeks ago,
she would have accepted as a compliment. But she had learnt a good deal
lately. Beholding her compositions with new eyes she blushed for them.
She had become aware that the few really great works of art in the world
are all relentlessly professional, and the others are scarcely worth
mention.

In the past week she had begun to grasp in detail her new friend’s
attitude toward the arts. She thought it austere yet fascinating.
Despite her mother’s vigilance they had enjoyed several long and
enchanting conversations, and she found herself adopting many of his
views. He was so delightfully arrogant in the laws he laid down; she
longed to be able to speak with that assurance, that air of initiation.
He had confessed to her the history of his own inner life, and how, in
his fear of producing work which might be second rate, he had decided
that it would be better to do none at all. Rather than betray himself as
the gifted amateur, he preferred to remain the mere critic, the friend
of great men. His attitude struck her as very noble. Also it possessed
undoubted compensations.

Beyond the window she could hear fragments of a prolonged conversation.
Agatha was sitting on the terrace with that disagreeable cousin of hers.
Lois and Hubert did not like Mr. Blair. They thought him a dreary
fellow, and his reputed brilliance in medicine did not excuse his lack
of humour. He trod heavily on their witty conversation; indeed, he could
scarcely open his mouth without saying something which contravened the
taste of the house. He was serious to the point of ill-temper when they
jested, and then he was unjustifiably flippant. His ill-judged sarcasms
looked very shabby beside the agreeable audacities which flowed so
easily from Hubert. Nobody had any patience with him but Agatha who was,
after all, his cousin. And it had been her mother who had sent him
there.

Mrs. Cocks, now a widow, was enjoying a popularity as conspicuous as
ever. Her activities were innumerable and so were her friends. These she
was in the habit of sending to Lyndon whenever they were recovering from
an illness. The place, she said, was as good as a hydro; John and Agatha
were so lazy themselves that they required almost nothing from their
guests. The cooking was perfect, and nobody need come down before
lunch-time. Meeting Gerald one day in town she had been shocked at his
look of fatigue. Under cross-examination he had admitted to
sleeplessness and overwork. Forthwith she had proffered an invitation to
Oxfordshire on her daughter’s behalf. Despite his earnest protests she
had insisted upon his going, and, once planted at Lyndon, he seemed too
much exhausted to go away, though he liked little that he found there.
Hubert was especially uncongenial to him, and all the while, as he
talked to Agatha, he was frowning irritably because of the din in the
drawing room. At last he broke off to exclaim:

“Isn’t that fellow playing much too fast?”

“He always does,” replied Agatha. “He belongs to that generation. Mrs.
Gordon Clewer, John’s great-aunt, explained it to me once. Have you met
her?”

“No. But I’ve heard her quoted.”

“One does, doesn’t one? Well, she says that about twenty years ago there
was a great reaction against young ladies’ drawing-room music. It was
felt to be amateurish and inefficient. All the clever young men took to
playing very fast, just to show that they could do it. Nowadays there is
no particular merit in pace, as people don’t usually play at all unless
they can do it well. So the most modern performers try to go more or
less by what the composers obviously intended. But there is still a
school which believes that there is something intrinsically a little
vicious in Largos and Andantes.”

She laughed as Hubert galloped with evident embarrassment through the
pathos of a slow movement and crashed joyfully into a finale
conveniently marked Presto. But her cousin did not laugh: his scowl of
annoyance deepened. He was sitting well forward in his deck chair,
ignoring the cushions which stretched away untenanted behind him. His
attitude irritated her; she thought that no one else at Lyndon would so
use a chair meant for relaxation. John and Hubert could lounge very
effectively, giving an attractive picture of muscularity in repose. Sir
Thomas would sag heavily, straining to their utmost the frail canvas and
tintacks. But Gerald did not seem to know how to take his ease and had
sometimes a very lofty air toward the comfort of other people. She had
once asked him, teasingly, if he never leant back in his chair; he had
laughed and adopted an easier posture, but, a moment later, she was
aware that he surveyed her own graceful lassitude with a detached
severity.

This detachment was beginning to alarm her. She had observed it on the
rare occasions when they met in town, but she had never thought that it
meant very much. At Lyndon, however, it became uncomfortably obvious
that he belonged to another world, and it did not please her that he
made no attempt to adjust himself. She was disappointed in him. He
looked unkempt and he said the wrong things. Four years had changed him
unbelievably. He had lost his vitality and wit. He was becoming
intolerant and dogmatic. She missed the personable, audacious companion
of her childish escapades. And she was sure that he criticized her.

She knew that his hateful, mysterious work, the career to which he had
prematurely sacrificed his youth, had done all this to him. She had
asked him about it, anxious to discover something of the grim world
which had absorbed him and made him a stranger. And he began to tell
her, with a growing eagerness, of his work in a Parisian clinic. She
thought it all rather horrible, shivering at the images he conjured
up—the whitewashed walls, the smell of antiseptics, the bleak exposure
of human agony, the alien standards of relentless toil. Yet these things
were his life, just as Lyndon was hers, so she must listen.

Hubert ran down at last and the piano in the drawing room was silent.
Lyndon was hushed save for the perpetual humming of mowing machines on
distant lawns. The musician and his lady came out on to the terrace.
They both seemed to be very pleased with themselves and Hubert was
humming:

“_Non mi dir_
_Bell’ idol mio_
_Che son io_
_Crudel con te._”

Lois hoped, with a faint suggestion of superiority, that the music had
not disturbed any one.

“Not at all,” rejoined Agatha sweetly. “We liked listening. But we were
wondering why Mr. Ervine always plays so fast.”

“Do I play fast?” parried Hubert, looking pleased.

“It seemed to us that we had never heard that Beethoven played so fast
before.”

“Most people play it too slowly,” he stated.

“Yes? I wonder why that is?”

“Of course, it’s a matter of taste,” Lois told them.

“Why, yes, I thought it might be that,” considered Agatha.

Hubert looked unhappy and she instantly said something which restored
his equanimity, for it gave him an opportunity of displaying his
knowledge of the moderns. He took her lead and they began a discussion
which made Lois a little jealous. It was unfair that Agatha should be
able to talk so well about things of which she really knew nothing at
all. It was not as if she even pretended to knowledge or to any settled
standards of taste. Her levity was shocking; she admitted to ignorances
which would have covered Lois with mortification, and dismissed an
acknowledged masterpiece airily as being too long and apt to bore her.
Yet Hubert did not crush her, or lay down the law; he merely exerted
himself to be amusing. It was strange how beauty could make a man forget
himself. But perhaps he was secretly so contemptuous that he did not
think her worth snubbing. Lois, remembering how didactic he could be in
other company, trusted that this was so.

Gerald also was puzzled. He perceived that his cousin was talking with
unexpected ability, and it occurred to him that she might be wasting a
very exceptional brain in this futile life of hers. Ervine was evidently
the sort of man she liked, since she was so ready to use her wits when
she talked to him. She was looking animated and amused. She did not see
what a mountebank the fellow really was. Strange creature!

Agatha thought that the silent pair must be brought back into the
conversation and turned to Lois, saying:

“Has Mr. Ervine heard you sing that religious song you have? You know!
The one about the procession.”

Lois was alarmed, wondering which of the songs she would rather not sing
to Hubert was about to be disinterred. Agatha, however, recollected the
name and it was quite a safe one. Hubert leapt at it delightedly and
began to hum:

“_La foule autour d’un chêne antique_
_S’incline, en adorant._”

“Wonderful, that octave descent!” he told them. “Have you ever heard
Mass in a Breton church? Have you seen the wave that goes over the
people when the Host is raised? Like the wind over a sea of corn. . . .
It’s thrilling. He’s got it exactly. That’s devotional, if ever music
was.”

“Not a bit of it,” put in Gerald, seizing his opportunity. “I don’t
agree with you at all. When first I heard that thing it struck me as
being absolutely false. Music can’t be devotional unless it’s written
devotionally. That fellow isn’t on his knees himself. He’s outside the
thing, thinking how effective it all is. It may be a magnificent song,
but it’s too self-conscious to be devotional. It doesn’t in the least
remind me of Mass in a Breton church; at least, I’m sure it wouldn’t if
I’d ever heard Mass in a Breton church. But it does convey an excellent
impression of you, Ervine, being thrilled at the simple faith of the
peasant.”

“It’s always interesting,” said Hubert, in a nasty voice, “to entrap the
scientific mind into an opinion on the arts. You especially, Blair, are
generally so cautious. You stray so rarely beyond the fields of medical
science and social economics. It’s a treat to hear you give yourself
away.”

“I expect he includes music in social economics,” said Agatha, who was
entertained by the antagonism between the men. “They are so amazingly
elastic, you know. They can be made to include almost anything.”

“Not music,” Hubert assured her. “Dear lady, music at least has nothing
economic about it. We may thank Heaven for that!”

Agatha frowned, not at Hubert’s piety, but because she did not like
people who said “dear lady.” She was quite pleased with Gerald for
replying contentiously:

“Yes, it has. All art is founded upon economics.”

Hubert groaned.

“But it is,” persisted Gerald. “Every opinion you express betrays your
social status. Your tastes are all acquired tastes; and acquired tastes
are the mark of the man of leisure.”

“Well, there’s something in that,” agreed Hubert.

“And what’s an acquired taste but a piece of conspicuous waste? Waste of
time. Proof that the acquirer has time to waste. Proof that he needn’t
work. Why do Chinese grandees let their finger-nails grow? Why do they
crush their wives’ feet? Same reason.”

Hubert remained contemptuously silent, but Lois contributed a remark.
She thought it was time she spoke, so she hazarded:

“Taste isn’t always confined to the leisured classes, surely. What
about—er—Robert Burns, for instance?”

“Do you think his taste was always very good?” asked Gerald.

“Well, then—genius,” she amended.

“Not at all the same thing,” Hubert told her.

She saw that it was not, but was uncertain whether genius or taste were
the nicer quality to possess. Gerald continued to dogmatize about the
leisured classes:

“Taste is merely a laborious form of auto-suggestion, upon which only an
idle man can embark. But, like a public-school education, it gives you a
certain _cachet_ by reason of its very uselessness. Look at it like
this. The leisured class was originally released from the necessity of
earning its own bread in order that it might preserve the State in
safety. As things become more civilized this work gets handed over to
paid officials and then the mere possession of leisure comes to be the
mark of the aristocrat. People invent all these ways of showing they are
leisured—sport and culture and so on. Complete bureaucracy and the
golden age of art generally arrive together. A really useful aristocracy
doesn’t have time for culture. It’s too busy doing its job; governing
the herd and fighting the foe, and all that sort of thing. Its pleasures
are simple and it shares them with the masses. The Norman knight, even
the hunting squire in the eighteenth century, was not so far removed in
culture from the hind at the plough as Clewer is from one of his farm
labourers.”

John put his head out of the window behind them and said: “I don’t
agree.”

He had been sitting in the smoking room with Sir Thomas, but, catching
the drift of Gerald’s remarks, he now came and balanced on the low
window sill, explaining:

“I’m not an aristocrat who has left off being really useful. I spent
most of to-day in a stuffy courthouse fining people for riding their
bicycles on the pavement, don’t you know. And what do I get for it?
Somebody has to do it. But why should I?”

“Now, Clewer! Do you really think that bullying people two days a week
can be called a life work?”

“That’s not all,” said John modestly. “Agatha’s mother says I’m going
into Parliament some day. Of course,” he added, with British haste, “I
don’t pretend to artistic tastes and so on. But I know what I like, and
I don’t deny that having decent things about the place,” he glanced over
his perfect lawns and then at his wife, “pictures and things, you
know—it does make a difference to me. And my point is that these chaps
owe it to us for all we do for them.”

Agatha laughed, as she always did when her husband referred to the
proletariat as “these chaps.” But she grew grave when she heard Gerald
say:

“Well, I admit that you are more useful than Ervine here, and
consequently you make fewer claims to culture. It only bears out what I
say. That’s why the women of the leisured class go in for art more, on
the whole, than the men do.”

“Oh, the women,” she murmured. “We are perfect monuments of conspicuous
waste, I suppose.”

“Of course you are. The ideal of beauty set up before the women of a
leisured class is almost always incompatible with usefulness. They must
look incapable of hard work; their dress must hamper them; their health
is often injured; their duties as mothers are set aside. They are to be
decorative luxuries, unfitted for any uses save one, and they must look
it. Simply because that’s a standard of appearance which can’t be
attained by the working classes. Women like——”

His eye wandered round the company and he looked a little disconcerted
for a moment. Then he boldly continued:

“Such women—women of the odalisque type, are symbols of an assured,
unearned income. A piece of blatant waste, like a scratch handicap.”

He broke off and met the glance of his cousin. She sat there, looking so
like and yet so unlike his lost love that he was silenced. He could
scarcely believe that this was not she but the husk of her, the
beautiful tomb, the unhappy, corruptible flesh which had once clothed an
ardent spirit. He had to remind himself that the soul was gone, dead and
buried beneath the gorgeousness of Lyndon.

She had listened to his strictures upon her and her kind without
modifying her languorous pose. With a gentle mockery she looked him over
and then gave him that quick, soft smile which was her last weapon. Her
husband marked it and grinned.

“I know that in theory beauty and utility should go together,” she said
mildly. “But practically I have never found that they do. Do you really
find most idle women plain, Gerald?”

Very few men could have continued to say that they did, but he was
obdurate. He considered the question, staring at his boots, and then
said:

“I see a good many in a professional way. They are not beautiful. They
are generally appalling.”

“But,” she took him up with more energy, “you don’t see anything to
admire in these wretched, squalid women one sees in slums and places,
surely? You don’t call them beautiful?”

“An overworked woman is a shocking sight,” he agreed. “Though not as bad
as one who does no work at all. Our society is made up of extremes. We
have lost all standards of how a woman should look.”

“A beautiful woman,” observed Hubert, “is a work of art in herself. But
then we have learnt that Blair has no use for works of art.”

“I never said that,” exclaimed Gerald. “Works of art are all right. So
are artists. But I don’t include them in the leisured class. The man of
leisure is an amateur. When he leaves off being that, he leaves off
being a man of leisure. His art isn’t an exploit, it’s a profession.”

“Quite,” said Hubert. “I agree. But the cultured amateur forms the cream
of the artist’s public.”

“I doubt it. He’s a drone, and inclined to demand work which only drones
can appreciate. Work which is an acquired taste . . .”

The sight of James Clewer wandering round the corner of the house
reminded them that at Lyndon they were not all drones. They had an
artist with them. Agatha called to him and he joined them with an
expression of vague dissatisfaction.

“What were you looking for, James?”

“Oh—for Dolly.”

“Dolly? What Dolly?”

“Dolly Kell.”

“Kell! Kell, the housemaid? What did you want?”

“Some bits of rag to clean my brushes.”

“I’ll tell her to bring some up to you. Listen! Do our standards of
taste make any difference to the pictures you paint?”

“What?”

James looked terribly startled.

“We are discussing taste. You know; saying one picture is second-rate
and another decorative, and so on. You must have heard it done. Do you
see any point in it?”

“I know what you mean. In Paris they used to talk a lot about those
things. The ones who drew worst talked most. I didn’t listen.”

“Then it makes no difference to you what we think of art?”

“No! Why should it?”

“We are the cream of your public.”

James looked horrified. He cast a scared glance round the group and
withdrew hastily. John, who was afraid they would begin discussing art
again, looked at his watch and mentioned that the first gong had gone
some time ago. They dispersed, leaving the issue undecided. Twenty
minutes later John opened the door between his room and Agatha’s, and
finding that her maid had gone, he left it ajar so that he could talk to
her while he finished dressing.

“Not a bad sort, Ervine,” he called through. “I quite like him, in spite
of his parlour tricks. Hope he and Lois make a match of it.”

“They seem to be very well suited,” replied Agatha. “Do you know at all
what Lady Clewer thinks of it? It struck me that she is taking pains to
keep them apart.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. It doesn’t mean disapproval. She thinks it puts a
girl’s price up to keep her well chaperoned. I think I agree.”

“You would.”

“And in any case, I happen to know that Mamma was getting rather worried
about Lois and James. Thought they saw too much of each other. Rather
late in the day, what?”

“It’s perfect nonsense.”

“’Course it is. James is more presentable than he was, and that’s all
you can say for him. Lois wouldn’t look at him and I can’t say I see
much sign of his looking at Lois. But Mamma’s anxious. It’s natural in a
mother to get worried, I suppose. They all do.”

Agatha said nothing. She had never, consciously, been a mother. Her
child, though born alive, had not survived long enough to engage her
attention. By the time she had recovered from the anæsthetic
sufficiently to ask for it her brief maternity was already over.

John continued, after a pause:

“No, what really does annoy me about James is the impossible way he goes
chasing round after that housemaid. You never saw that scene the other
day. She was polishing the floor in the library when we all went up to
find some book or other. The poor girl was trying to melt away quietly,
as she certainly should have done; but not a bit of it! James rushes up
to her, greets her effusively as his dear Dolly, and inquires after her
aunt’s bronchitis. ’Pon my word, I thought he meant to kiss her!”

“Well, but isn’t she a very old friend of his? I’m sure Lady Clewer told
me that her aunt was housekeeper here and ran the place when your mother
died.”

“Old Mrs. Kell, do you mean?”

“Yes. She’s Kell’s aunt by marriage, and she’s practically brought her
up. I believe the child had a mother, but couldn’t live at home because
of a very unsatisfactory stepfather who ultimately went off his head or
something. I know Lady Clewer told me some very tragic story when first
I engaged the girl. She seems to have stayed here a good deal with her
aunt when she was little. You must have been away at school, so you
don’t remember. But, being much of an age with James, she used to play
with him. So he really has some reason for asking after her aunt’s
bronchitis.”

“It’s not that I object to, it’s his manner of doing it. She didn’t like
it at all, poor girl. She’s well trained enough, and she hadn’t an idea
what to make of him. She was very stiff and ‘Thank you, sir, I’m sure’
with him. And then he gapes at her as if she’d slapped his face and asks
if anything is the matter. And it isn’t as if these scenes only took
place in the bosom of the family. Blair and Bragge were there, and what
they made of it I don’t know. I don’t take to Blair, by the way, Agatha.
Talks too much, doesn’t he? I was expecting you to shut him up. You
don’t generally tolerate people who preach.”

“He doesn’t generally talk as much as that. I egged him on to-day.”

“I didn’t think much of his views either. Practically Socialism, don’t
you know. Bad taste to force it on people.”

“His general turn of mind is affected a good deal by living in France so
much, I think.”

“What? The way he talks about women do you mean?”

“No, I didn’t,” she said with some irritation. “I’m sure I don’t know
where he got his views from, and I don’t agree with them. I mean that
his manner, the way he discusses things, puts us out. It mayn’t be
French particularly; he may have picked it up in America. Only he takes
exactly the same tone about everything, even when he’s serious. English
people put on a special manner to show when they are serious; they
either become solemn or excessively flippant. And anyhow they don’t like
discussing really important things. They seem to think that there is
something belittling in conversation. They don’t regard it as
continentals do.”

“Awful beasts, the French,” asserted John cheerfully. “They made me
sick. Agatha! If you can’t fix these studs, I shall have to ring for
Peters.”

She strolled in, cool and elegant, and arranged his difficulties for
him. As she did so he heard her murmur:

“Passionate . . . discursive . . . and unsentimental. . . .”

“What’s that?”

With an arm behind her shoulders he detained her.

“I was trying to sum up in my own mind the characteristics of the best
of the French nation. But they are rather fox, goose, and cabbage
qualities to the Anglo-Saxon mind. Really, John, take care, or you’ll
have powder coming off on your sleeve.”

“You can put on some more in a minute when I’ve finished. Tell me, is
that chap—Blair—what is it—passionate, discursive . . .”

“And unsentimental. He might be. I don’t know him as well as I used.”

John reflected upon the first of these qualifications and said:

“Well, now, I should have called him rather a St. Thingummy. You know,
the fellow who threw the inkpot at the lady. What are you laughing at?
He is. I saw a beautiful woman smile at him this afternoon and he didn’t
so much as blink.”

“He didn’t see,” she said quickly.

“Oh, didn’t he? I’m inclined to think that he did. But I expect he
thinks it’s an insult to argue with a woman as if she was one. He’s that
sort.”

“What! You think it was on purpose?”

“Of course it was. The man’s not an absolute fool.”

“He thought it would be rather degrading to lower the conversation to
the level of gallantry.”

“He’s that sort, I tell you. A cold-blooded fish.”

“But it would have been, wouldn’t it?”

“What?”

“Rather degrading?”

“I don’t know.” He released her as the gong rang. “The whole discussion
bored me personally. Does my sleeve really need brushing?”

Upon the following morning, John and Sir Thomas departed with some
ceremony for the Cheltenham races. The car which was to take them was a
large one, but when they had packed themselves into it, with their
greatcoats, and their road maps and their glasses, they filled it
completely. The other guests, gathered on the steps, called injunctions
as to the money they wished these emissaries to make for them. John
replied briefly that he would put nothing on for anybody but himself;
Sir Thomas, however, agreed with leering alacrity to make a little for
Cynthia.

As the chauffeur was climbing into his place, the lady of the house
appeared among the group upon the steps and informed the world that it
was going to be a wet day. It had been bright too early, said she.
Everyone was surprised to see her, for she seldom rose before
lunch-time, and her statement that it had been bright too early was
greeted with some mockery upon this account.

The car hummed up the avenue and several large rain-drops spotted the
whiteness of the steps in answer to her prophecy. A sudden wind blew all
the leaves silver against a leaden sky, and the party fled into the hall
for shelter. Agatha then explained the reason of her early appearance.
She was due to lunch with her mother on the other side of Oxfordshire
and would be starting immediately.

“I don’t suppose I’ll get away until terribly late,” she said. “My
mother will have a hundred things to talk about. I’m rather afraid,”
turning to Hubert, “that I may be a little late for your lecture. It’s
at six, isn’t it? But you’ll forgive me? I’ll get away as soon as ever I
can. I’ll come home through the village and run straight in to the
Institute. Then I can hear as much as possible.”

Hubert, who had been looking very miserable since breakfast, assured her
with perfect sincerity that he would not mind in the least if she missed
his lecture altogether. Looking round cautiously to see that the dowager
was not in hearing, he said:

“I’m afraid I’m no democrat. I have no desire to lift the masses.”

“A genuine democrat hasn’t,” rejoined Gerald instantly. “He thinks they
are all right as they are.”

With an imploring look, Hubert drew Agatha aside:

“Can you tell me,” he asked nervously, “if there are any books on Dante
in this house?”

“Oh, there must be. Let’s go and look in the library.”

She took him upstairs. The library was a long, beautiful room with six
windows looking out over the park. It was seldom used by the household.
Miss Barrington worked there occasionally, and Kell, the third
housemaid, expended much labour upon the polished floor.

The chill severity of the place abashed Hubert. Its classic simplicity
made him feel slightly uncomfortable. Its long array of solid,
calf-bound books seemed to cheapen his “two-pence coloured” culture and
put him out of humour with the showy little lecture which he was
composing. It was as if the presiding spirits of the place, the scholars
and the polished stylists of the eighteenth century, were frowning on
him from the lofty cases where their busts ruled the solitude. He moved
his eye quickly from Voltaire to Johnson, and from Johnson to Swift, and
turned to examine the view from one of the windows. Even Agatha shivered
a little at the frigid atmosphere of the place with its composite smell
of erudite vellum and furniture polish.

“I’ll have a fire lighted,” she said. “It’s quite cold. Then you can
write your lecture up here in peace and quietness. But first we will
find Miss Barrington and ask her about books on Dante.”

She rang the bell.

“This is an admirable room, isn’t it?” said Hubert.

“Yes, but I’m a little afraid of it. The sight of so much learning makes
me feel that my own knowledge is very meretricious. Don’t you agree that
it ought to be rather void of furniture, like this? When I first came
here it was quite full of chesterfields; Lady Clewer is very fond of
them and in a room of this size she was really able to have as many as
she wanted. But I insisted on moving them out. Oh, Kell! Will you light
the fire, please? And will you ask Miss Barrington if she will be so
good as to come here for a moment?”

Miss Barrington, when she came, was most helpful. There was a very fine
edition of Dante, she said. Hubert’s face fell, and she hastened to add
that there were several translations, including Carlyle. There were also
Boccaccio’s Commentaries, “Il Duca di Sermoneta,” and several other
heavy-looking tomes. The lecturer regarded them dubiously.

“Let me see,” he said. “My lecture is at six this evening. I haven’t got
very long. And to tell you the truth, I’ve written absolutely nothing
yet. I know nothing about the fellow, you see. Really nothing! You
haven’t by any chance some quite small handbook which epitomizes the
whole thing?”

Agatha had seated herself in a tall, straight-backed chair. She looked
at him with severity.

“Oh, no,” she protested.

“I’m afraid it will have to be.”

“But not from you!”

“The second-rate at second-hand? Dear lady, what else am I to do in the
time? I put it to you! I didn’t ask to give this lecture, did I? The
whole thing is abhorrent to me.”

“I have a little book,” suggested Miss Barrington doubtfully. “An Oxford
Extension book. It’s called ‘The Florentine and His Age.’ It’s about two
hundred pages. Would that be any use?”

“The very thing,” cried Hubert in relief. “Will you lend it to me, Miss
Barrington?”

“I lent it to Kell, one of the housemaids, who is going to the lecture.
She told me she knew nothing about Dante. Kell! Have you finished that
book I lent you?”

Kell was on her knees lighting the fire. She now rose to her feet and
approached them. She was a pretty girl with a round freckled face,
apricot-coloured hair and tawny eyes. Her neck was as white as milk. She
surveyed Miss Barrington with sedate respect.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

“Have you finished that book on Dante?”

“Not quite, ma’am.”

“Will you bring it here? Mr. Ervine wants to look at it.”

If this demand surprised Kell she did not show it. She departed and Miss
Barrington explained:

“You see, Mr. Ervine, all the Lyndon servants belong to the Reading
Union. Lady Clewer likes it.”

This was a new aspect of Agatha, and Hubert gaped. But she laughed and
set him right:

“Not me. John’s stepmother. She is down here so much that she supervises
parish work and all that sort of thing. She really likes it and it’s a
great relief to me, for I would hate it.”

“Of course,” said Miss Barrington, “all the maids cannot go to all the
meetings. They take it in turns. This time it happened to be Kell who is
going, so I lent her the book. She is a very intelligent girl.”

“She is the friend of James’s youth that he was looking for yesterday,”
added Agatha. “I’d like to know what she thinks of Dante.”

Kell returned with the book, which she had neatly wrapped in a cover of
brown paper. The fire was lighted and Hubert was left to himself.

The hall was full of Marian superintending the disposition of some
flowers in pots. She was rather annoyed with a gardener, and was so
occupied in scolding him that Agatha was able to carry on a significant
conversation almost at her elbow.

“Lois! Will you tie my veil for me?”

Lois, who had been reading the _Tatler_ with a very disconsolate
expression, came sulkily to her side and helped to dispose of the masses
of gray tulle which were to protect her head in the landaulette.

“I can’t think, Agatha, what you want to wear a veil in a closed car
for.”

Agatha’s voice grew softer.

“Poor Mr. Ervine is in the library. I’m afraid he’s rather stuck in his
lecture. He might like help—books and things. I wish you would look in
some time this morning and see if he has all he wants.”

Lois bloomed once more. She had begun to think that he must have gone
for a walk.

“Oh, all right. I certainly will if you want me to.”

On these occasions one remembered with pleasure that Agatha was really
the mistress of Lyndon.

Hubert listened to the departing landaulette with a hopeless heart. He
had not written a word. He sat with his head buried in his hands while
the rain beat a tattoo upon the window pane. Presently Lois put her head
timidly round the door.

“How are you getting on?”

“Not at all.”

“Oh, dear! I am sorry!” She came nearer. “Have you got all the books you
want?”

“Far too many. That’s the trouble.”

He pointed to the pile of library books on the table and waved the
little atrocity in his hand.

“If Miss Barrington hadn’t taken it upon herself to prime my audience
with this little handbook, I could have copied out a chunk of it and
given it as my lecture. But the third housemaid has heard it all
already. She’d spot it if I tried.”

“Would it be any easier if you dictated to me?”

Hubert thought that it would. He might manage to sparkle a little for
her; her admiration for everything he said was rather stimulating. She
seized a pad and a pen, expectantly. After a moment’s creative
abstraction he began:

“The advent of a great poet. . . .”

He caught the eye of Voltaire.

“Come away,” it said. “You and your great poets!”

Hubert coughed and tried again in another vein.

“‘The man who has seen Hell!’ That is what they called him, those
thirteenth-century citizens of whatever it was (leave a blank space, we
can look it up in a minute), as they watched that sinister figure
shouldering its way through their crowded market-places. ‘The man who
has seen Hell!’ Not, mark you, the man who has seen Heaven, although the
Divine Comedy includes a book called the ‘Paradiso.’ Why is this? Why is
it that in both contemporary and subsequent opinion the ‘Inferno’ is
incomparably the greatest book of the three? For us in these latter days
it has, of course, lost something of its piquancy. We have forgotten
what a _Chronique Scandaleuse_ it was. But if a man of genius were to
arise in our midst to-day and versify, say the eternal tortures of
Manning and Gladstone, were he to limn for us a picture of Parnell and
Mrs. O’Shea, a second Paolo and Francesca, blown upon the gales of Hell,
we might recapture the old thrill. . . .”

He paused to draw breath and Lois diffidently protested: “I don’t know
if this is quite what Mother wants. It’s for poor people, you know. I
don’t think she wants anything amusing.”

“Oh, all right. Tear it up.”

“You don’t mind my saying so, do you?”

“Oh, no. Indeed not. I’m most anxious to please your mother. You can
have no idea how anxious.”

Lois flushed and fidgeted with the ring at the end of her pencil. Hubert
began again:

“_Lasciate ogni speranza_. . . .”

“They won’t understand Italian. You must translate it.”

“Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” said the lecturer peevishly,
adding, a moment later, “no, don’t put it. I don’t think I will begin
that way. I was going to say that this was the artist’s comment on the
condition of the mind prior to creation. But I forget why.”

“Really nobody very clever is coming,” she assured him. “It’s a much
simpler affair than you think. Why can’t you just say where he was born,
and all that; and then say what he wrote. That is the sort of thing
Mother wants.”

“Dante,” dictated Hubert. . . . “No . . . put Dante Alighieri . . . was
born in . . . in . . . I say . . . was he born in Florence, or did he go
there after he was born? Would you mind looking it up in that little
book?”

Lois studied “The Florentine and His Age.”

“It doesn’t put,” she said at last.

“Oh, Lord! What’s a book like that for if it doesn’t give you the
facts?”

“That’s the gong for lunch.”

Hubert jumped up with alacrity.

“Shall we go on after lunch?” he said. “I may feel brighter after food.”

“Of course we will,” said the obliging Lois, “if you feel it’s any use
to you.”

Marian’s face was greatly troubled when she joined them at lunch.

“This rain is terrible,” she complained. “It’s so awkward, Mr. Ervine.
They’ve just sent in to say that the big station car is out of order and
can’t possibly be put right before Monday. It’s most tiresome. Because,
of course, we all meant to drive to your lecture in it. The Village Room
is quite two miles off, across the park, and if this rain goes on it
will be much too wet to walk.”

“It’s extraordinary how these things are always happening,” said Lois.
“We have four cars, and yet I do believe that we are more often held up
for want of transport than many people who have only a motor bicycle and
a side-car.”

“Well, you see, John and Thomas have the limousine, and Agatha the
landaulette. There is the little two-seater, of course, which will take
you down to the village, Mr. Ervine. But I’m very much afraid that the
rest of us will be deprived of hearing your lecture unless it clears up.
I’m so sorry! But it’s really too wet to walk. I catch cold so easily,
and so do the girls.”

“Perhaps, as it’s such a bad day, I might postpone it,” suggested Hubert
hopefully.

“Oh, no! Please don’t do that! All the folk from the village will be
there, Mr. Ervine. And they would be so disappointed; some of them have
to walk several miles. Poor things! Their lives are so dull and it is
such a treat for them! No, don’t put it off. Only it’s so disappointing
for us. But perhaps you will read it to us later.”

“Oh, no! I couldn’t inflict it on anybody twice.”

“James will go, of course. Won’t you, James? He doesn’t mind the rain a
scrap. And Miss Barrington. You mustn’t think that everyone from Lyndon
is deserting you. And then Agatha will be dropping in on her way home.”

“But will Miss Barrington walk?” asked Hubert doubtfully. “Let me walk
with you, Clewer, and Miss Barrington can go in the two-seater.”

“Oh, but that’s quite unnecessary,” protested Miss Barrington, casting a
nervous glance at her employer. “I don’t mind the rain. I like a little
turn in the fresh air.”

“Yes, she likes it,” asserted Marian, but was interrupted by a very
tactless explosion of sneezing on the part of her secretary.

She waited in heavy patience until Miss Barrington had done.

“I say! You have got a cold!” observed Gerald.

“Oh, no! Not at all. It’s nearly gone now.”

“Do go in the car and let me walk!” urged Hubert.

“I think fresh air does a cold good,” observed Marian judicially. “I
always go out for a cold myself. And I have a few notes to be left in
the village. I think Miss Barrington had better walk. Mr. Blair, will
you care to go? Lady Clewer would have room for you in the landaulette
on the way home, I’m sure, so there would only be the walk one way.”

“Yes, I’d like to come,” agreed Gerald.

“There, you see, Mr. Ervine! Three people are going from Lyndon in spite
of the rain. You mustn’t think we have all deserted you.”

“Dolly Kell is going, so it’s four really,” observed James.

“Hush, James!” remarked his stepmother mechanically.

A silence fell upon the lunchers while they devoured roast beef and
Yorkshire pudding. Hubert eyed Gerald.

“You’d really better not come, Blair,” he said. “You’ll be bored stiff,
you know.”

“But I want to come. I know nothing at all about Dante. I’ll hold an
umbrella over Miss Barrington.”

Hubert sighed and wished the affair well over. But he could not quarrel
with an occasion which was to secure him an afternoon alone with Lois.
When they emerged from the library at tea-time the lecture was written
and neatly fastened together with a paper clip.

“Sooner you than me,” said Clara, the scullery maid, as she peered out
into the rain. “It’s a good thing your boots is thick.”

“I’m glad to get a chance of a walk,” said Dolly Kell. “I’m not afraid
of a bit of rain.”

“This isn’t a bit of rain; it’s a flood. It’s terrible. There won’t be
many there, I shouldn’t think. I wouldn’t go, not if I was you, Dolly.”

“Oh, I got to. Old Lady Clewer would see if I wasn’t there. She’s so
sharp. Everyone from the house is going.”

“Yes. I seen Mr. James waiting by the yard gate.” Clara popped her head
out of the scullery window for a moment. “He’s there still. I wonder who
he’s waiting for, don’t you?”

“Not knowing, can’t say.” Dolly was not deceived by Clara’s innocent
curiosity. “I’ve got something better to wonder at. I’d get on with my
vegetables if I was you.”

She buttoned up the last button of her mackintosh and moved down the
passage.

“Oh! Ain’t you going out through the yard?”

“Never you mind what way I’m going out.”

A little side door at the end of the old schoolroom passage led into the
shrubbery. Through this Dolly slipped, holding her skirts well away from
the splashings of soaked bushes. As she picked her way into the avenue
she was glad of the prudence which had prompted her to spend her last
quarter’s wages on new boots and an umbrella instead of a summer
costume. The drive was deep in puddles and the rain pattered everywhere.
It fell in great splashes from the trees and dimpled the flowing
gutters.

She thought with compunction of poor Mr. James waiting in the downpour
by the yard gate. Her evasion seemed to be a little heartless. It would
have been kinder, after all, to have gone out by the yard. But then she
must have rebuffed his offers of escort under the inquisitive eye of
Clara, who would have seen it all from the scullery window. She had not
the courage.

This affair of Mr. James was very worrying to Dolly. It was worse than
any of the “social puzzles” in _Home Words_. She did not know how she
ought to act. They had been, of course, playmates and equals, but that
was a long time ago. On her return to Lyndon as third housemaid she knew
that things ought to be very different. He was a young gentleman now,
and it was her business to remind him of the fact should he show signs
of forgetting it.

She had grown up in the creed that Mr. James was “put upon.” Her aunt,
Mrs. Job Kell, had never liked the second Lady Clewer and her
interfering ways. The dislike was mutual, for Marian had been quick to
divine the element of contempt which lay behind the old housekeeper’s
civility. She had pensioned her off at the first opportunity, feeling
that old retainers are sometimes better at a distance.

Their hottest battles had been fought over James. Mrs. Kell, who had
mothered him from birth, was enraged by Marian’s unfavourable comments
on his person and intelligence.

“Soft-headed,” she would say to Dolly. “She’s soft-headed herself. You
mark my words, if anything ails that boy it’s too much brains, not too
little. Didn’t I rear him from a babby? I ought to know. He was always
as sharp as they’re made. A regular old-fashioned child if ever there
was one; ever so knowing. You remember him yourself. The funny little
dear!”

Dolly remembered a sturdy, ugly child some months older than herself. A
lonely, secretive boy he had been, but excellent company when he had got
over his shyness. They had played endless, mysterious games in the
gardens at Lyndon. They had kept house in the old brick potting shed,
cooking elaborate meals in Dolly’s little saucepans and rearing a large
family of dolls. With these, James, as a father, was allowed very little
say though he sometimes took the stick to them when they got beyond
petticoat government. The household reflected Clewer luxuries and the
artless simplicity of the four-room cottage. Dolly, having despatched
the children to school, would scrub out the “liberry” and announce:

“Now I’ll have a good cup of tea and a lay down.”

These memories made her feel very kindly toward him. She was a
good-natured girl, in spite of her sharp tongue, and hated giving real
pain. She soon perceived that she was wounding him deeply; he would
stare at her, when she snubbed him, with a startled grief in his eyes.
As she grew to know the household better, and saw the scorn and derision
in which he was held, she became very sorry for him and longed to unbend
to his wistful advances. But this would have been to carry on with a
gentleman of the house, a lapse unpardonable. Of course, he was quite
different from any other gentleman she had ever met; he always had been.
She had once said as much to her aunt, whereupon Mrs. Kell had become
very mysterious and refused to discuss the subject. She said she didn’t
know but what it mightn’t be accounted for.

The road across the park led through an iron gate into the wet village
street. The postman, one of Dolly’s admirers, was clearing the box at
the corner.

“Hullo, Dolly!” he greeted her cheerfully. “Rain-water’s good for the
complexion, so they say.”

She passed him with her round chin in the air.

“You’ll catch plenty of it in your mouth that way, if you’re thirsty,”
he called after her.

She stalked on, her head held so high that she failed to perceive the
approach of the grocer’s young man and almost collided with him. The
postman guffawed rudely in the distance, but young Mr. Hopkins, nothing
daunted, fell into step beside her.

“Good afternoon, Miss Kell,” he ventured. “It’s a wet day.”

“It is,” she agreed.

“You going a walk?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s a wet day for a walk, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you’ll be going a walk after chapel, Sunday?”

“I may and I mayn’t. What of it?”

“I was wondering,” he said diffidently, “if you’ve not fixed up with any
other chap, that is . . .”

“Oh, I haven’t fixed up with anybody, thanks. And I’m not going to. I’d
sooner walk by myself.”

“Really now . . .”

“I would. Till I can find a man that can talk sense, thank you, Mr.
Hopkins. I haven’t seen one yet.”

“If you’d only let me come along I wouldn’t talk at all. Would that
please you?”

“It wouldn’t. I said a man that could talk sense, not anybody dumb!”

He looked a little dashed, but toiled by her side until they reached the
Village Institute. Dolly turned in at the gate.

“You going in there?” he said, gaping.

“Oh, no, of course not,” snapped Dolly. “I’m only going to climb trees
in the garden.”

“You’re very clever, aren’t you?”

He was beginning to get riled.

“Well, what do you want to ask such a silly question for? Was I going
in. Couldn’t you see I was?”

“What’s taking you in, anyway?”

“Haven’t you eyes? It’s wrote large enough.”

She pointed to a bill on the paling executed in Miss Barrington’s best
poster writing. It said:

CLEWER VILLAGE INSTITUTE

June Session, 1914.
On Friday next, at 6 p.m.
Mr. HUBERT ERVINE will lecture on:
“DANTE, THE GREAT ITALIAN POET.”
Free to all. Come early.

“Dant the Eyetalian Poit!” read Mr. Hopkins. “Who’s he when he’s at
home?”

“Well, you are a Mr. Ignorance and no mistake. You didn’t ought to say
Dant. Dunty! That’s the proper way to say it.”

Thus Dolly, who had heard all about Dunty from Miss Barrington.

“Well, but what d’you want to bother your head about him for? That’s
what I want to know.”

“Curiosity killed the cat. Good-bye, Mr. Hopkins.”

Too much incensed to answer, he strode on and left her.

The Clewer Village Institute was a dreary place. A lending library of an
instructive nature, carefully chosen by Marian, lined the walls. All the
books were uniformly clad in drab holland covers. The baize table near
the stove was littered with old newspapers of a strictly Tory nature and
some pamphlets issued by the Primrose League. Two Union Jacks, draped
between the windows, testified to the patriotism of the village of
Lyndon.

As Dolly shook out her mackintosh she wondered anxiously how long James
would wait in the rain. She trusted that he would soon give her up. It
was so very wet and he had not got on his Burberry. She wished she could
have made him put it on without sacrificing any of her hard-won
aloofness. The room was empty, but this did not surprise her, for she
knew she was early. With the patience of a well-disciplined nature she
settled herself to tranquil inactivity on a bench at the very back of
the room. Divested of her mackintosh she was revealed, supple and
sturdy, in a navy coat and skirt of indifferent fit. Her best black hat,
abob with cherries, hid the apricot meshes of her hair.

She was flushed with the routing of Mr. Hopkins, though the suppression
of followers was an art in which she was much practised. She had many,
but she detested them all and was determined never to marry. Her young
intelligence had been dreadfully haunted by the shadow of that maniac
stepfather who had made life so frightful for her mother. It was a
memory which still terrified her and distorted her ideas; the risks of
marriage, its possible disasters, seemed to her insurmountable. Nor was
it likely that she would meet a man who could inspire her to face these
difficulties; strength and weakness alike antagonized her, since the one
stirred her to revolt against possible domination and the other roused
her ridicule. An affectionate, intuitive creature, built for womanly
ends, she was likely to remain single.

The rain drummed on the roof and the large clock over the door ticked
loudly. She began to grow nervous, wishing that somebody else would turn
up. Suddenly she had a perfectly horrible apprehension. Suppose that she
were all the audience! It might well be. She would never have come
herself, on such a nasty evening, if she had not been obliged. But it
would be awkward if she were the only one. Of course there would be the
party from “the house.” But Dolly knew that it was for herself and her
likes that this lecture was given. It was meant to elevate her. She did
not mind being elevated along with other proletarians, but she barred
the notion of enduring it quite by herself. If nobody from the village
put in an appearance she would have to sit marooned on the benches
designed for the commonalty. A semicircle of her betters, installed in
armchairs behind the lecturer’s back, would confront her for at least an
hour. Every time she looked up she would face a battery of aristocratic
eyes. She was a brave girl, but she quailed at the idea. She would have
withdrawn had she dared; but, with old Lady Clewer coming, flight was
impossible. Old Lady Clewer saw everything, except perhaps the way Miss
Cynthia was carrying on with that Sir Thomas. But then Miss Cynthia was
very deep.

She strained her ears to catch the approach of the station car which
would bring the family. It was surely time they arrived. The clatter of
boots and a great scraping in the porch relieved her. She was, it
seemed, to have at least one companion.

But her heart sank again when James appeared.

“Hullo, Dolly!” he exclaimed. “I thought you couldn’t be coming. I
waited by the back gate for you.”

Dolly grew pink.

“I went out by the shrubberies, sir,” she observed.

“Well, why didn’t you tell me?” he persisted. “I wanted to walk with
you.”

“I’m sure I’m very sorry, sir.”

“But why didn’t you? Are you angry about anything? What is the matter
with you? Why are you so different? Because if you are angry I wish
you’d tell me why,” he complained.

After all there was no great need to be shy of him, for she had known
him all her life. Now that they were alone together she had much better
speak plainly to him.

“I’m not angry. It’s only this. Now we are grown up it’s quite different
to being little. We can’t be friends like we used to be. Our stations in
life is so different.”

“I don’t mind about our stations in life.”

“Ah, but I do. A girl like me can’t be friends with a gentleman without
people thinking things.”

“They always do,” he argued. “It’s no use to worry about what people
think. I never do. I used to. But when I saw that they’d really rather
think wrong than right I gave it up.”

“Yes. You can. But I can’t. I got my living to earn.”

He digested this and grew grave.

“It’s very hard, that is,” he said at last.

“It can’t be helped,” quoth Dolly. “We didn’t make the world. If we had,
it would have been different, I daresay.”

“It would,” agreed James feelingly.

Dolly remembered with dismay that she had not called him “sir” for at
least two minutes. This was always happening to her. Also she was
inclined to relapse, insensibly, from the refined grammar and diction
with which she usually addressed her employers. It seemed more natural,
somehow, to converse with him in the rough-and-ready speech of her own
caste.

“This sort of thing is maddening,” he declared. “I like you better than
any one I know. I always have. I don’t suppose I shall ever find any one
I like better. It isn’t only the people here . . . I used to think that
it would be different if I got away and went to Paris. But it wasn’t.
Paris was all right for working in. I learnt a lot. But I felt just as
out of it there as here. I never knew what to say to them. And they all
laughed at me, like they do here. Even the ones who liked my work did.”

