Title:      Wintersmoon (1928)
Author:     Hugh Walpole
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Title:      Wintersmoon
Author:     Hugh Walpole



Wintersmoon (1928)
Passages in the Lives of Two Sisters
Janet and Rosalind Grandison
by
Hugh Walpole






To

ELIZABETH

AFFECTIONATELY






"What of the Past?

Shall we make use of these grey-green lichened Palaces . . . or
shall the spider-webs swallow them and we strike, out of this
gleaming Quarry, this new white shining stone?"

HENRY GALLEON, The Scarlet Emperor.







DEDICATORY LETTER


DEAR ELIZABETH

You told me once that you were bored with sequels, both in real
life and in novels--this, if I remember correctly, was when I
begged you to give us some more of Fräulein Schmidt's history.

It would therefore be extremely impertinent of me to offer you a
sequel--and this, in real life at least, I have hitherto succeeded
in avoiding.

Now also I take no risk.  This story of Janet Grandison, her
marriage and her sister, is no sequel to anything save that it is,
of course, like all of us, a sequel to everything.  What I really
mean is that you need read no other book before it in order
properly to understand it.

But once upon a time, when I was young and credulous, I planned a
Trilogy, called it 'The Rising City' and published the first volume
of it, 'The Duchess of Wrexe.'

So many people, older and wiser than I, told me that I was a fool
to meddle with Trilogies, that I fancied myself Balzac, that
readers hated presumption, and that novelists must be modest or
they are nothing.

Therefore I pretended to kill my Trilogy, hid my Rising City under
a green mist, and went my way.  Trilogies, however, cannot be
killed like that; they are the most persistent things alive.  The
Trilogy became a Sequence.  After 'The Duchess of Wrexe' came 'The
Green Mirror' and after 'The Green Mirror' 'The Young Enchanted,'
and now after 'The Young Enchanted' this 'Wintersmoon,' and after
'Wintersmoon'--who knows?

Here, at any rate, in these four books, is my idea of some of the
England of 1900 to 1927, and behind this there is also something
else that holds them, in my fancy, together.

And here are my four heroines, Rachel Seddon, Katherine and Millie
Trenchard and Janet Grandison.  But, because an author sees a
connection in these things and has the conceit to look on his four
books as one continuous work no compulsion is offered to the
reader.  'Wintersmoon,' indeed, may be read as though it had no
ancestors and intends no progeny.

Above all, no compulsion is offered to yourself, dear Elizabeth,
who rightly resent anything of the sort, anything that sounds too
long to be borne.

So, if you will