“Well, you know, sir, you act a bit queer sometimes.”

“I can’t help it. Do you see anything very serious the matter with me,
Dolly?”

“I don’t see there’s much wrong with you, I don’t. And Auntie doesn’t
neither.”

“But you are the only ones. And isn’t it hard?”

“Everyone has their troubles,” interrupted Dolly.

“I know. But why? I don’t want my station in life. Who gave it to me,
anyway?”

“Almighty God,” she told him austerely.

“Well, I suppose so,” he assented.

She was overjoyed to hear at least two people in the porch, but wished
that he would move from his pleading posture at her side. The newcomers
turned out to be Mr. Blair and Jimmy Pyewacket, the boy who weeded the
garden. She was distressed to think that Mr. Blair was a visitor at the
house, but consoled herself with the reflection that he was a born
gentleman and wouldn’t get thinking things, even if James’s attitude did
look a little odd. This was a great compliment to Mr. Blair, for Dolly’s
standards were cruelly high, and very few of the Lyndon guests were
allowed by her to be born gentlemen.

James, with the air of a man of the world, immediately effected an
introduction.

“Miss Kell, Mr. Blair. But you ought to know her, for she brings your
shaving water in the morning, doesn’t she?”

His triumphant glance told Dolly that he believed himself to have done
exactly the right thing upon this occasion. Let her retract her
statement that he acted a bit queer!

Mr. Blair was looking a little puzzled and she set them right.

“Not me, sir. Mr. Peters waits on gentlemen staying in the house.”

“That explains it,” said Mr. Blair. “I thought you must have changed
very much since this morning. Are we all the audience?”

Dolly looked round for Jimmy Pyewacket and saw him edging away toward
the door. She made a dash at him and detained him.

“Now then, young Jimmy! You don’t! Do stay, there’s a little love! I
don’t want to have to sit on these benches all by myself.”

“These gents’ll sit with you,” said Jimmy, poised for flight.

“No they won’t. They have to sit on the platform with the family.”

“Shall we?” exclaimed the gents, and Mr. Blair added: “We won’t. We’d
much rather sit on the benches. What’s the point of sitting behind the
lecturer’s back?”

“There won’t be any family,” observed James. “We are all that’s coming.
So we can sit where we like, I should think.”

“Nobody coming!” cried Dolly. “Not Lady Clewer nor Miss Lois?”

“Not they. It’s raining and their car is out of order.”

Dolly cursed her fate. If she had only known this she would have
absconded herself.

“You mustn’t go, you know,” went on Mr. Blair, attacking Jimmy in his
turn. “Think of the wretched lecturer! Four are better than three.”

“It’s so cold,” objected Jimmy, shivering at the damp odour of the
place. “The stove ought to of been lighted.”

“It’s laid,” said James, inspecting it. “Shall I light it?”

“Will you stay if we do?” pleaded Mr. Blair of Jimmy, who nodded
graciously.

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” Dolly encouraged them.

So they lit the stove and the four students of Dante gathered round the
crackling sticks. Dolly could not digest the idea that no one else was
coming from the house.

“But isn’t Miss Barrington coming?” she asked. “She always does.”

“He,” James indicated Mr. Blair, “wouldn’t let her. She has a very
sneezy cold. And when we were all in the hall after tea he told her to
go to bed. You should have heard him, Dolly! It was like Mamma and God
and a magistrate all at once. She went rather quickly!”

“My most effective professional manner,” murmured Mr. Blair. “She wasn’t
fit to be up at all.”

There was a great snorting and tooting outside as a little car bustled
up to the gate. The lecturer, nervously grasping a roll of MS., sidled
into the room. He glanced around, prepared for the beefy stare of
innumerable rustics, all the simple village folk who would be so
disappointed if he did not brighten their lives. He beheld empty
benches. The group round the stove rose to receive him in sympathetic
solemnity.

“I’m afraid most of your audience has been frightened by the weather,”
observed Gerald Blair.

Jimmy Pyewacket said hopefully:

“The rain’s stopping. P’raps some more will come.”

Hubert clutched at this.

“Yes, they might,” he said. “Shall we wait a bit in case they do?”

There was a pause and Dolly said encouragingly:

“Just as you like, sir.”

So they all sat down again and the warming stove drew clouds of steam
from their wet boots. A few minutes of uneasy silence passed. At last
Hubert thought fit to ask Dolly if she liked poetry.

“Some poetry I like,” she said. “There was one piece I read. I saw it in
the pictures first and it was beautiful. So I read the book.
‘Evangeline’ it was called. All about the olden times.”

“Ah—Longfellow!”

“That’s right.”

“You like his works, then?”

“Yes, sir. I think it’s beautiful.”

“And what,” asked Hubert, “do you think of Dante?”

Dolly was nonplussed and said she didn’t know much about him.

“But you read that little book . . . er . . . ‘The Florentine and His
Age’?”

“Pat and his Ape!” muttered James, with such concentration of scorn that
Dolly stifled a giggle.

“I read a bit of it, sir,” she replied.

“And what did you make of it?”

“It was a very nice book, I’m sure,” she said politely.

She had no wish to hear more of Dante. What she had read in “The
Florentine and His Age” had been quite enough. The fellow was,
apparently, a foreigner, an idolatrous Roman Catholic, a blasphemer, and
a bad husband. A shiftless creature, moreover, incapable of supporting
himself, and very rude about the steep stairs of the kind gentleman who
patronized him. His picture in the frontispiece had not been pretty. And
his poem, all about Hell, revolted her. Her stepfather, whose mania had
a religious turn in it, had talked a good deal about Hell, with all the
gusto of a cruel and perverted imagination. She thought the Florentine
must have been a little like him.

A few minutes elapsed and nobody could think of anything further to say.
At length another car was heard to arrive. Agatha, sumptuous in furs and
veils, slipped noiselessly through the door as though desirous not to
disturb a lecture which she imagined to be in full swing. She also
looked at the empty benches with a surprised air and then at the people
round the stove. Taking them in she became mirthful.

“Now, Mr. Ervine,” she commanded, when she had heard the facts. “Tell
the truth! You’d much rather not read that lecture at all, wouldn’t
you?”

“Much rather,” said Hubert earnestly.

“Well?” she looked round her with a question in her eyes. “What about
it? Shall we let him off?”

Everyone fidgeted. At length someone mentioned the dowager.

“We won’t tell,” laughed the mistress of Lyndon. “Burn it, and we’ll all
vow it was the best lecture we ever heard.”

With jubilant thankfulness Hubert thrust his lecture into the stove. He
sent a benediction with it, however, for it had secured him an afternoon
with his love. Agatha sat down in one of the most comfortable of the
armchairs and stretched a silken ankle toward the blazing manuscript.

“We must wait here for a bit,” she said, “to give him time to deliver
his lecture. What shall we do? I wish we could roast chestnuts.”

“I got peanuts,” volunteered Jimmy, producing a dirty paper bag.

“What are peanuts?” asked Lady Clewer, peering. “Can one roast them? Are
they nice?”

Jimmy said that they were very nice and was commanded to superintend the
roasting. Agatha looked round the room.

“This is fun,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve enjoyed myself in
this place. What shall we play at? Consequences? No!” She glanced at
Hubert. “It’s a risky game. Too risky. Shall we tell ghost stories?”

“Ah! Ghost stories!” said Hubert at once. “That reminds me of something
I heard in Morocco. . . .”

If ghost stories were to be told, he had better demonstrate how it
should be done. He had a horror of the amateur narrator. As a matter of
fact he was really rather good at it and enthralled them for half an
hour with one startling anecdote after another. Jimmy’s eyes opened
wider and wider and he edged closer to Dolly’s protecting skirts. And
she, as the rainy dusk drew in, thought nervously of the lonely walk
through the park. It would be very difficult to refuse James’s company.

At last Agatha decided that enough time had elapsed and they might
return in safety. Jimmy scooted off into the twilight as though all the
demons of Morocco were at his heels. The others paused uncertainly in
the porch until Agatha declared that nobody must walk home in this rain.
The little two-seater was nowhere in sight, but she insisted that they
could all pack somehow into the landaulette. Hubert was put in front
with the chauffeur and the four others climbed in behind. The roof was
too low for any one to stand in comfort and the only way for them all to
get in was for the men to sit with the ladies perched on their knees.
Dolly would have preferred Mr. Blair’s knees, but she was given to
James. She vaguely understood why Mr. Ervine had been put in front; he
would not have supported this intimacy at all well. As it was, she felt
that the barriers raised against James were sensibly weakened by this
enforced proximity. The car, turning into the drive, swayed them all
backward and forward so that she nearly fell off his knee. He put an arm
about her to keep her steady. She looked at his hand as it lay in her
lap. It was a broad, muscular hand, not over clean, and stained with
paint; a working hand, like her own. Behind her shoulder, through the
thin cloth of her coat, she could feel the strong beating of his heart.
Consciously she checked an impulse of tenderness and comprehension. She
tried to sit on his knee in a distant and respectful manner. Lady Clewer
might think it very forward in her to allow him to put his arm round her
waist. She glanced nervously at the others.

She need not have disturbed herself. Lady Clewer was secure in the arm
of her cousin. She also was staring pensively at the hand of the man who
held her. Dolly was struck for the first time by her employer’s
youthfulness; not more than twenty-one, so they said. You’d never think
it, she had such a stately way with her. But it wasn’t really very
stately for a married lady to sit in the lap of a strange gentleman,
cousin or no cousin. And she was looking as if she enjoyed it too.

Arrived at Lyndon, Dolly ran round to the back door and upstairs to
change her dress. Later in the evening she was sent with a tray of
invalid delicacies to Miss Barrington, whose cold was very much worse.
In the sick room she encountered the dowager, who was determined that
her secretary should be competently nursed.

“Well, Kell,” said she, “and how did you enjoy the lecture?”

“Very much indeed, thank you, my lady,” replied Dolly mindful of
instruction.

“And was Mr. Ervine very interesting?”

“Oh, very, my lady. We all got so scared.”

“Scared?” said Marian. “Scared?”

Dolly recollected herself and became very much confused.

“The Idferdo!” croaked Miss Barrington from the bed. “D’you bead that
the descriptiod of the dabbed alarbed you, Kell?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Dolly, when she had identified the “dabbed.”

Being a truthful girl she blushed as she said it.

CHAPTER III
THE KIND COMPANIONS

Agatha would have called Hubert’s proposal of marriage a thoroughly
British affair. Discarding all superficial eloquence, he told his tale
of love in the baldest, most colloquial terms. Lois was profoundly
impressed. This lapse from fluency was exactly calculated to convince
her of his earnestness. The emotion must be strong indeed before which
Hubert could be dumb. She searched about in her memory for the speech
which she had prepared for the occasion.

“I think,” she said, “that my feelings toward you are all that you could
wish.”

Her candour charmed him. He caught her to his heart with but a passing
fear that she would find him deficient in originality. Then, invaded for
a few moments by a genuine emotion of self-forgetfulness, he kissed her
a second time with no misgivings at all. They were truly happy.

A strange noise, a pervading, humming throb, at length shook them out of
their preoccupation. The whole air seemed full of it.

Lois exclaimed:

“What can that be? Is it a threshing machine?”

They were in the library, a room which they habitually frequented since
the epoch of the Dante paper. Moving to one of the windows they looked
down into the avenue. John and the head gardener stood together gazing
upward. Other gardeners were seen running in the distance; they also
stared at the sky. Lois and Hubert threw up the sash and leaned far out
of the window just in time to see the tail of an airship disappear over
the house. It was the first Lois had seen and she nearly fell out of the
window in her excitement. Hubert, after a second’s consideration,
decided that he must be excited too. Earlier in his courtship it would
have been more impressive to remain calm, but just now he had better
fall in with his lady’s mood.

“We can see it from the terrace,” she cried, and flew down to the south
side of the house.

Gerald and Agatha were discovered there, gaping intelligently, while
Cynthia and Sir Thomas were seen advancing from the rose garden at a
pace which, in any other couple, might have been a run. Lady Clewer and
Miss Barrington hung out of a window on the first floor, and everyone
enjoined everyone else to look at the airship. The elusive machine
turned suddenly north, however, and disappeared behind some trees. A
short discussion was held as to the best vantage point from which to see
it again. Lois suggested James’s studio, which had a window looking that
way. She ran indoors again, up the main staircase, down a long gallery,
through a baize door into the kitchen wing, up more stairs, noisy and
uncarpeted, through a corridor and up a narrow garret ladder into a
spacious loft running the whole length of the wing. The company panted
at her heels.

The loft was not entirely given over to James. The darker end of it was
used as a box room, and old luggage, gay with the labels of continental
hotels, was piled there. Here also was Cynthia’s bassinette, a high
nursery chair, bed tables, and other less sightly appliances for nursing
the sick. Everything, in fact, which the household did not normally
require. At the farther end of the room, by the large window, many
canvases were stacked, and a small table was covered with rags and
brushes. There was an easel and a moulting armchair, condemned in the
Lyndon nurseries. Here sat James, looking more peculiar than usual, in a
strange chintz pinafore which his stepmother had forced him to assume
while painting. He spoilt his clothes so. He was peacefully smoking a
pipe, and at their incursion he rose and retreated as far as possible,
eyeing them suspiciously.

“May we come in, James?” asked Lois, tapping the door after she had
entered the room. “We want to see the airship.”

He looked in alarm at the furniture by the door and asked:

“What airship?”

“We don’t accuse you of having one here,” said Cynthia, pushing her way
in. “It happens to be outside in the sky. I don’t suppose you noticed
it.”

“No, I didn’t,” he agreed, glancing out of the window.

“My dear James,” remonstrated Marian, as she toiled up the last of the
garret stairs, “how unobservant you are! It’s making a tremendous
noise.”

James paid no attention to this, but moved to the door and looked
anxiously down the stairs demanding:

“How many more people are going to come up?”

Agatha, who never hurried, was achieving the taxing ascent under the
escort of Hubert, John, Gerald, and Sir Thomas Bragge. Their voices
floated up beyond the well of the narrow stairs. Sir Thomas could be
heard remarking sententiously:

“The future of the world lies in the air, Lady Clewer.”

“Yes, but . . .” panted Agatha, “I don’t see how it can ever be really
safe . . .”

“From the military point of view, Agatha, safety isn’t always the first
consideration. In the next big war . . .”

“Oh, come, Blair! Isn’t that rather an exploded idea? Just consider! It
would be almost impossible to use the things without endangering the
lives and property of non-combatants. . . .”

Agatha appeared in the doorway, a little flushed with so much unusual
exertion, and began at once to apologize to James for their intrusion.

“I do hope you weren’t working very hard and that we are not
interrupting you,” she said. “But there is this airship outside, which
we want to see. Come and look at it.”

She caught his arm and drew him to the window where the others were
already gathered. They stood watching the marvel until it disappeared
behind the low, wooded hills on the horizon. Whereupon, without more
ado, the majority of the group prepared to depart. But Agatha was
determined that for once a modicum of civility should be paid to James.
She asked him, with her most engaging smile, if he would not show them
some of his pictures. She assured him that it would give them all great
pleasure, ignoring tranquilly the furtive signals whereby Marian sought
to prevent such a catastrophe. James looked surprised but not ill
pleased. He took a canvas from the pile and set it on the easel in a
good light.

The party viewed it in silent embarrassment and nobody ventured upon
comment until Sir Thomas rushed into the breach.

“Well, Mr. Clewer, and what is this supposed to be?” he inquired with
uneasy geniality.

Cynthia tittered and James explained that it was a bit of country beyond
Boar’s Hill.

“I didn’t know you painted landscapes,” said Agatha. “I . . . I rather
like all those telegraph posts going up and down.”

“Oh, but James,” exclaimed the stepmother, “you have done nicer ones
than that. Do show us one of your portraits.”

“I will in a minute,” said James. “You can’t have finished looking at
this yet.”

They stared for a little longer at the mustard fields and ploughed
furrows beyond Boar’s Hill. Lois glanced at Hubert in extreme anxiety.
She had staked much upon his first view of James’s work, for she had
hinted more than once that she thought it might have merit. Hubert’s
face was perfectly expressionless, and her heart sank. At last they were
permitted to see something else. James put up a picture of a man driving
a traction engine, explaining:

“That’s old Jellybelly.”

“Old what?” demanded Gerald, who was looking happier than he had done
since he came to Lyndon.

“He used to drive the traction engine when they were making the new road
across the park,” explained the artist. “His real name was Jellifew, but
the men in his gang called him Jellybelly because of the shape of his
stomach.”

John gave a shout of laughter.

“Lord, yes, I remember him! This is uncommonly good, James! Best thing
you ever did in your life.”

“Do you think so?” said James seriously. “Now I don’t think it is,
myself. But it’s one of the best I’ve done.”

“But you ought to have seen this old man,” said Agatha to the others.
“He was like somebody out of a Russian novel. And with this head like
Samuel Johnson. I’d forgotten how impressive he was.”

“I don’t remember him,” said Marian coldly.

“A most striking portrait,” murmured Gerald. “What do you make of it,
Ervine? You know about these things, and I don’t.”

“It’s . . . well observed . . .” said Hubert after a pause.

“The composition is rather unusual, don’t you think?” queried Lois
hopefully.

“Possibly,” rejoined Hubert, bland and enigmatic.

Marian, who found the whole subject of Jellybelly a little coarse, now
determined that they must not disturb James any longer and swept them
all from the room. She was more than annoyed with Agatha for exhibiting
him in this way; it had been perfectly unnecessary and very embarrassing
for everyone. James took himself much too seriously already, without any
encouragement from his sister-in-law. She pursued Agatha and Gerald out
on to the terrace in order to tell them so.

“If you don’t mind my saying so,” she began, “I really do think it’s a
pity to take too much notice of James’s pictures. You must know, with
all your experience, Mr. Blair, how difficult these cases are. They are
so liable to get a tremendous opinion of themselves.”

“What cases?” asked Gerald in surprise. “Is there anything the matter
with him?”

Marian raised her eyebrows as though she had expected more perception
from a London specialist.

“Well—he’s queer,” she said, pursing her lips.

“How do you mean? Neurotic? He doesn’t look it.”

“Not neurotic. Not that. No!” Marian shook her head sadly. “But we’ve
always had a great deal of trouble with poor James. Mentally, you know,
he has never been quite like other people.”

“Really? Well, that mightn’t be altogether a disadvantage. I don’t think
I should expect the man who painted those pictures to have a mind quite
like other people. But hasn’t he been off, studying in Paris, like any
other lad?”

“Oh, yes. He was in Paris. But not alone. He was very carefully looked
after, poor boy. It was necessary. He can’t really look after himself.
He made no friends of his own age, for instance, as any other young man
would have done.”

“He had very little chance,” said Agatha.

“My dear Agatha! He could have made friends perfectly well if he had
wished. What was there to stop him?”

“Everything, I should have thought. His peculiar position. The
supervision under which he lived. His own eccentric manner. . . .”

“There you are,” said Marian triumphantly. “That’s what I said. It was
his own fault that he did not make friends. His queer ways put them off,
and no wonder.”

“He looks extraordinary,” observed Gerald thoughtfully. “But that
doesn’t prove him to be without ability at his own job. Many men of very
exceptional powers have been rather strange looking.”

“I’m afraid,” sighed Marian, “that long experience has taught me not to
hope too much. It isn’t exceptional ability that ails poor James.”

She hastened off to dictate letters to Miss Barrington.

“Who says that fellow is mentally deficient?” inquired Gerald testily.

“Oh, nobody of any consequence,” replied his cousin. “No doctor has, of
that I am convinced. It was an established family legend when I first
met him, and it probably has as much truth as most family legends. He
certainly was very much more peculiar when he was younger. What do you
think of him, Gerald?”

“I like him. Really very much. There’s no sort of temperamental humbug
about him, is there?”

“There isn’t, certainly.”

“A little direct at times, perhaps. But it’s a good fault. You like him,
don’t you?”

“I do,” she confessed. “I find him a very restful companion. But I
cannot understand how he comes to be John’s brother.”

Gerald said nothing to this, an issue which disappointed her. Irritably
aware of his unspoken disapproval she was always seeking to entrap him
into some criticism of her house or her husband which could be
challenged and resented. But he would not give her an opening. Only from
his silences did she guess his hostility to Lyndon and its proprietor.
She had in consequence no chance of telling him that he was impertinent,
a thing which she was longing to do.

Their estrangement had grieved her sharply and she was truly anxious to
punish him for all the disquiet he was causing her. She had never
supposed that four years could bring no changes. She was steeled against
the shock of hearing that he loved another, although she would hardly
have been surprised to discover that he still loved herself. But for
this mute, melancholy condemnation she had not been prepared. At one
moment he would treat her with all the old friendliness; on the next he
would harden and draw away. She was most desirous of an open dispute in
which she could tax him with intolerance. Such an encounter would
relieve them both. She would demand whether he expected her to remain
seventeen all her life. She would force him to blame John, to blame
Lyndon, for the changes which he thus condemned. Then she would hurl at
him all the dignified wrath of a loyal wife. She began to compose some
very scathing sentences as they paced side by side toward the Dutch
garden.

Sheltered amid its clipped hedges another pair of kind companions
wandered in close conversation.

“A queer chap, your younger brother, what?” quoth Sir Thomas. “I
understand from your mother that he’s a little . . .”

He tapped his forehead and Cynthia laughed. She made no attempt to deny
the inference.

“Well, now,” he continued. “Those pictures, y’know! A bit thick! What?”

“Lois admires them like anything.”

“Does she now? Really! Well!”

“But then she’s clever, you know. I’m afraid I’m not clever like that.”

The golden eyelashes flickered over the dark eyes. It was quite obvious
that Cynthia had no particular wish to be clever.

“Quite right too,” approved Sir Thomas. “Personally I’ve no use for
clever women. Bluestockings! No reflection intended upon little Miss
Lois, though. But what’s a woman want brains for?”

“They don’t need them like men do.”

“That’s right. They don’t. What I always say is, let the women leave the
brain work to the men. What, after all, are brains for? To make money,
ain’t they? Well, and that’s a man’s job. What’s a woman’s job, you’ll
say? Why, to spend it! No need of brains to do that, eh, Miss Cynthia?”

“Rather not,” agreed the maiden earnestly.

“That’s what a man needs,” continued Sir Thomas with unction. “A wife
who can enjoy spending what he’s made. It gives him something to work
for. It’s a lonely game, you know. Piling up cash and no one to spend it
on. Yes! Very lonely! A little girl like you would never guess how
lonely an old chap like me can feel.”

He looked almost pathetic as he said this, for he was really coming to
believe that business successes are an empty triumph for a single man.

“It’s very harrowing,” said Cynthia thoughtfully.

If her dark eyes held a hint of derision, he could not know it, for she
kept them modestly upon the ground.

“If I had a wife now, that’s what I’d want,” said he. “A girl who could
turn herself out properly. Who’d make every other woman look green. But
a lady, mind you! A girl who could hold her own in any society. I’d be
proud to foot her bills, I tell you. But then, I don’t suppose any nice
girl would look at me. Not an old chap like me.”

“Are you old?”

This was evidently a surprise to Cynthia, and Sir Thomas beamed.

“Well, not so very old when you come to think of it. But old, I daresay,
compared to the young fellows you’re accustomed to.”

“I’m not out,” said Cynthia primly. “I don’t know any young men except
James and John.”

“Really? Now is that so? I could hardly have believed it.”

Sir Thomas was thinking how very accomplished she was if this were true.
He could have sworn that hers was no prentice hand in the tender game.

“Of course I’m not out. My hair isn’t up.”

She shook the shining, honey-coloured mane upon her white neck. They
paused in their walk and Sir Thomas delicately picked up a silky tress
between a stubby red thumb and forefinger.

“I see that,” he said. “No, I knew you weren’t out. But don’t tell me
you haven’t got a fancy boy for all that.”

“Oh, no. Think of Mother!”

He thought of Marian. She was indeed an indefatigable duenna. It might
really be that this damsel was as flawless as she seemed. Her
complacence was all the more gratifying to him on account of a recent
rebuff which he had received from another quarter. This wound seemed to
smart less as he fingered Cynthia’s yellow hair.

“Well,” he suggested, “I suppose you’ll soon come out? Be presented and
all that? You’re just longing for it, eh?”

“I’m not quite sure,” said Cynthia doubtfully. “I don’t want to come out
if it means going about with Mother. Lois has been out four years and I
don’t think she gets much fun. She has no freedom.”

“A girl gets a better time once she’s married,” he observed.

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“Little girl——” he began, and paused, at a loss.

He had slipped an arm round her shoulders and she permitted the embrace
with an indifference admirably calculated to encourage him. He was on
the point of further demonstrations when Agatha and Gerald came round
the corner of the hedge. Sir Thomas removed his arm. As he met the cool,
speculative gaze of Lady Clewer the slow purple mounted to his bald
brow. The two couples passed each other with brief civilities. Sir
Thomas, once out of sight and hearing, hinted that Blair and his cousin
seemed to be very fond of each other’s company. Cynthia assented, and he
was about to say that he wouldn’t be in Sir John’s shoes. But he
desisted. It wouldn’t do for his companion to think that he sympathized
with jealous husbands. A very little might still be sufficient to scare
her.

Agatha laughed at the encounter.

“These yew walks are dangerous,” she said.

“He’s an old horror,” said Gerald. “How can you allow it?”

“I’m not responsible for Cynthia. She isn’t my daughter.”

“No. But this is your house.”

“And you feel that our escutcheon is blotted?”

Gerald said nothing.

“You mustn’t worry about Cynthia,” she urged. “She’s perfectly able to
look after herself.”

“I’ve no doubt of it.”

“You used not to be so censorious.”

“You used not to be so——”

“So what?” she demanded quickly.

“So tolerant.”

“Well? Do you object to my being tolerant?”

“Oh, no!” he said politely. “I wouldn’t dream of questioning your right
to be anything you like.”

“I should hope not! But for all that you are growing rather critical,
don’t you think? You’re always making me feel it.”

He did not deny it, but said:

“We’ve got into different galleys, my dear. We’ve drifted apart, as the
sentimental songs say.”

“I know. But I’m sorry. I don’t like it.”

There was an accent of genuine distress in her voice which touched him.
He had not supposed that she could be hurt by anything he said or did.

“I was very sorry myself when first I realized it,” he told her. “But I
saw that it was inevitable, so I resigned myself.”

“I don’t resign myself to things so easily,” she said sombrely.

“Oh, you’d better!”

He stopped and looked at her in consternation. All his peace of mind was
based upon a belief that she was happy, and in harmony with the life she
had chosen. He was frightened by the restiveness of her tone.

“You’d better,” he repeated.

“Oh, Gerald!”

He wished that she would not look at him so sorrowfully. Too intolerably
reminiscent, she was, of the woman he had lost. He must either fly from
her or challenge her. If he held his ground an instant longer he must
attempt some master word which would bring this ghost to life.

“Agatha! Do you remember Canverley Fair?”

Rooks, cawing loudly in the elm trees behind the house, seemed to echo
his own dismay at what he had said. She was reflecting and he jogged her
memory in spite of himself.

“We went on swing-boats . . . and we saw a fat lady . . . and you were
. . .”

“Sick! Oh, yes, Gerald! I do remember. Oh, of course! How funny that
was! What funny little things we were!”

“We managed to enjoy ourselves.”

“Did we? I suppose so. Fancy my forgetting! But do you know, I believe I
made myself forget about it deliberately. I think I used to be very
ashamed of it. And now it seems just funny! It’s strange how one
outgrows one’s follies! One does at least leave off blushing for them.”

“Thank Heaven!”

“But that was a very pretty fair,” she exclaimed, delving further into
the past.

“Was it?”

“Well, wasn’t it? I seem to remember it as very pretty. All the colours
were nice. Bright colours . . .”

She stood looking at him: looking beyond him into that resplendent
memory; And it seemed to him that she could never have changed at all.
Her eyes, innocent and candid, were the eyes of his early love. She had
been restored to him, and he knew that his hard-won peace was gone for
ever.

They walked on again. He followed her toward the house, confused and
sad. His dislike of her surroundings, their luxury, materialism, and
sensuality, deepened to a sharp horror. He was so certain now that she
would one day see them with his eyes. It seemed to him that endless
suffering was in store for her.

Lois, observing their lugubrious approach, remarked to Hubert that
Agatha and Mr. Blair seemed to spend their time in walking about the
garden in silence. Considering how old was their friendship, she said,
they had uncommonly little to say to each other.

“Not like us,” exulted Hubert.

This was very true. Lois and Hubert had an eternity of things to say to
each other. It was as if the whole of their united future, now spread so
gloriously before them, could scarcely suffice for all the wagging their
tongues would have to do. But first of all she wanted to know what he
thought of James’s pictures. He was unwilling to tell her, for he
believed her to be fond of James.

“Of course, the ones he showed us weren’t his best,” she said wistfully.

“One would hope not.”

“Oh, Hubert! Were they so very bad?”

“Oh, no! The boy can paint all right. But they weren’t the kind of thing
that appeals to me. My taste isn’t infallible, you know. Now, Lois. What
am I to say to your mother? And when and where?”

Lois considered and then decided:

“You will have to be careful. She will think, you see, that you should
have spoken to her first. Not that she objects to you. I don’t see how
she can do that. But she will pretend to at first, just to show how
careful she is. And you must get her leave to speak to me, and then
allow her to arrange an opportunity for you. She won’t do that for a day
or two, but eventually she will. Then, when we’ve been shut up in the
drawing room, or sent out in the punt, or whatever it is, for a suitable
length of time, we will emerge and say we are engaged. She will think
about it for a week and then put it in the _Morning Post_. It honestly
will save trouble for her to think she has managed it all. I used to
fight over things, but it isn’t worth while, really. Now I use guile, as
Agatha does, or did, with her mother, and life is much calmer.”

“Well, it all seems rather complicated to me, but you know her best.
I’ll follow any plan you recommend. Shall I go now?”

“Yes, you’d better. She’ll be with Miss Barrington in her sitting room.
You know where it is? Opening out of the long gallery. Ask to see her
alone for a moment. Rather mysteriously. She loves being asked to see
people alone.”

“Right, my angel.”

Hubert went, and she decided that she could not spend the palpitating
interval better than in scolding James. It would relieve her spirits,
and he needed it. Mounting again to the loft she discovered the artist
plunged in contemplation before the portrait of Jellybelly.

“James, I’m furious with you,” she began.

“Why?” he asked mildly.

“Why on earth did you show those pictures to Hu—to Mr. Ervine? Why
couldn’t you have shown him the portrait you did of me, or that thing
you got the prize for in Brussels?”

“These are better.”

“You think so? Nobody else does. I was so ashamed, seeing you make such
a fool of yourself in front of Mr. Ervine. Any one could see what he
thought. I’ll never praise your work again.”

“No. I expect you’d better not.”

“I was never so humiliated in my life.”

“Yes. I expect you felt a pretty good fool,” said James in an interested
voice.

“I don’t believe you are one bit sorry.”

“Not a bit. Why should I be?”

“When I’ve always backed you up, I really do think—— However, you
suffer for it. I don’t.”

He thought this over and then asked:

“Where does it hit me?”

“Only that everyone laughs at you. You could have impressed him if you’d
tried. As it is, it’s easy to see that he thinks your work isn’t worth
his attention.”

“Well?”

“Well, that’s your loss. You really are very dense, James. He is a
thoroughly artistic person. He could be a lot of use to you.”

“How?”

“Let me tell you that you are getting altogether too conceited. Since
you came back from Paris you seem to think you know everything. Other
people have been to Paris. Mr. Ervine has. He’s a more experienced man
than you are. He’s been everywhere and knows everyone. You might profit
considerably by his advice.”

“I don’t want his advice. I’ve no doubt he talks. You all do. Like a lot
of rooks cawing.” He stared at the elm trees beyond the stable roof.
“Worse than any rooks. I’d sooner hear rooks any day. What’s he done?
Show me that. These talking people make me sick.”

“It wouldn’t do you any harm to listen to us occasionally. You only make
us all laugh at you, giving yourself such airs. I can assure you that
your pictures were not admired this morning.”

James turned round suddenly and, angry as she was, she quailed before
the whiteness of his face. She recognized the onset of one of those rare
but terrific rages which had been a legendary terror in the Lyndon
nurseries. It had always been accepted that, when James did lose his
temper, he might do anything.

“Get out!” he muttered, advancing toward her. “Get out! Or I’ll throw
you out of the window.”

“Nonsense, James,” she scolded. “Don’t dare to talk like that.”

But her voice shook a little and she took a step back.

“I will,” he said, coming quite close to her. “And I’ll throw out the
next of you that comes up here without being asked.”

He picked her up and carried her toward the window. She screamed loudly
and tugged at his hair, but the grip of his long arms never slackened.
She experienced, for the only time in her life, all the humiliations of
weakness before violence. Her sharp heels drummed against his shins. She
told Hubert afterward that it was like being carried off by a gorilla.
He steadied himself with one knee against the low sash, held her out
over the void, and spoke:

“Will you keep out of here after this?”

“Yes, James. Oh, you are a brute!”

“You’d better be careful. Will you leave off telling me whose advice I’m
to take?”

“Yes.”

“Will you keep your opinions to yourself? And your friends’ opinions,
too, if you can?”

“Yes. Do you call yourself a gentleman?”

“No. But if you’ll promise you may come in again.”

He spoke too late. Before he could lift her back into safety she had
slipped from his arms. She fell six feet on to a sloping roof and
slithered down the slates. A leaden gutter-pipe at the extreme end of
the roof checked her descent. She lay still on the slope, too frightened
to move, while below her there was a clear drop of three stories into
the paved kitchen yard. James, his passion evaporated, leant out of the
studio window and looked at her. His eyes were popping out of his head
with horror.

“Are you hurt?” he called.

“No. But I shall fall if I move. Oh, you shall pay for this, James!”

“Could you get along a little that way and jump into that tree, do you
think?”

“No, I couldn’t. I shall fall if I move, I tell you.”

“I’ll get a ladder. I won’t be long.”

He ran down and met Marian and Hubert emerging into the long gallery
from Marian’s sitting room.

“Lois is on the roof,” he announced. “She can’t get down.”

“On the roof,” cried Marian. “How did she get there?”

“From my studio window. I dropped her out. She is on the sloping bit.
She says she will fall if she moves.”

“Good heavens!” Marian turned pale. “But how dangerous!”

Hubert bounded up to the studio and looked out of the window at his love
on the slates below. She lay there sobbing to herself.

“Lois!” he called. “Are you all right?”

“How can I be all right?” she replied with some irritation. “Look at
me!”

“Don’t look downward whatever you do. You might get giddy.”

“I won’t.”

“They are getting a ladder. I can see them bringing it through the
kitchen garden.”

“I do hope, after this, you’ll have James shut up in a lunatic asylum.”

“Is it his fault?”

“Of course it is. He put me here.”

“But not on purpose?”

“Oh, yes. He simply picked me up and threw me out.”

“Good God! The brute! It’s incredible. He must be mad.”

“He is.”

“But what did he do it for?”

“Oh—he was annoyed.”

“What about?”

“Well, it was something I said.”

“But what did you say?”

Lois felt suddenly very reluctant to tell Hubert what she had said. It
did not lend itself to repetition in cold blood.

“What were you quarrelling about?” he asked again.

“Well—you, for one thing.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you after.”

A crowd had now collected in the kitchen yard. Marian and Miss
Barrington, Agatha and Gerald, Cynthia and Sir Thomas, James and John,
all the gardeners and most of the servants stood gazing up at Lois on
the roof much as they had gazed at the airship earlier in the morning.
Ladders were collected and tied together but still fell short of the
required height. Hubert, at the window, swore at the general stupidity
and encouraged Lois in such endearing terms as should have left no
doubt, in the mind of a less preoccupied audience, as to the relations
between them.

“They are sending into Oxford for the man who cleans the gutters,” he
told her. “His ladder is longer.”

Lois burst into fresh sobs.

“I can’t possibly wait here till then,” she wailed. “I shall move, and
then I shall fall off.”

James, John, and Gerald consulted together in the yard; they shouted to
the gardeners for a strong rope and ran into the house. Joining Hubert
in the studio, shortly afterward, they explained that James was going
down after her.

“It’s his idea,” explained John. “He thinks he can take the rope with
him and tie it round her waist. Then we can pull her up. When we’ve got
her safe we can send it down again for him.”

“Doesn’t look too safe,” said Hubert, frowning.

“It isn’t. But that gutter isn’t strong and I’m uncommonly afraid of it
breaking under her. That’s why I don’t want to wait for this man from
Oxford. I don’t think the thing will hold; you can see it bulging from
the yard, and if it broke she would shoot straight off the roof.”

“Look! Let me go!” said the gallant Hubert, a little uncertainly.

“No. James must go. He’s the lightest of us. And I don’t want to put any
extra strain on that gutter. You’re too heavy.”

“Clewer thinks he can manage it?” asked Hubert sourly.

“He’s got a good head for heights. Are you ready, James?”

James dropped over the edge of the window, fell heavily on to the
slates, and slipped down to Lois’s side. Leaning upon one elbow he
knotted the rope round her waist. As they writhed distressfully together
upon the sloping roof they reminded the distracted Hubert of the figures
on the Medici tomb. James gave the signal to the men above to pull, and
the gutter cracked.

“Hurry up!” commanded John. “The thing’s going.”

Lois was hoisted into safety as the gutter broke and fell into the yard
below. James saved himself by wriggling along the roof to where a
drain-pipe gave him a little extra purchase. But he was now out of reach
of the window and the rope. Beneath him a large chestnut tree shaded the
kitchen court. He eyed it meditatively for a second or two, balanced
himself, sprang, and landed in the branches.

“He really is like a monkey,” cried Lois, struck by the resemblance for
the second time in half an hour.

But his agility failed him at the critical moment. He crashed through
the leaves and fell to the ground with a heavy thud. John and Gerald
silently hastened from the studio.

“The branches broke his fall,” said Hubert reassuringly, as the group in
the yard closed round the motionless figure at the foot of the tree.

He and Lois stood alone together at the window. Both were rather pale.

“I hope he isn’t much hurt,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I was so angry
with him.”

“But what was it all about?”

She reflected how best she could narrate to him this rather
discreditable affair.

“Poor James,” she began, “. . . you know we used to be great friends.
And it’s naturally rather a shock to him now to find that I think more
of your opinion than his.”

Hubert remembered a hint that Marian had just given him and saw light.

“You mean he doesn’t like being cut out?”

Lois had not quite meant that, but she left it uncontradicted. It was,
on the whole, a nicer explanation than the real one. And it might have
some truth, when she came to think of it. Such fury does not arise from
ordinary pique, but a disappointed lover will do anything. A roar of
pain, as Gerald stooped to examine James, caused the pair at the window
to exclaim in relief:

“Then he isn’t dead!”

Hubert began to be indignant again.

“All the same, you know, it’s no excuse for throwing you out of the
window.”

“No, I know. With any one else it wouldn’t be. But he, you know—well,
he can’t be judged quite like other people.”

“I suppose not, poor chap. Anyhow, he took some risk getting you up
again.”

“Don’t tell any one. I think we’ll say it was an accident.”

“Oh! All right! Perhaps it would be best.”

Gerald put both his hands to his mouth and shouted up to them:

“A broken collar-bone!”

“But that isn’t at all serious!” said Lois, in some disappointment.

Immediately after breakfast it was generally a cardinal object with
Gerald and Hubert to escape from Sir Thomas Bragge. At this time of day
he was most dangerous, for the ladies were seldom on the scene so early.
But the young men considered that it was John’s duty to entertain him
since John had, presumably, invited him. They did not like hearing about
his successful business career, and the constant recital of the glories
of the house he meant to build disgusted them both, though on different
grounds. Gerald thought it stank of money. Hubert, who did not on
principle object to dividends, jibbed at the implied scheme of
decoration. They shared a hearty sympathy for the unfortunate architect,
who was regarded by Sir Thomas as a kind of stone-mason and bullied
abominably.

Gerald thought the garden a safer place than the house, and fled to a
concealed walk, under a rose-covered pergola, in which to smoke a
morning pipe. From this shelter he observed with immense satisfaction
the buttonholing of Hubert. Sir Thomas got his victim on the terrace and
began to tell him funny stories. Up and down they walked and Hubert
seemed to get sadder and sadder. Gerald could not help being a little
compassionate, for Sir Thomas’s stories, though almost always improper,
were so long and punctuated by so many guffaws that people generally
forgot the beginning before he reached the end. It was not quite as bad
for Hubert, however, as it would have been for Gerald, since he was
studying Sir Thomas and needed to collect more copy. He had already
“Bragged” a little for Lois’s entertainment.

Gerald, in delicious security, took his ease under the roses. In a very
few days he was hoping to be out of this demoralizing place and back at
his work. Lyndon was altogether too full of ladies for his liking. He
had shut women out of his life on the day that he learnt of Agatha’s
desertion. He took no interest in them, and except in his consulting
room, saw as little of them as a religious in a monastery. His friends
were men and he worked with men.

This newly awakened preoccupation with his cousin was, therefore, wholly
undesirable and must be shaken off. But he did not believe that it would
trouble him long when once he had got away from her. His broken heart
had been mended very quickly before; sooner indeed than he quite liked.
His profession had absorbed him and he was able to see how disastrous
marriage might have been. His particular field was, as yet, almost
uncharted. He was one of the pioneers in a new branch of medical
science. He possessed enough means to support himself if he did not
marry, and he intended to devote his life to experimental research; to
use to the full his peculiar opportunities.

He had scarcely thought of Agatha since the first despairing weeks. They
had not met until she had been married some two and a half years, for
she lay ill at Lyndon when he returned from his sojourn in Paris. He had
heard of the death of her baby with detached compassion. Soon afterward
he went to Austria and thence to Italy. Now he was returned to London,
was working sixteen hours a day, and accomplishing a third as much as he
could wish.

He should not have allowed himself to be entrapped into this visit. But
his relatives pestered him and he resented their intimations that he
avoided Lyndon for a particular reason. All that was over and done with;
he was immune. If a spark of the old feeling had been left he could
never have criticized her so coolly. A man must be genuinely out of love
who can condemn as he condemned. But he should have distrusted this
inclination to protest too much. He now suffered for his
over-confidence. He had discovered that she could still command his
unreasoned pity. Criticism, as strong as ever, could not kill it. And
his conviction that she was destined to pain was the more agonizing to
him since he could not leave off condemning her.

For his own sake he must immediately put an end to this state of things.
He told himself that it would never do. That it was no concern of his
whether she were happy or not: That hers was no isolated case and not to
be compared with the pain and sorrow which he encountered daily among
his patients. He must get the thought of her out of his head. And he
smiled as he thought how he would lecture a patient who had thus lost
his sense of proportion. But few physicians can heal themselves.

The path where he walked ended in a low brick wall enclosing part of the
kitchen garden. Upon the other side of this wall he heard a voice which
startled him into instant attention. A rather peculiar duologue was
going on.

“Really, Kell . . . you can’t manage it alone. I oughtn’t to let you.”

“Oh, that’s all right, my lady. It’s not heavy really. Only a bit
awkward.”

“It would be much better if I were to take the other end. Just wait a
minute. . . . Oh, I’m sorry! Did it catch your elbow?”

“Not at all, my lady.”

“It’s just till I get used to the weight . . .”

Staggering steps ensued, and then:

“Surely it’s much too large! Couldn’t you find a smaller one?”

“This was the one Mr. Higgins gave me, my lady.”

“He should have brought it himself. It’s too heavy for a woman. Wait
till I call one of the men. Two men. . . .”

Gerald brushed aside the larkspurs in the border, stepped up to the
wall, and looked over it. He saw Agatha and the pretty housemaid who had
attended the Dante lecture; they were struggling with a large
step-ladder. Both were very pink.

“Where do you want it taken?” he called.

Agatha pointed to a brick building at the end of the enclosure. Swinging
himself over the wall he picked up the ladder for them and set off
between the raspberry canes and onion beds. Agatha, following, explained
in a distressed voice:

“It’s so silly. It’s to get some cherries for James. It seems that he
has a passion for those little dark morello cherries against the
potting-shed wall. They are rather hard to get, they grew so high, and
are not very good when you’ve got them. At least, most people don’t care
for them. But James likes them better than anything else. Of course, I
ordered fruit and flowers to be sent up to him while he was in bed, but
Kell tells me it hasn’t been done. She has asked twice for the cherries,
but Higgins wouldn’t take the trouble. So to-day she went and got a
ladder, intending to get them herself. I saw her dragging this heavy
ladder along. You really shouldn’t, you know, Kell.”

Kell smiled respectfully and helped Gerald to place the ladder against
the potting-shed wall. She then produced a little basket which hung from
her arm and looked doubtfully from it to the top of the ladder. She was
evidently wondering which of the three should climb up and fill it.

“We will get the cherries and take them up to Mr. James,” said Agatha.
“You must be very busy at this time of the morning. It was most kind of
you to take all this trouble.”

The housemaid murmured a word of thanks and departed, walking sedately
up the box-edged path.

Gerald climbed the ladder and began to fill the basket, glancing down
from time to time at his cousin as she sat in the sun upon an upturned
rhubarb pot. He picked the cherries very slowly, prolonging as far as
possible this moment of satisfaction and contentment. He had become
aware that it was better to suffer in her company than to be tranquil in
her absence. She appeared to him perfect. Nothing she said or did could
make the slightest difference to his feeling for her. He could find no
fault, and her words and thoughts were beyond reproof simply because
they were hers. He had been overtaken unawares by that overpowering need
of one individual for another which defies reason and shapes our ends.
This final stage of his subjugation had been so sudden and so surprising
that he almost fell off the ladder.

At last the basket was full and he descended to her side. Together they
strolled away through the vegetables. She was pensive, reflecting upon
the strangeness of a lover. She knew him to be that and was just a
little triumphant at having won him again. But she could not tell what
she had done to bring him back. She asked him to come with her on a
charitable visit to James, and they mounted to the sick room.

James’s bedroom gave no clue to his tastes. The furniture was that which
Marian had provided when he had been promoted from the night nursery to
a room of his own. Only the bed had been changed in deference to his
added inches. There were no memorials of the past, no photographs of
school groups, no relics of obsolete, boyish collections, nothing that
could throw light on the essential James. His hairbrushes and a couple
of ties lay forlornly upon the dressing table, while on the mantelpiece
was a china money box in the shape of a bathing machine which had been
there since his eighth birthday. Pictures had formed part of Marian’s
scheme: “The Boyhood of Raleigh,” “Nelson in the Cockpit of the
_Victory_,” and “When Did You Last See Your Father?” had hung on the
walls for seventeen years. To remove them now would have revealed large,
brilliant squares on the trellised paper. The whole room was suggestive
of a little boy recently deported to a preparatory school with all his
more intimate possessions. James, sitting upright in bed and badly
needing a shave, did not seem to belong to it at all.

Gerald, used as he was to the study of abnormal mentalities, was struck
anew by the baffling qualities of this one. He divined a degree of
contra-suggestibility beyond any he had previously encountered. It was
impossible to make any impression upon James. He lived in a strange
world of his own, developing character, as it were, in spite of his
surroundings. Agatha put the basket of cherries on his bed and asked him
how he did.

“I had thought,” he said very seriously, “that I must be extremely ill.
But Doctor Crosbie tells me that this kind of injury, though always
painful, is seldom serious.”

“I sent up flowers,” she said, glancing round the room with
dissatisfaction. “Didn’t they come?”

“Dolly took them. We don’t think flowers are healthy in a bedroom.”

“Not healthy? How funny of you, James! What makes you think so?”

“Well, Dolly has a married friend at Brixton who was a trained nurse.
And she told Dolly that flowers in bedrooms give people cancer.”

“Kell seems to look after you very nicely,” said Agatha, trying to hide
her amusement. “Did she give you these to read?”

There was a pile of literature on James’s bed, including several numbers
of _Home Chat_ and a Sunday-school prize called “Leonard’s Temptation.”
James nodded but explained that the Bible was, in Dolly’s opinion, the
best reading for an invalid. She had lent him hers, which had pictures
in it, and a large number of pressed flowers and memorial cards of which
he apparently knew the several histories.

It was always difficult to talk to James, even if he was, as now, in an
expansive mood. His visitors were glad when Lois and Hubert appeared,
inspired also to visit the sick. Under the pretext that the room must be
crowded the cousins made off.

Agatha said, outside the door:

“Everyone seems to visit James in couples. I wonder if Cynthia and Sir
Thomas have been yet.”

“That girl—Kell—is very good to him.”

“Isn’t she? I don’t know what he would do without her. Of course, she
isn’t cut out for a housemaid really. She oughtn’t to be in service.
She’s too rough and countrified ever to soar beyond being an
under-servant; she doesn’t adapt herself like most of them do. She has
too much in her. She ought to be a farmer’s wife or something like that.
She’d run things splendidly if she were in a position of
responsibility.”

Lois and Hubert found that conversation flagged. They were oppressed by
the memory of the studio window. The accident which had led to James’s
illness was always with them, and it tied their tongues. Lois had by now
quite convinced herself that it was disappointed love which had caused
him to throw her out of the window, and she was inclined to be very
forgiving in consequence. But Hubert was not softened; he regarded the
fellow as a homicidal lunatic. James was taciturn and made no attempt to
help them out. At last they abandoned the effort of talking to him and
diverted themselves by laughing at the pictures in Dolly’s Bible. It is
to be hoped that they did not know it was hers, for they continued their
merriment when she brought in James’s lunch.

“Who is this party contemplating a sort of astral butcher’s shop?”
demanded Hubert.

“Oh, that’s Peter on Cornelius’s roof. It’s in Acts.”

“I never read Acts. It’s got shipwrecks and all sorts of excitements in
it, hasn’t it?”

The luncheon tray reminded them of their own need for food and they
departed. Dolly, her cheeks deeply flushed, gathered up the markers and
pressed flowers, which had been scattered over the bed, and replaced
them in the despised Book. James regarded her with sorrow and
comprehension.

“Dolly,” he said gently, “I’m ever so sorry they laughed at your things.
I couldn’t stop them.”

“Miss Lois ought to know better,” said Dolly. “She’s had enough
education, I should think, to know it’s wrong to make a mock of sacred
things.”

“He did it first.”

“More shame to him!” she cried hotly. “And then he comes and sets
himself up to teach us! Education! If education makes people talk like
ignorant heathen, I’m glad I haven’t got any.”

“Don’t think about them,” he urged.

“People like that call themselves ladies and gentlemen! I wonder they
have the face! When they talk so bad that poor people are ashamed to
hear them. Don’t you never want to teach them manners, James? I do.”

She bit her lip, realizing that she had called him by his name.

“They get taught sometimes,” said James, grinning reminiscently. “Do you
know how Lois fell out of the window?”

“No. How?”

“I put her out.”

“You never didn’t! What for?”

“Bad manners.”

“My stars!” Dolly gasped. “You shouldn’t ought.”

“I know. I was very much frightened. I thought I’d killed her. But it’s
done her no harm.”

“It hasn’t done her no good neither, seemingly.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“But you was really very wrong to do it. You have got a nerve! Whatever
will you do next?”

“How should I know?”

He grew morose again.

“What do you live here for?” she asked suddenly. “I wouldn’t. Not when
they treat you like they do. Haven’t you got any money of your own?”

“Yes. I’ve got about four hundred pounds a year.”

“What? As much as that? Why, it’s nearly eight pounds a week!”

“Do you think that much or little?”

“Depends on how you look at it. At my home we think a man gets good
wages if he gets three pounds a week. Why! Lots of men marry on two
pounds.”

“Marry?” said James. “Marry?”

“Have you finished your soup?”

She bent over him to take the bowl but with his free arm he caught her
and forced her to sit on the bed beside him.

“Marry!” he exclaimed again. “I was a fool not to think of it! Look
here, Dolly! I can marry you, can’t I?”

“Don’t talk silly. . . .”

“It’s not silly. Couldn’t we be married and have a house of our own?
Would you like it?”

“What?”

“Why shouldn’t we? Don’t you think we’d be very happy?”

She perceived the gravity of his intention and began to reflect.

“I used to think I’d never marry any one,” she said at last,
indecisively. “But you’re different somehow. I don’t believe you’d annoy
me the way other men would.”

“Of course I wouldn’t. I don’t annoy you now, do I? Well, why should I
then?”

“That’s right. That’s where it is. And then I believe you’d let me have
my way about the house and everything. I like managing things.”

“Oh, yes, you can do what you like in the house as long as you don’t get
telling me how to paint.”

“Tell you how to paint! Me? Not much! I can’t even draw. But listen
while I explain. Will you come to chapel with me Sundays? That’s my
trouble. I never felt I could marry a religious man, because my
stepfather was religious. And the way he went on . . . well, it made you
hate the name of God sometimes, if you know what I mean. But then, I
couldn’t marry an unbeliever, because I’m religious myself, somehow, in
spite of my stepfather. Divine worship I like; it’s only religious
people I can’t bear. If you’ll come to chapel Sundays and hold your
tongue about it other times, and not always be asking blessings, it will
just suit me.”

“Me too,” said James. “I know what you mean.”

“I never thought I could fancy a husband,” she observed. “But there’s
something about you, James—well—I don’t know! So gentle as you are
generally and then throwing anybody out of the window!” She laughed. “It
seems like I’ve got to keep you out of mischief.”

“We’ll be married at once,” he said, revolving the great idea in his
mind.

“We might as well,” she agreed.

There was a pause while the betrothed pair stared at each other. Dolly
began to wonder whether she would have to prompt him, so slow was he in
arriving at a clear conception of his own needs. But at last he drew her
toward him and began to kiss her fresh cheek, tentatively, and with an
embarrassment which seemed to her pitiful. She realized that these were
probably the first caresses ever offered by him to any human being since
the departure of her aunt from Lyndon. This was not the diffidence of an
inept lover but a symbol of the complete isolation in which he had
lived.

The knowledge filled her with a passionate tenderness, and, half
sobbing, she flung a protecting arm round him as though to shield him
from a world which had been too unkind.

“I can’t quite understand what is going on in the shrubbery,” said
Agatha, sitting up and shading her eyes. “First of all I saw Lady Clewer
and Mr. Ervine walking up and down on the terrace. Then, with a
determined air, they went into the shrubbery, just as if they had lost
something and were going to look for it. Then she came out without him
and went into the house. Then she reappeared with Lois and marched her
into the shrubbery. Now I see her coming out again alone. She has
presumably left them inside together.”

“Rather unusual on her part, isn’t it?” said Gerald.

“Very. That’s why I’m puzzled. What can be the meaning of it?”

“Well, she’s coming to tell us.”

Marian was advancing across the lawn toward the cedar tree, her face
aglow with smiles. Though she was at least a hundred yards from the
shrubbery she had the air of one who walks on tip-toe. She joined them.

“I hope you won’t mind my giving you a hint,” she began, “but I wouldn’t
go into the shrubbery just now if I were you.”

“Not if you’d rather we didn’t,” said Agatha, feeling that no power on
earth should induce her to ask why not.

“Of course, I don’t know,” pursued the joyful mother, “if anything will
come of it. But Mr. Ervine is having a little talk with Lois. A very
important little talk.”

“So we saw.”

“Oh, did you guess? How quick of you, dear! Between ourselves I have a
very shrewd suspicion of what her feelings are. And nothing could please
me more. He is such a nice fellow! And he has been so straightforward
about it all, speaking to me before he ever said a word to her. I just
had to give him the opportunity.”

“I see Sir Thomas going into the shrubbery from the terrace,” exclaimed
Agatha.

“Oh, dear!” cried Marian, looking much distressed. “I can never reach
him in time. Can we shout? How can we stop him?”

“I’ll run,” said Gerald.

He ran and Marian sank exhausted into his chair.

“Dear me!” she said. “How all this takes me back to your engagement,
Agatha. I never shall forget that dance at the Calthorpes’, and how your
mother and I stood at the door of the little conservatory, blocking up
the entrance, so that you and John should have time to settle things
before any one came in.”

“Did you?” asked Agatha curiously.

“Yes. And your poor mother was so afraid that you would refuse him. I
was a little nervous myself. You were so young. And you hadn’t seen
Lyndon.”

Agatha glanced at the house which should have prompted her to so
immediate an acceptance of John. It was indeed a magnificent possession.
There was no end to its beauty. But she was quite sure that she had
never thought of it once during that half-hour in the conservatory. As
far as she could remember she had not thought about anything at all. If
she had entertained any intelligent ideas they had made no impression.
She could recall the heavy scent of the conservatory, and the flame of
orchids, the cadences of a distant waltz, John’s hand on her heart and
the urgency of his voice. These things had brought her to Lyndon.

“I was very young,” she said. “I hardly knew what I was doing.”

Gerald was now on the terrace talking to Sir Thomas. She looked at him
resentfully. He was unfair and she often wished that she could tell him
so. He did her an injustice in supposing that she had not married for
love, according to her lights. Everyone, her mother even, had encouraged
her to believe that her attachment to John was of an enduring nature. If
she had learnt the impermanence of such passion, it was irrevocable
experience which had taught her. She could not be expected to know then.

Not that she feared for Lois. This manipulated proposal, so typical of
Marian and her kind, did not go for much. Lois and Hubert were really
suited to each other; they had a community of tastes which augured well
for the future. They would probably make a better thing of it than she
and John had done. They would rise to a level of intimacy and
companionship impossible to her. And yet, it might not have been
impossible if . . . Here, woman-like, she was able to skip a few
thoughts and safeguard her conscience.

Gerald was returning with Sir Thomas and two more chairs. They all sat
down under the tree in silence, bending an expectant regard upon the
entrance to the shrubbery. At last Gerald asked Marian how long she
supposed her young couple would be. Marian looked rather scandalized and
said she really didn’t know.

“They would have to come out by now, surely, if she had refused him,”
suggested Agatha. “But do you think it’s quite nice of us to sit here
waiting?”

“I must know when they have finished their little talk,” urged Marian.
“I shall have to speak to Lois.”

“But the rest of us? I think it would be more tactful if we removed
ourselves.”

Agatha began to prepare for departure, while Gerald unkindly suggested
that the interesting pair might have left the shrubbery by the gate into
the park. This idea horrified Marian, and she was about to pursue them
when they were all given pause by the hasty approach of Cynthia. They
were instantly aware that she had news of interest to communicate to
them. So seldom did she move with animation that only the deepest
excitement could cause her to hurry as she was now doing. She surveyed
them triumphantly for a moment and then drawled:

“James has done it this time.”

“Oh, James!” said Marian, with bored irritation. “What has he been doing
now?”

“He wants to marry Kell.”

“Kell!”

“Kell, the housemaid?”

Everybody gaped, and Agatha immediately wondered why she had not
foreseen it. It was so patently obvious.

“The third housemaid,” said Cynthia with relish.

“Good heavens! But why . . .?” began Marian.

“How should I know?” replied Cynthia, who believed that she did.

“Who told you?” demanded Agatha.

“John. He and James are hard at it in the study. James got up this
morning, you know. The doctor said he might as long as he keeps his arm
all tied up. And he went straight off, as soon as he was up, and found
John and made this announcement. They want you, please, Mother.”

“Oh, dear,” cried Marian, with a glance at the shrubbery. “I can’t
possibly come yet. I must stay here for a minute or two.”

“But isn’t it like James?” exclaimed Agatha.

“She seems a nice girl,” contributed Gerald.

“An uncommonly pretty girl,” pronounced Sir Thomas. “What does she say
to it? Will she have him?”

“You bet she will if she can,” Cynthia assured them. “You’ll have to
sack her now, I suppose, Agatha?”

“Yes, indeed! My dear, it will be most disagreeable for you,” said
Marian sympathetically. “Having a thing like this happen in one’s own
house! Would you like me to see her for you?”

“No, thank you,” replied Agatha a little coldly.

“I don’t see how you can possibly blame yourself, though,” continued
Marian. “Nobody could have foreseen this. I suppose it’s all the result
of our letting him go to Paris. However . . .”

Her glance suggested that they could not really discuss this delicate
matter in the presence of gentlemen. Agatha was thinking swiftly. She
remembered Kell tugging at the heavy ladder to get cherries for James.
She thought of Kell’s Bible on his bed. Kell was really a very nice
creature. It was monstrous that any one should regard the affair in the
light of a scandal. Marian’s suggestive hints were not to be endured.
Neither James nor Kell should be insulted while Agatha was the lady of
Lyndon.

“I shall be very sorry to lose her,” she announced. “She is such an
exceptionally nice girl. But I don’t suppose she will want to stay on as
housemaid after she is married.”

This was an open defection and was felt as such by the company. Marian
looked dumbfounded. Cynthia and Sir Thomas had much ado not to laugh.
The affair, to them, could have but one significance. Gerald Blair
became extremely joyful.

“I think James has shown the most astounding good sense,” stated the
amazing Agatha. “I think he will be very lucky if he can succeed in
marrying such an admirable creature. I am sure she will make him happy,
which no one else has ever tried to do.”

“My dear Agatha . . .” began Marian, but the rebel, quite exhausted by
her own violence, had turned away toward the house.

Gerald recognized the frightened pallor which had succeeded her flush of
excitement. He had seen it before on an occasion, the only occasion in
her life, when she had defied her mother. That was five years ago, and
her defiance, if he remembered rightly, had been shortlived. This time
her rash impetuosity must be encouraged, upheld. He hastened after her
and found her, still palpitating, in the flowery spaciousness of her
drawing room. They looked at each other and Gerald ejaculated:

“Cleared it!”

“Well, but don’t you agree with me? Don’t you? If she cares for him,
don’t you think it’s the best thing that could happen to him? And I
honestly don’t think she’d have accepted him if she didn’t.”

“Of course it is. Any man would be in luck to get a girl like that.
She’s splendid. Well balanced, healthy, sane—a good stock. I watched
her at the Dante lecture and thought what a fine woman she was.”

“Oh, don’t talk like that. I don’t mean that. They love each other
really and properly, as only one couple in a thousand manage to do. Stop
talking like a eugenics text-book.”

“It’s my job.”

“Yes. But you know better than that! Gerald! Stop looking out of the
window! You know better than that.”

“I know——” he began, and pulled up, appalled at the indiscretion of
the remark he had been about to make.

The contagious properties of love are proverbial and it is always
dangerous for a couple divorced by fate to reflect in unison upon the
happier romances of other people. These ill-starred cousins were unlucky
in that they had been thrown together at a time when the whole of Lyndon
was mating. A moment after Gerald’s too significant pause, they had the
prudence to withdraw, somewhat hastily, from an interview which was
leading them beyond the bounds of decorum. Agatha ran upstairs and
Gerald bolted into the billiard room.

He left Lyndon next day before she had finished making her leisurely
breakfast in bed. She heard the throbbing of his car at the door and the
change of gear as it hummed away up the slope. Silence fell upon Lyndon
when he was gone, scarcely broken by the peaceful, everlasting sound of
mowing and the shouting of cuckoos far off across the water meadows.

She lay drowsily, watching the tempered sunlight which streamed through
the half-shaded windows. It fell in great rainbow splashes upon the
crystal and silver of her dressing table. Her breakfast steamed on a
tray beside her bed and her morning’s letters were strewed upon the
counterpane. At last she roused herself sufficiently to pour out another
cup of coffee and examine her mail. There were several pages from her
mother, and she frowned a little as she perused them. One passage in
particular made her flush and sigh:

“By the way, I’ve had such a funny letter from Marian. (How I
wish we had not got on to these Christian name terms of
intimacy! They tie one so!) I must show it to you. It’s most
veiled, of course, but it seems she really is getting worried
upon the family question. Has she been dropping tactful hints to
you? If not, I think you may expect them. Personally, I consider
it’s exceedingly impertinent of her, in spite of my own views on
the matter, of which you are already aware. _Of course_ it’s
important that the place shouldn’t go to the Causfield Clewers,
and I really think that the sooner that contingency is provided
against, the better. Still, you’ve heard all this before, and I
expect you think you know your own business.

“_Have_ you talked to J. about standing for Parliament in the
next election? I met Tim Fenwick at Lady Peel’s yesterday, and
he seemed to take it for granted that the Government would come
to grief over this Ulster question. If this is really so, John
has no time to lose. He, T. F., I mean, has been nursing his
constituency for months. Do get J. to stir himself. I think it
would be such an excellent thing for you both; you can do so
much for him, canvassing and so on, and people without a family
need something of the kind, some common interest to bring them
together. And I think a serious object in life would be good for
him. If you will persist in what I cannot but regard as a very
rash obstinacy, I think the safest course will be to get John
into Parliament if possible. . . .”

Agatha, angry as she was, could not help laughing a little at these
tactful suggestions. It was so like her mother to think that politics
would provide John with a good substitute for paternity.

Since the death of her first-born, the luckless heir of Lyndon, she had
steadily refused to bear children or had, rather, postponed the bearing
of them to a more convenient epoch. She could not bring herself to face
again the trials of that first year of wifehood. It had taught her, with
an enduring shock, the nature of her hold upon her husband. She had felt
him slipping from her at a moment when she stood in the most need of his
supporting tenderness.

It had been his obvious pity for her condition which had alarmed her. He
had been much too considerate for her peace of mind. Never for a moment
had he forgotten that her eclipsed beauty had made her an object of
compassion. This attitude struck her as an insult; a piece of brutality
thinly veiled by sentiment. She knew that she had lost all her real
power over him and that he was behaving to her in accordance with his
ideas of civility. His renewed ardour at her recovery of health and good
looks had made her sure of this. And at that time she cared a great deal
for his devotion. She did still. On his subjugation depended most of her
own self-esteem.

She had decided to wait some years before taking such a risk again, and
he, happy in the recovery of his beautiful wife, had acquiesced. There
was plenty of time before them, for Agatha was, in those days, barely
nineteen. But the subject was a sore one with Mrs. Cocks, who
continually urged her daughter to “get it over.” As for Marian, she
looked upon such a refusal of responsibility as flighty and a little
ill-bred. It is to be doubted whether any one in the world guessed what
tears had been shed by the mother in secret over the child she had never
even seen. Now, as she lay at ease in her magnificent bed, a small and
very bitter drop splashed on to Mrs. Cocks’s letter and blurred the
large handwriting. For Agatha had a morbid and unconfessed conviction
that no child born to herself and John would meet with a better fate
than the first.

His step in the gallery recalled her to herself. Instantly she put her
hands to her hair beneath the falling silk and lace of her cap.
Searching under her pillow she found a small handkerchief and carefully
removed the traces of her tears. When he greeted her she was smiling.

“Blair has gone,” he informed her. “I expect you heard him go.”

“Yes.”

“Hope being here has done him good. He assures me that he is sleeping
better. But I can’t say I see much improvement. He came looking haggard
and he’s gone away looking haggard.”

“I don’t think visits to relations are very good rest cures.”

“You’re right. He should have gone a sea voyage or something.”

He was wandering round the room picking up photographs and putting them
down again and fidgeting among the things on her dressing table.

“Lois and Ervine are settled,” he said. “Mamma is going to send the
notice to the papers to-day. Hello! What’s this?”

He held up a small, common-looking object. It was that pocket photograph
of Gerald and Agatha which had been taken so long ago at Canverley Fair.
She had on the previous night removed it from the cabinet where it had
lain forgotten and stared at it for a little time, thinking strange
thoughts. She remembered now that she had not put it away.

“This is Blair, isn’t it?” continued John. “But who’s the kid?”

“Don’t you recognize her?”

“Not . . .? You never wore your hair dragged back like that, did you?”

“When I was sixteen I did. I was sixteen when that was taken.”

“But how on earth did your mother allow it?”

“She didn’t know. We got photographed without her leave at a country
fair.”

“I didn’t mean that. I mean how could she allow you to do your hair like
that?”

“Oh, she liked it like that. It’s unbecoming, isn’t it? But I wasn’t
out, you see.”

“It’s hideous. I didn’t think you could look like that.”

He put it in his pocket and said:

“I can’t have this thrown away. It’s a family curio.”

“It wasn’t going to be thrown away. Please give it back, John!”

“Oh, no. I’m going to keep it. I’ll put it among the miniatures.”

“No, John! I want it!”

“You won’t get it. Though I don’t wonder that you don’t want to let it
out of your hands. It’s a very compromising piece of evidence, you
know.”

“What of?” she asked, tremendously startled.

“That you were ever plain. No one would believe it without positive
proof. It gives me unlimited power over you. Cynthia would give her eyes
for a squint at it. By the way, now that Mamma has disposed of Lois, I
think she will wake up a bit about Cynthia and Bragge.”

“What do you think about that?” asked Agatha, sitting up.

“Oh, well—he’s rather a bounder, but if she will have him, it’s a good
match from the financial point of view.”

“But he’s so much older.”

“Yes, it’s a drawback. But if she doesn’t mind, why should we?”

“I can’t see how she can contemplate such a thing.”

“I expect she wants her freedom.”

“But I can’t believe it will turn out happily.”

“There won’t be any scandals in the family, if that’s what you mean.
Cynthia’s got her head screwed on too well for that. And that’s all we
need worry about.”

“I hate his ideas. So vulgar—so mercenary.”

“What about hers?”

Agatha was silent.

“You may take it,” he said, “that they will be well matched. She knows
her own business. So does he. And a pretty penny she’ll cost him.”

“At her age,” argued Agatha, “a girl ought to have ideals.”

“Ought she? Had you?”

He had seated himself beside her on the bed. Silhouetted against the
shaded window she could study his massive profile and the slight
thickening of his neck over the back of his collar—the first
indications of approaching corpulence. Though not really fat, he had too
much flesh for thirty-four. But all the Clewer men were large; James
would be fat in ten years’ time, fat and pale, whereas John would be fat
and red. He was toying with her hand, pressing each white finger slowly
back, and she conquered an impulse to snatch it from him.

“I think I had ideals at seventeen,” she said thoughtfully.

“You’d got rid of them by the time I met you. That was one of the first
things that struck me about you, Agatha: your sense of proportion! Don’t
start losing it now!”

“If only Sir Thomas wasn’t so . . .” She paused and met his eye. “Well,
you know quite well, don’t you, that . . .?”

“She got him on the rebound after a break?” He laughed. “How far did he
go before you turned him down?”

“Oh, a good way, horrid old thing.”

“Old blackguard!” He laughed again. “I thought as much. In fact, it was
pretty obvious. But he can’t be blamed so very much. He has a certain
amount of excuse, you know, my dear.”

“But he was your guest.”

“Well—er—yes. He is a bounder, isn’t he? But Cynthia probably knows
all about it, don’t you think?”

“Are you never jealous, John?” she asked curiously.

“Not of that! Consider, my love, what a stormy life we would lead if I
began. No. But just occasionally, when you get these soul qualms, you
alarm me. I have a suspicion that if you ever deceive me it will be with
a bishop or somebody like that.”

After a pause he continued:

“Oh, I remember now what I really came to talk to you about. It’s this
affair of James’s. Something’s got to be done about it. And my only hope
is the girl. I want you to talk to her and see if you can’t scare her
off. You know she’s played her cards uncommonly well. She must be a
clever girl. I’ve been talking to James, and I gather she’s succeeded in
hooking him without giving any tricks away. There’s been absolutely
nothing in their relations which puts her at a disadvantage. She isn’t
forced to have him, you understand?”

“Perfectly.”

“I must confess I was surprised.”

“I’m not. I don’t think you understand either of them.”

“I don’t understand James, certainly, and you are more likely to
understand the workings of another woman’s mind than I am. My own
opinion is, however, that she’ll chuck him when she finds that four
hundred pounds is all she’ll get with him. She must have thought he had
more. When she finds that he hasn’t, she’ll probably change her mind,
don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t a bad match for a girl in her class.”

“Not if the fellow were presentable. But really, you know, the girl’s a
fine girl. She must expect some compensation for putting up with James.”

“Really and truly I think you are mistaking the nature of her attachment
to him.”

“Well, that’s what I want you to find out. You talk to her, quite
sympathetically, if you like, but just hint what a bad bargain he will
be.”

“But do you think it’s altogether a thing to be discouraged? She is,
after all, a nice, respectable girl, and he is not quite like other
people. He’s a misfit here. Nobody regards him, and he’s not happy,
obviously. With a wife and a home of his own he might do much better.
And he’s very fond of her.”

“It wouldn’t do at all,” said John decidedly. “Don’t you see that they
would probably be in continual financial difficulties? Always dragging
us down and coming to us for help. Besides,” he added, with some
constraint, “I think it would be rather a misfortune for James ever to
marry any one. We don’t want a heap of his brats swarming all over the
place.”

“But they won’t live here, surely?”

“No, but they would eventually, if James came into the place.”

“It’s early days to think of that.”

“I can’t help thinking of it. Hang it all, I do care for the place.”

“It isn’t any worse than the Causfield Clewers getting it. You’ve always
said you wouldn’t mind so very much if that happened.”

“Nor would I. They are a very decent set, I believe. This would be quite
a different thing.”

“Well,” she said, “I’ll see Kell and I’ll put the financial question
before her. But I can’t promise not to back her up if she sticks to him.
I shall think too well of her.”

“No, don’t. I don’t want a quarrel. James is so persistent that he may
carry this through, just as he did us all over the Paris business. I
shouldn’t be a bit surprised. And in that case I don’t want an open
breach. It will only make things worse. That’s why I don’t want Mamma to
get her finger into this pie; she’s so uncompromising. Be nice to Kell,
but tell her firmly that, if they insist upon marriage, we won’t help
them in any way. That should scare her.”

“All right. I’ll see her now.”

“Need you worry so early?” He looked grateful. “Wait until after lunch.
Any time will do. You’ve nothing doing to-day, have you?”

“Nothing. But I’ll see her at once and then get up,” said Agatha
briskly.

He kissed her and departed, leaving her to arrange her thoughts for the
encounter. Kell was summoned. In her print frock, with her flaming hair
tucked away under her cap, she looked out of place in the exotic
richness of Agatha’s bedroom. She suggested a marigold in an orchid
house. She came and stood at the bedside, looking at her employer with
eyes that were respectful but unembarrassed.

“Sit down, won’t you?” said Agatha, raising herself upon one elbow and
looking kindly at the girl.

Kell sat, with a trace of nervousness, hardly knowing where to place her
reddened hands.

“I wanted to talk,” continued Agatha, “about this marriage. Naturally it
is rather a surprise to us. You must forgive us if it is so.”

“Of course, I see that, my lady,” rejoined Kell. After a pause she
continued in the careful speech she used with her employers, “I know he
is above me in station. But I think I can make him happy. He is so
different from most gentlemen.”

“He is indeed!” thought Agatha. Aloud she said: “Have you
thought—forgive me if I am impertinent—have you thought at all about
ways and means? Do you think you can afford to marry, in fact?”

“Oh, yes,” said Kell, looking surprised. “We were going to begin buying
our furniture at once.”

“He has four hundred pounds a year, I believe,” murmured Agatha.

“Plenty girls in my class marry on less, Lady Clewer. I’d think very
poorly of myself if I couldn’t manage on eight pounds a week. And we’ve
got something saved for our furniture.”

“But then the standard of living would be rather different. You couldn’t
live like cottagers, quite.” Kell looked unconvinced. “Or would you?”

“We thought so,” the other girl admitted. “We don’t want anything
different. I’m not marrying him because I want anything different. I
don’t like his being in a different class to me. I’d rather he was the
same. For us to try to live like gentlepeople would be silly. It
wouldn’t suit him nor me.”

“Then what are your plans?”

“There’s a little cottage out Bramfield way, my lady, that would do for
us very well. I like Bramfield, because I’ve a married cousin living
near there. And he likes it because of his pictures. He often goes over
there to draw out the scenery.”

“Does he? Do you like his pictures, Ke . . . I can’t call you Kell if
I’m to be your sister-in-law, can I? May I call you Dolly? It seems to
be more sensible, doesn’t it? Tell me how you like his pictures.”

“I don’t know.” Dolly looked confused. “I hardly understand such things.
He seems quite set on it, as you might say.”

“Do you think he’ll go on painting when you are married?”

“Why, yes! What else would he do? A man must have something.”

“But you don’t admire his work particularly?”

Dolly flushed, feeling that her loyalty was in some sort attacked.

“I think he’s very clever to draw out all those things,” she said
defensively. “And they’re very like, I’m sure. I think the machinery in
that picture of the traction engine has come out quite beautiful. But I
don’t understand such things. At school I was always bad at the
drawing.”

Agatha turned to another aspect of the case and asked: “What are your
immediate plans? It will be very awkward for you during the next few
weeks, won’t it? Are you finding it difficult?”

“Well, they don’t know in The Room yet,” said Dolly. “But I’ve nothing
to be ashamed of when they do.”

“No, indeed! But I was wondering if it would be easier for you to go
away for a bit. Have you no friends you could stay with until your
marriage?”

Dolly shook her head.

“There’s only my aunt,” she said. “And she won’t be too pleased. She
doesn’t hold with people marrying above them.”

“We’ll think out a plan,” said Agatha. “I’ll get up now. Could you send
Pauline to me?”

Dolly rose, her round face very pink.

“I have to thank you for your kindness to me,” she said. “I know it is
difficult for you and your family, and I shall always be grateful to
you, Lady Clewer, for treating me in such a friendly way. I don’t know
whether you and Sir John and old Lady Clewer won’t think that I ought to
try and live like a lady when I’m married. But, to my way of thinking,
we’d look more foolish if we did that, and give the family more to be
ashamed of, than if we went on in the station we are used to.”

“But you see, Dolly, it won’t be his station.”

“I know, my lady. No more this isn’t.” Dolly was becoming earnest and
idiomatic. “James and me—we are just suited to each other like. We’ll
be just a little sort of class to ourselves, I should say.”

“That will be it,” said Agatha, enlightened. “Well . . . if you are both
happy . . .”

Then, remembering John’s instructions, she repeated his warning as well
as she could. Dolly listened with dignity.

“We don’t want anything done for us,” she said. “And I can promise that
we won’t burden you. We wouldn’t like to lose our independence, you
see.”

“Very well, as long as I’ve made it clear to you . . .”

“It’s quite clear, thank you, Lady Clewer. We’ll remember it.”

Dolly withdrew and Agatha embarked upon her toilet. Later in the morning
she climbed the unaccustomed stairs to James’s attic. The artist, his
arm in a sling, sat before the portrait of “Jellybelly,” which had
remained on the easel since the day of the accident. Agatha turned her
eyes away from it hastily, with that instinct of self-preservation which
James’s work usually evoked.

“I came up,” she said, “to talk about you and Dolly.”

“Well?” he asked truculently.

“I think things will be rather difficult for Dolly, you know.”

“You can make them difficult.”

“I don’t want to. Please believe that I don’t want to. What I want to
say is this. Wouldn’t it relieve the situation a good deal if you both
came with me up to town and stayed in an hotel somewhere until after the
wedding? You’ll have a lot of shopping to do, and it will be easier all
round. I’ve not proposed this to John yet, until I saw what you and
Dolly think. But I believe he would think it a good plan if the marriage
is really coming off soon.”

“Thank you, Agatha. But I don’t see, if you are nice to her, that she
would have such a bad time here.”

“But the other servants!”

“What could they do to her? Dolly won’t mind.”

“Yes, she will. Dear James, if you are going to marry her you must try
to think of things from her point of view. Can’t you see that?”

“Have you spoken to Dolly?”

“Yes. And I believe she would like the plan if I suggested it.”

“Well,” he said, “I’ll agree all right, if you will be my guest while we
are in town, Agatha. Will you do that? I’ve been yours quite long
enough. It’s time you were mine.”

“Well, James—I don’t quite like——”

“You want to stop it?” he asked, looking at her keenly.

“What? The marriage? No I don’t.” She hesitated a moment and then said:
“I don’t at all. I believe it ought to be a great success.”

“Agatha! Then you are really on our side?”

“Yes. I believe I am.”

“Well, I wouldn’t ever have guessed. Though I always thought, you know,
that you were a nice creature. Nicer than any one except Dolly.”

He smiled at her, his plain face creased into an unaccustomed beam of
delight.

“You are——” Words failed him. “I can’t tell you what I feel. But I’ll
never forget it. Nor will Dolly. It makes it all so much easier. I used
to think sometimes that you weren’t one really though you looked like
one.”

“Like what, James?”

“Oh—one of those women—like Mamma and Lois and Cynthia—a lady, you
know. Not like Dolly.”

He fell silent, smiling delightedly at her. Then, suddenly inspired, he
jerked his thumb toward the easel.

“You have it.”

She controlled her features and hoped that she had given no hint of her
dismay. But he was, fortunately, quite convinced by her words of
gratitude.

“Shall I bring it down to your room?” he asked.

She tried to imagine its stark contours in the luxury of her bedchamber.

“Where on earth can I put it?” she asked herself, as she stumbled down
the garret stairs.

CHAPTER IV
THE BRAXHALL FRESCOES

Sir Thomas Bragge set his house upon a hill. It was built, regardless of
expense, upon the most prominent site in all Berkshire. Its uncounted
windows, flashing in the sun, were visible in every direction for many
miles. Locally it was known as “Bragge’s Barracks.”

It marked, monumentally, the excessive prosperity of Sir Thomas during
the war with Germany. His income had, in five too short years, increased
tenfold, and his notion of a suitable house kept pace with it. He looked
back now with contempt at the mere bungalow, the country cottage, which
he had designed for himself in the spring of 1914, and was profoundly
thankful that it had never been built. He could not have lived in it
with dignity after he became a millionaire. When he thought of this
escape it was to agree weightily with his mother-in-law’s theory that
this terrible war had been sent to us for our good.

Upon another point he frequently found matter for self-congratulation.
His house, if built before the war, might have been commandeered for
public purposes. He would have been obliged, perhaps, to offer it as a
hospital, since even financial success has its drawbacks. Public
opinion, which he never flouted, might have driven him to such a display
of patriotism, but he would have detested the depredation of his
property. Lyndon, so he understood, had suffered considerable damage.
All the paint had been kicked off the kitchen wainscot, and the carved
banisters at the head of the long gallery had been knocked to bits by
careless men bringing down a coffin. At least, he had heard as much from
Lady Bragge; he himself had visited the place but once during its
transformation and had been sadly scandalized at its altered appearance.
It had scarcely seemed to be the same house; so much of its indefinable,
leisurely charm was gone with its decorative mistress. Devoted wholly to
practical and unlovely ends, it had taken on a new aspect of bare
austerity. He could not recognize it as the shrine of ease whence he had
plucked his Cynthia.

His mother-in-law, brisk and competent in her red commandant’s uniform,
had been, of course, in her element. He had no fault to find with her
activities. But it had given him a disagreeable shock to discover pretty
little Mrs. Ervine, dishevelled and slightly perspiring, in the
scullery. She was, he considered, a great deal too good looking and too
gently nurtured for that kind of heavy work. He was sorry for Ervine,
who would find his wife very much gone off when he came home on leave.
It had been a great relief to him that his Cynthia had shown no
aspirations toward the canteen or the operating theatre, but was content
to organize Charity Matinées and make bandages twice a week in the most
beautiful of veils. As for young Lady Clewer, he had nothing but
applause for her promptitude in absconding from Lyndon. She was most
wise to hand over the whole concern to his cousin Marian, for the
duration of the war. The mere surrender of her house testified
sufficiently to her public spirit, and it had been done with consummate
tact, for Marian was born to be a commandant. And in London there had
been plenty for Agatha to do. She had presided over countless
committees, her beautiful eyes had wrought havoc for some months in the
Intelligence Department of the War Office, and she had even worked in a
canteen for a week or two. On the wings of Peace she had returned to
Lyndon, and Sir Thomas could once more visit the place without shock to
his sensibilities.

He could, with reason, call himself happy. The war, bereaving in some
way the huge majority of his acquaintance, had brought nothing but
blessings to him. His relations had all done their duty and were little
the worse for it. John Clewer had contracted a strained heart, the
result of gas poisoning, and his brother James had a permanently stiff
leg, but that was really all. Not many families could be said to have
escaped so lightly. The House of Bragge, unpolluted by the assaults of
war, rose swiftly upon the conclusion of that Peace for which they had
all worked so hard. It was the consecration and embodiment of the new
order, and Sir Thomas loved every stone of it.

Braxhall, for so he had called it, stood at the head of a wide,
well-wooded valley. Its gardens and pleasure grounds extended down a
steep hill for nearly half a mile, toward an excellent trout stream
which wound through green fields. The house itself was finished with all
the speed possible to a wealthy builder, but the setting, which had to
be wrought out of the bare hillside, took some time in the making.
Already, however, rustic bridges spanned the trout stream, rustic
summerhouses dotted the bleakness of the slope, and geraniums flamed in
stone vases along the numerous terraces. Wooden and iron pergolas marked
the spots where Sir Thomas intended to have rose avenues; a paved formal
garden with a fountain and orange trees in green tubs had been sunk in a
sheltered spot to the west of the house, while the hill was crowned with
a wonderful sparkling array of glass-houses.

The interior was not completely arranged when the proprietors first came
into residence. The principal suites of rooms had been furnished, but
the chief glory of Braxhall, an enormous banqueting hall, was not, as
yet, in use. This was to be the family dining room; upon a raised dais
at the farther end Sir Thomas and his lady intended to eat their lunches
and their dinners. Its unusual largeness gave them no qualms; the pride
of possession would enable them to hold their own against its
proportions and the rich amplitude of its mural frescoes. Sir Thomas
calculated that in another six months his house would be in perfect
running order. In three years he could begin to take a pride in his
garden, which now demanded so much from the eye of faith. In three
years, therefore, he, who had already so far outspanned his goal, would
have nothing left to wish for. Nothing save, perhaps, a doctor who would
keep off the topic of strokes.

With his lovely wife upon his arm he was inspecting his domain one fine
morning, absorbing at every pore the concrete pleasures of ownership.
Cynthia was more languid in her appreciations, but she was probably
enjoying herself, or she would not have consented to come upon such a
tour at all. They paused before the level flats, newly sown, which were
to become croquet lawns and tennis courts.

“Now, that’s a good bit of work!” exulted Sir Thomas.

“It’s very slow, isn’t it?” observed his wife.

“Slow! D’you call it slow? What! I’d like to see it done quicker.
I’d-like-to-see-it. There’s not a man in England who’d have got that job
through so quickly. But I’m not so bad at getting a thing done quickly
when I want it. I said to Harvey I wanted the best man I could get. He
said: ‘If you want the thing well done, Sir Thomas, Jacobs is your man.
He’ll grow you a perfect lawn in half the time anybody else would, on
this side the Atlantic,’ he said. ‘Get him to do it and you’ll see the
grass grow. Of course, he’ll cost you a pretty penny, but I take it, Sir
Thomas, that you won’t mind that?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘No! You’re right, Mr.
Harvey. I don’t mind. Get the thing done! Get a good man and damn the
expense. But I must have something for my money. When I buy, I buy in
the best market.’ ‘Well,’ he said . . .”

“It looks very ugly now,” interrupted Cynthia, who had heard this saga
before.

“Well, I don’t know,” Sir Thomas argued. “It’s a good bit of work,
Cynthie. And a good bit of work is never ugly to my mind.”

This æsthetic flight was lost on Cynthia. She sighed:

“Lyndon has spoilt me a little for lawns, I suppose.”

Though revelling daily and hourly in the countless things which Sir
Thomas provided for her, she was obliged occasionally to bait him a
little with reminders of those possessions which no money can buy. Sir
Thomas, remembering the Lyndon turf, the fruit of several centuries of
patient husbandry, grew a shade more purple.

“Lawns aren’t everything,” he contested, a little sulkily. “If I’d
wanted nothing but a lawn I’d have bought that place, Aldstone Priory.
But you said you didn’t like it. And you were quite right, I’m sure. By
the time we’d put in central heating and a few bathrooms, there wouldn’t
have been a decent room in the house.”

“I know,” said Cynthia placatingly. “Let’s go and look at the
peach-house.”

This was a line in which Lyndon could not compete. There were no
glass-houses upon any private property in Great Britain which could
compare with those of Braxhall. After an exhaustive tour, Sir Thomas
suggested that it must be fully lunch-time, but was reminded that they
could not eat until Lois and her mother had arrived.

“Well, I hope they’ll come soon,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

They wandered round to the uppermost of the garden terraces, and looked
down the valley. Upon the road, some three miles off, two cars were seen
approaching. These, as they drew nearer, proved to be Braxhall
belongings. The foremost, a pale blue limousine, was always sent to the
station to meet visitors, while the other, if necessary, brought maids
and luggage.

“That’s them,” observed Lady Bragge.

Sir Thomas cheered up.

“Just time for us to have a cocktail before lunch,” he said. “It takes
seven minutes to climb the road hill.”

Cynthia nodded and they retired indoors for refreshment.

Ten minutes later the bustle of arrival filled the marble spaciousness
of the entrance hall. Marian Clewer, active and handsome in her tussore
silk dust coat, paused in the great doorway, glancing about her with
appreciation. She loved coming to see Cynthia and could never visit
Braxhall without a sense that all her toil as a mother had not been
wasted. Lois, who followed her, cast glances which were less complacent
and more critical. With a thrill of inward repulsion she beheld Cynthia
and Sir Thomas descending the shallow stairs side by side. They evoked
in her mind a medley of exotic images: a magnolia and a peony . . . a
satyr and a naiad . . . a silver moon and a rubicund sun. She could
never see them together without an invasion of contrasting ideas.

They were very pleased to see Marian; her admiration for all their
possessions endeared her to them. To Lois they were cordial, as befits
kindred, but their geniality had a note of reserve in it. Despite their
saving insensibility, they had perceived that Braxhall did not impress
her as it should, and they distrusted her accordingly.

Marian kissed her younger daughter gravely and tenderly, and, in a lower
voice than usual, asked dear Tom after his gout. Cynthia was immediately
aware of something odd in her manner; a little of her customary
elasticity was gone. There was a hint of forced cheerfulness, of inner
trouble bravely endured.

“Something’s upsetting Mother,” she told Sir Thomas, when she had sent
her guests upstairs. “Did you notice?”

“No! I noticed nothing. She seemed quite cheerful, I thought.”

“Not a bit of it! That’s her smiling-but-resigned face. I know it.”

“I wonder!” exclaimed Sir Thomas in alarm. “I wonder if she got rid of
those rubber shares when I told her to. I do hope . . .”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think it’s anything like that,” said Cynthia decidedly.
“I can’t imagine Mother losing money!”

“Well, I’m sure I hope not,” said Sir Thomas. “You must try and get it
out of her.”

“Oh, she’ll cough it up fast enough. She’s just longing to, I expect.
But she wants to prepare us first by this graveside sort of
cheerfulness.”

“Well, pump her at the first opportunity.”

When Marian and Lois reappeared they all took lunch in the panelled room
used as a dining room until the banquet hall should be ready.

“I’m dying to see the frescoes,” exclaimed Lois as she helped herself to
stuffed olives. “Are they very lovely, Cynthia?”

Cynthia was silent for a few seconds. Then she said: “Well—I wouldn’t
call them lovely myself. I think they are perfectly hideous.”

Sir Thomas looked unhappy, and protested:

“Martineau saw the south wall when he was over here in the spring. And
he said that they were the finest bit of work, of the kind, ever done in
England.”

“If only they stand the climate!” observed Lois. “Hubert says . . .”

“They’ll stand it all right,” pronounced Sir Thomas. “You must remember
this new central dry-heating I’ve put in. It’s guaranteed to remedy the
defects of a damp climate. When you step into that hall, you step into
the Sunny South. It might be Italy. If no mural frescoes ever stood the
climate before, you’ve got to remember that there’s been no hall built
exactly to suit them, like mine is. Of course, it’s cost me . . .”

“If it’s never been done before, how do you know all this?” asked
Cynthia derisively.

“Now, Cynthia! You know that when I once tried to explain the apparatus
to you, you went to sleep. You don’t want me to begin all over again?”

“Mercy no! I only mean that you’re trusting pretty much to the shop, or
wherever it is you got it from, and they may be doing you.”

“Oh, indeed! They’d be sharp customers if they could do that. No! I’ve
been into the thing, I tell you, and——”

“What is the subject?” interrupted Marian.

“The Rape of the Sabines,” replied her daughter.

“The . . .?”

“The Rape of the Sabines.”

“Oh, surely not?” exclaimed Lois.

“You’re making a mistake, Cynthie,” said Sir Thomas. “It’s a Bacchanal.
You’ve mixed it up with those tapestries we got.”

“Oh, well,” said Cynthia, “it’s all the same thing really. A lot of
people prancing about with nothing on. I’m sure I wouldn’t know what it
was meant for.”

“I shouldn’t have thought a classical subject would suit James,” said
Lois. “What does he know about Bacchus?”

“Well, I don’t want to criticize,” said Marian, who liked nothing
better. “And I do think it’s very nice of you and Tom, Cynthia dear, to
give James this work. He must need it with all those little children.
But I can’t help feeling it’s a pity, in your lovely dining hall. I
think you should have got somebody really first class.”

“But, Mother,” protested Lois, “you don’t understand. It’s not because
they want to be nice to James that Tom and Cynthia are having the
frescoes. At least . . .”—realizing the painful candour of her
statement—“of course, it’s very nice for him. But, really and truly,
Hubert says there is no one to touch him in these large decorative
pieces!”

“Well, I don’t understand it,” said Marian. “I don’t see what Hubert has
to go upon. James never painted any frescoes anywhere before that I’ve
heard of. Sherry, please!”

“Ervine knows what he’s talking about,” asserted Sir Thomas. “If he says
James Clewer is the best man, I’m content to take it that he is. Where
I’m not qualified to judge, I’m content to take the opinion of an
expert.”

“But Hubert used not to admire James’s work,” argued Marian.

“James has improved a lot lately,” explained Lois. “Besides, all the
canons of artistic taste have changed so much lately. It’s the war, you
know,” she added vaguely. “Hubert says his experiences in the army have
influenced his ideas of art a lot. He says he feels he needs something
much more dynamic than he did before the war.”

This sounded so impressive that everyone was silenced, and Marian
concurred gravely with:

“Of course, the war has changed us all very much.”

The Bragges and their guests, munching their turbot, reflected for a
while upon the extent to which they had been changed by the war. Marian
at length observed that even poor James was a good deal altered. Perhaps
she meant that he was more dynamic, but she said:

“He’s improved a lot in looks. They made him hold himself so much better
in the army.”

James had joined the army with characteristic suddenness, while his
relations were still very busy discussing some light form of war work
which he could do. No feat of the imagination could transform him into a
British officer, and yet, what else could he be? John and Hubert were
already in training camps, and these deliberations had been carried on
mainly by the Ladies of Lyndon. It was in the summer of 1914, before the
rush for munition-making, and there really seemed nothing for it but to
put him into the Red Cross as an orderly. Marian thought that he could
carry stretchers, but Lois, who had got a First Aid Certificate and knew
all about such things, maintained that he could not.

Finally there came Dolly’s letter to Agatha with the news that James had
enlisted in the Wessex Fusiliers, along with several Kell cousins. While
he was at the Front Dolly let her house and went to live with her aunt
in Devonshire, so that Lyndon had seen very little of her. Lois caught
sight of her, briefly, in London about eighteen months later. She was
standing upon a pile of milk cans in Victoria Station, a child in her
arms, waving good-bye to a trainful of shouting, cheering men. Lois
learnt that James was in the train, returning after six days’ leave. She
realized that she had seen the trio entering the station some minutes
before, and, though finding their appearance vaguely familiar, had
failed to identify them. There were so many families who looked like
that. It struck her that the singularity of these relations of hers lay
in their absolute ordinariness, their embodiment of a type. James, in
his great-coat and with his bulky kit on his back, was no longer
conspicuously uncouth. He looked like every soldier who ever returned to
battle, and Dolly, his wife, in her undemonstrative fortitude, was like
all the women who saw their men go.

As she had nothing better to do, Lois took Dolly to a neighbouring
tea-shop, where they ate tepid poached eggs and tried to be civil to
each other. But they could not honestly feel that they had got very far.
Young Henry, James’s son, did not interest Lois. He was rather plebeian
looking, with scanty ginger hair; much too like all soldiers’ babies,
she thought. There had been, subsequently, two others, a girl and a boy,
also red-haired. Kell was evidently a dominant type.

When James was invalided out of the army with a permanently crippled
leg, he returned with Dolly to their cottage in Oxfordshire and began to
paint harder than ever. Nobody paid much attention to him until the
echoes of war had subsided a little. Then it appeared that he was being
talked about. Hubert went to a small exhibition of his work in some
obscure place or other and came home much disturbed. Hubert and Lois
began to speak a little carefully of James. Before long they had almost
managed to forget that they had ever spoken otherwise.

Cynthia and Sir Thomas completed this renovation of the family attitude
when they offered to James the work of decorating their banqueting hall.
They did this upon Hubert’s recommendation. Having approved of the
initial design they had departed for a long tour in the Riviera, leaving
the artist to perform the work. He had lodged, in the greatest luxury,
in the furnished part of Braxhall during the whole period, waited upon
by an army of servants, and with permission to get down any number of
models, if he wanted them, and quarter them upon Sir Thomas as long as
he pleased. Even a car had been left for him.

The work was finished and James gone before the owners returned from the
Continent. It was to celebrate the opening of the hall for practical
uses that Lois and Marian had been invited to Braxhall. They were the
first of a family house party collected for the occasion. A great
luncheon, to which half the County had been invited, was to take place
the following Thursday, when the hall was to be used for the first time
and the frescoes generally exhibited. Reflecting upon this party, Marian
asked anxiously whether James was to be present.

“No,” said Cynthia. “He can’t come, or won’t come, I don’t know which,
unless Dolly comes too. And Dolly can’t come without the baby, for a
very pressing reason.”

Marian raised her eyebrows delicately.

“How like Dolly!” commented Lois.

“I always did think her rather like a cow,” said Cynthia.

“Still, you know,” said the hospitable owner of Braxhall, “they could
all come if they liked.”

“Oh, no!” said Cynthia distastefully, “They look so like a family party
at the Zoo.”

Lois agreed. It was more than possible that the guests on Thursday might
find the frescoes a little hard to swallow. To meet the artist and
family, as well, might amaze them beyond recovery. It was really better
that James should lurk mysteriously in the background. Lois had already
begun to talk a little romantically about him and to hint at a “Bohemian
marriage.” She did not state, in so many words, that Mrs. James Clewer
had been a very capable housemaid, but people gathered that she had been
beneath her husband in station. It was supposed that she might have been
a model or a chorus girl. Lois did not enlarge upon Dolly’s extreme
respectability.

“Then who else is coming to stay here?” inquired Marian.

“John and Agatha and Mrs. Cocks come to-night.”

“And, by the way,” put in Sir Thomas, “I’ve invited that cousin of the
Cockses’ that doctor, what’s his name? . . . The shell-shock man . . .
Blair! I met him yesterday, coming out of the club, and told him about
the frescoes. He seemed interested; said he’d always been interested in
James and his work. So I told him to come here, and he’s coming
to-morrow, Cynthie. That’s all right, isn’t it? I told him that the
longer he stops the better pleased we shall be. There’s plenty of room
here, luckily.”

He paused, uneasily, for the three women had exchanged glances. They sat
stubbornly silent, and he asked again:

“That’s all right, isn’t it? A cousin of Agatha’s, and a good man at his
job. Peterson was talking about him the other day. He says that there
isn’t a man in Harley Street——”

“Oh, yes, I daresay he’s an excellent doctor,” said Cynthia coldly.

Marian irradiated discretion and changed the subject. But it would have
been obvious to the veriest dolt that she had been touched in a tender
spot. She began to inquire after the garden with a slight accentuation
of the gently martyred air which she had displayed on entering the
house. She was, obviously, hiding a wounded heart. Sir Thomas, baffled
as only a man among discreet women can be baffled, raised an eyebrow at
his wife. But Cynthia would not look at him. Inspired by his bad angel,
he followed up his first blunder by another and a worse.

“And how’s John been keeping these days?” he asked. “Heart not giving
him much trouble, I hope?”

This was, it appeared, a perfectly disastrous inquiry. Marian turned
pale, Lois crimson, and even Cynthia left off crumbling her bread and
coloured a little.

“You ain’t still anxious about it?” demanded Sir Thomas. “You should
make him see a specialist, a really crack man.”

“He has seen a specialist,” said Marian, with reproving dignity.

“Yes,” persisted Sir Thomas. “But has he seen a good one?”

“Naturally.”

“Because you ought to be careful what you are doing, you know. Can’t
play fast and loose with that sort of thing. I heard of a chap the other
day, young Baines, son of my friend Baines, up in Liverpool. He got
gassed, just like John, suffered with his heart, and what’s more, he
died of it. These poison cases are no joke, let me tell you.”

Marian glanced appealingly at Cynthia as if demanding how much longer
they were going to have to endure this sort of thing. Cynthia said:

“Hush, Tom. We all know that.”

“Well, the Bainses didn’t. I mean they didn’t wake up to the seriousness
of the thing until the poor chap collapsed. Of course, their doctor must
have been grossly careless, but there it is. And you know, Marian, all
these Talbots have rocky constitutions.”

“Thank you,” replied Marian, who had been sitting with compressed lips.
“You need not instruct me as to John’s health. I happen to have brought
him up.”

“If you’ve finished your dessert,” said Cynthia, “perhaps you’d like to
come down to the hall and look at the dadoes—I mean the frescoes. I’ll
have coffee brought there.”

They passed through the entrance hall and proceeded down a corridor
paved in black and white marble and panelled by long looking-glasses.
Folding doors upon the right led into the hall, and opposite them hung a
large portrait of Lady Bragge. It had been painted very recently by a
fashionable artist who could be trusted to do credit to Cynthia’s gown.
She wore her pearls, with a voluminous wrap of rose-pink brocade
slipping off her milky shoulders, and she carried an ostrich fan.

As the guests passed through the doors into the hall, Sir Thomas dropped
behind and whispered to his wife:

“What was the matter at lunch? What did I say wrong, eh?”

Cynthia shrugged her shoulders and replied coldly:

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

She walked into the hall and left him to his perplexities.

They entered under a minstrels’ gallery, hung with purple velvet, and
passed solemnly over the polished floor into the centre of the chamber.
A row of windows in the north wall gave a fine view of the Berkshire
Downs. Upon the wall opposite the frescoes unfolded themselves in three
tremendous panels, so complex, so strangely glowing, so crowded with
swift life, as to smite the perceptions with a sense of absolute shock.
Behind the dais at the farther end, where the banqueting table was set,
a fourth and still more violent panel suffered slightly from the oblique
light, but became clearer as they approached the dais step.

They all looked at the paintings for a very short time, and then hastily
removed their eyes and concentrated their attention upon the furniture
and fittings of the room. Even Lois had not the courage to study the
Bacchanal for long. There was something in the piece which abashed her
profoundly, but whether it was the incongruity of these shameless gods
of an older world in so modern a shrine as Braxhall she could not tell.
Anyhow, she was not equal to looking at them under the pained eye of her
mother, and she decided to come again when she could be by herself.

The furniture was scanty. Upon the dais stood the table, its sable
surface still innocent of the goblets and trophies which Sir Thomas
meant to put there. High carved chairs with cushioned seats stood round
it. But the rest of the hall was splendidly bare. Electric candelabra
hung at intervals from the richly moulded ceiling, and the windows were
draped, like the gallery, in purple velvet, blazoned with armorial
devices in gold thread. This gave the place something of the solemnity
of a ritualistic church in Lent. A gilded grating, about a foot high,
skirted the base of the walls round the entire room: this was part of
Sir Thomas’s dry-heating apparatus, whereby warm-air shafts were run up
behind the walls on which the frescoes were painted.

“We mean to keep it empty, like this,” explained Cynthia. “The table on
the dais will seat as many as we shall want in any ordinary way. We can
put up trestle tables in the rest of the hall on special occasions like
Thursday. But generally we shall keep the floor clear for dancing.”

“We’ve a first-rate Victrola up in the minstrels’ gallery,” added Sir
Thomas.

Lois glanced up and saw the top of it just visible over the purple
hangings. In the effort to stifle a sudden paroxysm of laughter, she
moved to one of the long windows and looked out on Berkshire. Sir Thomas
sighed, his eyes following her wistfully. He said with regret:

“I wanted stained glass, but Clewer wouldn’t have it.”

“We got a killing letter from Dolly when we were at Monte Carlo,” said
Cynthia. “She said she felt she ought to let us know that James was home
again, because a man had come here to see about the windows. Whereupon
James threw up the work and went home to Bramfield, saying he couldn’t
paint frescoes in rooms with stained-glass windows.”

“I’d half a mind to tell him he needn’t come back,” observed Sir Thomas.
“I wanted those windows. I’d an idea that I’d like a series,
allegorical, you know, showing the advances science has made during the
reign of Queen Victoria. Railroad, and telegraph, and photography, and
so on. But, as he was obdurate, I had to give it up. I was determined to
have the frescoes, so I had to let him have his way. Any one can have
stained glass.”

“That wasn’t the only thing he was tiresome about,” said Cynthia. “He
would put that wall into three panels when we wanted two.”

“Yes, we wanted two, with a plain division in between for Cynthia’s
portrait to hang on—that picture that’s hanging outside the door. I had
it specially painted to hang in this hall. But no! He wouldn’t hear of
it! Said he wouldn’t leave any space for the portrait anywhere.”

“It really might have been his house from the way he talked,” continued
Cynthia. “He had the portrait moved out of the corridor while he was
here, so that he shouldn’t have to see it when he came in and out of the
hall. He said something or other very violent about it—I forget what.”

“Jealous! That’s what it was,” chuckled Sir Thomas. “All these artists,
y’know! They all hate each other like poison.”

“It’s a great pity to have that lovely picture hanging outside in the
dark corridor,” said Marian regretfully. “But there isn’t room left for
it here that I can see, not in a good light. He’s filled up every inch
of space. But couldn’t you bring it in and put it on an easel, just at
the corner of the dais? I think pictures look rather nice on easels like
that. You could drape it or ornament it in some way.”

“Oh, no, Mother! That would be quite impossible,” expostulated Lois. “It
would be absolutely out of keeping with the frescoes and the whole hall.
It would look very foolish.”

“Well, perhaps . . .” said Marian. “But it seems a great pity. How
stupid of James not to have left any room for it! That’s just the reason
why it’s nice to employ relations, that you can ask them for those
little accommodations which you wouldn’t demand of strangers.”

She glanced once more, disapprovingly, at the riotous walls, with revolt
in her honest soul. She could not bear the frescoes; upon no panel could
she rest her eyes without meeting something which made her feel
uncomfortable. Nor was it the prevailing nudity which overset her, but a
kind of elusive familiarity which pervaded all these fleeing nymphs and
pursuing satyrs. They were very much more convincing than any Bacchantes
she had ever encountered before and their orgy was therefore more
embarrassing. They discomposed her as much as if they had been personal
acquaintances.

Cynthia was faintly aware of this too, but it did not distress her. On
the contrary she felt that the whole thing was rather daring, and, in
her indolent way, she liked to be daring. She savoured in advance the
faces of the County dames when asked to sit beneath these unhallowed
walls. Though persistently disclaiming any interest in the paintings,
she secretly found them diverting.

Sir Thomas was bewildered by a number of sensations, but clung with
determination to the most gratifying. He had a unique dining room.
Already in his mind’s eye he saw Braxhall and its frescoes as one of the
glories of England, a Mecca for American tourists. Of course, he thought
the paintings very indecent, but he understood that this did not signify
if the subject were classical. He had been similarly scandalized by
Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” when he first met it, and had lived to
learn that there was nothing the matter with it. He was always seeing it
in the most chaste interiors.

Lois was flustered. She contemplated these flaming manifestations of the
mind of James, and admitted to herself, in a spasm of honesty, that she
did not know what to make of them. She could not really tell whether
they were good or bad until she had heard what Hubert had to say. Hubert
had been away on a fishing holiday in Norway, and was not expected at
Braxhall until the evening before the party.

The clock in the tower above the hall struck four and they were all
amazed. Luncheon at Braxhall was always a lengthy meal, and to-day they
had been late. In half an hour tea would be administered to them among
the orchids in the drawing room. For this occasion a change of dress was
necessary and they all dispersed.

Later in the evening Sir Thomas sought his lady in her bower and testily
began:

“Now perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me what was the matter with
your mother at lunch. You’ve been sitting with her long enough to find
out, I should hope. Is there anything serious wrong with Clewer’s
heart?”

Cynthia, who was rubbing orange stick on her nails, replied: “Yes. A
good deal is wrong according to Mother. She seems to be quite upset
about it. He may die at any moment, or something like that. Anyhow the
specialist took a very gloomy view of him. But mind you don’t talk about
it, for nobody is supposed to know.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Sir Thomas, in deep concern. “You don’t say so! Is
it his heart?”

“Yes, I think so. It leaks or does something. I’ve really forgotten
what. But you’d better ask Mother, if you want to know. She’s bursting
with details. I never can remember that sort of thing.”

“But can nothing be done?”

“Well, of course he ought to be taking great care of himself. Only she
says he won’t. Can you reach me those little curved scissors on the end
of the dressing table? Only you must be careful not to show you know
about it when he comes. He hates any fuss. He only told Mother in the
deepest secrecy because he wanted her to help him put his affairs in
order.”

“Dear! Dear!” murmured Sir Thomas, appalled by the practical bearings of
this detail. “That sounds bad.”

“I don’t know if it’s true, but Mother says that the specialist thinks
he can’t last more than a few months in any case. But she’s apt to
exaggerate. Of course, she went off and told everybody she could think
of, by way of keeping it a secret. Lois and Hubert have heard all about
it. But that’s neither here nor there. John mustn’t know that we know.”

“Can’t last more than a few months!” cried Sir Thomas. “Is that a
certainty, Cynthia, or is it merely a scare? He looks ill, but not as
ill as that. How much chance is there of his improving? Is it the effect
of the gas poisoning?”

“I really don’t know. You know what Mother is like; she’s very
mysterious and won’t tell you anything until you’ve asked a lot of
questions, and then she pours it all out. It always annoys me so much
that I don’t ask.”

“Well! Well! What specialist did he see?”

Cynthia reflected and then said:

“Mother did tell me, but I’ve forgotten. She said he was a very good
man.”

“Perhaps it’s just a scare,” said Sir Thomas hopefully.

“It might be,” replied his wife, without emotion. “You never know. But
Mother seems to take it pretty seriously.”

“You’re a cold-blooded little woman, Cynthie! You don’t seem a bit upset
about it.”

“I am very much upset. I think it’s most harrowing and all that.”

“Rough on his wife,” he continued after a pause. “How worried . . .”

Cynthia laughed.

“She doesn’t know anything about it, my dear Tom.”

“She doesn’t know?”

“No, indeed. And she mustn’t be told, what’s more. John is quite
determined about it. You should hear Mother on the subject! He says that
nothing will induce him to trade on his wife’s pity.”

“What the deuce does he mean by that?”

“How should I know? Only—if they don’t get on well . . .”

“Oh! Don’t they get on well?”

“Mother seems to think they don’t. And, by the way, you have dropped a
brick about asking that Mr. Blair down here.”

“Blair? Oh, yes! Now what’s the matter with him?”

“You’re generally more up in the family gossip.”

“Family gossip? What family gossip? Oh, there’s nothing in that old tale
about him and Agatha, surely?”

“I’m only going by what Mother says. I’ve not seen them together
personally; at least, not for ages. So I can’t pretend to have an
opinion. But she got the wind up that time in the middle of the war when
he was back in town after he’d had pneumonia or something. She says that
he and Agatha were never to be seen apart, and people began to think
there was too much of it altogether, considering John was away, don’t
you know.”

“But nobody seriously suggested that there was anything in it, did
they?”

“Don’t ask me what people suggested. You know perfectly well what they’d
be most likely to suggest. Anyhow, Mother was greatly relieved when he
went off to the Balkans, and she says she’s noticed that they seemed to
be avoiding each other when he came back. She thinks it’s a good thing
and is very furious that he is coming down here.”

“But—Cynthie—you don’t think . . .?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I’m not in their confidence.”

“But they are bound to meet sometimes,” he argued. “And I should have
thought this was as safe a place as any, with your mother and hers in
charge, so to speak.”

“Oh, I don’t object to his coming. It’s Mother who’s afraid he’ll break
up the happy home. I’m sure I don’t mind one way or the other. Though
he’ll be a boring guest. I never could see anything in him myself.”

Sir Thomas thought it out and then said decisively: “She’s got too much
sense. She’ll never compromise herself. Not she!”

“I’ve always thought her too good to be true,” said Cynthia, “but I’m
inclined to think she’ll manage her affairs quietly.”

“Still, I don’t want any scandals, open or otherwise, in this house.”

“You can’t help it very well, now he’s accepted your invitation. I
expect it will be all right. I’m sure I hope so.”

“I’m not surprised at him, not at all. Poor chap! He isn’t the first,
and he won’t be the last, not by a long chalk. But she’s always been so
uncommonly discreet. He’ll be the first . . .”

He paused. Cynthia said nothing but looked disagreeable. “How do you
know?” she inquired at last.

“Oh, well, I should imagine so,” he replied lamely.

“My dear, what a place!” commented Mrs. Cocks. “Did you ever see
anything like it?”

She turned from her sitting-room window to a renewed contemplation of
the magnificence within.

“Yes,” said Agatha. “It’s rather like the home of a rich man in the
films. There is the same prevalence of orchids and little statuettes.”

“I never go to the horrid things, so the comparison doesn’t strike me.”

“You should see my lodging! John and I have a bridal suite, the grandest
you ever saw. All done in lavender silk with great bunches of lilac and
lilies of the valley. The bed in my room is as large as Dolly’s parlour
at Bramfield. I’m sure it is. Louis Quatorze, so Cynthia tells me. They
were spacious days. Four people could easily sleep in it without
discommoding each other.”

“They often did,” said Mrs. Cocks, in an interested voice. “This notion
that even two are something of a crowd is quite a modern idea. I was
reading the life of Mme. de Montespan the other day and it struck me
forcibly what much more sociable habits they had. You should read that
book, Agatha; it would amuse you. Tell me, have you pictures of Highland
cattle in your sitting room?”

“No. We have a Greuze and two Brangwyns. The Highland cattle are only
temporary. The furniture shop supplies them with the suite and they are
put up until Sir Thomas has collected some genuine works of art to
replace them. Your rooms can’t be quite finished yet.”

“Oh, I see! Well, I’m glad they begin with creature comforts. I can do
very well with the cattle, and I appreciate all this luxury.”

“Do you? It surfeits me. I shall return to Lyndon singing ‘Be it never
so humble . . .’”

“Ah! You care very much for Lyndon, don’t you?” said Mrs. Cocks quickly.

Lately she had felt in need of reassurance concerning her daughter’s
happiness. She liked to hear Agatha speak of her possessions with an
inflection of pride or joy. Agatha nodded an assent and stared out of
the window, her fingers drumming restlessly on the sill. Mrs. Cocks
remarked with irritation that her hands were growing a little thin.

“Yes,” agreed Agatha. “My wedding ring has had to be made smaller.”

After a pause she added:

“I do love Lyndon. Living in this house makes me realize how much I love
it. When I’m at Lyndon I have a feeling sometimes that it doesn’t matter
what follies we perpetrate because it will survive us. It was made by
more sensible people than we are. And sensible people will live there
again some day.”

“Dolly and James, or their descendants, will live there some day,” said
Mrs. Cocks significantly.

“Well, they are the most sensible people I know,” returned Agatha. “By
the way, I’m going over to see them to-morrow; I must say good-bye to
them before I go to Scotland. Will you come?”

“I positively must write letters the whole of to-morrow,” said Mrs.
Cocks, shaking her head. “Otherwise I should love to see their
household. I can’t picture it at all.”

“Oh, it’s funny, but exactly what you would expect. Dolly has a girl in
to help her with the Monday washing, and does all the rest of the
housework herself. And there is an army hut in the garden, with glass
panels in the roof, which James uses as a studio. Dolly tells me she’s
only been inside it once in three months, and that was when she thought
Henry had swallowed a button and wanted the doctor fetched in a hurry.”

“But what does he do when he isn’t painting?”

“Oh, he digs in the garden in the evening, in his shirt-sleeves, and he
gets a bath on Saturday night, so I understand. And on Sunday he puts on
his best suit and takes Dolly to chapel.”

“Aren’t you touching it up a little, Agatha?”

“Indeed I’m not. Come and see for yourself. And he never paints on
Saturday afternoons, or Sundays, or bank holidays.”

“Then the _ménage_ is entirely run by Dolly?”

“Absolutely. The house is Dolly’s house. He has accepted her ideas of
domesticity _en bloc_. I gather that the only thing they ever fell out
over was a dispute about a hat. She wanted him to go to chapel in a
bowler, like any other Christian, and he flatly refused. He said a
bowler hurt his head. They became very acrimonious about it until Dolly
realized that no bowler on earth would fit so large a skull. So she got
him a Trilby hat, which perches very oddly on the top of his head, and
all was peace.”

“But one would have thought that his artistic temperament must have
rebelled in some way against this life. It’s so humdrum!”

“It seems to suit him. They’ve got the usual little sitting room with
lace curtains, and an aspidistra and a horsehair couch, and ‘The Soul’s
Awakening,’ and a plush tablecloth, and china children in gilt swings on
the mantelpiece. I don’t think he regards them as ornaments at all. He
simply sees the whole as an expression of Dolly. And, as he’s devoted to
her, he doesn’t object to it.”

“I don’t understand it.”

“I do and I don’t. I can see how harassed he’d have been with a wife who
had any pretensions to taste; who went in for peasant pottery and
Russian linen and expected him to react. But still, I get puzzled. I
haven’t looked properly at those frescoes in the hall yet, because Lois
would keep talking about El Greco, and I had to attend to her. But when
I think of them, and then think of James sitting in his parlour with
such visions in his head, I just gasp! He must be so absolutely
independent of externals. Accidental surroundings, I mean, like
wall-papers. But I suppose that his upbringing partially explains it.
Lyndon was so uncongenial to him that the whole of his essential
character was developed in spite of his education and not because of it.
His abnormal contra-suggestibility is the result of his attempts to
protect himself.”

Mrs. Cocks recognized an exotic word and knew at once where it had come
from. She looked at her daughter long and critically. In that lovely
person and countenance she perceived sufficient cause for uneasiness. A
shade less beautiful than formerly did Agatha appear. There was a
certain sharpening of feature: the eyes were shadowed. Something of the
bloom had gone. Agatha had never, at any time, advertised happiness in
her carriage. But she had been, serene and now was untranquil. Sombre
sometimes, and then feverishly animated, she had lost her poise. And she
was growing thin. To her mother’s anxious heart these portents boded the
premature decay of a youth which had bloomed too early.

“Malt and cod-liver oil,” she muttered from the depths of her
reflection.

Agatha laughed, divining the chain of thought which led to such a
remark.

“What! In the middle of the summer? And at my age?”

“Your age! It’s nothing. You’re a baby still. However, I don’t think
this is a very healthy place, although it stands so high. It must be
enervating or something, for nobody here looks well. John especially.”

Agatha’s face hardened.

“John is quite well, I think,” she observed.

“Well, I’m glad you think so, for he doesn’t look it. But they all seem
to be out of sorts. Cynthia blooms, of course, but poor old Sir Thomas
is dreadfully melancholy at times. He struck me as being in very low
spirits indeed at lunch to-day. Did you notice those enormous sighs he
kept heaving? I was quite sorry for him. And as for Lois, she looks
terribly pinched and haggard.”

“I don’t think she has been very well just lately,” observed Agatha with
a sigh.

“Hasn’t she? Well, and isn’t that very unusual with her? And Marian is
the worst of the lot! What on earth is the matter with her? Why does she
persist in looking as if she were bearing up only for our sakes?”

“I don’t know at all. I think she’s annoyed about Gerald coming.”

“Gerald? Gerald Blair? He’s not coming here, surely?”

“Yes. He’s coming this evening in time for dinner, I believe.”

Mrs. Cocks could not conceal her dismay.

“What for?” she said.

“You’d better ask Sir Thomas. He asked him. To see the frescoes, I
suppose. How long is it till tea? I think I’ll explore these woods a
little. I feel stifled in this house. . . .”

A few minutes later Mrs. Cocks watched her running down the terraces
into the valley. She crossed the stream by a wooden footbridge and
paused long upon it, regarding the slow, innocent flowing of the water.
Then she wandered on and was lost among the trees, walking with the
listless impatience of a mind in conflict.

Mrs. Cocks turned from the window and paced the room, possessed by many
perfectly reasonable fears. Her anxiety was no longer to be stifled. She
was convinced that she had already ignored these symptoms of nervous
upheaval longer than was safe. She could not continue to tell herself
that all this was merely the result of the war, of four years’
protracted strain. It might be true, but it was not to the point. As she
watched that restless figure walking among the trees, she had realized
fully that the issue now lay, not with causes, but with possible
consequences.

Two days at Braxhall had been sufficient to show her that the young
Clewers were at odds with one another and with life. It was obvious,
moreover, that the trouble had been going on for some time and was
working to a cumulative crisis. Agatha could scarcely speak to or of her
husband save with a kind of suppressed exasperation, while John was
uniformly morose. Under these conditions the advent of Gerald Blair must
be regarded as an appalling catastrophe. Nothing could have been more
unlucky.

Mrs. Cocks had stoutly refused to listen to those veiled fears which
Marian would have imparted to her two years ago, before Gerald removed
himself to the Balkans. As Agatha’s mother she was bound to declare that
there was nothing in it. But she knew in her heart that there was plenty
of cause for alarm. No one could have been more deeply disturbed than
she: no one had been more inclined to fear that these two were on the
verge of loving each other again. She was forced, for her peace of mind,
to look upon the affair as a proof of Agatha’s levity rather than as a
symbol of constancy. Ignoring the possible effects of her own
strategical error in sending him down to Lyndon in the spring before the
war, she told herself that Agatha, in her husband’s absence, was finding
entertainment in the revival of an old flame. Agatha was not, evidently,
framed by nature to be a grass widow, but she would settle down when
John came back.

John’s demobilization, however, had worked no miracles. And Mrs. Cocks
was beginning to gauge, for the first time, the strength of Gerald’s
“upsetting ideas.” He had really succeeded in imbuing Agatha, to a
certain degree, with views which, for want of a better word, she was
forced to call socialism. She had traced to his disturbing influence a
volcanic notion which had seized Agatha in the spring of 1918. This had
been the wish to do some very hard work. Agatha, whose war activities
had always been of the lightest, insisted suddenly upon a twelve-hour
day in a canteen, a phase which had lasted nearly three weeks and which
had only ended with the inevitable physical collapse.

And now, as the mother paused, uncertain as to her wisest course, but
determined that someone must be spoken to and something must be done,
Marian Clewer knocked at her door and invaded her with that air of
forced cheerfulness which was beginning to exasperate everyone in the
house. Mrs. Cocks purposely ignored it, a fatal mistake, for a very few
sympathetic leads from her would have drawn from Marian the whole tale
of her anxiety about John. And, as she herself said afterward, of
course, if she had known that . . .!

“Well, Marian,” she began brightly. “This is the first time I’ve really
seen you since we arrived. What a magnificent place it is!”

Praise of Braxhall brought a real gleam of pleasure to Marian’s brow, as
she seated herself a little heavily by the window. She looked round her
with contentment.

“It is a very lovely place, isn’t it?” she said. “It makes me very
happy, every time I come here, to see Cynthia so comfortably settled.
It’s a wonderful thing, Ellen, to feel that one’s daughters are
absolutely happy in their marriages. Of course, it’s given to few.”

“It is,” agreed Ellen, scenting an attack. “By the way, how is Lois? I
don’t think she’s looking quite up to the mark.”

Marian beamed triumphantly as she acquainted Mrs. Cocks with the nature
of Lois’s indisposition.

“Of course, nobody knows of it yet,” she said. “Lois and Hubert are
quite delighted. And so am I. At our age there is a great satisfaction
in being a grandmother, isn’t there?”

“Of course, you don’t count James’s children,” parried Mrs. Cocks at
once.

“Well, no. A stepson isn’t quite the same thing. Besides—one’s
daughters . . .”

“If Cynthia ever has a family, there will be plenty of room for them in
this house,” observed Mrs. Cocks, who knew very well that Cynthia would
have nothing of the kind.

Marian ignored this thrust and continued:

“I’m so especially glad for Lois because there is no doubt that she and
Hubert do have their little differences.”

“No doubt at all,” said Mrs. Cocks promptly.

“Though, of course, they mean absolutely nothing. An ideally devoted
couple! Still you know that sort of thing, trivial things in themselves,
of course . . . in time are apt to become serious. And children smooth
them out so. They take a young couple out of themselves. I was very
sorry that Lois didn’t begin much sooner. I think it’s the greatest pity
. . . however . . .”

“When do you expect . . .?” interrupted Mrs. Cocks.

“Next March.”

“I’m very glad; especially when you are all so pleased.”

“I have, I suppose, a great deal to be thankful for. Though of course I
have troubles. . . . Still it would be terrible to feel that either of
my daughters was unhappily married. I can imagine nothing more frightful
for any mother. Where is Agatha, did you say?”

“Gone for a walk, I believe.”

“She does not look well. I was quite shocked when I saw her; really, I
hardly like to say it, but she is losing her looks rather, poor girl.”

“Oh, she needs a change. London gets stuffy. Scotland will set her up.”

“Yes, yes! It will be a good thing to get her right away up to Scotland.
Ellen, I’m most distressed that Mr. Blair is coming here. Believe me, I
knew nothing about the invitation until it was too late. I would
certainly have stopped it if I could. But Tom, ignorant of the
particular reasons against it, invited him without telling us.”

“I don’t think you need worry about that. I don’t think I know of any
particular reasons against it,” replied Mrs. Cocks stiffly.

“Don’t you really?” asked Marian. “Personally—of course I’m given to
plain speaking—personally I think it’s the greatest pity Agatha should
see much of him while she is in this unsettled state.”

“I don’t think you need trouble about Agatha. It is quite natural that
she should be very much attached to Gerald, though I know I have never
succeeded in explaining this to you. They are cousins and were brought
up together. Practically brother and sister.”

“But there was never anything more? No engagement of any kind?”

“There was certainly no serious engagement. There was the usual kind of
boy and girl flirtation, perhaps. But you must know, with daughters of
your own, how ephemeral such things are.”

“I’m glad to say that I’ve had nothing of the kind to deal with in the
case of my own daughters.”

“Really?” said Mrs. Cocks. “Oh, well, perhaps not. No!”

Her smile infuriated Marian, who added: “But then, they both have great
natural discretion.”

“So has Agatha,” returned Mrs. Cocks hotly. “But with any one so
attractive there are bound to be these little episodes. One gets to take
them for granted. After all, Marian, even if he is still rather
obviously _épris_, he isn’t the only one, is he?”

“Perhaps not. But still I think it’s a pity he should be coming here
just when poor John——”

She checked herself, but Mrs. Cocks took her up:

“Poor John! I don’t understand this ‘poor John’ attitude which you have
all adopted. You seem determined to make a martyr of him: to suggest
that Agatha doesn’t treat him properly.”

“Agatha makes no secret of the fact that she doesn’t care a rap for
him.”

“Has she said so to you?”

“No! Of course not. But her manner to him . . .”

“She has never been demonstrative in public. I should be sorry if she
was.”

“But it isn’t only in public.”

“How do you know? Don’t you think that you are drawing upon your
imagination?”

“No, I’m not. She has been quite changed toward him ever since he was
demobilized. She can hardly be called a wife at all.”

And Marian supplied details which, if true, left little doubt as to the
gravity of the young couple’s estrangement.

“How do you know all this?” demanded Mrs. Cocks. “You only can know from
one source. John has obviously been complaining to you. If he does that,
instead of managing his matrimonial affairs for himself, I can quite
understand Agatha’s feelings.”

Marian began to be aware of her own rashness, for her statements had no
positive foundation. They were based upon assumption only—inferences
drawn from a few bitter remarks made by John when he was arranging with
her for the disposition of his affairs. She began to think that she
ought to go and see Cynthia about the table decorations for Thursday.

“Then Agatha has said nothing to you?” she parried feebly, as she got to
her feet.

“Agatha is too loyal,” said Mrs. Cocks grimly. “She would never complain
of her husband.”

Marian, having eased her bosom of some of her furniture, departed. She
left a sadly discomposed mother. Mrs. Cocks was aghast, furious, and
convinced that instant action was imperative. All her vague anxiety had
been turned into indignation: she felt that John was unpardonable.
Previously she had been inclined to pity him, though not very much. So
great was her estimation of Agatha’s attractions that she could not
really think of him but as an uncommonly lucky man—nearly as lucky as
her own husband had been. Still it must have been a little trying to
return from the Front to a lady in so irritable a temper. But this
whining to his stepmother put him out of court. No high-handedness on
Agatha’s part could justify it. He must be made to feel that wives are
not kept thus.

Resolved to lose no time she set off at once in search of him and had
the good fortune to locate him alone in the billiard room. Closing the
door firmly behind her and seating herself with decision, she opened
fire:

“Now, John! What’s all this trouble between you and Agatha?”

“Why should you think that there is trouble between us?” inquired John.

He stood stolidly before her, so still and unblinking that she began to
wish he would fidget.

His question disconcerted her. She could not say: “Because your
stepmother said so,” without betraying Marian’s confidence. She was too
loyal to her own sex to acquaint any man upon earth with the
indiscretion of another woman. She replied:

“Well, it’s obvious.”

“I suppose it is,” he said slowly. “But Agatha has said nothing to you
herself?”

“Nothing. I think she would think it disloyal.”

She hoped this indirect shaft would go home. But John was reflecting
deeply with bent brows. At last he said:

“Well, I haven’t an idea what the trouble is. Agatha is the only person
who does know, I should think.”

His eyes were feverish and weary, and it struck her that he was a very
bad colour. He certainly looked ill, but an aggrieved note in his voice
hardened her heart against him. She saw quite clearly now that his calm
assumption of possession must be shaken. He must be made to see that he
stood in danger of losing Agatha altogether; and if the idea was
unpleasant to him, it was no more than he deserved. Anger blinded her to
the perils of the course she had chosen. She had really persuaded
herself that a little jealousy would be very good for him—would wake
him up to the fact that he had a wife worth fighting for.

“Well, of course,” she began, “though she’s said nothing to me, I have
formed my own opinions, and I think I’d better tell you what they are. I
feel that a great deal is at stake for you and Agatha just now; the
whole happiness of your after lives perhaps. No! Don’t interrupt me, but
listen! You must put up with a little plain speaking, my dear boy. I
think you and Agatha have got to the critical phase when—how shall I
put it?—the—the honeymoon stage of married life is over. The only
strange thing is that it should have lasted so long. Very few couples, I
should imagine, preserve their first ardour for eight years. But you’ve
been exceptionally lucky.”

“I don’t quite see what you are driving at. I haven’t changed. I love
her as much as ever I did.”

“Quite so! And you think that is a sufficiently good reason why she
shouldn’t change either. That is so like a man! I believe you all regard
a woman’s passion as something like electric light, to be switched on
and off as you want it. Don’t you think that you’ve been taking her a
little too much for granted? Because nothing, let me tell you, is more
fatal where a woman of her temperament is concerned. I know, because she
is very like me. You must never let her feel that you don’t regard her
as a prize and a privilege. For goodness’ sake, sit down! It bothers me
to see you standing like that.”

He fetched a chair and carefully sat down opposite her. She continued
deliberately:

“I expect you know that you won her from another man.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, hasn’t she told you? Funny girl! It’s quite true. There was a
schoolroom attachment which gave me a good deal of uneasiness at one
time. Of course, she forgot it all very comfortably when she met you.
But I mention it now because I think you should realize, with a girl
like Agatha, that these old flames are always just a little dangerous.
Especially in a matrimonial cross-roads like that which you are facing
now. Unless you can manage to keep your hold on her . . .”

“I like this! You talk as if marriage has no obligations, Mrs. Cocks.
I’ve been a perfectly good husband to Agatha, and I’ll thank her . . .”

“Technically, John, she’ll always be a perfectly good wife to you: you
know that quite well. I’m not discussing her principles. But the heart,
you see, cannot be bound. No person on earth can undertake to stay in
love. If you want her to do that you must rely upon yourself and not
upon the obligations of the marriage service. I’m saying all this
because, as he is unfortunately coming here . . .”

“He! Who?”

John’s face was gray.

“Gerald Blair. That’s the man I’m talking about.”

“Blair! Blair! What has he to do with all this?”

“Nothing. Except that, as I say, you won her from him once. He is, I
think, beginning to interest her slightly again. And I want to point out
to you that it is probably your fault. You haven’t been taking
sufficient pains to interest her yourself. When you marry a woman like
Agatha you must live up to her. My dear boy, don’t go that colour!
There’s nothing serious in this affair. D’you think I’d have spoken of
it if there was? To you, of all people? No! I only regard it as a
symptom that she feels you have been taking her too much for granted.”

“How long has this been going on?” he said, staring at her sombrely.

“Oh, my good John! Nothing has been ‘going on.’”

“Blair!” he said again. “Blair!”

Mrs. Cocks began to wonder if this were not altogether too much of a
good thing.

“You say they were engaged?”

“Wanted to be engaged. It all blew over completely. Only lately . . .”

“No,” he said, “not lately. Longer ago than lately. . . . I’m beginning
to see it now. . . . Yes, of course. . . .”

“There I’m sure you are wrong. It’s only since the war.”

“No. It was before the war. There was that time he came down to Lyndon.
I remember.”

“You are making too much of it,” began Mrs. Cocks anxiously. “There
could have been nothing then, I’m certain.”

“She had a photograph. . . .”

“What photograph?”

“Of herself and Blair. In a tin locket. Taken at a fair or something,
she said.”

“Oh, that fair! I remember! But she was hardly out of her cradle then.
Only sixteen or thereabouts. I packed her off to school.”

“She kept the photograph.”

“Sentimental creature!”

“She isn’t sentimental. I’d think nothing of it if she was.”

Mrs. Cocks pulled herself together.

“All this is nonsense, John. There could have been nothing that time
before the war. She was on perfectly good terms with you, wasn’t she?”

“She seemed to be.”

“If I’d thought you were going to take it this way I would never have
spoken. I thought you had more sense of proportion.”

“I’ve been blind! . . . Blair! And that’s why, oh God damn it all,
that’s why she’s always sneering at me for being too rich!”

“Too rich?” echoed Mrs. Cocks blankly.

“Yes, too rich. She’s got very socialist lately, don’t you notice?”

“Well, she has said some very strange things. But I thought it was this
house which had got on her nerves. I never could see that she objected
specially to spending money on herself.”

“Nor I. But I couldn’t remember where I’d heard these views before. I’ve
got it now.”

“Yes, he has strange ideas. And she has always been influenced by them
to a certain extent. After he went to the Balkans, that time when they
had been seeing a good deal of each other . . .”

“What time?”

“Oh, that time in the war, after he had had pneumonia. You remember,
surely?”

“I don’t. I was at the Front, unfortunately.”

In the ensuing pause Mrs. Cocks began to grow desperate.

“Well,” said John, “when he went to the Balkans, what did she do?”

“Oh, nothing. Only worked in a canteen: but I felt he put her up to it.
It’s no use looking like that, John. I merely wanted to show you the
sort of thing that is liable to happen if you let Agatha get out of
hand. If you insist upon taking it _au grand sérieux_ you’ll simply have
trouble. And, above all, try to remember that nothing is more likely to
exasperate her than the idea that she is being discussed and criticized.
Family criticism is a deadly thing.”

“I agree with you.”

“Make love to her, as you used to do, and she’ll forget all about him.
In a year’s time you will laugh at all this.”

John did laugh, a little unpleasantly, and she began to feel that
nothing she could say further would improve matters.

“That was tea, that gong,” she observed. “Are you coming?”

“No. I think I’ll go fishing.”

“John, you realize that if I thought there was the slightest danger of
her caring seriously for Gerald I would never have spoken to you?”

“Yes, I see that. I quite believe you think there’s nothing in it. But
it’s opened my eyes to some things that have puzzled me. You can’t live
with a woman, and be fond of her, and not know when she’s got something
on her mind. It’s my belief that she’s loved that fellow all along.
Except for a very short time when I swept her off her feet.”

“I’m sure you are mistaken. And even if it were true, John, it’s no use
putting it into words like that. It’s a great pity. She’s married to you
and must make the best of it.”

“She is and she must.”

He held the door open for her, and she gave up the attempt to reason
with him. She was uneasy and almost sorry she had spoken. She had wished
to bait him a little; to brace him up by suggesting that he had a rival.
She had not supposed that he could be capable of any desperate jealousy;
his self-confidence was too genuine for that. But she thought that a
small attack upon his complacency would be good for him. He must be made
to realize his own extreme good fortune in being “most damned in a fair
woman.” For Mrs. Cocks held the views of a lady who is beautiful, gently
nurtured, bred to claim homage as her due, heiress of all the
achievements of civilization and profoundly ignorant of its basic
brutalities.

A few phrases, caught as she crossed the ante-room, restored her belief
in herself. Through the open door came the emphatic voice of Lois:

“. . . and if it’s only half as pronounced as it was in London, two
years ago, it’s enough to kill poor John outright.”

Lois and Cynthia fell suddenly silent at her entrance, and as she sipped
her tea she felt that she had, on the whole, done very wisely. It was
true that John had taken her words far more seriously than she had
intended, but if the whole family were discussing the affair like this
it was obvious that he must hear of it sooner or later, and she was glad
that she had got in her say first. Braxhall, as she saw it, contained a
good deal of inflammable material. She had little doubt of her
daughter’s ultimate discretion and had genuinely persuaded herself that
the affair was, for Agatha, a mild sentimental adventure. But she was
deeply alarmed at the possibilities of family gossip in such a house.

Reviewing her three young people, as she grasped them, she thought that
they should not be hard to manage. Here was John, aggrieved and
resentful, his petulance continually inflamed by the ardent sympathy of
his stepmother. Agatha was obviously more than a little bored and ready
to grasp at an occasion for emotional entertainment. Gerald, she
supposed, was like nothing so much as a fluttering moth, drifting
helplessly back to his cradle, despite the counsels of prudence.
Altogether the situation, spiced by the malice and inaccuracy of the
other ladies, had the makings of a very fine explosion. There would
certainly be wigs on the green if a woman of tact and determination had
not, by heaven’s grace, been upon the spot.

She was right, as far as she went, but she had the misfortune to gauge
the emotions of her protagonists at far too low a point of intensity,
misled by the understatements of modern speech. Disturbances which she
beheld as embryonic had already reached the most sinister proportions;
her trio were rushing together, doomed to inevitable impact. She knew
nothing of the misgivings, the sense of inward betrayal, with which
Gerald Blair had accepted Sir Thomas’s invitation. She could not guess
his resolution, faithfully kept since his return from the Balkans, to
see his cousin no more; or how that resolve had been overthrown by a
chance report that Lady Clewer was looking miserably ill and unhappy, an
idea which gave him such anguish that he was constrained at last to end
it by coming to see for himself.

Likewise she underrated the effect of her bracing counsels upon her
son-in-law who was, at that moment, lashing the trout stream in a mood
which rang all the changes upon despair and fury. Of the three, indeed,
Agatha was the least discomposed and the least deserving of compassion.
She was still able to disguise to herself the nature of her own
feelings. For her the mere prospect of seeing her cousin again, after a
long separation, had so much of pleasure in it that she was able to
postpone the thought of ultimate issues. She knew that he had avoided
her since his return to England; she believed that she knew why. She had
applauded his wisdom and grieved over its cruelty. Now that he had
inexplicably changed his mind she was able to stifle apprehension in her
gladness that he had done so. She walked about the woods until she was
tired and then returned to Braxhall. Finding that the hour was still
early, she lay down with a book upon a sofa near the window. There, half
hidden in a haze of cigarette smoke, she was found by her husband on his
return to the house.

John, during the interval by the river, had become an angry man. In the
first shocked perception of the truth he had been too much stunned for
emotion. He had stated the facts with a sorrowful calm, seeing them too
clearly to be resentful. But this spasm of insight was shortlived. An
accurate realization of any truth is generally followed by a mood of
bitter rebellion against it, and in such a mood he sought his wife. She
roused herself to greet him with that conscientious friendliness of
tone, that manufactured interest in his affairs, which so deeply
exasperated him.

“Well, what have you been doing?”

“Fishing.”

“Did you catch anything?”

“No.”

“How tiresome for you,” she murmured, and waited a moment.

As he did not seem to be inclined to talk she returned to her book. At
the end of a couple of minutes, aware that he had not moved, she glanced
up at him again. He was looking at her with some earnestness. She asked:

“Did you want anything?”

“No.”

“Is anything the matter?”

“No.”

“Sure it isn’t the Scotch express?”

She referred to a difference of opinion which had occupied them earlier
in the day, concerning the time and route of their journey North. She
felt that she had been obstinate and was sorry for it. Half consciously
she gave him that swift, upward smile with which she had been wont to
reduce him. It reached him now, in his trouble, like a mirage, a hint of
unsubstantial bliss. He was consumed by his need of her, by the
impossible hope that she would love him again and help him to escape
from all this grief and fury, the uneasy, insecure present, and the
implacable menace of the future. He fell on his knees at her side and
would have taken her in his arms, but she recoiled.

“I only wanted to make up,” he pleaded almost humbly.

“I know. You have only one way of making up our disagreements and I find
it monotonous.”

The heavy fog of rancour, which had momentarily lifted, clouded his mind
again. He turned from her and stood looking out of the window. It was as
though he had met the full shock of his own doom for the first time—had
received his first inkling of life’s impermanence. A man of sufficient
courage and small imagination, he had taken the doctors’ verdict with
equanimity. The thought of death was very disagreeable to him, but it
had no appalling significance. He had seen it often enough, and had
faced it continually, as a matter of course, for four years. He did not
wish to leave a world which he found very pleasant, but he was protected
by that providential egoism which shields most normal people. He had no
real conception of the universe going on without him. His agony at the
thought of relinquishing his wife had been tempered by his inability to
imagine her continued existence after his own dissolution.

But now the merciful veil was torn from his understanding and he was
learning the vanity of all property. A sense of possession had informed
his entire attitude toward his surroundings; his love for Agatha was
permeated by it. And this sense was outraged by the realities forced
upon him. He grasped his limitations, knew that he would lie forgotten,
senseless clay, while she, the living woman now before him, would pass
into the possession of another man. It was one thing to know that she
might marry again; it was another to imagine her married to Blair. His
spirit could not submit to such a possibility, and yet he knew that he
was helpless.

A car was climbing the long hill, and the sound of its approach floated
distinctly through the open window. Agatha heard it and was transformed,
glowing warmly, for she knew that it brought her cousin. It was an
instant’s self-betrayal, but it revealed her to John, who had turned
sharply and marked the fleeting radiance. He left her immediately,
unable to trust himself in speech.

She dressed for dinner hastily and went down to the marble corridor
leading to the hall. Gerald was there and she watched him for a moment
unperceived, as she stood at the turn of the stairs. He looked very
uneasy, as though he had arrived by mistake into this sanctuary of the
sleek, the idle and the luxurious. His bearing was that of a stranger in
a strange land, and he was having a look at Cynthia’s portrait with a
public gallery expression on his face.

She decided that she would take him with her to see Dolly and James. He
would like their household. It would be nice to take someone there who
found it as admirable as she did. In another second she would call to
him, and see him start, and turn and smile at her.

“Did you arrive in your evening clothes?” she said.

He did not start as much as she had expected, having braced himself for
this encounter so tremendously that nothing could quite take him by
surprise. But he was a little pallid as he came toward her.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t. But I changed in record time. I thought it was
later than it is.”

They sat down together on a carved settle and plunged into the instant,
eager conversation of their youth. She tried to describe to him the
frescoes in the hall. The effort overset them both, and their mirth,
floating upward, greeted the other inmates of Braxhall as they descended
the stairs in procession.

She took him over to Bramfield the next day. Dolly heard the car turn
into the lane and was at the gate to welcome them. She was not much
changed since the days of her Clewer servitude. Her figure was broader,
perhaps, but her hair still shone with its old flame and her freckled
face was comelier than ever. Henry and little Agatha clung to her
skirts, while in her arms she held Jimmy, her youngest.

“Well, Agatha,” she cried, as she kissed her sister-in-law, “you are a
stranger! I thought you were never coming to see us again. But you’ve
been busy, I expect. Sonny! Kiss your Auntie, you bad boy! It’s funny
how he hates it: thinks he’s too old. How do you do, Mr. Blair? I’m very
pleased to see you. You will be staying at Braxhall, I suppose?”

“I was wondering if you’d remember me,” said Gerald, as he shook hands.

“I should think I did,” Dolly assured him. “You came to that lecture Mr.
Ervine didn’t give, in the Lyndon Reading Room. I remember. Shake hands
with Mr. Blair, children.”

She took them up the garden path, pausing to allow them to admire the
lilies and hollyhocks in the small beds.

“Yes,” she agreed, “they are a sight. We got second prize at Bramfield
show last year, in the cottage garden competition. I always said we
might of got first, if James hadn’t spent so much time on the vegetable
marrows. He was quite gone on them, and couldn’t attend to nothing
else.”

“And they didn’t count?”

“Not as flowers, they didn’t. They are vegetables, you see, Mr. Blair.
We had one was the biggest in three parishes. I told James about a young
fellow I knew that grew a prize marrow and carved a verse of a hymn on
the rind. ‘God moves in a mysterious way,’ it said. And when the marrow
grew, it grew. James would have it that he must put something on ours.
So he drew out a picture: Jonah sitting under a gourd, like in the
Bible. But as the marrow got bigger it went sort of crooked, and spoilt
it. He was vexed about it.”

“How is he?” asked Agatha.

“Very well, thank you. Though his leg pains him now and again. He’s apt
to get rheumatism into it. He’s working now, so I won’t call him, if you
don’t mind. But he’ll be in for tea, and he’ll be ever so glad you’ve
come. If I’d known, Agatha, I’d have made drop scones. And I’d have put
Sissy into that frock you sent her. I do think it’s lovely. I don’t know
wherever you got that nice embroidery. I never saw anything like it
before.”

“I got it at the Russian shop in the Brompton Road.”

“Oh, Russia! I expect they do lovely work there. But tell me, do you
think it’s all true what it says in the papers about these Russians?”

“It can’t be all true,” began Gerald at once.

“That’s what I say. It sounds awful! James read me a bit out of _John
Bull_ last Sunday that said there wasn’t a house left standing, not a
man, woman nor child left living, where the Red Armies had been. And
then we read some more in the _Daily Herald_, only this time it was
about the White Army. And James said: ‘Well, but isn’t that the other
side?’ And I told him you can’t believe everything you see in the
papers.”

“It’s very difficult,” agreed Agatha thoughtfully. “It’s broadminded of
you, Dolly, to take _John Bull_ and the _Daily Herald_. We only take the
_Times_.”

“Well, we don’t get time to read the paper every day. But we do a bit on
Sunday. Come into the parlour, won’t you? I do believe you’ve not been
here, Agatha, since we bought the gramophone.”

“No, I haven’t. Dolly, how exciting! What did you do that for?”

“James got it for my birthday. That is it.”

“But it’s a beauty! These cabinet ones are so much the nicest.”

“It’s second-hand,” said Dolly. “We couldn’t have got such a good one
new. But James got this off a friend that was short of money and wanted
to get rid of it. It’s as good as new.”

Agatha felt vaguely surprised at the idea of James having a friend. But,
when she thought it over, she could see no reason why he shouldn’t.

“Those cheap ones,” continued Dolly, “well, they wouldn’t do at all. We
didn’t like all that sort of scraping they made; you can’t seem to hear
the music. But this is just what we wanted. I’d play it to you now, only
James isn’t here. I expect he’ll turn it on after tea.”

“Oh, I do hope he will. What records have you got?”

“Not many yet. We haven’t had it so very long. We’ve got a lot out of
the ‘Messiah.’ That’s my favourite piece. I sung in it once in our
chapel choir at home. It’s grand! But I expect you’ve heard it often.
Then we’ve got a thing, I think it’s call ‘Chaconne,’ that James likes.
He heard it in Paris. And we have some comics for the children. And I
got ‘Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes,’ when I was over in Oxford once. I
think it’s a very pretty song, but James regularly has his knife into it
and broke it by accident. At least, he said it was. Sissy, lovey, just
look into the kitchen and see if the kettle’s boiling!”

Dolly spread an elaborately embroidered linen cloth, with a crochet
border, over the plush table cover and fetched out the Spode tea-things
which she had inherited from her grandmother. Sissy and Sonny were
invested with bibs and mouthed their grace with some promptings.

“You’ll have eggs with your teas,” pursued the hostess, “after this long
drive? James always gets eggs when he’s been working all afternoon. Oh,
yes, you must! How many would you like? Mr. Blair could do with two,
surely?”

She was very much put out at their refusal, but relented when they
described to her the meal which they would have to eat on returning to
Braxhall.

“Not really?” she exclaimed. “Then I don’t wonder you won’t eat much
tea. And I expect you ate enough lunch to feed a poor family for a week,
didn’t you? But—d’you mean to say they eat all that?”

“Eating’s nothing,” said Gerald. “You should see what they drink!”

“Oh, it is wasteful! I do think it’s shocking! Now, at Lyndon sometimes
I used to be surprised at all the food that got eat up in the dining
room. But that wasn’t nothing to this; and it was before the war too.
But these new gentlemen, like Sir Thomas, they don’t seem to mind what
they do. I don’t like all that waste. I wonder now how much butcher’s
meat goes into the housekeeper’s room?”

Agatha was unable to enlighten her on this point and a moment later she
laughed at herself for the question.

“It was a silly thing to ask, for I don’t believe, Agatha, that you know
that much about your own house.”

Gerald was intrigued by the manner of the two women toward each other.
It was not quite what he had expected. He had gathered that the family
thought Agatha too friendly with Dolly. But he had never been able to
imagine them on terms of perfect familiarity. He had always pictured
Agatha as the more assured of the two, smoothing, in her tactful way,
the small difficulties of intercourse. He saw now, however, that Dolly
dominated the alliance. He perceived in her manner, moreover, a hint of
mocking tenderness, a very guarded gesture of compassion. It was
possible to believe that she pitied Agatha for some reason, with purely
imaginary ills. He wondered if Agatha had confided to her simple bosom
some of the hidden disquiet of which he was now so poignantly aware. He
hoped that this was so. She could not have a better confidante. Since he
himself could not inquire into the trouble, since it would be dangerous
for him to try, he was glad that she had Dolly. But he would have
thought that the spectacle of so much conjugal serenity, such maternal
complacence, must be torture to a woman like Agatha, tardily reaping the
bitter fruits of her mistaken marriage. Her fortitude in enduring it
indicated a generosity of temper which rejoiced his loving heart.

The voice of James could be heard halloing through the house for his
tea. His wife called to him:

“It’s here! We’ve got company.” To the guests she explained: “We
generally get it in the kitchen when we are alone.”

The master of the house joined them. He was paler and a good deal fatter
than of old, and he walked with a decided limp. His large face creased
into joyful smiles when he saw his sister-in-law, and he greeted her
affectionately.

“You remember Mr. Blair, James?” prompted Dolly.

“Of course I do. You are Agatha’s friend, aren’t you? It’s a long time
since I’ve seen you, though. Where have you come from?”

“I’m staying at Braxhall,” said Gerald.

James looked very much surprised.

“What for?” he demanded.

“He has come down for the fresco lunch,” explained Agatha. “And I want
to know why you aren’t all coming. You certainly should, you know.”

A peculiar expression eclipsed the candid sweetness of James’s smile.
For a second he looked positively venomous. Then he became merely sulky.

“I’m never going near that place again,” he averred.

“But I thought the frescoes looked very nice,” persisted Agatha.

He regarded her closely and in some astonishment.

“Have you seen them?” he asked.

“Well, I’ve only had one little peep. I haven’t looked at them properly
yet.”

“No?” said James.

Then he turned to Gerald and demanded:

“You seen ’em?”

“Not yet.”

James assented, as though he had been quite sure of the answer. Dolly,
meanwhile, had been looking uneasy and now introduced a change of
subject:

“They’ve been looking at the gramophone, but we haven’t played it yet.
Henry! Don’t get putting your fingers in the jam! Now, if you do it
again you’ll get a good smack.”

James’s face cleared instantly.

“Oh, have you? Wouldn’t you like to hear it? Shall I play it to you
now?”

He put on a record of Mme. Clara Butt singing “I know that my Redeemer
liveth,” to which they all listened reverently while they ate their
bread and radishes. Upon the faces of Dolly and James was written a
complete, uncritical joy in their new possession. It was obvious that
they loved an excuse for playing their gramophone.

“It’s almost as good as real, isn’t it?” said Dolly.

Even Gerald, who hated gramophones, had to admit that this was the least
offensive that he had ever heard.

“Now we’ll have the ‘Chaconne,’” breathed James.

He had stopped smiling and a slight quiver ran all through his large
body. The others fell silent and in the hush of the small room Agatha
felt an instant’s pang of unreasoned fear of him. He fetched the record
and put it into place with the soft, mysterious gestures of a priest at
the altar.

Dolly and Agatha listened with the religious expression of women who are
making a genuine effort of intelligence. Dolly plaited her cotton skirt
into creased folds between a work-stained thumb and finger. Agatha sat
very still. Everything in the little parlour was like a dream,
unsubstantial as the thick yellow splashes of sunlight which dappled the
geraniums in the window and fell in sleepy pools on the carpet. In the
middle of its warm illusion the motionless solidity of James seemed to
melt, his brooding impassivity to shiver and break, until the vibrant
air was alive with his thoughts. As for Gerald, he was a thin flame
burning somewhere in the shadows of the room.

When the concert was over James was instructed to take Mr. Blair out to
the bench by the porch for a smoke. Dolly and Agatha retired upstairs to
the privacy of the conjugal bedroom, where Jimmy got his tea and Agatha
powdered her nose. The two women lingered some time, discussing the
technical side of the child’s arrival.

“I was laid up longer than the other two times,” said Dolly. “I wasn’t
back to work not inside three weeks. I don’t know what Auntie wouldn’t
have said to me. She’s always on to me for turning into a lady. Mrs.
Hickman, the woman that came in to do for me, was a low sort of person.
The dirt! You’d be surprised; just in that little time! ‘Well,’ I said,
when I came down, ‘the first thing I do is to have a good clean round.’
I was glad James was away at Braxhall most of the time doing those
frescoes. It would have been very uncomfortable for him, not getting his
meals nice like he’s used to.”

“Have you seen the frescoes, Dolly?”

“No, I haven’t! Not yet! And between you and I, Agatha, I’m worried
about them. He’s so funny. To begin with he was quite all right, just
like he always is over his things, you know. Quite taken up with them.
But then Sir Thomas kept writing and going on at him, saying they wanted
stained-glass windows, and this and the other, and I don’t know what
all, until he got quite disgusted. And I got afraid, really I did! For
you know he’s dreadful when he does lose his temper, which isn’t often,
thank goodness!”

“I rather gathered that the Bragges had been a little trying.”

“That’s right. And it isn’t only this. That Cynthia you know, well I
suppose I shouldn’t talk back at her as she’s James’s sister, but first
and last she’s been very nasty to us. Very nasty she’s been, just in
little ways. But she was never kind to James: he hasn’t told me the
half, I’m sure, but he remembers it all. He remembers too much, as I
often tell him. Because most of it happened when they was only children,
and I don’t like holding things up against people. It’s not Christian.
Quiet now, Jimmy, you greedy boy! You’ve had quite enough for one
while.”

“Let me have him for a bit.”

Agatha took the child while Dolly buttoned up her frock and put a few
pins into her hair. The room was very small and almost filled by the
double bed and the baby’s cradle squeezed against the wall. James’s
Sunday clothes, newly brushed, hung over the foot rail of the bed, and
Dolly now folded them neatly and put them away in the bottom drawer of a
little wardrobe. Agatha tried to imagine herself and John submitting to
the enforced propinquities of such a marriage chamber and felt dismayed
at the idea. It showed her how slender was the bond between them. Their
union would have been quite unendurable if they had been forced to live
as Dolly and James lived, as the majority of the human race have to
live, without the means for privacy.

Her mood of the moment was such that she was inclined to view her own
advantages over Dolly in the light of a calamity. She envied a
simplicity of existence which, at another time, might have struck her as
wanting in refinement. Seeing all things from her cousin’s standpoint,
and exaggerating, if possible, his distrust of those civilized amenities
which depend upon a large income, she found the Bramfield household an
admirable institution. She saw in the undecorated austerity before her a
symbol of that marriage which endures against accident, against shock
and change, because illusion has no part in its foundation. Such a
companionship she had once desired for herself: she believed that it
would mitigate the unbearable solitude of her spirit. But she and John
could never compass it. She had forfeited such hopes for ever and ever
when she became his wife.

“Do you know that a million married people are now living apart?” she
asked Dolly suddenly.

“What’s that?”

“A million married people are at this moment living apart in England
alone. And, dear knows how many more don’t want to.”

“Well, I never!” Dolly was shocked. “Is that really true? Isn’t it
awful? The papers is full of these divorces nowadays.”

“What’s the cause of it all, do you think? Why are there so many more
unhappy marriages than there used to be?”

“I don’t think there are any more than there used to be, I don’t. Only
people won’t put up with things, not like they used to. It’s the same
all round. Look at the way people used to have to work before there was
any Unions. Twelve hours a day, even for little children! It was awful!
Auntie used to tell me about when her mother was a young woman, away up
in Leeds; and you couldn’t believe that such things could have happened.
People must have taken things a sight more quietly than they do now.”

“Then you think there were always unhappy marriages, but people didn’t
rebel against them.”

“Yes, I think so. My mother! When I think of what she had to bear! No
woman wouldn’t stand it nowadays.”

“But isn’t it a good thing, don’t you think? Why should people endure
misery if they can escape from it? When a person rebels, it’s progress
really.”

“Well, I don’t know, Agatha. I see what you mean and I’m sure you are
right in a way. Only I get thinking sometimes. . . . It seems a
pity. . . . Sort of like this. The way we go on now, people act silly
and then find out new ways so as not to suffer for it. They don’t study
not to be silly. That isn’t going to make the world any better, not in
the long run.”

“But is anything likely to make the world better in the long run?”

“Godly living will,” said Dolly firmly, “and nothing will do instead of
that, not if it’s ever so.”

“Oh, Dolly! But what is godly living?”

“I should have thought you’d know that as well as I do. It’s obeying
what our conscience tells us.”

“But if you’ve made a mistake so that you can’t—you can’t—if you have
got yourself all into the wrong atmosphere. . . . What I mean is, you
can’t be godly or anything else genuine if you are absolutely out of
harmony with your life. Listen! Suppose a woman was married to a man who
wasn’t unkind or unfaithful or anything, but she just found she didn’t
love him, and felt that her life with him was absolutely at variance
with her conscience—and—and there was another man—whom she ought to
have married, who had the same ideals, with whom she could lead a better
life? Which do you think she ought to do, stay with her husband, or go
to this other man?”

“I wouldn’t like to say,” said Dolly, looking embarrassed. “How d’you
mean, lead a better life?”

“Well, if the other man had—say, a religion that she believed in and
that her husband couldn’t ever, ever understand. After all, it says in
the Bible ‘leave all and follow Me.’ I don’t want to be blasphemous, but
couldn’t it be a sort of—call?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. I never heard of any one getting a call that
way, though I’ve heard plenty of people telling about their religious
experiences.”

“But it might be.”

“Well, I suppose it might. Only it seems a funny idea. I think anybody’d
have a hard job to persuade themselves that it was right. Why, supposing
she had little children to care for?”

“Oh—I mean a woman without children.”

“Did you? But then there’d be her husband. What would he do? He’d have
to get another woman to look after him most likely. And she wouldn’t be
his wife, not unless he had enough money to divorce the first one. And
then they’d be living in sin.”

“I—meant—fairly well off people, who could afford divorce.”

“Oh, I see,” cried Dolly, enlightened. “You mean a lady, not any sort of
woman?”

“Y—yes. I suppose I do naturally think of a lady when I think of an
imaginary case.”

“Well, you see, I naturally don’t.”

“Is there so much difference?” said Agatha wonderingly. “But if it was
any woman, Dolly? Would you condemn her if she left her husband and went
to a man she loved better?”

“I couldn’t say unless I knew her. I would if I thought she was light.
But it isn’t only that kind that do such things.”

Through the window the smell of lilies was blown in from the garden and
the voices of Gerald and James murmured on in intermittent conversation.
The noise of the car in the lane reminded Agatha that she must get home
early. She began to tie her veils.

On the way home she said to Gerald:

“Dolly thinks that our much-vaunted civilization is too much occupied
with palliatives. She’s very strong upon the folly of substitutes for
godly living, as she calls it. She thinks we concern ourselves too much
with averting the consequences of our own acts instead of eradicating
folly and vice themselves.”

“Dolly’s views,” said he, “are so sound that they are apt to be a little
obvious. What desperate remedy was she referring to in particular?”

“It was divorce,” said Agatha, after a moment’s pause. “We were
discussing unhappy marriages and whether there were more now than
formerly.”

Gerald looked straight in front of him and said in a detached,
discursive tone:

“Nobody but the parties themselves can say what constitutes a happy or
an unhappy marriage. Evils which to one section of society, or one
generation, seem quite unbearable are beside the point to another. I
remember seeing that so strongly once when I was reading some letters
written by an old boy in the seventeenth century (I rather think it was
Halifax) to his daughter. He was obviously devoted to her; and his
advice about bearing ill-treatment from a husband comes as something of
a shock. I don’t think it referred to any special husband: I mean I
don’t think she was even grown up at the time. It was just on general
principle. He counsels the child as to the best way to endure brutality,
drunkenness, and flagrant infidelity as if they were inevitable, as they
probably were in those days. But he was a sane man, and very fond of the
girl, and one gets the impression that he quite expected her to be happy
and prosperous, as I’ve no doubt she was.”

“It’s very odd,” said Agatha. “I suppose it all depends upon what one
expects to get. In a way marriages of convenience must be much more
likely to be happy than marriages for love, because they are based on
less extravagant expectations. Either way, it’s a toss up.”

“It’s ultimately based, I fancy, upon the question of common ideals;
unity of outlook. Whether the pair concerned have the same conception of
their environment, the same purpose in life. The usual considerations
determining a love match don’t necessarily ensure that, any more than
would the business propositions behind a marriage of convenience. Look
at our present host and hostess! They are, to me, as good an example of
a happy marriage in one way as Dolly and James are in another. I can
imagine either making another partner miserable. But together they are
complete, and Braxhall is a wonderful expression of their joint
outlook.”

Agatha was silent, her mind busy with unspoken applications. She was
dismayed by the unconcealed bitterness of his tone toward Braxhall for
she felt that Lyndon fell under the same condemnation. The Bragges
merely proclaimed blatantly an ideal of life which, in her own
household, was discreetly and beautifully intimated. So, in the light of
their earlier encounters, did she interpret all his scornful remarks.
But she did him an injustice. He was long past criticizing anything that
was hers.

He changed the subject, feeling, with an obscure sense of
self-preservation, that matrimony, happy or otherwise, was no safe topic
for himself and Agatha. He said that he was intrigued by James and the
frescoes.

“I don’t understand him. There must be something behind it which nobody
can have understood. He spoke in such an odd way when I was sitting in
the garden with him. I shall go and have a look at the things as soon as
I get back.”

“What did he say?”

“He seemed almost apologetic about them. And yet defiant. He said that
he considered they were as good work as ever he’d done, and that Sir
Thomas could always whitewash the wall if he didn’t like it, but that
he, James, wouldn’t alter them for anybody.”

“Of course, they are all rather—bacchanalian, but I don’t think the
Bragges seem to mind.”

The car swung into the long road leading up to Braxhall valley. Beside
them the stream wound through the fields, and “Bragge’s Barracks”
frowned upon them from the heights. Agatha realized with a pang that her
afternoon of happiness and freedom was nearly over; she was returning to
a prison, and would soon be plunged afresh into that abyss of
irritation, suspicion, veiled criticism, secret conclaves, tactful
hints, and plain speaking. The clarity of mood, the singleness of mind,
which she could only achieve in Gerald’s company must inevitably be
shattered. She had looked forward to taking him to Bramfield; she knew
that he would like Dolly and James, and she revelled in the sense of
companionship, of comprehension, which had been theirs since childhood.
In her exaltation she could believe that they were both entire strangers
to Braxhall, travellers from another world, gayer, simpler and more
vital.

Anxious to prolong her reprieve, she suggested that they should walk up
through the gardens.

“We can cross by the footbridge,” she said, “and send the car up by the
road. There is plenty of time. It’s not six yet.”

He acquiesced and they stopped the car. A steep stile took them into a
square field peppered with mushrooms. Gerald, the glare of the collector
in his eye, immediately began to pick these, swearing mildly at
deceptive puff-balls. She watched him, still possessed by the
conviction, common to all lovers, that she had discovered the secret of
the universe. Her amusement was tender and beguiling.

“You are one of those people who can’t pass a mushroom. I know! My
mother is like that. She will walk ten miles carrying one.”

“Still,” he protested, “even one is nice in a stew.”

“They will be excellent in our hash to-night, I’ve no doubt. What will
you do with them? Which chef will you give them to?”

“It’s sheer waste to leave them.”

They crossed the little footbridge into the garden. Gerald held his hat
full of mushrooms in both hands, very carefully, like a chalice. The
silence and the sun absorbed and enfolded them; the extreme degree of
isolation in which they walked was intensified by the fact that they
were visible from every window on the south side of Braxhall. They
ascended toward that observant, many-eyed façade as adventurers approach
a hostile stronghold.

Slower and slower grew their pace as they mounted from terrace to
terrace; longer each pause as they turned to look down the valley.
Nothing stirred in the picture below them; not a cow or a sheep moved in
the unbroken green of the fields, and the heavy foliage on the opposite
hillside was as massive, in the strong sunlight, as a tapestried
picture.

“How warm and tame these woods look!” said Agatha suddenly. “You would
never think that at night they are full of lost souls.”

“Oh, those owls! Did you hear them?”

“They went on all night. They were worst about half-past two.”

“I know.”

Each had a vision of the other lying awake in those long haunted hours
when the valley echoed to strange cries and a low mist from the stream
lay over the fields. They resumed their climbing and did not pause again
until they had reached the topmost terrace of all and stood close
beneath the walls of Braxhall. Then Gerald spoke impulsively, in
obedience to a decision which he had just reached:

“I suppose lunch to-morrow will be over by three o’clock? I must get
away by the three-forty.”

“Oh, Gerald! You aren’t going? Not to-morrow?”

“Yes.” He spoke a little unsteadily this time and did not look at her.
“I think I ought to be getting back.”

She stared at him, an icy terror spreading over her, so that she
shivered in spite of the strong sun.

“I really oughtn’t to be away at all, just now,” he added. “But I wanted
to see—to see those frescoes, you know.”

He regarded his mushrooms unhappily. He had made up his mind that
another night of listening to the Braxhall owls would be as much as he
could bear. To himself he repeated in mental reiteration:

“Too risky! Altogether too risky!”

They moved on into the house. When they reached the marble corridor she
had collected herself sufficiently to remark: “Oh, yes. I suppose you
oughtn’t to leave your work for long.”

He nodded and began to mount the wide, shallow stairs. She watched him
until he had turned the corner. He was still carrying his hat
reverently, like a chalice.

He was scarcely out of sight before Lois came hurriedly through the
folding doors of the banqueting hall. She advanced in the greatest
agitation, calling softly to her sister-in-law. The pallor of her
tear-stained cheeks roused Agatha, for a moment, from the stupor of
misery which had overtaken her.

“What is it? What is the matter?” she cried.

Lois sank on to the bench beside her and began in a low voice:

“Oh, Agatha! It’s so dreadful! Listen! Hubert is come—and——”

She paused to give a loud sob.

“Dearest Lois! Tell me what it is. What can have——”

“Can you come into the hall for a minute? No, wait! I’d better tell you
first what has happened.”

“Have you had bad news?” asked Agatha, wondering if Hubert had been
speculating.

“No! No! He came, and I took him to see the frescoes. Oh, dear! Oh,
Agatha, did you see anything wrong with them?”

“My dear, I know absolutely nothing about pictures.”

“But you don’t need to, to see this. How can we have been so blind? It’s
incredible! I saw it directly he pointed it out to me. And you can’t
think how angry he is. He says I am absolutely incapable of looking
observantly at anything.”

“But what is it? What is wrong with them?”

“Oh, it’s perfectly wicked of James. It really is. He’s put in Tom and
Cynthia.”

“Put in?”

“Into the fresco. They are quite unmistakable. Hubert says he doesn’t
know when he’s seen anything more savage. He saw it the moment——”

“Oh, it can’t be. I don’t believe it. I saw the frescoes myself. Where
are they?”

“In the centre panel, over the dais. Don’t you remember those people
reclining at a sort of banquet—absolutely gorging?”

Agatha reorganized her memory and recalled with a shock of alarm an
incredibly aldermanic figure, which she had set down for Silenus, taking
his ease, if she remembered correctly, in the arms of a slender, blonde
hussy. . . . A horrible doubt was born in her mind.

“Let me look!” she cried, and then asked: “Who is in the hall?”

“Only Hubert. He’s the only person that knows, so far, except John. John
saw it at once when we told him, and he just wants to murder James. And
he said we’d better find you and consult what’s best to be done. So we
both went to look for you. I don’t know where he’s gone; up to your
room, I expect. I—I don’t think he knew you had gone out with Mr.
Blair. But I happened to look out of the window and saw you coming up
the hill. So I ran out to stop you.”

“I see,” said Agatha, too much preoccupied to notice that Lois was
blushing. “Let’s go into the hall.”

She followed Lois through the big doors. They discovered Hubert, in a
transport of fury, pacing up and down and viewing the unspeakable
paintings from every part of the room. Agatha looked at the panel over
the dais and turned pale. It was quite undeniable that the central
figures of the piece were more than reminiscent of Sir Thomas and Lady
Bragge.

She looked for a long time in shocked silence and then said faintly:

“I suppose it’s having no clothes on that makes one slow to recognize
them.”

“I suppose so,” said Hubert grimly. “But I found no difficulty in seeing
it the moment I came into the room.”

“But then, you know, the first time I saw it they were both here, with
their clothes and everything—it distracted one’s attention a certain
amount.”

“I see it more strongly every minute,” broke in Lois. “I’ve seen Cynthia
look like that a dozen times, when she is a little anxious what Sir
Thomas will say next. Late on in dinner, you know, when he’s rather
. . .”

“I’ll go down to Bramfield to-morrow and kill James,” said Hubert.

Agatha was looking intently at the piece and now asked: “What are all
those people doing on that little hill behind the group? What are they
building?”

“A temple?” suggested Hubert uncertainly.

“It’s Braxhall,” she vowed. “It’s this house as you see it from the
valley.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t signify. It isn’t nearly so
obvious as these people in the foreground. Among all these bosky
hillocks and leafy groves it will pass unnoticed very probably. The
other can’t.”

“I don’t think there are any other portraits,” said Lois, who had been
looking anxiously at the other panels. “Not of people we know, anyhow.
That’s some comfort.”

“I shall go round and kill him,” repeated Hubert with gathering venom.

“I wish you would,” muttered Lois.

“When you think it was on my recommendation. . . . Of course, I ought to
have known that he wasn’t to be trusted. I knew he was getting riled
with the way Sir Thomas went on, and I half suspected that he had some
dirty trick up his sleeve. But I depended on Lois to let me know if
anything was wrong. I ought to have known that she is about as much use
as a sick headache. I ought to have known, after all these years. . . .”

“But Lois wasn’t the only one,” interrupted Agatha. “We’ve all been
blind. Look at John! And my mother, and Lady Clewer, and the Bragges
themselves! You are the first person to notice it, Hubert, as far as I
know.”

“Well, I can’t understand it. You simply can’t have looked at the
thing.”

“No. I don’t think we did. That’s it. At least, it is in my case. There
is always something in James’s work which makes me very reluctant to
look at it. I couldn’t say why.”

“Of course,” said Hubert bitterly, “anybody could be excused for not
recognizing their own portraits; and I suppose that the rest of you were
so steeped in the Bragge atmosphere, don’t you know . . .”

He broke off with a shrug. He could not forgive them for not having
warned him. His taunt was directed at his wife but it stung Agatha
intolerably. Convinced that her cousin was fleeing from Braxhall because
he could endure it no longer, she resented any implication which would
put her in such a galley. It was an insult to say that she was steeped
in Bragge atmosphere. Confronted with this epitome of it, she found it
all as detestable as anybody could. Neither James nor Gerald could hate
it worse.

“But what about the party?” Lois was saying. “That’s what we wanted to
consult you about. What are we to do? Can it be put off? What shall we
say to the Bragges?”

“Couldn’t we persuade them to have lunch in the panelled room?”

“It wouldn’t hold half the people. Besides, the whole thing is got up
especially to exhibit the frescoes.”

“Well,” said Agatha, thinking swiftly, “we must let things take their
chance. I would suggest that we say nothing to any one. Not till after
the party. It can’t be put off now.”

“But supposing people see . . .” began Lois.

“Can’t we trust that the majority of the guests will be as unobservant
as we have been? I don’t see why not. They won’t expect it, you know;
and most people don’t see things they don’t expect. And they will all be
eating lovely food; food good enough to absorb their attention
completely. Besides, a lot of them will have their backs to that
particular panel.”

“I shall give myself away,” said Lois. “I shall blush whenever I look at
the thing.”

“If ever I do anything for that fellow again,” said Hubert, “I’ll be
boiled alive!”

“And for relations too!” cried Lois. “It’s simply disgusting! When we
have all been so . . .”

She was disconcerted by something in the faces of the other two, and did
not attempt to specify what his family had always been to James. Instead
she added:

“I’m sure we all recognize, now, that he is justified in his claims as
an artist.”

“I never heard him make any,” murmured Agatha.

Hubert was studying the fresco again and now commented: “I always did
think that Sir Thomas looked like a satyr. I remember it struck me the
first time I saw them sitting together under a tree. A satyr and a
nymph! Oh, yes—but it wasn’t Cynthia though, it was you, Agatha.”

“Cynthia or me!” thought Agatha. “It doesn’t matter which. We are both
the same type to James—and Gerald.”

“But even if we get through this awful lunch safely,” demanded Lois
tearfully, “what then?”

“We’ll have to see,” said Hubert. “I think I agree with Agatha. Since we
can’t postpone the lunch we must go through with it, and in that case
the fewer people who know the truth the better. Your mother doesn’t
know, Lois?”

“No. And what she’ll say when she finds out, I don’t know. She will make
James sorry.”

“What about your mother?” went on Hubert, turning to Agatha. “Should we
tell her? Would she help us to carry things off?”

“Heavens, no! On no account! She’s the very last person to tell. Though
she’s generally so quick that I can’t think why she needs telling. But
she would be so frightfully amused—you must forgive me for saying so,
Lois. It wouldn’t be safe. She wouldn’t be able to help telling people,
or at least prompting them to guess.”

“Oh well, then, in that case . . .”

“We must try to keep her very busy and animated all through lunch so
that she simply doesn’t look at the thing. . . .”

The dismayed trio stared at the thing and wondered how any one could
possibly be prevented from looking. They started guiltily as John flung
open the door at the end of the hall and slammed it behind him. He
joined them without a glance at the frescoes and addressed himself to
his wife.

“I didn’t know you had gone for a walk. I was looking for you.”

“I went over to Bramfield to see Dolly and James,” she replied in some
surprise.

His face, at the mention of James, grew a shade blacker. “Oh, yes? I
thought I saw you walking across the valley field just now.”

“We got out of the car by the footbridge and walked up the garden.”

“I know. I saw you from the staircase window.”

Hubert and Lois looked at each other, and Lois broke in:

“I found Agatha in the hall, John, and brought her in here. I didn’t
know you were still looking for her.”

“I wasn’t. I was coming down to fetch her when I met Sir Thomas, who
began to talk about his peach-house. I couldn’t get away.”

“About these frescoes . . .” began Hubert timidly.

“Eh? The frescoes?” asked John vaguely. Then he recollected himself and
exclaimed: “Oh, damn the frescoes. Do what you like about it. They are
no business of mine.”

And he turned again upon his wife a regard which said that here was a
business which touched him too nearly. Hubert seized Lois by the arm and
almost ran her out of the hall.

“Well, but,” she whispered as soon as the door had closed behind them,
“Agatha shouldn’t walk about in front of the windows with Mr. Blair just
when poor John is so ill.”

“She doesn’t know he’s ill,” returned Hubert violently. “It’s—it’s
unfair not to tell her. It’s——”

“Hush! Somebody will hear. Wasn’t it awful? I never saw anybody look so
angry. His face was quite blue. It must be very bad for him.”

“It’s not our business,” said Hubert firmly.

They stole away.

John, left alone with his wife, turned upon her furiously. “You went to
see Dolly and James, did you? Well, you won’t go again.”

“John! What is the matter with you? You’ve no business to lose your
temper like this. What do you mean? I shall certainly go if I please.”

“I won’t have it. I forbid you to go there again. You are not to see
James any more, or his wife. You must drop them, see? It’s the
encouragement you give them that lets us in for this sort of thing.”

He waved a hand at the frescoes.

“But I’m very fond of him,” she protested vaguely, still at a loss.

“You are fonder than is prudent of several of your relations, aren’t
you?”

She started, stared, and grew very pale. He was, indeed, appalled at
what he had said, and repented instantly. He had been stung beyond
endurance by the sight of that slow, intimate ascent through the
Braxhall gardens. He was determined to end, one way or the other, a
situation which was becoming intolerable. The irrevocable words now lay
between them like a flung gauntlet. Nothing could unsay them; but
Agatha, after a moment’s consideration, made a visible attempt to ignore
them.

“We’ll discuss James later,” she said. “The business before us now is
the frightful party to-morrow.”

But he thought that he might as well go on as he had begun. “The party
to-morrow won’t concern us,” he told her, “because we shall not be
here.”

“John?”

“We leave here first thing to-morrow morning.”

Her eyes questioned him and he flung the reason at her. “I won’t have
you driving about the country with that—that fellow. You will leave
Braxhall to-morrow and I won’t have you seeing him again.”

“Do you mean Gerald Blair?”

“I do.”

She considered this for a moment and then asked:

“And what makes you take this line? What cause have I ever given you?
What have I done?”

“You’ve lost your head over him. It’s perfectly obvious to any one. And
it’s enough. I’m not taking any risks.”

She opened her lips for a denial which would not come. Instead she cried
out:

“Risks! What risks? Do you want to insult me?”

“This sort of thing has got to stop,” he said doggedly.

“What sort of thing?”

“Your whole behaviour. I tell you I’m tired of it. You treat me like a
discarded lover.”

“Do I? Do I? Well, so you are!” she cried, her voice rising.

Disgusted at her loss of self-command and the vulgarity of such a scene,
she added in a lower voice:

“You are. You’ve never been anything more. Never a real husband. Not
more than Tom is to Cynthia. Our relationship may be legal, but it isn’t
marriage. Nothing can make it that.”

“Really? And what is it then?”

“It’s been my fault,” she conceded earnestly. “I ought never to have
married you. We have no ideals in common. I’ve never been a real wife to
you. Nothing more than a mistress; nothing more.”

“It’s a pity you feel like that,” he said bitterly. “But I’m afraid
you’ll have to put up with it.”

Then he burst out again:

“Oh, hell, Agatha! Can’t you speak the truth? Can’t you think straight?
You married me and you’ve got tired of me. And you’ve invented all this
humbug about common ideals to justify your infidelity. That’s the long
and short of it.”

At the word infidelity she swung round, her conscious innocence flaming
in her face.

“Never for a moment——” she began, and then broke off. “But it’s
horrible to have to make denials—to exculpate oneself! If you can
believe——”

Tears, the first he had ever seen her shed, choked her speech. Smarting
under a sense of undeserved insult, she stood before him weeping
silently. He beheld her beauty and her grief with a fierce throb of
satisfaction. To make her suffer was at least a reassertion of power. He
became dominant and calm.

“We go to-morrow,” he repeated.

She answered, very low:

“We needn’t—for the reason you mention. . . . He is going away
immediately after lunch.”

A spasm of anguish shook her and he heard himself saying coldly:

“Oh, I see. Is that why you are crying?”

His heart had begun to do strange things and it occurred to him that
this interview, if prolonged, might prove fatal to him. He had no wish
to die at Braxhall. Glancing at her from the door, before he left her,
he saw that she had not moved. She was still standing on the dais step,
both hands pressed to her bosom, while the fresco panel flamed above her
stricken head.

* * * * *

Gerald, upon reaching his room, had, in a thunderclap of energy, sat
down and written the opening pages of a paper upon “The experiments at
Nancy” which had been simmering in his brain for some time. He was
wonderfully relieved by his sudden decision to quit Braxhall upon the
morrow and to see his cousin no more. Anguish it might be, but it was at
least a termination of the conflict. He was able, for the first time in
many weeks, to lose himself in his work. He wrote, absorbed, for nearly
an hour, and then, pausing for an instant’s relaxation, recalled idly
the mysterious utterances of James about the fresco. He remembered that
he had meant to visit the hall immediately upon his return, and
accordingly he set off, descending by a small staircase, close to his
room, which gave him access to a door opening immediately on to the
dais. He was, therefore, precipitated within a few feet of Agatha before
either was aware of the other.

She was seated upon one of the chairs set round the dais. Her elbows
were on the table and her face in her hands. Her whole attitude bespoke
an abandonment of grief. She had evidently failed to hear his approach
over the thick dais carpet.

He stood poised for flight. Prudence inwardly counselled a prompt
withdrawal; passion impelled him forward. Lingering, he was lost, for
she raised her head and saw him. She betrayed no surprise, but fixed
upon him a regard of infinite sadness, and sat motionless in her chair,
the slow tears still rolling down her cheeks.

He was inured to women’s tears; he had seen too many of them. But all
his experience had never shown him a creature who could weep so
beautifully. No sobs shook her; she was composed, mistress of herself,
save for these silent, persistent signals of woe. He had, among his
patients, a reputation for complete immunity; no nervous collapse could
soften or alarm him in Harley Street. Had she brought her tears there it
is possible that he might have checked the flood with a few bracing
words and a glass of water. But affection had undone him, as it has
betrayed better men, and, instead of resorting to professional advice,
he was moved, he hardly knew how, to fling himself at her feet, to call
her by every endearing name which occurred to him, and finally, with a
sense of foundering rectitude, to clasp her to his heart and entreat her
to tell him her trouble.

Of the subsequent conversation neither retained any very clear
impression. It was an affair of mutual declarations, and in a very short
time they arrived at the conclusion that a further separation would be
impossible to them. They must defy all the forces which had divided them
ten years earlier, and this must be done at once. Agatha’s misery
appeared to both of them as something no longer to be borne, and they
believed that their immediate union would be almost certain to abate it.

“We must get married,” Gerald stated. “We ought, of course, to have got
married ten years ago. We’ll go abroad somewhere until Clewer divorces
you, and then we will be married.”

“But do you think that will be right?” demanded Agatha hopefully.

He looked surprised, and a little put out.

“Right? What do you mean exactly? I think it’s the wisest thing we can
do under the circumstances. And anyhow we are going to do it.”

“I mean, can you do it with an absolutely free conscience?”

“N—no, not exactly. I couldn’t say that.”

Agatha did not like this at all.

“You can’t do what you think wrong,” she said doubtfully.

“Oh, yes, I can,” he assured her.

“But it must be right,” she argued. “We were meant for each other. It
was my marriage that was wrong.”

He agreed, but said that he would, he thought, condemn behaviour like
theirs in any one else. He reminded her, a little shamefacedly, that he
had accepted John’s hospitality and was returning it by stealing his
wife. But she insisted that they were justified. He thought it rather
tactless of her thus to harp upon the most painful element in their
situation. He had overlooked, for a moment, a woman’s capacity for
sanctifying her passions by an ideal. She had succeeded in persuading
herself that flight from her husband was the only remedy for an enormous
wrong, the only means whereby she could release her better self for a
life of austere endeavour. Her natural aptitude for symbolism had led
her to perceive a deep significance in the events of the afternoon. The
impression of the fresco was strong upon her, and she believed that in
renouncing her married life, with all its luxuries, she was pledging
herself to a very noble path. She could only repeat, rather resentfully:

“It seems right to me.”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” remarked her lover.

He took a short turn down the hall and returned to the dais step,
looking up at her.

“I don’t want you to deceive yourself,” he said anxiously. “I don’t want
you to be rushed into any course which you might afterward regret. I
should be a scoundrel if I took advantage of what appears to be a slight
confusion in your mind. I wish I knew what to do!”

“I thought we’d settled what to do.”

“Yes, but I want you to be quite sure. Think it over! Don’t decide now.
Tell me to-morrow. Remember I’m ready to take your word as final. I’ll
take you off at any moment if you like, or I’ll go away and never see
you again if you’d rather. But it must be either one way or the other.
I’m not going on like this: it’s unendurable. Think it over and tell
me.”

She realized that the abruptness of his speech was calculated. He was
deliberately trying not to appeal to her emotions, but to summon to
their aid those rational faculties still left to them. He tried to leave
her without further speech, but she called him back.

“Gerald! Are you quite sure that you want me to come? You aren’t being a
good Samaritan, are you?”

“Want you? Of course I want you! I always have. But that isn’t the
point. I’ve done without you up till now, and I can doubtless go on
doing without you, if I have to. But I won’t stand seeing you unhappy
like this. It’s more than any one could bear, loving you as I do.”

“But you could get on without me if you had to?”

“Why—yes—I suppose so.”

“Then I’ve no business to come. My justification——”

“Oh, Agatha dearest, can’t you think straight?”

At this point Mrs. Cocks burst in through the door at the end of the
hall. She glanced at the cousins, her eyes sparkling with instant
displeasure.

“Agatha!” she exclaimed. “Do you know that it is five minutes to eight?
Are you never going to dress this evening? I’ve been waiting for you,
upstairs, for at least three quarters of an hour.”

“Is it really so late, Mother?”

“Yes! Yes! Hurry, child! Hurry, Gerald!”

She swept them from the hall and carried her daughter upstairs.
Dismissing the maid, she declared that she would supervise the hasty
toilet herself.

“Pauline would be much quicker,” maintained Agatha.

“Perhaps. But I want to do some plain speaking which can’t be
accomplished before Pauline. What were you and Gerald quarrelling about
when I came in?”

“We weren’t quarrelling,” said Agatha after reflection.

“Weren’t you. You looked as if you were; you were looking defensive and
he reproachful. And, by the way, may I ask if you and he have been in
that hall ever since you came in this afternoon?”

“Oh, no! I was there with Lois and Hubert. And then John. Gerald had
only just come.”

“Oh, really? That’s not as bad as I thought. Still, you know, Agatha,
when I saw you coming up through the garden . . .”

“Good heavens!” cried Agatha impatiently, “how many more? Did everybody
in the house see me coming up through the garden?”

“I expect so. That’s where you are so silly, dear.”

“I never knew it was such a monstrous thing to do.”

“Now you are being even sillier. Tell me, who else has seen you?”

“Oh—Lois and Hubert—and John.”

“John! What did John say?”

Agatha made no reply, but dabbed powder on to her nose with shaking
fingers.

“You’ve put on too much,” observed her mother critically, and she
fetched a damp sponge and removed it all. “Now begin again. Tell me—is
John annoyed? Have you quarrelled with him?”

“He blames me,” began Agatha, and stopped with a gasp.

“What for?”

“For the same reason that Gerald blames me.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Cocks was at a loss. “But I thought you said you had not
quarrelled with Gerald.”

“Nor have I.”

“But you have quarrelled with John?”

“Yes. They both want to know if I can’t think straight.”

“What shoes will you wear? Is John jealous?”

Agatha was silent.

“It’s only natural,” continued her mother, as she folded up discarded
garments. “You can’t have it both ways. I’ve never seen a more devoted
husband. You wouldn’t like it if he got tired of you?”

“I shouldn’t mind.”

“Well, of course, if that’s your line, I don’t blame him if he does
resent it a little. In fact, I think he’d be justified in consoling
himself elsewhere. Do consider the possible consequences of such
behaviour, child. With a man like John, you can’t afford to run risks.”

“Thank you, Mother, I’d rather not discuss it.”

“Try to look at things a little more from his point of view. What, after
all, did he marry you for?”

“Oh, please, Mother, would you mind going? Will you please leave me
alone? I want to be by myself. I—I won’t come down to dinner, I think.”

“Good heavens! Child! Are you ill? Don’t go that colour! Sit down and
let me get you some sal volatile.”

“No. I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right. I only want to be by
myself.”

“But if you are too ill to come down to dinner, you are too ill to be
left alone. I shall stay with you and make it clear that you are really
unwell. I’m not going to have Marian saying that you are sulking after a
scene with John. Are you sure you can’t come down? It would look much
better if you could.”

“Well, yes,” said Agatha, whose colour was returning. “I will come.
Could you find my Spanish comb? And I’ll have that black lace shawl.
It’s somewhere in the wardrobe.”

“You are still very white. I should put on just a very little touch, if
I were you. You don’t want to go down looking conspicuously pale. Of
course, John is such a paragon of a husband. . . .”

The gong, heralding another of the endless Braxhall meals, reminded Mrs.
Cocks of the need for haste. She turned to the wardrobe without another
word.

Toward four o’clock upon the following afternoon Lois stood on the
topmost garden terrace, watching a car which sped along the valley road.
It contained the last of the guests who had lunched at Braxhall. She
stood attentive until it had turned the corner and then heaved a great
sigh of relief.

Hubert had been instructed to take Mrs. Cocks to some retired place and
keep her there. He had evidently done his duty, for nothing had been
seen of the pair of them for more than an hour and a half. Lois thought
he should be released and set off in search of him. She found them in
the sunken garden: they were sitting upon a stone bench by the fountain,
absorbed in animated conversation. Hubert, though sprightly, was, to the
practised eye of his wife, at the point of exhaustion; but his companion
was enjoying herself vivaciously.

“The guests have all gone,” said Lois, joining them.

“Gone? No! It must be very early!” cried Mrs. Cocks. “Nearly four? I
couldn’t have believed it! I’m afraid I’ve been very uncivil; I do hope
Cynthia won’t think so. I never meant to stay here so long. But your
husband has been telling me such killing stories, Lois.”

“Cynthia has gone up to rest, and Sir Thomas is having a cocktail
somewhere. I heard him calling for it.”

“But are they all gone? How annoying! There are several people I
particularly wanted to talk to. Why were you so amusing, Mr. Ervine?”

Hubert, who had been amusing because told to be so by Lois, said that he
was very sorry for it.

“I wanted to find out how many people have noticed that the Bragges have
set up a portrait gallery. Most original, I call it. I hear that you all
discovered it yesterday, and I think it most unkind of you not to point
it out to me.”

“Dear lady,” began Hubert, “we meant for the best.”

“Oh, I know you did. And you were perfectly right. But you see I never
noticed it until the middle of lunch. I pointed it out at once to Mr.
Chaytor, who was sitting next to me. But he was very crushing. He merely
said that he had already observed a resemblance, and changed the
subject. I think he was rather scandalized. And the man on my other side
was deaf. I was longing to find someone to laugh with about it. Do you
really mean to say that the Bragges don’t know?”

“Not yet,” sighed Lois. “But they’ll have to be told, I suppose.”

“James is really a wag. When will you tell them?”

“Oh, Mrs. Cocks,” interrupted Lois, “Agatha was looking for you
everywhere. She wanted to see you before she went. She told me to tell
you she’d left a note for you in your sitting room on the mantelpiece.”

“Went? Went where?”

“Away from here. Back to London, I suppose. She went by the
three-forty.”

“But they aren’t going till Saturday. We all go up to Scotland
together.”

“Oh, John hasn’t gone. Only Agatha. She went in a great hurry just after
lunch. She didn’t even have time to say good-bye to Cynthia. I met her
on the stairs taking leave of Sir Thomas, and she told me she had to run
because her car was round, and asked me to give you her message about
the note.”

“This is very strange!” exclaimed Mrs. Cocks, jumping up. “I can’t
understand this. I must find John.”

She hurried off toward the house, and Lois sank upon the stone bench
beside her husband and felt in his pocket for a cigarette. He lighted it
for her, and another for himself, remarking as he threw away the match:

“I suppose we can now say ‘Nunc Dimittis’ and what not.”

“You did nobly, dear! I felt that our only hope was to keep her away
from people. When I glanced across the table and saw by her expression
that she had seen, I thought all was lost. But your skill in keeping her
in seclusion has saved the day. What did you tell her stories about?”

“Oh, the Jews mostly. We began with the frescoes, of course, and I
propound my theory that art is in for a golden age because all the
profiteers are going to patronize it. This, I say, is due to the
prevalence of Semitism. Formerly the Jews pretended not to be Jews and
spent their money on baronial halls and portraits of Norman ancestors.
Nowadays, when the whole world is run by ’em, nobody’s ashamed of being
a Jew. They build their own houses and don’t waste money on second-hand
stuff. They patronize contemporary art. From that we got on to swapping
stories about our Jewish acquaintances.”

“But Sir Thomas isn’t a Jew.”

“No. But he meekly follows the beaten track of the leading profiteers
who mostly are. But tell me, how did this affair go as a whole? What was
the impression you got? How many people would you say spotted it?”

“Oh, a good many. But most of them were too well mannered to show it.
They were too much shocked and embarrassed to be amused.”

“Then on the whole it was better than it might have been?”

“I don’t know! It was pretty grim. I hope I’ll never have to live
through such another day.”

“So do I.”

“In the beginning I thought it was going off better than I could
possibly have supposed. I was astonished.”

“I know. When the thing was so blazingly obvious to me, I could not see
how they could miss it. And when we got to the joints without a hitch, I
began to be positively elated.”

“There is a good deal in what Agatha says. I think his work repels most
people. They have a sort of instinct not to look at it, and they don’t.”

“They certainly don’t. The lady on my right put up her lorgnettes and
had a very brief squint and then put them down with a click, and said:
‘I hear Mr. James Clewer is a great Socialist.’ I thought that this was
a new phase in Brother James, and said I didn’t know anything about his
political opinions. And she said wasn’t it true that he had married a
working-class woman and lived like an artisan? I said that I believed
that it was. She said that was what she meant, and that she detested
Socialists. I said I did too. Whereupon we talked Bolshevik atrocities,
and I don’t think James or the frescoes were mentioned again.”

“One of my neighbours asked me if Mr. Blair was James,” said Lois. “I
said no, and asked him why he thought so. He said because he looked so
miserable and out of it.”

“Blair certainly looked sorry for himself. And so, by the way, did M. le
Mari. But Agatha seems to thrive on it. I don’t know when I’ve seen her
looking more magnificent.”

“Perhaps she enjoys keeping two men miserable. She was in splendid
spirits—so very animated. She was laughing and talking away all through
lunch. Generally she leaves that to other people.”

“Well, to do her justice, I think she was making a genuine effort to
keep the family flag flying. She was the greatest support to us. No one
in her vicinity had eyes or ears for the frescoes.”

“That is so,” admitted Lois, “Yes, I really thought we were safe until
that awful moment when I caught sight of Mrs. Cocks’s face. It was lucky
that we had short-circuited her by putting her between the proper Mr.
Chaytor and the deaf Sir Nigel.”

“I know. And almost immediately afterward I became aware that a horrid
silence was stealing over the nearest of the trestle tables. And there
was Clewer, sitting perfectly mum, and not attempting to keep up the
conversation. He was a broken reed!”

“It’s the first time I’ve ever known him fail in his social duties.”

“Yes. He’s pretty cut up about Agatha, I really believe. I suppose there
was slaughter after we left them in the hall last night.”

“How long ago it seems!”

“Yes, we’ve lived through a lifetime of care and anxiety since, haven’t
we? It was quite a game to watch it spreading. It would have been funny
if it hadn’t been so grim. That look of incredulity dawning on one face
after another! Still we got off better than I expected.”

“Oh, but Sir Thomas’s speech was terrible! I thought it would be the
last straw. The manners of the English are incredible, as you say. One
can’t overstate their sense of decency. They just all looked a little
uncomfortable, for the most part. Very few exceptions.”

“And any one would look uncomfortable at any of Sir Thomas’s speeches.
His articulation was so uncommonly thick that I began to think of
strokes, didn’t you?”

“Oh, but when he proposed James’s health . . .!”

“Still he was so maudlin and incoherent by that time that most people
couldn’t have heard much of it.”

“Well, one or two who had behaved beautifully up till then began to get
a little hysterical. Is that Mother calling?”

Marian had come to the end of the terrace and was hailing them. Her
tones were significant and peremptory. When they joined her she inquired
in lowered accents:

“Have you heard?”

Lois nodded.

“It’s wicked! It’s monstrous!” broke out Lady Clewer. “Such a thing has
never happened in the family before.”

Lois and Hubert could well believe this.

“We shall never be able to hold up our heads again.”

“Very few people know as yet,” consoled Hubert. “And perhaps something
can be done?”

“I should hope that very few people did know! May I ask how you did? Who
told you?”

“As a matter of fact,” hesitated Lois, “we knew yesterday?”

“Yesterday!” shrieked Marian. “You knew yesterday?”

“Yes, but we thought it would be better not to distress you by speaking
of it until after the lunch party. We discussed it with Agatha. . . .”

“You discussed it with Agatha.” Marian was so much taken aback that she
could only whisper. “How could you discuss it with Agatha?”

“Well, we thought she would be a good person to talk it over with.”

Marian stared at them with her mouth open. At last she managed to ask:

“Did you begin on it, or did she?”

“We did. And she advised us to say nothing about it until after lunch
to-day.”

“I’ll be bound she did. But I simply cannot understand such disloyalty
in either of you. It was bare-faced connivance! You should have come to
me at once. And think of poor Tom and Cynthia having such a thing happen
in their house! It’s disgraceful! And now it’s probably too late to do
anything, though Mrs. Cocks is going off at once to see what she can
do.”

“Mrs. Cocks!” exclaimed the other two. And Lois added: “What can she do?
Where is she going? Not to James, surely?”

“To James? Of course not. Why should she? Lois! Hubert! You don’t mean
to tell me that James has had any hand in this affair?”

Lois and Hubert looked at each other, and Hubert said cautiously:

“Please, Lady Clewer, what are you talking about?”

“Why—this step of Agatha’s! Don’t you know? She’s gone away—run
away—with her cousin. With Mr. Blair. She has left John.”

It was now their turn to be speechless.

“She left a note, a wicked, cruel note, for John,” went on Marian with
rising indignation. “And one for her mother. Of all the horrible
things. . . . But what were you saying about James?”

“That’s nothing. Something quite different,” said Hubert. “This
frightful news—I can’t believe it. It can’t be true. There must be some
mistake.”

“I insist upon knowing at once,” said Marian sharply. “Lois, I command
you to tell me; what has James been doing?”

“Oh, Mother! That can wait! Are you sure that this about Agatha isn’t
all a frightful mistake? I knew they left by the same train; she made no
secret of it. But that doesn’t prove . . .”

“The note she left for John was perfectly unambiguous. He showed it to
me.”

Lois, to her extreme surprise, burst into tears. She was fatigued and
bewildered. Hubert and Marian, remembering her condition, became alarmed
and consoling, blaming each other for having subjected her to the shock.
She sobbed noisily upon Hubert’s shoulder for a few minutes, and then
collected herself sufficiently to ask:

“What did John say?”

“He said nothing. He was so frightfully moved that he couldn’t speak. He
just handed me the note and walked out of the room. He’d written on the
back of it, ‘I shall make no attempt to follow her, I am going down to
Lyndon to-night.’ This was just after the last of the guests had gone.”

Lois collapsed again.

“Oh . . . Oh . . .” she wailed. “Why must all this happen?”

“Lois, my darling, my precious, don’t. You’ll make yourself ill.”

“Oh, Hubert! I can’t bear it! After this awful day with James’s horrible
frescoes . . .”

“James? Will you tell me what this business of James is, please? Hubert!
You are evading me. I won’t have it!”

“Oh, well, it’s got to be,” sighed Hubert, and told her.

Her incredulity protected her for some time. Even after they had
revisited the hall and inspected the paintings she insisted that they
must have been changed since she last saw them. She maintained that she
could not have failed to recognize them. When, after long argument, the
truth assailed her, she became too deeply shocked for any
demonstrations. Lois and Hubert waited for a torrent of vituperation,
but she said nothing. In silence she left the hall and stumbled down the
marble corridor into the drawing room. They followed her, literally
clinging to each other in terror of what she would say when she once
began. She had sunk on to a chesterfield, and Hubert, really alarmed by
her gray colour, went in search of restoratives. She had barely reached
the point of interjections and gasps when Mrs. Cocks, a Bradshaw in one
hand and a fountain pen in the other, stormed into the room.

“There’s this five-fifty-five,” she began, and then exclaimed with some
commiseration: “Good heavens, Marian! How ill you look!”

“James . . . these frescoes . . . Tom . . . Cynthia,” began Marian
faintly.

“Oh, the frescoes? Oh, yes! I’m very sorry for you all about that
affair, indeed I am. But, listen, Marian. Can I speak to you privately
for a moment?”

“You needn’t mind Hubert and Lois. They know all about Agatha going, if
that is what you want to talk about.”

“Oh, indeed? I’m very sorry for it. Of course,” Mrs. Cocks turned to
them, “I know you will be discreet. It’s very important that this affair
should go no farther. I’m hoping to find Agatha in town this evening and
to bring her back with me. I beseech you, Marian, to say nothing of it
to any one else. Is it necessary to tell the Bragges?”

“They ought to know what has been going on in their house,” began Marian
firmly.

She was beginning to feel a little better.

“At least say nothing till we have seen what can be done,” entreated
Mrs. Cocks. “For John’s sake, I should have thought you’d wish to keep
it quiet. Just listen! If I take this five-fifty-five, I get to
London—let me see—I’ve lost the place. It’s quite tolerably early in
the evening, anyhow. I shall go straight to Harley Street and find out
where he is staying. They know I’m his cousin, so they’ll probably give
me his address if I’m a little pressing. Then——”

“But I must go over to Bramfield immediately! Immediately!” cried
Marian, starting up. “I must make James change that horrible thing. He
must paint it out. He must do a new one. I’ll make him. It’s
disgraceful. Hubert! can you order a car for me at once? . . .”

“Oh, Marian, do listen to me for a moment! What do the frescoes matter,
after all, compared with this? Could you see John for me and find out if
he . . .”

But Marian burst out afresh:

“Oh, why couldn’t you have told me yesterday? We could have hung a
curtain over that back panel.”

“Good God!” cried Hubert in horror. “You couldn’t have done that. It’s
the best panel of the lot. You can’t hide away work like that.”

“Don’t speak in that cynical way, Hubert!”

“I’m not being cynical, Lady Clewer. There are some things you can’t do,
and——”

“Can’t I? You wait and see what I can’t do! I tell you, if James won’t
alter that horrid thing I shall strongly advise Tom and Cynthia to
distemper it over.”

“Well, then, I wash my hands of it,” said Hubert furiously.

“It’s a pity you ever had anything to do with it, Hubert. It was you
persuaded them to have James. I was always against it.”

“Oh, Mother, how could Hubert know?”

“Marian, I don’t believe you want me to bring Agatha back. Can’t you see
that my business is urgent? Urgent! It can’t wait; I’ve no time to lose.
You can distribute the blame about the frescoes at your leisure after
I’m gone. You have no sense of proportion.”

“I’m sorry for you, Ellen. I pity you deeply. I see that it must be a
great shock to you . . . for you never would see. . . . Of course, it’s
less of a blow to the rest of us simply because we did recognize. . . .
But what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to speak to John and tell him I’ve gone after her. Tell him
I’m convinced it’s all nothing: all a mistake. Do try to persuade him to
be a little kind, if . . . when I bring her back with me. However much
he feels he has been in the right, do beg him to be generous! I expect I
shall take her back to South Kensington to-night, and to-morrow we will
come back here.”

“I will see him, Ellen, but I doubt if he will ever forgive her.”

“But perhaps he may find that he has not so very much to forgive. Do
entreat him to keep an open mind.”

“Very well. But it’s no use your bringing her back here to-morrow. He is
going down to Lyndon to-night, and I shall probably go with him.”

“Oh? Then we’ll come to Lyndon.”

“Oh!” cried Marian, wringing her hands. “When I think of my poor
Cynthia! So horribly insulted! Other people have scandals and
divorces—but this! It’s so unusual! Nobody—nobody ever had anything
like this in their family. And Cynthia of all people! She deserves it so
little. She has always been such a discreet child. Tom will be beside
himself. Unless—unless I can make James alter the thing before they
find out. Don’t tell them, any of you! Do be careful what you say to
them.”

“I will say nothing! Nothing!” said Mrs. Cocks, perceiving her
advantage, “if you will promise not to speak of this exploit of Agatha’s
until I have been to town. Please, Marian! Wait at least until
to-morrow.”

“If you like, Ellen. Though mind you, I don’t expect you will be able to
do much. But I must go to Bramfield and see James. Then I’ll go to
Lyndon. I needn’t tell Tom and Cynthia I’m going via Bramfield.”

“And I must pack if I’m to catch the five-fifty-five.”

Both matrons hurried from the room, their excited voices dying away as
they ascended the stairs. Hubert picked up the half-finished glass of
brandy and water which he had fetched for Marian. He offered it to Lois
and, when she resolutely refused it, drank it up himself.

“Do you think,” Lois whispered, “that Agatha really has . . .?”

“I’m afraid it looks hatefully like it,” he said gloomily.

“It’s a pity she didn’t know how ill John really is.”

“She ought to have been told.”

“I don’t believe she’d have gone if she knew, do you?”

“Oh, she couldn’t! A woman would have to be an absolute devil to be as
heartless as that. And she has a kindly nature, I think.”

“Yes, she is kind.” Lois was still too much shocked to be conventional.
“Poor Agatha! I’m very sorry for them all. Aren’t you, Hubert?”

Hubert was on the point of saying that he wasn’t particularly sorry for
Gerald Blair. But he had the wit to refrain, and remarked instead:

“Perhaps her mother will be able to bring her back. Look here, Lois! If
she’s going to town to-night, and your mother and John are going to
Lyndon, we shall be left alone with the Bragges. I bar that. I couldn’t
stand another meal in that hall. We’ll go too.”

“But, Hubert, where? We can’t go home to-night. They don’t expect us,
for one thing.”

“We’ll stop somewhere in town to-night, and go home to-morrow. We’ll get
that five-fifty-five Mrs. Cocks goes by. Look sharp and see to our
packing! We’ve just time. I’ll find Bragge and make our apologies.”

“But it’s so rude.”

“We’ve done enough for ’em for one day. I’m going, anyhow. If you like
to stay by yourself you can.”

“We’ll never have time.”

“Yes, we will, if we are quick. Do run, Lois. Just get together our
things for the night, and your woman can follow us with the rest of the
luggage when she’s packed it. I’ll give you dinner in any pub you like,
and you can choose your show afterward. I’ll take you to hear Wagner if
you want. Only do hurry!”

Lois yielded and ran upstairs to harry her maid through a hasty packing.
Hubert found Sir Thomas and manufactured a sufficiently credible excuse
for their sudden departure. In a very short time Braxhall was emptied of
its guests. The long table was removed from the dais in the hall and
replaced by a smaller one, suitable for two diners. There, in spacious
magnificence, Sir Thomas and his lady devoured their evening meal,
solemnly, slowly, and for the most part in silence. Occasionally the
owner of Braxhall broke into a monologue.

“Odd thing they all had to hurry off like that. But they were very sorry
to go. They said so. Hard luck on them, having to go. We sha’n’t have
any bridge to-night. However! I think they enjoyed themselves.
I-think-they-enjoyed-themselves. But we sha’n’t have any bridge
to-night. No! No bridge! You and I will have to get out the cribbage
board, Cynthie.”

Lady Bragge helped herself to iced asparagus.

“Went off very well indeed, the lunch did. Very well! Quite a new thing
in these parts, I should say. A unique experience for everybody there.
That’s what it was. A unique experience. I never heard before of an
American lunch in honour of a work of art. No more did any one else,
I’ll be bound. No! Quite a new thing. Pity James Clewer wasn’t there.
He’d have enjoyed it. I like to see people enjoying themselves. But I
proposed his health. I didn’t forget that. A good sort, James! I like
him. I-like-him. Blood is thicker than water, when all’s said and done.
I said so in my speech. A decent fellow. Weoughttoamadeimcome. . . .”

Tears stood in Sir Thomas’s eyes as he repeatedly averred how much he
liked his brother-in-law.

Cynthia said nothing but went on eating her dinner. Occasionally she
stared idly about her, at her food, at her husband, at the frescoes,
with the same exquisite, enigmatic contempt.

CHAPTER V
THE FOOLS’ PROGRESS

Lois said:

“I hate to disturb you, dear, but isn’t it time you went to dress?”

“I expect so,” said Hubert without moving.

“Very well, then. . . .”

He sniffed appreciatively the warmth of the peat fire and turned a
gloomy eye upon the uninviting dusk beyond the window.

“I don’t want to go,” he said, not for the first time.

“I’m sorry if it bores you, but I really think you should.”

Lois spoke with decision, looking a little like her mother. There was
already a hint of the same massive contours about her jaw. He, for his
peace of mind, did not observe it for he had risen to tap the barometer.

“I shouldn’t wonder if there was a frost to-night,” he protested.

“Take the foot-warmer and the fur rug,” she advised.

Making a final effort against the benevolent pressure which was forcing
him out of his house on so unpleasant an evening, he turned on her and
said:

“Look here! I don’t really see why I should go. They don’t particularly
expect me. It won’t be in the least rude if I don’t turn up. They don’t
want me. They are your friends, you know; and if you don’t go, I don’t
see why I should. And it’s the kind of thing that bores me stiff.”

“I’m sorry I can’t come,” she pleaded, “but I really oughtn’t to, you
know. It wouldn’t be a suitable party for a young woman in my
interesting condition.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use such vulgar expressions,” he complained. “I
can’t think where you pick them up. ‘Interesting condition’ is very
low.”

“I got it out of Dickens: it’s mid-Victorian. But I could say much
worse. I could say ‘in the family way.’ ‘A party in the family way.’
. . .”

Hubert drew himself up into a mid-Victorian husband and thundered:

“Be silent, ma’am, and don’t pollute my house with such coarse
expressions. . . .”

He was interrupted by the parlourmaid who came to carry out the tea.
Hastily he left off being Mr. Caudle and picked up the London _Mercury_.
Lois crossed to the window and drew the blue linen curtains, shutting
out the chilly twilight. She could afford to make jokes about her
condition, since it scarcely troubled her at all. Though she was nearly
seven months gone, her cheeks still bloomed and she moved buoyantly.

The clock struck, and Hubert remarked with relief:

“It’s only six. I needn’t dress yet.”

“The car is ordered for a quarter to seven, and you’ll take all of three
quarters of an hour.”

“But that will get me up to town at seven-thirty, and I don’t need to be
there before nine, surely?”

“You’ll want dinner first. Aren’t you dining at Eaton Square? I told
Mother you would be, when I rang her up this morning.”

“Uncommonly officious of you, Lois! I never authorized you to say such a
thing. I’d meant to dine here and go up afterward, if I felt inclined,
and if it wasn’t too cold. But this absolutely pledges me. I suppose
your mother is expecting me now?”

“I’m afraid so, dear.”

“All the same, I don’t see why I should have to go to the Martins’ if I
don’t want to. What, exactly, do you expect me to do when I get there?”

“Oh, my dear Hubert! We’ve been into all this before.”

“Yes, you’ve told me what I ought to do, but not how I’m to do it. I’m
to lead the fellow round, I suppose, and introduce him to all the people
you and your mother think he ought to know.”

“That’s the idea.”

“And what earthly good do you think that’s going to do him or them?
Haven’t you learnt by this time that it’s quite impossible for the
family to run him?”

“But, Hubert, this is the whole object of getting him and Dolly to come
and live at Hampstead.”

“I never could see any object in their living at Hampstead.”

“Of course, Chelsea would have been better, but Dolly had all these
ideas about the children getting good air. And there are artists at
Hampstead. But the point of the whole thing is to get him into congenial
society; to get him to meet more people and get known a little. I’ve
been so pleased about his getting this invitation to the Martins’. It’s
just the sort of thing we want. He will meet exactly the right people.”

“All right, let him meet them! What good do you think that will do? What
sort of impression is James likely to make on the right people, or they
on him? Can’t you see that he would much sooner stay at home with his
Dolly?”

“Dolly is invited too, to-night.”

“Is she? Then I don’t really think I need go. She’ll look after him
quite capably. I sha’n’t go. I’ll run up and dine with your mother and
come back.”

“Oh, Hubert, please! Remember James is my stepbrother.”

“Whom you’ve always understood. I know.”

“Don’t interrupt! Yes, I do understand him. I discovered him long before
any one else, now didn’t I? Ages before you did.”

“It’s a pity you didn’t discover him a little sooner over that Braxhall
affair.”

She put her hand over his mouth and stopped him. The smouldering
bitterness in his heart was instantly quenched: he caught her fingers
and kissed them.

“All right!” He sighed. “I’ll do my best; I promise I will. I’ll go.
Only you see, I don’t think it will do any good. I’m coming to the
conclusion that our cue is to leave him absolutely alone. He’s of age,
and a married man, and what not, and I shouldn’t wonder if he knows what
he wants better than we do. Honestly, my dear, I think your mother is
making a mistake in trying to turn him into a tame family genius at this
time of day. But I’ll do what I can.”

“It’s just that he needs to know a few more people and go about rather
more,” repeated Lois with conviction. “He’s never been among really
congenial people—creative artists.”

Hubert was silent, since he disagreed with her. He sat by her side and
absorbed regretfully the beauty and comfort of his home, still but half
resigned to his enforced departure. They were in the living room. There
was nothing so Victorian as a drawing room in Hubert’s house; only a
library, a hall dining room, a music room, and a living room, besides a
billiard room in the garden, and quite enough too, as Dolly had observed
when she heard of it. The house, which was called Killigrew’s Croft,
suited Hubert and Lois very well. It was in Buckinghamshire, near
Amersham, within easy reach of town, yet sufficiently out of it to pass
as country. Outside it was rather ordinary and suggested the placid
comfort of a retired stockbroker. But the interior was very Georgian.
The carpetless floors, the severe whitewashed walls, the Russian linen,
the black divans with their brilliant cushions, the John drawings, and
the peat fires were all there. Hubert liked it immensely, and felt that
it was exactly right. So, had he been born a generation earlier, would
he have regarded a Morris paper and Willow Pattern china. But he did not
suppose that his house was at all individual, having spent his life in
homes exactly like it. Lois, born in Manchester, and reared at Lyndon,
was still inclined to regard it as unique. She thought it a great deal
more tasteful than the home of her girlhood, and often argued with
Hubert about it. She could not grasp his admiration for a house so
unlike his own.

“Looking at this, one would never think you admired Lyndon,” she would
say, comparing the yellow washed walls of her living room with the
Chinese paper in Agatha’s drawing room, all strange birds and exotic
vegetation. “It’s so crowded! Every sort of style, all mixed up. Think
of those lacquered cabinets and the Queen Anne Talbois cheek by jowl in
Agatha’s bedroom.”

“I never was in Agatha’s bedroom,” said Hubert wistfully. “What was it
like?”

“Like nothing on earth. A wonderful Elizabethan bed, all hung with old
Italian tapestries. And, I think, an Aubusson carpet. And a Louis Quinze
dressing table, and a crystal jug and basin from somewhere in Hungary.
And, by way of pictures, a Gainsborough portrait, and a landscape,
Cotman, I think, and ‘The Rake’s Progress’ in funny little black frames
all along the chimneypiece. And a good deal of carved jade and ivory
lying around. It was just like all the other rooms in the house, only
she had seized on the very best things.”

“I can’t imagine it.”

“Just a muddle! Not any clear expression of one kind of culture. If all
the things had been English, or all French, or all Chinese!”

“But that’s England, you know, Lois. Just that! There’s nothing in
England so English as a house like Lyndon. A medley of races and
civilizations and ideas, all chucked together anyhow, and yet—not
chaos—but a whole—a living, individual whole.”

“I didn’t know you were so patriotic.”

“No more did I. I’ve always considered myself rather cosmopolitan. But
when I think of Lyndon I feel sorry. Sorry all that should go. It’s so
absolutely ours, you know, and it’s melting like snow in the sun. Now a
room like this,” he waved a hand round his living room, “you might find
in any capital in Europe at the present moment.”

“Well, if you are so discontented with it, change it! It’s yours. You
say you admire Lyndon, but you don’t copy it, I notice.”

“Copy Lyndon? Oh, Lord! Copy Lyndon! My dear girl, I couldn’t! It can’t
be copied, that’s just it. One man didn’t make it; it’s been the work of
generations. The smell of it! That smell of stone passages and beer! No
one can build a new house and put a smell like that into it. Think of
all the storms it has weathered! It’s survived the landscape gardening
of the eighteenth century, and the flagrant bad taste of the Regency,
and Victoria’s upholstered mahogany, and the æsthetic monsoon of my
childhood, Walter Crane and all that, yes, and the recent deluge of
peasant handicrafts and chromatic barbarism. These impermanent things go
over it in waves. Our house, for instance, is just part of a wave, and
quite a nice wave too. But Lyndon is a rock. The whole effect remains
essentially the same, though it emerges from each wave with a few more
things scattered over it as relics of the epoch. Lovely things—the best
that each particular tide has produced. . . . Pity it should go!”

“Why do you talk of it going? Nobody wants to burn it down.”

“A house dies with its family. Lyndon has come to an end. It’s nothing
better than a museum now. And a museum isn’t a living thing: it’s a
mausoleum for bygone cultures.”

“John may go back there in the spring, Mother says. So it won’t have
been empty for so very long. Six months can’t turn it into a museum,
surely?” she asked, with some derision.

“N—no,” he replied uncertainly.

He had always thought of Lyndon as Agatha’s house, rather than John’s,
and, to him, its history was ended upon the day when she fled to Corsica
with her accursed cousin. But he knew better than to air this idea,
especially when Lois was already a little irritated. It was, in truth,
hard upon her to have to listen to these glorifications of Lyndon when
she had spent so much of her rebellious youth in trying to escape from
it.

Pondering upon these conversations, he sat beside her, holding her hand
in somnolent content until the clock struck a quarter past six. Pressure
was again exerted by his wife. “You positively must dress,” she urged,
and he capitulated.

Upon his way to town, however, his indignation boiled up again. It was
bad enough that he should be forced to spend the evening with the
Martins. He had begun to grow out of the atmosphere of guarded
Bohemianism in which they moved, and expected to be bored. But it was
monstrous that he should have to dine with his mother-in-law as well. He
raged dimly against the conspiracy of women which netted him in. He had
always hated Eaton Square, and just now he knew that there would be
long, unsparing inquiries about Lois and her health. Besides, he might
see John, and he hated meeting John. He knew that he ought to be sorry
for the fellow; that his was the gesture of the Levite who passed by on
the other side; but he could not help it. John was too unfortunate; it
was impossible to forget that his wife had deserted him in a
particularly heartless manner, and that he was dying by inches. It was
really tactless of him, all things considered, to hang about London in
this way. He should have buried himself and his sorrows in some decently
distant place. He was not, it seemed, too ill to shoot in the country at
week-ends. Hubert thought that he should stay there altogether.

He supposed that John was right, on the whole, not to plunge into the
scandals of a divorce. It was decent of him, anyhow. But it made the
affair so unofficial: so preposterously delicate. One never knew where
one was. It was impossible to talk to any one of the Clewer connection
for five minutes without getting on dangerous ground. The thing had
become a question of clan loyalty, and everybody in the family was
expected to lie fluently in the cause. It was a silly fiction, this
upholding of Agatha’s respectability in the public eye, for the whole
story was bound to come out sooner or later. She was showing no
disposition to leave her cavalier, and her reputation could only be held
together as long as she was content to lie concealed in Corsica. Hubert
racked his brains to remember the details of the official explanation.
Supposing Stella Martin were to ask him to-night how long Agatha would
be abroad! Should he say he didn’t know? Or was he supposed to know? He
ought to have asked Lois.

But he did not, willingly, discuss Agatha with his wife. Within the
tribal group there was, of course, no charity for the lost mistress of
Lyndon. It seemed to him sometimes that they were almost too hard on
her. He knew that she had behaved badly; she could scarcely have behaved
worse; but he could never listen to the abuse which the other women
poured out upon her without a pang, the stirrings of an emotion which
was not condemnatory. He remembered how lovely, how unlucky, and how
kind she had been. Yes, and still so young. He would much rather not
think of her at all.

Instead he thought of James, aggrievedly. Why should he be burdened with
James? He did not mind having him as a brother-in-law, at a convenient
distance. Sometimes he was rather proud of the connection. But taking
him about was another matter. It made one so horribly conspicuous.
Wrapped in these gloomy reflections he arrived in Eaton Square, and, as
the car drew up, resolved that his boy should marry an orphan. He would
do for his son what no one had done for him; he would see to it that the
lad never met any young woman encumbered with surviving relations.

He was relieved not to find John among the chesterfields in the drawing
room. When last he had dined there he had sat for a quarter of an hour
with John. Three times he had asked nervously whether there was anything
in the evening paper. John had told him thrice, with a kind of
abstracted patience; that rubber was still going down. That had been the
whole of the conversation between them. To-night, however, Marian
trailed in alone. She wore the kind of informal dinner gown which
suggests a solitary meal. She had aged conspicuously during the past
months; her elaborate brown hair was now flecked with gray, and a
settled melancholy made her face look heavier. But she was still a fine
woman, with every appearance of vigour and health. Trouble had not bowed
her white shoulders or dimmed her little blue eyes. She said that John
had gone for a week to Sussex to stay with friends.

“I like him to get the change and the interest,” she said, “though I
feel he’s hardly fit for it. He should really be nearer to good doctors.
It would be very awkward if—if he was taken ill or anything when he was
staying with people. But he won’t give in, poor boy, or be treated like
an invalid. It’s pitiful! Now, tell me how Lois is.”

Hubert immediately regretted John, whose presence would have protected
him. He said:

“Lois is very well.”

“Is she getting about a certain amount?” asked Marian tenderly.

“Oh, yes. She seems to be very energetic and active. We go quite longish
walks.”

“She must be careful not to overdo it.”

Marian sounded disapproving, but he rejoined brightly:

“She’s taking every care of herself, I’m sure.”

“It must be a very anxious time for you.”

“Oh, no,” he protested, “I’m not anxious. She seems so well.”

But she was quite determined that he should be anxious, anxiety being,
in her opinion, the only proper state of mind for him.

“If it wasn’t for John,” she said, “I could be with you a great deal
more.”

“Thank God for John,” thought Hubert; “he has his uses.”

“It would be a great relief to me if I could be with Lois and make quite
sure . . .”

“Dinner is served, my lady.”

“She’ll begin again in the dining room,” thought Hubert as he armed her
downstairs.

But he had forgotten the servants. She could not begin again while they
were present. Indeed, she ate most of her meal in silence, for she was
so preoccupied with John’s misfortunes, James’s misdoings, and Lois’s
condition as to be really unable to talk of anything else. Hubert was
permitted to enjoy the very good food in peace, and when, at length,
they were left alone together, he short-circuited a return to Lois by
plunging into the question of James.

“I understand,” he said, “that I am, as it were, to chaperon him at this
party?”

“Oh, Hubert, if you would! And if you’d give him a hint, just a little
hint, now and then, how to behave, it would be so kind. I’m so glad he’s
been asked; this sort of thing is so good for him. I’m rather
disappointed, you know, in the results of the Hampstead move. I had
hoped for better things. It was such a piece of work to get them to move
at all. He was so stubborn; I don’t think he’d have given in if their
landlord at Bramfield hadn’t given them notice. Then I talked to
Dorothy, and got her to see all the educational advantages of having the
children near London. Just imagine, she and James had contemplated
sending them to the little village school near by! I was horrified. I
didn’t like to say what I thought to Dorothy, for of course she was at a
National School herself, but I spoke to James and asked him how he could
think of it. And he said she had been to the school one day to have a
look at it herself, and was quite satisfied with it. It was a very small
school, and he said”—Marian blushed at such coarseness—“he said that
she only saw one child that she was at all doubtful about, and she
caught it coming out and had a look at its head, and was quite
reassured.”

“Not really?” said Hubert with a grin.

“I don’t see anything funny in it,” said Marian. “I feel it’s all rather
sad. What is to become of those poor little children? Still, I persuaded
Dorothy in the end. I pointed out what a much better studio James could
have, which she appreciated. She admitted that it was always rather
difficult getting models, and so on, when they lived so far out in the
country. And, of course, when she saw reason the battle was won. He
always does what she wishes.”

“But you aren’t satisfied with the result?”

“Well, you see, I wanted him to know more people. You’ve no idea,
Hubert, how curious people are about him. People who’ve seen his
pictures. I’ve been asked about him so often by people who are anxious
to meet him. But I don’t know. It seems hopeless! Living at Hampstead
hasn’t done him a bit of good; it hasn’t altered him in the very least.
As I say to people . . . that unfortunate marriage! It will be a drag on
him all his life. It makes his house quite impossible. I took Mrs.
Downsmith there the other day to call, and really that girl has
absolutely no idea how to do things. Tea! You should have seen it!
Shrimp paste in a pot, and we were offered eggs. And after tea they
played us tunes upon that awful gramophone. I really didn’t know which
way to look, and I could see that Mrs. Downsmith thought it all most
extraordinary. Coming home I said what I could about artists’ households
being always rather Bohemian, and she said: ‘Bohemian isn’t the word I’d
have used somehow.’”

“No, it’s the respectability which baffled her, I expect. If James and
his family lived in romantic squalor in a one-room studio, they would be
much more conventional.”

“It’s very sad. But I feel that if we could get him right away—away
from his wife . . .”

“She’s invited to-night.”

“Oh, is she? I am sorry. That is unfortunate! It’s quite unnecessary
that she should be asked to places with him. That is a pity!”

“But he won’t go anywhere without her.”

“Oh dear, how difficult it all is! Of course, people can’t be expected
to invite her to their houses. She oughtn’t to expect it. Can’t she see
what a drag she is on him?”

“But she’s quite respectable.”

“Y—yes. But impossible socially. It would have been better . . .”

Marian broke off and did not state what would have been better. Hubert
inferred that Dolly would have been less of a drawback if she had come
from a meaner stock or were not properly married.

Coffee came in. Marian had instituted a small coffee-making machine on a
wheeled table and brewed the drink herself before leaving the dining
room. Agatha had had one at Lyndon, and there were coffee percolators
now at Braxhall and Killigrew’s Croft. But Hubert thought it a pity.
They none of them did it properly; even Lois fussed over it. No woman
could make coffee as the peccant Agatha had made it, lazy and amused,
with one eye on the bubbling percolator and all her attention for her
guests. He could even remember tenderly the evening when, absorbed in
somebody’s witty conversation (it must surely have been his own) she had
forgotten to fasten something or other and the whole thing had blown up,
spattering half-a-dozen shirt fronts. Alas, poor Agatha! It was dreadful
to think of her abdication; to imagine her drinking her coffee in some
grubby Corsican inn, counting Lyndon well lost for love of the
insignificant, the quite undeserving Blair. Hubert would not believe it.

A moment later he learnt that he need not believe it, for Agatha was no
longer in Corsica.

“There is one thing,” said Marian mysteriously, as she poured two
cupfuls of water into the percolator, “that I wish you’d tell Lois. That
is, if you think that it won’t upset her in any way.”

“Yes?” he said, hurrying her past Lois.

“I couldn’t tell her this morning on the telephone, because one never
knows what the servants may not overhear. One has to speak so clearly;
I’ve often been annoyed about it. But I’ve heard that Agatha and—and
her cousin are back in town. I’m keeping it from John, of course.”

“Oh, really?” murmured Hubert, feeling uncomfortable, but strangely
excited.

“If it’s true, it’s most inconsiderate of them,” pursued Marian
weightily. “The least they could do was to keep away. But I met Lady
Peel yesterday, and she told me that she had just been with Ellen, with
Mrs. Cocks, I mean, and that she said that she was expecting Agatha home
shortly. It was most awkward for me, because I had just said she would
be abroad some months longer. I thought Lady Peel looked a little
queerly at me. It’s a pity that Mrs. Cocks has not got a more reticent
nature. I can never be quite sure how much she tells people.”

“But perhaps Agatha is coming home alone,” suggested Hubert.

“I’m afraid not. I mean I’m afraid they are both coming, and it’s too
much to hope that they are not coming together. I was determined to make
sure, so I sent Miss Barrington, who is absolutely discreet, round to
Harley Street this morning to ask when he was expected back. She saw a
parlourmaid who said he was coming to-day or to-morrow, she believed,
but that she didn’t think he was coming there, and he wouldn’t be seeing
patients yet awhile, and she could forward letters but couldn’t give an
address. So it looks like it.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “It does look rather like it.”

“Will you tell Lois, or shall I write a note to her?”

“Oh, I’ll tell her.”

Hubert could not see why the tidings should disturb his wife to any
great extent.

“Of course, it’s hard on John,” he added with some compunction.

“I shall keep it from him as long as possible. It’s very upsetting for
us all. I only hope Lois . . .”

“It’s really time I got off,” exclaimed Hubert, glancing at the clock.
“I’d better get to this place punctually, hadn’t I? No knowing what
James mightn’t be up to if I left him to himself.”

And he fled.

On his way to Chelsea Hubert’s brain was busy with this new development
of affairs. Ought he to tell anybody who inquired to-night that Agatha
was now back in London? And what on earth was going to happen next? Of
one thing he was certain, knowing the family: there would be scenes and
indignant letters and diplomatic discussions. What a confounded nuisance
it all was.

Penetrating into the main reception room of Stella Martin’s house in
Cheyne Walk, he peered nervously through the heavy fog of cigarette
smoke in search of his inconvenient brother-in-law. The heat of the room
made him feel rather giddy, and he was deafened by the high, staccato
symphony of cultured conversation. He could not see Dolly or James
anywhere. Freaks he saw, of every sort and size; freaks who would make
even James look almost normal. He saw celebrities, and minor
celebrities, and people who looked like celebrities but couldn’t be,
since he did not know them. At last he saw his hostess and made his way
over to her.

Stella Martin was a lively, pretty woman with long earrings and a
cigarette perennially falling out of the corner of her mouth. She had
been a great friend of Hubert’s in his salad days, but he had begun
lately to find her rather boring. She had become Lois’s appendage, and
he still liked her well enough when she was not trying too desperately
to avoid the commonplace. He often complained to Lois that the woman
positively collected shady characters. Lois had disagreed with him and
said that Stella surrounded herself with men of talent.

“But the ladies . . .” he had expostulated.

Lois admitted that the ladies were sometimes rather odd, but maintained
that they were the kind of ladies who have had, throughout the ages, a
particular attraction for men of talent. And, anyhow, it was very
conventional of Hubert to object to them. Hubert, who had begun to
discover that there is, nowadays, a certain distinction in
conventionality, did not wilt under this taunt as much as she had hoped.
He agreed.

“We have a pretty amusing crowd to-night,” said Stella. “You know most
of them, don’t you? I’m sorry Lois couldn’t come, but I think she was
very wise not to turn out this wicked night. It’s much too cold. It was
nice of you to come, Hubert.”

“She was very sorry to have to give it up.”

“She must come up and have tea with me one day when I can have her all
to myself. Mr. and Mrs. Clewer are here, by the way; I don’t see them at
the minute, but I know I’ve shaken hands with them.”

“Oh, they are here?”

“Yes, or at least they were. You’ll find them if you look. And Lawrence
Argony may drop in later on. It will be a great feather in my cap if he
does, for you know he never will go to evening parties. Have you seen
his portrait of Garry Shandon? I haven’t, but, after all I’ve heard, I’m
longing to. Mick says Garry is rather vexed about it. But I don’t know
what else he expected, do you?”

She turned to other guests, and Hubert resumed his search for Dolly and
James. He came to the conclusion that Stella’s ladies were rather more
respectable than usual. Listening to their vehement conversation and
watching the bobbing of their bobbed heads, he decided that he was in
for an evening with London’s women of talent. Though he saw a few who
might be said to have one foot in the demi-monde, he was sure that they
had got in to-night upon some intellectual ticket. They must have
written an autobiography or a novel or something. Friends greeted him,
and he found himself pouring forth, a little absently, a small but
regular stream of witty remarks. Half of his mind was occupied with the
thought of Lois and his nice quiet house where he would rather have
been. He was immensely pleased to find that he could think of his home
with such a pang, and his impersonation of a man about town at a party
in Chelsea was spiced by the thought of the domestic fellow that he
really was. Then he caught sight of Dolly, with James beside her,
sitting on a distant divan. Very mournful they looked, in this strange
galley, and their faces, when they perceived him, lit up with a
ludicrous relief. He crossed over to them and they made room for him
with alacrity.

“Oh, but I’m glad you’ve come,” cried Dolly. “We were just wondering if
it was too soon for us to go. It’s so awkward us not knowing any of
these people.”

“Well, I can introduce you to any amount,” said Hubert, mindful of his
mission and trying not to look at James’s dress clothes. “That’s a
friend of mine over there. The man with the eyebrows. Binns, the
architect. Shall I effect an introduction?”

“No, don’t,” said James. “I want to look at him. He’s got a very nice
head, especially at the back. I couldn’t see it if I was talking to
him.”

“James says all the people here are out of drawing,” said Dolly
doubtfully.

“They are certainly a queer-looking lot,” said Hubert, agreeably
convinced that he looked quite normal himself.

“You may say so,” she affirmed with more ease. “I never saw anything
like them. I said to James when we first come in: ‘Well, the Zoo isn’t
in it!’ Not but what it isn’t a very nice party,” she added, remembering
her manners. “I always tell James it’s good for us to go into company
once in a while. But we are still so upside down, getting into the new
house; it was quite a job getting here at all to-night.”

“D’you think my clothes smell too much of camphor?” asked James. “Dolly
was very worried about it.”

“It’s the first time he’s had them on in years,” she explained. “That’s
why they fit so sort of loose on the shoulders. In the army they made
him hold himself so straight.”

“And for the same reason they fit sort of tight in front,” said James.

Hubert sniffed and said doubtfully:

“I smell something—but it isn’t like camphor exactly.”

“Oh, I expect that’s Sanitas,” explained James cheerfully. “I sprinkled
on a little. I thought it would drown the camphor.”

“Which was silly,” commented Dolly. “If anybody has to smell of
anything, camphor’s better than Sanitas.”

“And how is the new house getting on?” asked Hubert.

“Oh, nicely, thank you. There’s a studio for James that we’ve got ever
so nice. Better than anything we’ve had before.”

“It’s quite a good house,” said James. “And Dolly has made it look
exactly like our last one, so there is nothing to worry about. I thought
at first I shouldn’t like it, but I do quite.”

“There’s a basement kitchen, though,” said Dolly, “which is a nuisance.
I don’t like the children getting all their meals down there. I said to
old Lady Clewer, ‘Well, I don’t think the kitchen’s very nice.’ And she
said, ‘Perhaps you won’t be in it so much now.’ But, as I say, wherever
else should I be? But, as we’ve a room on the ground floor that we don’t
need, I’m having a nice little electric range put in there, and a sink,
and I’ll do most of my cooking there, and we’ll get our meals handy.
It’s nice and sunny. The garden at the back isn’t up to much, but
there’s always the Heath for the children to play on. Sonny has fallen
into that pond already, but that’s only what’s to be expected.”

“We had to paper the whole house,” said James. “Mamma wanted us to
distemper it, but we don’t like distemper.”

“No,” rejoined his wife. “Just like a prison or a hospital! A nice
bright paper is ever so much more cheerful. Eh, James! There’s Mr.
Argony!”

The big gun of Stella’s party was making his way slowly through the
room, growling replies to the greetings which washed round him like a
tide.

“He does do it well,” said James appreciatively. “Just like Sissy
feeding chickens.”

“Do you know him then?” asked Hubert in surprise.

“Oh, yes,” Dolly told him. “He often comes to tea with us. He and James
like to get a good talk. You know what men are! Talk the hind leg off a
donkey and then have the face to bring it up against the women. They go
on about these pictures of theirs.”

Lawrence had by now perceived them, and, shaking himself free from his
ardent acquaintances, he joined their group. Hubert, who knew him
slightly, offered his greetings. The great man stared at the trio, his
heavy eyebrows shot out in a frown of perplexity. He seemed to find them
unexpected. Having revolved them in his mind for a second or two, he
exploded:

“I have it! Brothers-in-law.”

“Stepbrothers-in-law,” corrected James. “His wife is my stepmother’s
daughter.”

“His wife is your stepmother’s daughter?” repeated Mr. Argony.
“His—wife—is—your—stepmother’s—daughter? HIS WIFE. . . . Oh, quite
so! Quite so! How are you, Mrs. Clewer? I’m glad I found you here,
James, for I came especially to find you. Someone told me you’d be here.
Can you come round to my place to-morrow? I’ve got to talk to you about
something.”

“To-morrow is Sunday,” calculated James. “I can’t come in the morning.”

“Well, don’t come in the morning. Come in the afternoon.”

“But I could come in the morning,” went on James laboriously, “if I went
to chapel in the evening. Dolly, shall we do that?”

“Oh, settle it between you,” said Lawrence amicably. “Any time will suit
me. I shall be in all day.”

“When are you coming to tea with us again?” asked Dolly. “You haven’t
been, not for a long while.”

“Oh, I’ll come soon,” he assured her, and was taken away by his hostess.

Hubert was able to put the question which had been burning within him
ever since he became aware of an intimacy between Lawrence Argony and
the Clewers.

“I suppose you’ve heard of this portrait of Garry Shandon?” he said.
“Nobody’s seen it yet, of course, but——”

“I have,” said James.

“You have?”

“Yes,” said James, adding kindly, “it’s very good.”

Hubert gave it up and resolved to tell Lois that never again would he
undertake the social pilotage of James. It was absurd! It was like a
minnow trying to steer a whale. He was relieved when he saw Stella
descending upon them with a black-and-white-striped lady in tow.

“You three have monopolized this divan long enough,” she declared. “I
must break you up. Hubert, this is Mrs. Taylor, who wants to know if
it’s true that you and Lois have been to Madeira, and if it’s nice
there. Mr. Clewer, there are some people in the next room who are dying
to meet you. . . .”

She carried off poor James who, in his dismay, was almost clinging to
his wife.

Hubert, marooned upon the divan with the lady who wanted to know about
Madeira, found it very difficult to keep his attention fixed.
Fortunately she did not require much to set her going. He bent upon her
an interested eye, and occupied his mind with the idea of James and
Lawrence Argony. If only he could manage to convince Lois that this
friendship was of his making, how pleased she would be! But he could not
claim to have had any hand in it; James had brought it off without the
help of his relations. Still this was, surely, the sort of thing she
wanted. She would be glad when she heard of it.

“In those days,” said a voice at his side, “my state of mind was one of
wonder without curiosity.”

“How very uncomfortable!” he murmured, noting that he was no longer
listening to Mrs. Taylor but to a good-looking elderly man with gray
whiskers. Stella must have substituted this new one at some moment when
he was not attending.

“Curiosity,” said the stranger, “is necessary before any great work of
art can be produced. I trust you agree with me?”

“Quite!” concurred Hubert. “Exactly!”

His mind reverted to a picture of Dolly blowing the children’s noses,
and spreading their jam for them, while James and Argony growled
technicalities at each other across the kitchen tablecloth. Or did they
have tea in the parlour on these occasions? Perhaps Argony got an egg,
being a fellow worker.

“But don’t you think,” said the lady with the Spanish comb (at what
point had they absorbed her into the group?), “don’t you think that the
individual must realize himself before he can create?”

“He must, indeed,” said the gray whiskers. “There must be no
repressions, no inhibitions. . . .”

They seemed to be so beautifully occupied with each other that Hubert
thought he could slip away unnoticed. He became aware that Dolly was
beckoning to him across the room. She was standing half hidden by a
curtain drawn across the door of a small conservatory, and she struck
him as being a trifle flushed and in some distress. When he had joined
her, her agitation was manifest.

“I want to go home,” she said wrathfully. “I want to get away from here.
Let’s find James and be off.”

“Come and sit in here,” said Hubert soothingly. “Come and rest a little
and let me try and get you an ice or some coffee.”

He moved to take her into the conservatory but she drew back quickly.

“No,” she said. “I can’t go back in there. He’s inside still.”

“Who is?”

“That young fellow.” A fleeting smile crossed her troubled face.

“Fact is, we’d better move away. He can’t get out very well till we’ve
gone.”

“But what has he done?”

“Well . . . that’s asking! Though it isn’t so much what he’s done as
what he said. He ought to be ashamed of himself, and so I told him.”

“Oh, do please tell me what he said,” cried Hubert, edging round the
curtain to get a look at the young fellow. “I’m dying to know.”

“Oh, I couldn’t! Not to any one! Excepting only James. But this is a
shocking place! It is really. I want to get out of it quick. The sights
I saw when I was sitting in that conservatory! I never did.”

“But it can’t have been anything so very bad. . . .”

“Oh, I don’t know. I thought when I first come in: Well, they look a
godless lot! And I thought right.”

Surveying her comely face and sturdy, supple figure, sharply outlined
against the black curtain, Hubert felt a kind of sympathy for the
unknown culprit. There was something very attractive about
her—primitive but compelling. And it must have been uncommonly
difficult to find anything to talk to her about.

“How did you get there?” he asked.

“Oh, Mrs. Martin introduced him and took James away. Do let’s find
James! I can’t think where he can be. I haven’t seen him this
half-hour.”

“Perhaps he’s in the other room.”

They set off in search and Dolly, perceiving Mr. Argony in the middle of
a group, ran up to him, crying:

“Oh, Mr. Argony! You haven’t seen James anywhere, I suppose?”

The people who were being fortunate enough to engage Mr. Argony’s
attention were deeply outraged and looked the intruder up and down with
amazement. She was so provincial, in her ready-made tea frock; so
plainly not of their world. Lawrence, however, beamed and reflected:

“James, when last I saw him, was sitting with a lady in a small recess
on the stairs. A remarkably beautiful lady, as far as I remember. He is
probably there still. You’d better look after him, Mrs. Clewer.”

Profoundly disturbed, she returned to Hubert and whispered: “He’s
sitting on the stairs with a beautiful lady! Isn’t that a funny thing
for him to do? I’ve never known him to do it before. Whatever can have
come over him?”

“Perhaps it’s this godless house,” suggested Hubert maliciously.

“It might be. You never know,” she said mournfully. “It’s what I
said—this is a dreadful place. He’s usually as quiet . . . But with all
these hussies . . .!”

She glared at the nearest, but he reassured her.

“That one is all right. All that powder is only camouflage. She writes
history books and is a notable matron. She has five perfectly good
children at home.”

Dolly sniffed. In order to pacify her he suggested: “Shall I go and
inspect James and his lady? Then I can report on the state of affairs.”

“He never sat on stairs before.”

“I rather thought Argony said a recess on the stairs. That is better
than actual stairs, don’t you think? More dignified?”

“I don’t think that’s any better, I don’t.”

“Oh, yes, it is. They are probably sitting on two chairs.”

“It might be a sofa. There was a sofa in that conservatory.”

“Well, I’ll go and have a look.”

He made his way out on to the landing where some intelligent person had
turned off most of the lights. Upon each stair he fell over a couple of
fellow guests, and his passage through the obscurity was marked by a
continual stream of apologies. He became aware that Stella’s party was
not entirely confined to the middle-aged. The younger generation was
there all right, but it had not favoured the strong illumination of the
rooms above. Reaching a view of the recess he perceived that Argony had
been perfectly right. Even in that dim light he could identify one of
its occupants as James; the large face looming over the crumpled shirt
front could belong to no one else. The other, a mysterious feminine
presence, was half concealed behind a curtain, but, despite the dark and
a distance of several yards, Hubert got the impression that she was a
lovely creature. Their attitude was intimate and absorbed—their
conversation eager. Hubert hovered uncertainly, a thousand new-born
surmises seething in his brain, and then approached them.

A better view of the lady gave him pause, and he jerked backward,
speechless, wondering if he could run away. There was no time, however,
for she had turned, recognized him, and half risen. He pulled himself
together and advanced to greet her, wondering if sisters-in-law are not,
on the whole, the most trying sort of relation.

“I heard you were expected back to-day or to-morrow,” he said. “But I
didn’t think I’d see you here.”

“I came hoping to find my mother,” she explained. “I went round to South
Kensington, but she was out and the maid rather thought she would be
here. So, as I know Mrs. Martin fairly well, I came straight on. But I
hear she hasn’t come. She must have gone somewhere else!”

“I haven’t seen her,” said Hubert. “Then you got back to England . . .?”

“This morning.”

“They had an awful crossing,” appended James. “She says Blair boasted
all the way across France that he was never sick, and then he was much
sicker than she was.”

“Oh, yes . . .” said Hubert uneasily.

Agatha slipped a hand through James’s arm.

“Is Dolly here?” she asked.

“Oh, yes! I’ll go and find her and tell her you are here,” he said
joyously. “She will be pleased.”

“Tell her that I’m going in two minutes, but I’d love to see her first,”
Agatha called after him.

Hubert was left alone with her in the recess. Instinctively he drew the
curtain farther across, shielding her from the observation of passers on
the stairs. She laughed a little as she saw his gesture and sank on to
her corner of the sofa, motioning him to sit by her side. Her composure
relieved him. He had thought distractedly that he would not know what to
say to her: he now remembered her facility for silence. He need say
nothing at all if he so preferred it. He felt stealing over him that
potent serenity which he had almost forgotten, and which was part of the
charm she exerted. He told himself that she was beyond criticism; beyond
it, at least, when one was with her. In retrospect, when one had
forgotten a little what she was really like, it might be possible to
condemn her. It seemed to him as though this alcove was too small a
place in which to cabin all her marvellous beauty. She was fairer than
ever before.

Presently it occurred to her to ask:

“How’s Lois?”

“Lois is very well,” he told her, with a certain hesitation.

“She’s not here to-night?”

“No. She’s down at Killigrew’s Croft.”

“I’m sorry to have missed her.”

He said nothing, and in the pause which followed she pondered upon the
hint of reserve with which he had spoken of his wife. Did that mean that
Lois was, inevitably, one of the people who must be relinquished? It
could only mean that if she wished it herself. Hubert was not the man to
coerce his wife in such a matter. But of course it did! She sighed, for
she had been fond of Lois. Still . . . she had come back to face the
music. . . .

Clamour without told them of the approach of Dolly and James who, in
their rash descent, had fallen foul of the stair haunters. James was
heard to ask indignantly:

“Why are all the lights turned off? It’s impossible to see. Oh! Here’s
the switch.”

Light flooded the landing and staircase. Dolly stood, doubtfully, in the
entrance to the alcove, looking at Agatha with a face in which
perplexity and compassion were mingled.

“Well, Agatha,” she murmured, “if this isn’t a surprise!”

“Dear Dolly!” cried Agatha a little breathlessly, “aren’t you glad to
see me?”

“Of course I’m glad,” said Dolly, embracing her with gravity. “But I
must say——”

She paused, plainly at a loss, and James put in:

“Come upstairs and find some place where we can sit and have a good
talk. It’s so dark here.”

“I’d rather stay here if you don’t mind,” said Agatha. “There are so
many people that I know upstairs, and I’m so tired. I don’t feel up to
meeting them all. And, Hubert, I’d give anything for a drink.”

“I’ll get you a cocktail or something. Dolly, what can I get for you?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say no to an ice, if you could find one. You go too,
James, and get us something to eat. I’m quite hungry, now you come to
mention it.”

Hubert and James departed and found the illuminated staircase perfectly
clear. Faint rustlings and whisperings from the darkness of an upper
flight told them whither the youthful horde had migrated. When they
returned with plates and glasses, the two women were seated close
together upon the alcove, sofa, talking with animation. Hubert heard
Dolly say:

“Well, if, as you say, they are wearing them longer in Paris, I suppose
they’ll be getting longer over here soon. I must say I’m not sorry.
These short skirts don’t suit anybody like me that’s got thick legs.”

They all sat down in the very constricted space and ate their
provisions. James observed genially:

“How the Clewer family do collect into lumps! I’ve noticed we always do
it. Draw the curtain further across, Dolly, so that nobody can notice
that we are all relations. Then Mrs. Martin won’t think she ought to
come and break us up.”

On the landing outside hung a picture which had struck Hubert’s
attention earlier in the evening. To him it suggested brawn in an
advanced stage of decomposition. But to two guests who were coming
upstairs it had, apparently, other significances. The party in the
alcove overheard the following conversation.

“Fine thing that!”

“Very fine! Lowe!”

A third was evidently being summoned upstairs.

“Come and look at this.”

“Quite good, yes,” said Lowe, after a pause for observation. “A good bit
of colour that, when you see it in the right light,” pursued the first
speaker, coming down to particulars. “Decent colours!”

“Very fine thing . . . uncompromising sincerity. . . .”

“Yes . . . rather nice colours. Let me see . . .” Lowe hesitated, “. . .
it’s a lobster, isn’t it?”

“. . . . Er, no. . . . A Madonna and Child, I believe. But of course
that’s immaterial!”

“Oh, quite! That doesn’t signify. Nice colours!”

“Yes. Good colour. . . .”

They drifted on.

Hubert and Agatha heard a strange sound which neither of them had heard
before in their lives. Dolly was, possibly, more used to it. James was
laughing loudly.

Agatha made no long stay at Mrs. Martin’s party but returned early to
the small hotel where she and Gerald were staying. She found him at the
writing table in their room, deeply absorbed in a publication
terrifically entitled Brain, upon which he was making notes. The set of
his mouth and the nervous, unconscious tapping of his foot as he read
told her that he was working hard. Without an interruption or a greeting
she composed herself in an armchair upon the hearth, to wait until he
had done. To her surprise a small fire was burning smokily in the grate.

He, jerking himself with an evident effort to a recollection of her
presence, inquired abstractedly whether she had seen her mother. She
told him of her fruitless quest, and said that she would go round to
South Kensington the first thing in the morning.

“Did she leave a message for you?” he asked, frowning.

“No, nothing! But Meadowes seemed to know I was expected back, so she
must have got the letter I sent her. No note or anything came for me
here, I suppose?”

“Not that I know of.”

“She might have written,” muttered Agatha.

“Was it a nice party you went to?”

“Quite nice.”

“You didn’t stay very late.”

“Not very late. Have you been working all the evening?”

He did not answer and she saw that his attention was returning to
_Brain_. Leaning back in her chair she abandoned herself to the
melancholy of undisguised fatigue until he said, without looking up from
his page:

“You’d better get to bed. Don’t wait for me. I shall be some time yet.”

“I think I’ll wait,” she said. “I want to talk to you when you’ve quite
finished.”

The silver travelling clock, one of Agatha’s wedding presents, ticked on
the mantelpiece; it looked out of place among Gerald’s pipes and tins of
tobacco. The sounds of London outside died away into post-midnight
silence. Still his pen scratched and the pages rustled. The fire sank
together and she tried with a poker to stir it into a remnant of heat.
She was exhausted by her long journey, for French second-class railway
carriages were still a new experience to her and the crossing had been a
nightmare. The disappointment of missing her mother had been the final
blow. This chilling silence staggered her; she had been quite unprepared
for it. She had expected stormy recriminations and reproaches, together
with the blessed assurance that she had an unfailing partisan. Now
everything was uncertain, and she dreaded the interview before her.

Too tired to think, she smoked several cigarettes and fell into a sort
of chilly doze. Her childish mind, straying unhappily through the void
like a lost bird, circled inevitably toward the thought of Lyndon. It
was an ark, a shelter of comfort and solace. She could sit dreaming of
her lost home by the hour, supporting herself by recollections of its
enduring beauty. It gave her escape from sordid discomfort and fretful
anxiety. In this bleak London winter she thought of warm sun, and the
lawn and cedar tree, and the smell of cut grass. But often, when she had
found the Mediterranean too hot and glaring, she had remembered the
cold, wet winds of early spring, and daffodils, and rooks blown among
the elms by the home farm.

At last Gerald shut up his book, and came across and knelt beside her,
spreading cold hands toward the sinking fire.

“I’m afraid there’s no more coal,” she said. “Are you cold? I’m glad you
had it lighted.”

“Oh, I’m quite warm. I thought you’d be cold when you came in. It’s a
bitter night.”

“You aren’t warm,” she told him, chafing his fingers gently. “You are
cold and tired. Would some Oxo warm you up?”

“Well, it would be rather nice.”

She hunted in the tray of her box and produced a small spirit lamp, a
cup, a saucepan, and a tin of Oxo cubes. She rather enjoyed making Oxo,
for it was a new accomplishment. Life in small Corsican inns without a
maid had taught her several strange things, and it was still a novelty
to minister to the needs of another person.

Gerald regarded his mistress with a faintly puzzled amusement as she
busied herself boiling the water. She was not unaware of this, and the
beginnings of resentment stirred in her tired spirit. Keenly sympathetic
though he might be in life’s more urgent stresses, he was a little
obtuse in small things. He could not realize how excessive was the
degree of adaptability demanded by her existence with him. According to
his ideas they had lived in no small luxury. He had always taken her to
far more comfortable inns than he would have selected for himself, so
anxious was he to make things easy for her.

“I saw Dolly and James,” she said.

“Oh, did you? What were they like?”

“As nice as ever. They were at the party. So was Hubert.”

“Oh! You saw him?”

“Yes. He was—just flustered.”

“But you didn’t see your mother?”

“No. That was what I was wanting to talk to you about. It struck me on
the way home that it was just as well I didn’t see her, for I’ve never
really settled what to say to her. I’ve always rather counted on her
taking the initiative. But, supposing she doesn’t, what line am I to
take?”

“Well, Agatha, say exactly what you like. I mean your relations with
your mother are entirely your affair. I’ll back you up in whatever you
say, of course. That water’s boiling!”

She began to stir the Oxo.

“Well, then, I’ll ask her if she has any idea what John is going to do,
and why he doesn’t seem to be taking any steps to divorce me. And if she
doesn’t know, I’ll try to get her to see Lady Clewer and find out. I may
say that we’re going to be married the moment I’m free, mayn’t I?”

“Of course.”

“I want to get her to see how much better it would be to end the
anomalous position we are in now; at the cost of an open scandal if need
be.”

“Yes.”

The pair paused, while Gerald sipped the Oxo, sitting at her feet. At
last he said:

“Agatha, my dear, would you care to go to America? To New York?”

“I! Why? Are you thinking of going there?”

“Yes. I’ve been offered work there. I found the letter waiting for me in
Harley Street when I went round there this afternoon. My friend Green,
who used to work with me, is running a new sort of clinic and wants me
to help him.”

He plunged into a long and highly technical description of the kind of
clinic it was. At last she said wonderingly:

“Then it would be the kind of work you like?”

“Oh, yes. Quite interesting, I think. Of course, the salary is very
small, but it would be enough, with what I’ve got, to keep us in
tolerable comfort, I imagine. But I’d only accept it if you cared to go
too.”

“Is it a permanent thing? Does it mean spending the rest of our lives
there?”

“Well, yes. It pretty well amounts to that. It will mean several years
there anyhow. I thought it mightn’t be a bad thing, if you approved,
that is to say. We could get right away.”

“But your practice here?”

He gave her a swift, surprised look, and said nothing for a few seconds.
Then he replied indifferently:

“It isn’t the sort of thing I really hanker after. I get too many of the
idle rich, and their ailments are so much alike that it becomes
monotonous. The proletariat offer a much more varied field.”

“But my mother—everyone—said that you were getting on so brilliantly
well here.”

“I had a sort of vogue with your mother’s friends. That is because just
after the war nervous breakdowns became a fashionable complaint. Soon
they’ll take to something else, and where should I be?”

“I was reading in the paper about the slump in Harley Street and how all
the specialists are doing so badly.”

“Bound to happen with the wealth of the country changing hands so
rapidly. The people who used to be ill can’t afford it now. And the New
Rich haven’t learnt to be ill yet. They still regard ill-health as a
misfortune, probably, and not as an absorbing way of spending money. It
will right itself in time.”

“Then you would really like to go to America?”

“I should quite. It depends entirely upon your decision.”

She felt at the moment that New York was the last place in the world she
would wish to live in. But she replied:

“I don’t mind particularly where I live. Really I don’t. I’ll go quite
happily anywhere that you have to go.”

“Right! I’m glad you’re so decided. I thought you might rather hate the
idea.”

“Did you indeed? You were right!” was Agatha’s inward comment.

Why on earth should it be New York? Almost any other place would have
been better. She had always disliked the idea of it, a great, noisy, new
city, perpetually in a hurry. If it had to be the States, why couldn’t
it have been Virginia, or California, or somewhere in the South? She was
all for warmth at the moment.

Gerald was saying:

“Then I’ll find out the particulars of the thing and close with Green if
it’s all satisfactory. The only drawback is that he wants me rather
soon; almost at once, in fact. I’m afraid I shall have to be off in six
weeks at the outside. That would give me time to dispose of my affairs
here. You could, of course, come over later, if you didn’t want to leave
England so soon. Or you could wait here until the divorce proceedings
were through, and then come out. In that case we could be married as
soon as you arrived, but it would mean a longish separation.”

“Does Dr. Green know of your . . . position? I mean would it make any
difference to his offer that we shall probably be in the divorce
courts?”

He shook his head.

“No, I don’t think so. I’m almost sure it wouldn’t. But I must find all
that out. In fact, I expect I’ll have to explain the circumstances to
him.”

“I think I could be ready to leave England in about six weeks. It’s
really quite a long time. I’d rather not stay here and be divorced all
by myself.”

“Just as you like. Only I must go then if I’m going at all. He wants my
help in getting the thing started. Otherwise, of course, I wouldn’t
contemplate leaving you.”

“No. We’ll consider it to-morrow when I have seen my mother. We shall
know better what to do then. I can’t think why John hasn’t divorced me.
I made sure he would be very prompt about it. And he should have no
difficulties at all; his case is perfectly clear.”

“Well, you must talk to your mother about it.”

Silence again overtook them, this time prolonged and mournful. The hour
was late and the fire quite out, but neither made a move to leave the
cold hearth. Their brief, bleak colloquy had given them too much to
think about, and they crouched over the ashes, pondering. Gerald was
asking himself, with that wearing, secret uneasiness which now so
frequently assailed him, whether she would be happy in this new life. He
was beginning to feel that this beloved, yet incongruously magnificent
creature, whom he had so unexpectedly acquired, was a charge—an
obligation. Beholding her at Lyndon, he had raged against the opulence
of her setting; but a mere removal had not satisfied him. He now felt
that he must himself provide some sort of background for her; she was
more inseparable from backgrounds than he had thought. He had already
half forgotten that tide of indignant pity which had driven him to
snatch her from Braxhall. Though obstinately counting himself a happy
man, he would sometimes pause and gasp in amazement at what he had done.

Still he loved her intensely, and sustained himself with an impassioned
belief in her fortitude. Not many women would take the prospect of exile
in an alien, uncongenial country as she had taken it. But he did not
tell her this, which was a pity, for she wanted to hear it. She was
discovering that he took her virtues for granted and she was not sure
whether she liked it. But he would have thought it rather insulting to
tell her how noble she was, so he said nothing.

“That’s not an alarum clock going off upstairs?” she cried. “It must be
late! I can’t bear to think of people getting up already; I need to
recruit a lot of energy before I can even think of a new day.”

It was indeed late in the following morning when she finally dragged
herself from her bed and set out on her anxious pilgrimage to South
Kensington. Upon the road she rehearsed all that she must say, and it
seemed to her that she was quite ready for the encounter. She would
point out that she intended to go to America with Gerald, and that, in
this case, divorce would be the simplest remedy. She must display no
regret, no penitence, and no exaltation. Emotion of any sort would put
her at a disadvantage. Calm common sense was the only platform on which
to meet her mother.

As she stood on the doorstep she felt that she was very calm and
sensible indeed. But she no sooner caught sight of her parent, waiting
at the head of the stairs, than a part of her defences began to slip
from her. She had been a fool to think herself ready, when her mother
would, in every one of life’s emergencies, be always so infinitely more
prepared.

“Well, Agatha—what kind of a crossing? I was afraid it would be rough.
So sorry to have missed you last night.”

Meadowes faded away down the hall as Mrs. Cocks kissed her daughter.
They went into the drawing room and sat down on a sofa by the fire. The
hearth was dominated by a large wooden frame on which was stretched
squared canvas, half worked into a thick woolly rug. Mrs. Cocks
displayed it jubilantly.

“It’s perfectly fascinating,” she said. “You do it with this little
needle, threading it through and through—so! Of course, the designs you
get in the shop are hideous but you can do your own. I was in the
British Museum the other day, looking at their carpets, and I’ve got
several new ideas. I’ve made two already. One I gave to Lady Peel. The
other was the first I made; it isn’t very interesting. I put it in that
peculiarly draughty place on the landing by the bathroom. It’s just the
right size. You must come up and see it after lunch.”

Agatha admired the rug and wondered if her mother was being unexpectedly
subtle or more superficial than usual. She had looked for censure on the
very doorstep. Was all this talk of rugs merely meant to disconcert
her—to put her to the necessity of opening the difficult question
herself? Or was her mother really indifferent and incurious? She sat for
some time listening to inconsequent gossip, until she could bear it no
more.

“Mother,” she began, “I rather wanted to discuss some of my private
affairs with you.”

Her mother’s reply enlightened her not a little, revealing, as it did, a
carefully rehearsed attitude.

“Of course, that is as you please. But unless your plans are of a kind
that I can countenance and approve of, the less you tell me the better.
As my daughter I don’t want to lose you, so I’d really rather not hear
anything that might make things difficult between us. Remember, Agatha,
at present I know nothing of what you have been doing lately, except
that you have been abroad for a time.”

Agatha recognized this line of argument, for she had heard it before.
Mrs. Cocks had always been a little inconsistent in her ethical
conventions. The line she drew, where the social irregularities of her
friends were concerned, had strange curves in it. Agatha often thought
that she strained at gnats and swallowed camels. She would exclude one
from her house, in rigid disapprobation, and welcome another, equally
culpable, with warm cordiality. “Of course I know nothing of all that,”
was her plea on these occasions, “and I don’t see that it’s my business
to know.” A policy of invincible ignorance. She was now evidently
prepared to maintain, in the face of an outraged world, that she knew
nothing of her daughter’s misdoings.

Both women were silent for a few minutes and then Mrs. Cocks said
carelessly:

“I’ve had a fire lighted in your room, as you will be wanting to unpack
this afternoon, I expect. When are your things coming round? You haven’t
got a maid with you, I suppose? You’d better let my woman do it for
you.”

“But you weren’t expecting me to stay here, Mother?”

“Why not? I thought you might like to be here for a week or two.”

“I don’t think I can leave Gerald, thank you. We are staying at the
Talisman Hotel, you know.”

Mrs. Cocks flushed with irritation. It was really very tiresome of
Agatha to ignore her plea for reticence.

“I don’t know that I particularly want to hear about that,” she said
with cold distaste. “But since you insist upon talking in this way, may
I ask how long you intend to continue thus?”

“Until we can get married. I want John to divorce me. I can’t think why
he doesn’t. Mother! I know you think it all very wrong, but . . .”

“You can hardly expect me to approve,” broke in Mrs. Cocks, impulsively
forgetting her rôle of cool incuriosity. “You’ve dragged my pride in the
dust. I can’t possibly hold my own with Marian Clewer now, and you’ve no
idea how odious she’s been. I’m quite defenceless. When she brags of her
daughters, what am I to say of mine?”

“I’m very sorry, Mother.”

“I can’t understand it,” continued Mrs. Cocks bitterly. “I cannot
understand it. I couldn’t have believed you capable of such folly. To
risk your position and reputation like this! Because, even nowadays, you
would be considered _déclassée_ by most nice people, if it became
generally talked about. Fortunately, hardly any one does know, outside
the family. I think a lot of people guess that you are not on very good
terms with John, but nothing worse than that. If you will come to me
now, you are likely to get out of it all a great deal better than you
deserve.”

“But, Mother, I want John to divorce me, and then people must——”

“John is not going to divorce you. And very rightly. He cares for the
scandal if you don’t, and he isn’t going to have his name dragged into
publicity like this. And allow me to tell you that you will live to
thank Heaven that he had such good sense and moderation.”

“But unless he divorces me, I can’t marry Gerald.”

“I cannot see why you should be so anxious to rush into a second
marriage when you did so badly over your first.”

“But he has to go to America in six weeks and I want to marry him and go
too.”

“America! In six weeks? My dear child, the quickest divorce that ever
was heard of would hardly enable you to remarry in time for that. But
what on earth do you want to go to America for?”

“I don’t want to go there particularly. But Gerald has to go, and I
naturally want to go with him. He’s got work there.”

“Oh, well, of course, if you insist upon living with him, emigration
will be his only chance of supporting himself—and you. You’ve probably
ruined his career here. Yes! Since he has had the misfortune to love
you, my child, he’d better try the States.”

“Do you really think that?” murmured Agatha, turning pale.

“Of course I do. It’s obvious to any one. His practice here will fall to
pieces as soon as ever this scandal comes out. Bound to! His best type
of patients are exactly the sort of people who would have nothing
further to do with him. People that one knows. But, tell me, is this
work in America well paid?”

“Not very, I believe.”

“And have you considered how you will like straitened circumstances
in—in—wherever it is?”

“New York.”

“New York? Oh, it’s quite impossible! My dear Agatha, you’ve never been
there. I have, so I know what I’m talking about. You wouldn’t stand a
week of it. It’s the most entertaining place—for the very rich. But
only for the very rich. Unbearable otherwise. You surely can’t
contemplate such a thing? You don’t know what you are doing.”

“Well . . . you see . . . I love him.”

“Love him! But eight years ago you loved John.”

“I was mistaken. I didn’t.”

“How do you know that this is not a mistake?”

“I always loved Gerald. But I didn’t always know it.”

“Then you did very wrong to marry John, that’s all I can say.”

“I know.”

“I can’t understand it. But then I never could understand these things.
I can’t understand how you, of all people, could be so ill-bred.”

“Do you think it is ill-bred?”

“Yes, I do. It’s very vulgar. But it’s the same everywhere nowadays. In
all the books one reads, on the stage, all over the place. All these
violent passions! It’s the war, I suppose. But that sort of thing has
always rather disgusted me. I daresay I’m out of date, but it revolts
me.”

Agatha reflected mournfully upon her recent sentimental journey. It
seemed, at that particular moment, to have been all customs houses and
rough crossings. She could not remember any violent passions anywhere.

“I don’t think you are quite fair,” she said defensively. “I don’t think
Gerald and I are very passionate people, whatever else we might be
accused of.”

“But if you haven’t even the very inadequate excuse of passion, why in
Heaven’s name have you misconducted yourselves in so frightful a manner?
Do explain yourself, Agatha! You told me just now, with some fervour,
that you love him.”

“So I do! So I do!”

“Very well, then. What, exactly, do you mean by that?”

“Oh, don’t you know what I mean?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“Well”—began Agatha laboriously, feeling how hopeless was her task,
“he’s the only person in the world that I’ve ever wanted to—to make
happy—to give to—to make sacrifices——”

“I see!” said Mrs. Cocks drily. “And what sacrifices have you made for
him so far? Apart, I mean, from the loss of principle, position, and
reputation, which was, after all, mutual.”

Agatha considered, with a shock of dismay. The past months, reviewed in
the light of her mother’s derisive irony, did not seem to be very full
of sacrifices, as far as she was concerned. She had in no way requited
his unremitting vigilance for her happiness. So far, he had been the
victim of their escapade. “No,” she said candidly. “I’ve not done much
for him as yet. But I’m going to.”

“No you won’t. You never will. Don’t deceive yourself, Agatha. You
aren’t that type of woman, though you may occasionally wish you were.
You are the sort of woman who takes, who accepts sacrifice; the prize
and privilege of successful men, not the helpmate of their failures. You
were expensive to produce and you are even more expensive to—to keep.
Don’t wince like that! It’s a very useful type, and stimulates nine
tenths of the culture and civilization in the world. But you are
frightfully mistaken if you think you can change your nature. You have
never, in all your life, put up with anything you disliked or done
anything you didn’t want to. You can’t begin now.”

“I’m not so very old.”

“Too old to change your character. And anyhow it’s unfair to experiment
on poor Gerald. If you think you can go with him to America and be a
good wife to him in poverty and discomfort, you’ll make the mistake of
your life. You haven’t the strength of character. You’ll bring misery
and disillusion on him. Have you thought of the consequences, supposing
you couldn’t stand it?”

“Other women——”

“Other women are trained in harder schools. Just consider for a moment
the sort of middle age you are storing up for yourselves.”

Agatha had a moment’s horrible vision of herself growing old, an
inefficient, fretful figure, clouding his life with her querulous
demands and eclipsed beauty. Had she that generous love which survives
the hard middle years? Hastily banishing the nightmare, she said with
decision:

“There will be hard times, of course. But we shall get along as other
people do.”

“Don’t make the mistake of supposing that you have a noble character
because you would like to have one. It’s rank folly.”

“But I’ve burnt my boats. I’m his, now. I must go where he goes. People
may not know it yet, but that doesn’t alter the essential fact. It’s
true that I’m taking great risks. But I must. I can’t leave him, Mother,
whatever you say.”

“You must leave him for a little time, at any rate. I’d hoped to
persuade you of that without being forced to tell you something which I
really have no business to speak of, since I promised not to. But you
compel me.”

“Oh, no, don’t, if you oughtn’t!” cried Agatha, shrinking back.

“I’m afraid I must, for nothing else will make you see reason. Besides,
it’s something which you have every right to know, and which you ought
to have been told long ago. In fact I spoke pretty plainly to Marian
about it. I said that she had absolutely no right to keep it from us.
It—it explains why John is not getting a divorce. I went to see Marian
soon after you left Braxhall, to talk things over, you understand, and
find out what John meant to do. And after a good many preliminaries I
began to gather how ill he really is.”

“Ill! Is he ill?”

“Very ill, dear. He has been for some months past. He was when you were
at Braxhall. I got it out of Marian that he’d seen a specialist just
before that time. It was that old heart trouble, you know.”

“But I knew he’d seen a specialist. He saw Sir Newman Crawley. But he
was quite reassuring.”

“I’m afraid he wasn’t. You were most unjustifiably kept in the dark. His
verdict was very grave.”

“Grave! . . . What did he say?”

“This is bound to be rather a shock to you, dear. He—he practically
told John that he was—dying. He gave very little hope of his recovery.”

“Mother! Oh, Mother! No!”

“He said that it would probably be quick,” said Mrs. Cocks, looking into
the fire. “A few months, he said.”

“But he said all this before we went to Braxhall? Before we went?”

“Yes. Of course he should have told you.”

“Before we went.”

“I consider that you should have been told at once. I suppose he wanted
to spare you, poor boy, as nothing could be done. Still, I might have
been told. But he only confided in Marian, who of course told Lois, and
Hubert, and Cynthia, and Sir Thomas, and Dolly, and James for all I
know, but elected to keep it secret from the people most concerned. But
had you absolutely no idea of it?”

“What?”

“Don’t gape like that! I don’t believe you’ve heard a word I’ve been
saying.”

“I’m sorry. But what have I done! Oh, what have I done! I might have
known.”

“Of course, if you’d known, this . . . regrettable precipitancy . . .”

“Oh, hardly that! We’d been in love for ten years.”

“And did quite well without each other. It’s a pity you couldn’t keep it
up a little longer.”

“Oh, Mother, don’t! Don’t be so cruel. Anyhow, it’s not that I’m
thinking of. But I’ve been so unkind to him. Oh, perhaps it’s not true!”

“I’m afraid it is, dear.”

Mrs. Cocks put a few stitches into her rug. Agatha was walking
distractedly about the room, delving into the past.

“Poor John! Oh, I ought to have known! But why? Why didn’t he tell me? I
don’t blame him, though. I know quite well why he didn’t. I was
abominable to him and let him see I didn’t love him. Oh, but of course I
wouldn’t have left him if I’d known. At least, not like that. But then,
what would I have been worth even if I had stayed, if it was only for
that? I don’t wonder he didn’t tell me. He would have, if I’d treated
him better.”

“I don’t know that it makes so very much difference to John,” said Mrs.
Cocks dispassionately. “The injury which you’ve inflicted upon him would
be the same whether he were well or ill. I don’t expect he feels it any
more bitterly on that score.”

“I’m not thinking of that so much as the hateful way I baited him before
I left him.”

“And I’m not really thinking of John at all. And it’s rather sentimental
in you, Agatha, to do so at this late hour. If you were going to
consider his feelings you should have done so sooner. No! I’m thinking
of the perfectly unnecessary way in which you have compromised
yourself.”

“I don’t see what else could have happened really,” said Agatha
dejectedly, as she sat down again. “Once it was a declared thing between
me and Gerald, I suppose I must have gone to him. Only it would never
have come to such a point, that time at Braxhall, if I’d known about
John. How horrible it all is! However, it’s done now and can’t be
undone. I must try to think what is best to do next.”

“Quite so. And you have to remember that your reputation is still
undamaged. The family will remain silent for John’s sake.”

“But that can’t last for long.”

“I hope you’ll see the sense, now, of coming to me here, at least until
. . .”

“But, my dear Mother, what’s the use of that? If I go to New York in six
weeks’ time with Gerald, what’s the use?”

“I think you must wait here quietly until you can join him to be
married.”

“Oh, no! We couldn’t be separated like that.”

“I think you owe it to John. I really do.” Mrs. Cocks was playing her
last card and her face bore traces of anxiety. “So far you haven’t
brought public disgrace on him. And that is what he minds; you know
quite well it is. If you leave Gerald now and live here with me for a
month or two you will save your husband’s name from dishonour. I think
you’ve no right to refuse that to a dying man.”

“I must see what Gerald thinks,” said Agatha uncertainly. “He will know
what is right. He has a finer conscience than I have.”

“Has he, indeed?” said Mrs. Cocks.

“I can see your point of view. I’ll put it to him.”

“I’m sure he’ll think as I do. Let him go out to New York, and you can
follow him when you are free. After a decent interval. Surely it would
be better, from all points of view? We might both go out; it would look
more respectable. And then you could marry him out there. I know it
sounds callous to talk about the future in this cold-blooded way, but
one must look ahead.”

“It—it would be bound to be fairly soon, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, quite. I gather there is, practically speaking, no doubt about
that.”

Mrs. Cocks longed to add: “You needn’t be afraid your husband will not
die,” but she checked herself in time and continued relentlessly:

“For one thing, if it’s all decently and respectably done, and you don’t
compromise yourselves by rushing off together before you can be properly
married, it will be so much easier for you to return to England
eventually. Supposing Gerald changed his mind about his work and wanted
to come back and take up his London practice? You would infinitely
prefer that in your heart of hearts, wouldn’t you? You don’t surely want
to spend the rest of your life in New York?”

Agatha shivered.

“Why invite a scandal when you can avoid it? I should have thought your
affection for Gerald would have made you consider his position and
career a little more.”

“You see,” exclaimed Agatha, “I rather think it is on my account that he
has accepted this work in New York. I think he thought, poor dear, that
it would be easier for me. And if that is so, I don’t think I ought to
let him go without me.”

“Well, at least, come here until you go. Don’t go on blatantly living
with him as long as you are in London. I really think you should have
more consideration for all our feelings than to do that. Besides, the
Talisman is such a respectable place! It’s where all the head-mistresses
go when they come up to attend conferences. I shouldn’t wonder if you
got turned out when the management discover who you are. And they are
bound to do that before long. How shall you like that?”

“Oh, it is difficult! I’ll go off now and consult him,” conceded Agatha.

“Stay to lunch first. There is plenty of time.”

Mrs. Cocks was unwilling to let Agatha go until she had forced her to a
decision.

“But I said I’d be back for lunch. He will wait for me.”

“Ring him up and tell him you are staying here.”

“I could do that.”

Agatha went to the telephone. As she waited for Gerald, she said
reflectively:

“It wouldn’t be a long separation. Only six weeks.”

“What, child?” Mrs. Cocks looked up from her rug. “Oh! Oh, no! Not long.
The most married people are sometimes parted for as long as that.”

Agatha addressed herself to the telephone:

“Oh, Gerald, is that you? I’m speaking from South Kensington. I’m
stopping to lunch, so don’t wait for me. . . . Oh, not badly. . . . I’ll
tell you when I get back. . . . I don’t quite know. . . . If I’m not
back by tea-time, ring me up, will you? Good-bye, then.”

She hung up the receiver, and found that her mother was looking her over
with approving eyes.

“You’re in very good looks, my dear. You’ve quite got back your colour.
I don’t know when I’ve seen you look better. Corsica has evidently built
you up. Come down to lunch.”

The two women strolled downstairs. Agatha stifled a small pang of
compunction at the thought of poor Gerald lunching in the hotel all by
himself. As a matter of fact he had taken the opportunity to escape from
the menu cards and the sweet peas and maidenhair fern and all the
flummery which so exasperated him at an hotel meal. He had sought an
eating-house near Guy’s, a haunt of his bachelor days, where he was
almost sure of picking up a friend to share his chops and beer.

Hubert, borne as far as Cowper in his passion for the eighteenth
century, had re-read the “Winter Morning’s Walk.” He became enchanted
with it and insisted upon reading extracts to Lois in spite of her
visible absorption in a volume of Marcel Proust. The next day was
bitterly cold, and he was very anxious that they should set forth upon a
Winter Morning’s Walk of their own, but she would not be persuaded. In
the afternoon, therefore, feeling every inch a country gentleman, he set
off by himself. He strode through several farmyards and looked severely
at some pigs. He thrashed with his stick at such poor weeds as the
season had spared. His hope was that if he crossed a sufficient number
of fields, and climbed a few score stiles, he might, permeated by the
beauties of the wintry landscape, achieve that mood of philosophic
reverie which gives distinction to the poets of Cowper’s age. If fields
and hedges failed to produce the right effect he might try a country
churchyard.

He had observed that the fellows usually begin by cataloguing the
scenery, and he obediently scrutinized the view, moving the eye, as the
poet directs, “from joy to joy.” But, gaze as he would, he remained
cold. Emphatically that, for a bleak, black wind swept from the steely
sky and whistled over the stubble, nearly flaying him. His nose turned
blue and his eyes began to water; it was the kind of day when no clothes
seem thick enough.

“It needs a frost, I suppose,” he reflected, “and snow, and icicles
hanging from the old barn roof, and what not. Something more like a
Christmas card.”

He thought sadly of Madeira, where they had intended to spend the
winter, and, as a fresh gale came down the hill, he wondered if Madeira
would really be warm enough. The shortening afternoon gave him a good
excuse for turning homeward.

Having reached his garden, however, he perceived Lois at the window of
the living room, and immediately underwent a recrudescence of the
country gentleman. She beckoned to him but he ignored her and began a
solemn tour of the estate, minutely examining each much-pruned rose bush
in the bed under the window. He hoped that he did not look too cold and
miserable. Lois opened the long window and called to him to come in, but
he hardly heard her in the frenzy of excitement with which he stooped
over an extremely small bush. Then he straightened himself.

“Lois!” he called. “Just come and look here!”

“What at?” she called back, shivering in the window. “Do come in out of
the cold. I’ve had a letter.”

“I do believe . . .” he said, in deep concern, “. . . I’m very much
afraid it’s the blight!”

“The what?”

“The blight! . . . Er—rose blight.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Of course there is.”

She came out and joined him.

“I don’t see anything wrong,” she said.

“I don’t like that funny reddish colour at the end of that twig,” he
commented anxiously.

“Aren’t they always like that at this time of year? And, anyhow, you
can’t do anything about it, even if it is. You don’t know what to do.”

Hubert looked pained at such an accusation. He said, with becoming
gravity:

“I’ll have to consult with Saunders.”

“Now, do come in. I’ve something I want to talk to you about.”

He followed her into the genial warmth of the living room and just
managed to suppress a sigh of ecstasy as the window closed behind them.

“I had a nice bracing walk,” he told her. “Pity you wouldn’t come. Those
pigs at the old farm are very fine. I had a look at them.”

But she was so intent upon a communication which she wished to make that
she had no time to be a country gentleman’s wife. She did not even
notice that he was aggrieved about it.

“It’s the most extraordinary thing,” she said, “and you will have to
speak to James. He pays too little consideration, really, to poor
Mother’s feelings, and it’s disgusting after all she’s done for him.”

“How often have I told you,” said Hubert furiously, his grievance taking
shape, “how often have I told you that I will not speak to James about
things? Why should I? He’s more trouble than he’s worth. If anything is
to be done with him, one of you women had better talk to his precious
Dolly. That’s the only way to deal with him.”

“Dolly is as bad as he is. She’s worse. They are both disgusting, but he
has some excuse. He’s always been eccentric, and anyhow, men have
different standards. But Dolly shouldn’t countenance it. At least, one
expects people of her class to value respectability. One would think she
would be more particular.”

“What have they been doing now? I thought Dolly was too respectable, if
anything. That was your mother’s view when last we discussed her.”

“Mother writes that she really can’t go there any longer. She can’t
countenance the way they receive Agatha. She says that Agatha is up at
Hampstead so often that one can never be really quite sure of not
meeting her.”

“But, Lois—I told you that at the Martins’ party the other week we
all——”

“That’s different. That’s in public. Of course, in a private family
affair like this, one has to behave civilly in front of people. Dolly
and James did quite right: I was glad to hear that they had that much
_savoir-faire_. But it’s quite a different thing asking her to their
house.”

“It’s rather funny, when you think how very lately it was Agatha we all
blamed for receiving them. But really, my dear, I think it’s entirely
their business who they ask to their house.”

“Have their family no claims? When you think of what we have all done
for them! Where would they be if it wasn’t for us? You’d think James
would have more feeling of loyalty to his brother. You’d think a
respectable creature like Dolly would draw the line somewhere.”

“I daresay she does.”

“I tell you she doesn’t. If, knowing the facts, she can go on asking
Agatha to her house, it shows that she doesn’t.”

“I don’t see that follows,” argued Hubert. “It merely shows that she
wouldn’t draw the line where you do. Her conventions are not the same as
yours.”

The word conventions drew her fire, as he knew it would. She plunged
after it, off the main track of her indignation.

“Conventions? Who is talking of conventions? I don’t consider myself a
very conventional person. . . .”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. As people go I should say I was very tolerably
broadminded. Anyhow, I’m much less conventional than you are.”

“Very possibly,” agreed Hubert in an irritating voice.

“So you can’t talk.”

Hubert said nothing, but picked up the evening paper and settled himself
in a comfortable chair by the fire. Lois, finding herself in a
cul-de-sac, made one of those unexpectedly swift returns to the main
issue which so often surprised him:

“Anyhow this question of James and Dolly has nothing to do with
convention.”

“I should have thought it had.”

“It’s—it’s simply a matter of decent feeling.”

“Same thing,” Hubert was heard to mumble.

“It’s not. It isn’t at all the same thing.”

“I think it is.”

“I say it isn’t.”

“What attitude,” demanded Hubert, after a pause, “should decent feeling
have prompted Dolly to adopt toward her sinning sister?”

“Don’t be flippant, Hubert! I feel very strongly about this.”

“I observe that you do. But I’m not joking, Lois. I want to know. How
should Dolly behave to Agatha?”

“She should make it quite clear—as soon as she has the opportunity to
do it privately, I mean—she should make it obvious that she disapproves
of her.”

“But, I just put it to you, supposing she doesn’t disapprove?”

“Well, then, she should.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Hubert! How can you ask? And she pretends to be religious!”

“But her kindness to Agatha may be on religious grounds, you know.
Eating with publicans and sinners, even with scribes and pharisees, has
been sanctioned by an unimpeachable precedent.”

“Yes, perhaps. But it isn’t only religion. It’s the flagrant disregard
of all social . . .”

Since convention was the only word which suggested itself to her, Lois
left this sentence unfinished and went on to the third item in her
charge.

“They ought to remember what they owe to the family.”

“But what do they owe?”

“What does any one owe? If I had treated you as Agatha treated John,
would you like to see your relations welcoming me with open arms?”

Hubert was struck by this.

“No, I can’t say I should,” he said thoughtfully. “A little hurt, I
should be.”

“And for Dolly and James especially, when you think of everything that
has been done for them. Mother, and John, and you, and the Bragges. If
you think how we’ve all helped in James’s career! You don’t remember,
because you didn’t know us then, but I do, how Mother worried herself
getting him good lessons and sending him to Paris and all. It’s really
rather wonderful when you think she isn’t his real mother. And she had
to stand no end of criticism from his own relations for not sending him
away to school; that old Major Talbot and Mrs. Gordon Clewer—all quite
odious about it, and insinuating all sorts of things. They none of them
could see that she was keeping him at home because she thought he would
develop better there, and that a boy of his temperament couldn’t be
treated like the average. And then think how John let him go on living
at Lyndon, just letting him paint and go his own way without a word of
criticism! Not many young artists have such obliging brothers. And then
his marriage! I don’t see how he could possibly have married if the
family hadn’t been so nice about it. He never considered, I suppose,
when he was allowed to marry with so little trouble, what a blow it was
to all of us. We all had to make sacrifices. And then think of the
trouble you took to get him work! And Cynthia and Tom and the way he
treated them. And the whole business of the Hampstead move. Mother was
up there every day for a week, seeing about it. And you taking such
trouble to introduce him to people; turning out on cold nights to take
him to evening parties which bored you frightfully. Oh, I know it’s a
privilege to have him in the family, but it’s a great burden too! And
he’s not a scrap grateful!”

Hubert meditated on this catalogue in some awe and said:

“He certainly has a good deal to thank us all for. But do I understand
that your mother actually met Agatha at Hampstead?”

“Yes. She went up to see Dolly about a servant or something. And James
calmly took her into the sitting room, where she found Agatha helping
Dolly to make herself a blouse, if you please! You’d have thought they’d
have the sense, under the circumstances, to show Mother into another
room. It was most awkward.”

“And what happened?”

“I’ll read you what mother writes.”

Lois picked up a letter and read:

“‘Though I was very much taken aback, I was not, on the whole, sorry to
have an opportunity of expressing my feelings. I was a little afraid
lest my manner at Mrs. Townshend’s might have been misunderstood. . . .’

“You see,” explained Lois, “they had met before. Mrs. Cocks, since she
got Agatha to go back to her, has taken her about a good deal. She wants
to whitewash her as much as possible, I suppose. And Mother met them at
an ‘At Home’ and had to be civil, or people would have thought it odd.”

She resumed her reading:

“‘I said nothing. I just said: “Oh, Dorothy, if you’ll excuse
me, I’ll come another time. Or perhaps, if Lady Clewer is not
going to be here for long, I could wait in the studio until she
is gone.” Just like that, taking no direct notice of her at all.
James, as you may imagine, failed to grasp my meaning, and said:
“Why do you call her Lady Clewer?” But I think his wife
understood. I went and sat in the studio. Would you believe me,
I was there for twenty minutes before Dorothy came in. Even then
she did not apologize. I said very little; I told her that I
could not visit at Hampstead while such disagreeable things are
likely to happen. She tried to excuse herself, of course, by
saying that they had not expected me. But, as I said, that only
makes it worse. It’s admitting that they do these things behind
my back.’”

“She just ignored her,” said Hubert thoughtfully. “If it had been you,
Lois, what would you have done? Would you have done the same?”

“I think so. If I had had the presence of mind. But I’d have got
flustered; Mother is always so sure of herself.”

“But I don’t understand. I don’t quite get your point of view. I’ve
known you receive people who, to put it baldly, were no better than
Agatha, and who had fewer claims on your affection. And, after all, the
scandal has never been public, and she’s living quietly with her mother
now.”

“Yes, but it’s the family side of it.”

“You mean that you are ready to accord a toleration outside the family
which you withhold inside it?”

“Of course, I might have known that you would take Agatha’s part,” cried
Lois angrily. “All men do, it seems.”

“Oh, good heavens!” groaned Hubert. “Why can’t you keep to the point,
Lois? These digressions make all our discussions so lengthy.”

“That’s exactly like you! When I bring up an argument you can’t answer,
you always call it a digression. You know quite well that you can’t be
unbiassed about Agatha. You can’t deny it.”

“I don’t deny it. But I deny that it has anything to do with the point.
I want to extract from you some explanation of your most unreasonable
definition——”

“Very well, then, if you admit that you are biassed where she is
concerned, it seems to me that your whole position is unsound.”

“—your most unreasonable definition of toleration as——”

“Hubert! I wish you’d listen to me and not try to interrupt so
constantly. It’s very bad manners, and we’d get on so much better if you
ever listened.”

“On the contrary, you interrupted me. But we’ll let that pass. I’ll
listen in silence until you’ve quite finished, if you will try to
abstain from hurling unanswerable but perfectly irrelevant truths at me
and asking me to deny them. It gives you a specious air of victory, but
it doesn’t in the least disprove my point, you know.”

“I’m glad you admit that they are truths. Since you admit that, where
Agatha is concerned, you are not qualified to hold an opinion——”

“I’ve admitted no such thing!”

“Hubert! You are perfectly impossible! If you won’t let me speak, I
won’t try.”

And Lois bent to poke the fire with hands that shook with wrath.

“Since you must drag personalities into this discussion,” went on
Hubert, more gently, “I’d like to say this. It doesn’t seem to me that
you can be very friendly with a person, fond of them and accepting
kindness from them, and then suddenly chuck them. Agatha has been very
kind to us both, Lois, and we have been fond of her. It seems to me to
give her a claim on us. And I expect Dolly feels that way too. She owes
a lot to Agatha. You don’t mean to tell me that you can, at a moment’s
notice, forget the friendship of years? It’s so unlike your usual
generosity of temper.”

She said nothing, but kept her face averted. He was suddenly aware that
she was on the point of tears, and he instantly grew remorseful. The
quarrel became insignificant, and he asked himself angrily why she
should not be unreasonable if she wished. He cursed himself for having
lost his temper and was glad when tea appeared, since it would give him
an opportunity of ministering to her.

“Wouldn’t you like to have it on the sofa?” he suggested. “Let me pour
out.”

She refused coldly and they began the meal in an uncomfortable silence.
She was wondering whether any man ever ends any argument with his wife
without suggesting a cup of tea or a lie down. She wondered this because
it simply did not occur to her that husbands have more forcible weapons
at their command. The occasion of James and the window, the only
occasion in her life when she had not been treated like a lady, had
faded from her mind. It did not lead her to speculate why it was that
Hubert never boxed her ears when she annoyed him.

He was seeking a topic which might mollify her. At last he inquired if
her mother’s letter had any news of John.

“Gone down to shoot at Lyndon,” said Lois shortly.

“Has he got friends with him?”

“I believe so.”

“I shouldn’t have thought it was very good for him, should you?”

“No.”

“But I suppose it’s a change for him.”

“I suppose so.”

“Damned uphill work!” he protested inwardly.

Her humours, however, were seldom long-lived. She was not a sulky woman.
When, after tea, he came to light her cigarette for her, she unbent and
retained him with a caress.

“I hate quarrelling,” she murmured.

“So do I.”

“What do we do it for, then?”

“I shouldn’t think we are worse than any one else.”

“We quarrel about such silly things. James!”

“Not James particularly. It might have been the new tennis courts or a
railway time-table. It was merely a little ebullition of the sex
discord.”

“No, it’s generally James. At Lyndon it was the same; he was at the
bottom of every family row I can ever remember. He’s so different from
us! Like a cuckoo in a sparrow’s nest.”

“I was thinking the other day . . . you know, I shouldn’t be in the
least surprised if he set a fashion. A cult of domesticity. I expect all
talented young men in the next generation will marry housemaids and
wheel their children out in perambulators on Sunday afternoons, and talk
in words of one syllable. It’s always the accidental, the chance result
of education and surroundings, which makes an impression on the
second-rate mind. They’ll copy his work, of course, but that’s nothing
to the way they’ll copy his personal eccentricities.”

“Hampstead and Chelsea will look very odd when they are full of people
modelled upon James. Dull too!”

The telephone bell rang and Lois went to answer it:

“Hello! Hello! Yes, it’s me! Lois speaking! Oh, yes, I’ll tell him.”

She turned to Hubert.

“It’s Mother. She wants to speak to you.”

Hubert took the receiver from her.

“Yes! . . . Yes? Oh! Oh, yes, what is it? . . . Oh! . . . Oh, I’m very
sorry! Where did you say? Oh, yes, I’ll tell her. Yes, I’ll be careful.”

He put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to her. “She wants me to
break to you that John died at Lyndon this afternoon,” he said in an
aggrieved voice. “I can’t see why she couldn’t tell you herself. Shall I
offer to go up? She was speaking from Eaton Square. They’d ’phoned from
Lyndon.”

“Yes, you’d better.”

He turned to the telephone again.

“Oh, I’ve told Lois, Lady Clewer. Yes, she’s quite all right. I don’t
think you need worry about her. Shall I come up? I can come at once. Are
you alone? . . . Oh! . . . Well, ring us up if there is anything that we
can do, or if you want me for anything. . . . Oh! . . . Yes, I will if
you like. But I really think there is no need to worry.”

He put up the receiver and rejoined his wife by the fire.

“The Bragges are with her,” he said. “And she says I must on no account
leave you. I’m to ring her up last thing to-night and reassure her about
you. She seems dreadfully afraid that you’ll be very much upset.”

Lois was looking as if she could have wished herself a little more
upset. She said gravely:

“Poor John. It’s very sad.”

Hubert agreed that it was.

“I wonder if he was shooting this morning. This cold day . . .”

Hubert nodded.

“Poor Mother! She was as fond of him, you know, as if he had been her
own son. It will be very hard for her.”

The tears which she could not shed for John rose, into her eyes as she
thought of her mother’s distress.

“I’ll go up to-morrow,” she said, “and help her about getting her
things. I’ll need clothes myself.”

Her mind was occupied with the subject for some moments, and then she
said lamely:

“Of course, expecting it as we have been for the last few months, it’s
less of a shock. . . .”

It was as though she were excusing herself for not feeling more.

“It’s a queer thing,” said Hubert, “to think of James at the head of the
family. I wonder if he’ll live at Lyndon!”

Lois looked really shocked.

“Oh, Hubert! Isn’t it awful! But it must be faced, I suppose.”

“There are bound to be great changes.”

“I wonder what Agatha will do now, Hubert.”

“Do? Why she’ll marry Blair of course.”

“I’m not quite sure,” said Lois thoughtfully. “I think her mother is
working against it, you know. I think, now she has got hold of Agatha,
she will throw all her influence to delay the marriage in the hope that
it won’t come off.”

“I should have thought that it was quite inevitable.”

“Well, you know, Agatha’s position is quite assured. She isn’t publicly
compromised; she won’t have to marry him. She’s young and beautiful and
well off. Her jointure must be ample. Mrs. Cocks might well think she
could do better for herself than marry Mr. Blair.”

“Mrs. Cocks might, but I doubt if Agatha would. I won’t believe it. I
can’t believe she’d chuck Blair now. I think you do her an injustice,
Lois.”

“Well—we’ll see.”

“But could you forgive her if she turned him down?”

“No. I don’t think I could.”

“She’d brand herself as a light woman,” he said gravely.

Lois blushed at so outspoken a definition, and said quickly: “I don’t
want to be unjust to her. It all depends, I think, upon the influence of
Mrs. Cocks. I don’t want to be hard on Agatha, really I don’t. But I
feel she has every virtue except character. She has no real principles,
only nice manners. When you first get to know her you think that such
charm and kindness must have something fundamentally fine at the bottom
of it. But you gradually grow impatient with her and you end by thinking
that all her goods are in the shop window. But I’m sorry I spoke in that
petty way of her before tea.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. I’m sure I was most insufferable.”

“We must try not to quarrel when we have a family to educate.”

“Indeed we must! If I forget myself you will have to say: ‘Hubert! And
before the children too!’”

Lois laughed and they drew in closer to their bright fire. The bitter
gale outside moaned among the larches, but they did not hear it, so
entranced were they with their own living future. The storm swept the
wintry land and sang a dirge in the void chimneys of Lyndon, swaying the
tapestries in that room where John lay, so soon forgotten, in the chilly
magnificence of a bed which had once belonged to Agatha.

Mrs. Cocks watched her daughter tear up her fourth attempt at a letter,
and refrained from suggesting that there was a block of scribbling paper
in the writing table drawer. It was certainly a waste of good notepaper,
but it would not do to interfere at this point. Agatha took a fresh
sheet, wrote some kind of invocation at the top, and paused
despairingly.

Mrs. Cocks bent over her rug to hide a smile. She suspected that this
letter was to Gerald, and, if it was difficult to write, so much the
better. The more often Agatha tore up her beginnings, the more likely
was she to say the very things which it was most desirable that she
should say.

“My dear!” declaimed the mother to herself, recounting the history of
this crisis to an imaginary familiar, “I did nothing. Absolutely
nothing! I said nothing. I just sat still and let it work. And at the
last moment, without a word from me, she came to her senses. I never
felt more strongly how wise it is not to interfere in other people’s
affairs. As one grows older one learns the folly of it.”

It struck her that Agatha’s mourning was really a little too much
modified, even for these days of flighty widowhood. As soon as the
crucial point of Gerald Blair was settled she must have a campaign with
clothes and insist upon their being blacker. But not just yet.
Essentials must be fought out first.

“There is nothing like Providence,” she reflected. “When you think of
the risks the child has run, she is really likely to come out of them
very well.”

Agatha was reading Gerald’s letter over again. He wrote:

“DEAREST LOVE:

“This is an impossible situation to comment on, isn’t it? I
shall never, for the rest of my life, escape from remorse when I
think of poor Clewer, and I expect you feel pretty much the
same. I’m desperately sorry about it, and I don’t wonder if his
relations feel inclined to shower all sorts of curses on our
heads.

“But now about us, since it’s no use maundering over follies
which can’t be remedied. Dearest, I can’t help being very glad
that we can get things put straight before I sail, though it
sounds brutal to say so. I’m arranging about a special licence
immediately and would like to see you as soon as possible, for
we shall have a good deal to talk over and settle. When can you
see me? I’m not supposing that you can possibly manage to sail
as soon as I do, since it’s such short notice, so I’m taking no
steps about fixing up your passage until I hear from you. Is
that right? I have, in fact, made up my mind to do without you
for some months longer, but you must try to come over as soon as
ever you can, for you’ve no idea how much I miss you all the
time.

“I’m getting intensely keen on the job, you’ll be glad to hear;
the more I learn of it the more I like it, which is uncommon
luck.

“Ever yours,
“G.”

It was such a confident letter. Not even “Shall I see about a special
licence?” but “I am arranging about a special licence immediately.” Its
confidence appalled her. She felt totally unable to tell him that she
was unsure in her own mind; that she doubted her power to be happy in
New York or to make him so. She took a fresh sheet and wrote:

“MY DEAR LOVE:

“I’m glad you’ve been so prompt about all arrangements. Come and
see me early to-morrow. I rather think I could manage to be
ready to sail when you do, if it’s possible to book my passage
as late as this. I cannot endure a further separation as late as
this. I cannot endure a further separation if it can be avoided.
But we will discuss that when you come.

“Always your loving
“AGATHA.”

She then reverted to an earlier page, on which she had written “Dearest
Gerald,” and added:

“I’m afraid you’ll think I’m failing you horribly, but I really
think it would be a pity for us to get married in such a hurry.
We must allow a decent interval to elapse. My leaving you and
coming here was a concession to the proprieties, and having gone
that far, we might as well do the thing thoroughly. Couldn’t you
go out for a year or eighteen months, and then, if you liked the
work, I could join you and we could be married? Or you could
come back if you had decided against remaining in New York. I
don’t want to make you feel I’m backing out, my dear, but I
think it’s rather a pity to let ourselves be rushed in any way.
There is no need. We have behaved badly about John, and I feel
that it would be bad taste, under the circumstances, to force
things blatantly upon the world by getting married the moment I
am free.

“I can see you any time. I go out in the afternoons occasionally
for a short walk, but otherwise I’m pretty sure to be in, as I’m
not, naturally, going about very much just now. I do want to
preserve decorum, as far as possible, in this very difficult
position.

“Ever yours most affectionately,
“AGATHA.

“Don’t be angry with me for feeling all this, Gerald dear.”

These letters she placed side by side and looked from one to the other
helplessly. Then she rewrote the second, leaving out the words “There is
no need,” for she blushed when she thought of Gerald reading them. But
still, she could not decide which to send. The second letter, even when
amended, was a contemptible production; she knew what Gerald would think
of it. But she considered that it would be even more cowardly to send
the first unless she was sure that she could live up to it. She would be
jeopardizing his happiness in order to sustain her own self-esteem.

Glancing furtively at her mother she blessed the rugs which were
apparently so all-absorbing. Advice and interference at this moment
would be the last straw. But her perplexities had evidently passed
unnoticed. She sat weighing one letter against the other until the maid
came in with the afternoon post. There was a note directed to her in
Dolly’s neat board-school hand:

“MY DEAR AGATHA:

“Can you come up some time, quite soon, please, and see James
and I? We are very much upset about something, and would like
your advice. We would come to you only James is working very
hard all day now and in the evening it’s difficult for us both
to get away as the girl goes out. So we hope you won’t mind us
asking you to come, dear Agatha, and that you are feeling
alright and not too much worried by the Trouble in the Family.

“With very much love from us both, yours affectly,

“DOLLY AND JAMES CLEWER.” . . .

Agatha determined to go up to Hampstead that very afternoon. Also she
would postpone her decision about these letters she had written until
after her visit. It struck her that her point of view depended
enormously upon domicile, and a few hours in another _milieu_ might
throw fresh light on the situation. She reacted to life so differently
in different places, and the most decisive step of her career had been
taken because she had been at Bramfield and at Braxhall upon the same
day.

She put the two letters into two envelopes and tucked them away into her
handbag. She would post one when she got back from Hampstead. Then she
said to her mother:

“I’m just off to see Dolly and James.”

“Oh?” said Mrs. Cocks doubtfully. “All the way to Hampstead? How will
you go?”

She had reason to suspect the influence of Dolly and James.

“I can go by Tube.”

“I don’t know that I quite like that. After all, child, you are, in the
eyes of the world, a very recent widow. It isn’t quite the thing to go
rushing round London in Tubes like this.”

“It’s very unlikely I’ll meet any one we know. I’ll keep down my veil.
I’m afraid I must go.”

“Very well,” sighed Mrs. Cocks, who was afraid to draw the rope too
tight. “But I think you ought to be back for tea. It isn’t really decent
that you should be going out at all, except for a little exercise in the
gardens. Of course, it’s dull, but one must observe some forms. Why
don’t you occupy your mind with some solid reading? When your father
died, I remember, I read all through Prescott’s ‘Conquest of Mexico,’
during the first few weeks of mourning. Of course it’s a little heavy.
But why don’t you read Mme. de Sévigné? She’s very amusing. I’ll look
her out for you.”

“I’ll try to be back for tea,” conceded Agatha, and escaped.

An unpleasant wind, icy and dusty, blew in her face as she picked her
way up the hill from the Tube station. It was an unbecoming day and she
felt blue and pinched; she had a suspicion that she looked old.
Hampstead, usually so pleasing a place, seemed to her dirty, noisy, and
incredibly cold. She tried to sustain herself with memories of the
warmth of Corsica; of long days by the sea, watching its blue glint
through the arbutus trees. But then, the South could be squalid too.
Remembering the smell in the inns and the flies on the ceilings, she
thought that it could be worse. On the whole squalor in warm countries
was more intolerable than squalor in cold. New York, so she understood,
was given to extremes of climate; torrid in summer, frigid in winter, it
was probably squalid all the time.

Turning a corner by South Kensington Station she had caught a glimpse of
herself in a long glass by a shop door. She had seen a pallid,
disgusted-looking lady, well over thirty, whom she had scarcely
recognized. She had never known that it was possible to look so
commonplace, and the idea nauseated her. She tried to believe that Venus
herself would appear insignificant in such unkind weather, and then
remembered a young woman of about her own age who had passed her a
moment later and whose beauty was preserved by a closed car and Russian
sables.

When she had entered upon the silent residential quarter in which Dolly
and James were established she unfastened her handbag and drew forth the
first letter that she had written to Gerald. She glanced through its
honest, loving sentences, and then tore it up into very small fragments.
These she scattered to the implacable wind to be blown for ever about
the Heath from the gray ruffled pond to Parliament Hill.

Then she mounted James’s doorstep and rang the bell. The girl admitted
her and said that Lady Clewer had just run around to the grocer’s, but
Sir James was in his studio. James at the same moment appeared at the
end of the passage and greeted her joyfully.

“Dolly’s out,” he said, “but she’ll be in in a minute. Come into the
studio where it’s warm. We have a fire there.”

He led her down the hall where Clewer mackintoshes hung in symmetrical
rows, through a covered passage, into the large comfortable studio which
had been built out into the yard behind. She paused on the threshold
with a cry of surprise, for against the wall, in a good light, there
leaned that portrait of James’s mother which had once hung in Eaton
Square.

“How did that get here?” she said.

“Mamma made me bring it back after the—the funeral,” he explained. “I’m
very glad to have it. It’s good, don’t you think?”

“I’ve always thought it good.”

He looked at it attentively and then pronounced:

“Too many of them altogether.”

“What? Portraits?”

“No. Lady Clewers. There’s this one, and there’s Mamma, and there’s you,
and now there’s poor Dolly, who detests it. That’s too many.”

“There certainly does seem to be rather a crowd of us.”

“It’s a good thing you won’t be one for much longer. I suppose you will
be getting married soon?”

“Well—yes—sometime, I suppose.”

“It will be nice for you to be an honest woman again,” said James
kindly.

Agatha agreed that it would be nice, recognizing some conjecture of
Dolly’s in this artless repetition.

“You’ll find you are much happier altogether when you have got out of
the family,” he assured her. “Did Dolly tell you how worried we are?”

“No. She only said something. . . .”

“There she is back! I heard someone at the back door. I’ll just call to
her that you are here.”

He leant out of a window which gave him a view of the tradesmen’s
entrance and shouted:

“Dolly! Dollee! Agatha’s here! Oh, it isn’t Dolly, it’s a man. What is
it? Oh, the Gas! Oh, yes, can’t you come again when my wife is in? I
don’t know where it is, do you? Very well, then, I’ll let you in. Can
you show me how to do it or do you do it yourself? You’d much better
wait till my wife comes in. Yes, I’m Sir James Clewer all right. Oh,
Dolly! There you are! Agatha and the Gas are here.”

Dolly dealt with the Gas and came up into the studio. She wore a new
black dress of far more lugubrious appearance than Agatha’s gray furs,
and looked unexpectedly bereaved. She kissed Agatha with a perplexed
mournfulness and dragged a chair up to the fire for her.

“How nice of you to come so quick,” she said. “Has James been telling
you? What do you think?”

“I haven’t told her yet,” said James, fetching chairs for himself and
Dolly. “It’s Mamma’s newest idea, Agatha.”

“It isn’t as if it wasn’t bad enough us coming into a title we never
wanted,” began Dolly wearily. “We don’t like being Sir James and Lady
Clewer all of a sudden. It isn’t what I expected when I married James.
It doesn’t suit our style of living. But what must be, must, and since
it’s the will of God I suppose we oughtn’t to complain.”

“I don’t suppose it’s the will of God at all,” interposed James. “Why
should it be? Why should He want to make me a baronet, I should like to
know?”

“If He hadn’t, He wouldn’t of let your poor brother die,” explained
Dolly severely. “But what I mean to say is this. We don’t want to let it
upset us more than we can help, do we?”

“You see,” continued James, “Mamma came up here yesterday and wanted to
know when we were going to move into Lyndon.”

“You could have knocked me down with a feather,” said Dolly. “Just when
I’d got that range put into the back parlour and the whole house
papered. I didn’t want overmuch to come here: I didn’t think it near so
healthy for the children. But since we are here I’d sooner stay. There’s
no question but it’s better for James and his painting.”

“Yes, this house suits us,” said James. “We’ve got everything here how
we like it. Do you think it’s fair to make us live at Lyndon, Agatha?
She says that it’s my duty now to keep up my position.”

“And the worst of it is, there’s a lot in it,” said Dolly sadly. “I
sometimes think that he ought to go. There ought to be some of the
family live at the House. I quite see that.”

“What I feel,” said the hopeful James, “is that it’s so much more your
house than ours, Agatha. It’s just the place for you, and you and Blair
would do much better there than we would. Now you are going to be
married, couldn’t you go and live there and be the family for us? You
like Lyndon, don’t you? Better than any other place? I know you do. Then
do please go!”

“Oh, dear James, it’s quite impossible.”

“Wouldn’t Blair like it?”

“He’s going to America in a fortnight,” she said quickly.

“What? For ever and ever?”

“For some time, I’m afraid.”

“But aren’t you going too?”

“N—not yet.”

“But you will eventually, I suppose. Oh, dear! Then that puts an end to
my best plan,” said James dolefully.

Dolly was almost tearful.

“Oh, Agatha, I am sorry! We shall miss you ever so! I don’t really know
however we’ll get on without you, so kind as you’ve been. But you must
write to us a lot.”

Agatha felt too jaded and dejected to tell them that she had practically
decided not to go. It would have needed so much explanation. They had
supported and encouraged her in every vicissitude, so far, believing
that she was bound to Gerald as they were bound to each other. This
deliberate desertion they would never understand. She could picture
quite clearly Dolly’s look of startled disapprobation and James’s
compassionate gravity. She wondered why she knew so well how James would
look. Hadn’t he, once before, looked on her with pity and proffered
advice which she had not taken? Her mind swung back to her wedding day
and she remembered that he had said:

“Don’t go if you don’t want to. . . . They are very silly, you know, but
you shouldn’t pay any attention to them. I don’t. . . .”

Bending her head toward the fire, so that they might not see her
twisting face, she said to James and his wife:

“No, I’m afraid you must count me out as far as a tenant for Lyndon
goes. But really, I don’t see why you should worry. I shouldn’t let them
make you go if you don’t want to. You’ve always been the most sensible
person I know, James, about refusing to let other people interfere with
you. You’ve never allowed them, so far, to distract you from anything
you want to do, or confuse your ideas as to the essential things for
your own happiness. Why should you allow it now? I certainly wouldn’t go
and live at Lyndon if I were you. It would upset your life horribly. Oh,
you’ve done so well up till now! Don’t let them persuade you against
your will! You mustn’t go.”

“I don’t want to,” he said. “But Dolly thinks . . .”

“Goodness knows I don’t want to neither,” broke in Dolly. “But there
ought to be the family living in a place like that. James has got a duty
toward it. He’s a rich man now and, of course, he’ll find it much harder
to know how to act right. It says in the Bible that it’s easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle——”

“That isn’t as bad as it sounds,” interrupted James in an instructive
voice. “Miss Barrington explained it to Cynthia and me once. And she
said that the eye of a needle was really a gate in the walls of
Jerusalem.”

“If the Lord had meant that He’d of said so,” replied Dolly with
conviction. “Anyhow the meaning’s plain. It’s much more difficult for
James to go to Heaven now than it used to be, so we’ve got to be more
careful how we behave. We are the Family now. We don’t want to be, but
we are. And we’ve got this house; we don’t want it but we’ve got it.
It’s the state of life to which we have been called.”

“Well, I’m not going,” announced James, who had evidently made up his
mind. “Nobody can be called to two states at once and I shall stay here
and paint. You can go if you’d like, Dolly; I won’t interfere with what
you think is right.”

“James Clewer! What a shocking thing to say! We can’t be parted, and you
didn’t ought to speak of it, not even in fun.”

“I’m not in fun.”

He rose and crossed to the wall where his mother’s picture stood. After
looking at it for a few seconds he said again:

“I’m not in fun. You ought to know that. You know, you both know, how I
hated that place! Even after you came, Agatha, it was never the sort of
place I like, though it was better. Things were quite different for me
when once I got away from it. It may be very beautiful, and so on, but
it isn’t my sort of house and never will be, not if I’m the Family fifty
times over. I won’t have my children living there. I’ve got away and got
my own place for them, and if we went back they’d never have a free
moment. We’ve got a duty to them. I’m sorry, Dolly; I know I generally
do what you want, but this time I’m not going to.”

Dolly, after the shortest of pauses, signified a tranquil acquiescence
in a decision which she saw to be irrevocable. She turned to Agatha and
asked:

“And what do you think we should do with the house, then?”

“What about your stepmother, James?” asked Agatha. “She’s the person who
has always run it really. Would she like to go on there?”

“We hadn’t thought of her,” said James.

“After all,” pursued Agatha, “she’s lived there a great number of years.
And done it very well. Couldn’t you ask her to stay on for a bit? Later
you might feel differently about going back yourselves.”

“That would be almost as bad as letting it,” objected Dolly. “I mean,
I’m sure she’s a kind woman and very good to the poor and all, but I
don’t like her way of doing things. She doesn’t do them quite like the
lady of such a house ought to do. She isn’t like you, Agatha, for
instance.”

“Dolly, I think you are much too feudal. You want to put the clock back.
You want to revive a state of things which is past and gone for ever.
What did I do for Lyndon when I had it? I enjoyed it very much; it
suited me to live in it, but I did nothing for it and in the end I
disgraced it. I know I belong by race to the ‘Bless the Squire and His
Relations’ galley, but it’s out of date, all that sort of thing. I never
made the smallest attempt to uphold it. It’s she, with all her modern
activities, and her dairies, and her laundries, and village institutes,
who is ready to shoulder responsibility. I know she domineers, but think
how she works! Think of all the dull hard work she’s done since she came
to Lyndon! She’s what is called middle class, but she’s ready to take on
all the unpaid public work, she and her like. Lyndon’s hers. I belong to
a class which is of no account now.”

“They do say that these people, what made their money in trade, are
getting into all the old houses nowadays,” agreed Dolly.

“If we went to live there ourselves, you know, Dolly, we couldn’t push
her out of it. She’s dug herself in all right,” said James, “and how
should we like that?”

“Well, we needn’t decide all in a minute,” concluded Dolly. “Let’s think
it over. I daresay you are right, Agatha. I wish you didn’t have to go
to America all of a sudden. I’d been counting on you to set us right in
quite a lot of things. We’ll often need someone to advise us now. Oh,
dear!”

She sighed lengthily. Agatha had never seen her so unsure of herself.

“What date are you sailing?” asked James suddenly. “Couldn’t we all come
and see you off?”

“I don’t quite know,” replied Agatha. “It’s such very short notice.”

“Why aren’t you going when he is?”

“Well, my passage isn’t booked for one thing.”

“Oh, I see!” he exclaimed, enlightened. “You wouldn’t have gone if John
hadn’t died.”

“Hush, James!” admonished Dolly.

“But I don’t see why,” he complained. “If she could go to Corsica, why
not to America?”

“There are plenty of reasons,” said Dolly tactfully, “which might not
occur to a gentleman. But I do wish you could go same time he does,
Agatha. It will be a job for you to go alone. I should hate it if James
was to go and leave me to get by myself.”

Agatha had a vision of the courageous Dolly and her children, harassed
but indomitable, loaded with strange luggage and armed with third-class
tickets, setting forth to the ends of the earth in pursuit of James. She
jumped up and began to pull her furs round her.

“You’ll stay to tea, won’t you?” exclaimed Dolly. “If you’ll excuse me
while I get it. I sent the girl out with the children when I came in.”

“No, do you know I don’t think I can. I said to my mother that I’d be in
for tea.”

Agatha’s heart was as bleak as the skies outside and she wanted to
escape from Dolly and James and their insufferable security in each
other. Some of her misery was written in her face, for James said
quickly:

“I’ll walk with you down to the station.”

Dolly stood on the doorstep and watched them to the corner of the
street. The wind, swirling in bitter gusts, blew her bright hair round
her face and fluttered her black skirts, revealing the serviceable green
petticoat beneath. When the strange couple, James broad and shambling,
Agatha slim and elegant, had disappeared, she sighed and turned into the
house to get James his tea.

“Aren’t your feet very cold?” asked James, seizing Agatha’s arm and
piloting her down the hill. “You ought to wear woollen stockings like
Dolly does.”

Agatha did not reply: she was much embarrassed by the long veil which
hung from her little hat. It blew all ways at once, and wound itself
round James’s neck, and round every lamp-post that they passed. They
came to a pillar-box and she reflected that, with the fountain pen in
her bag, she could have addressed her letter. She would have posted it
if she had been alone: but such a deed could scarcely be perpetrated on
the arm of the upright James.

At the station he took her ticket while she tucked her loosened hair
under her hat and redraped her veil becomingly. He put her into the lift
and stepped back, waiting to see the last of her. He gave her a
painstaking, reassuring smile; a mute kindness spoke in it, and she had
a sudden desire to run back to him and lay all her case before him.

The impulse came too late. She had barely sketched a movement forward
when the iron gates clanged between them and she was plunged into the
abyss.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where
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[The end of _The Ladies of Lyndon_, by Margaret Kennedy.]

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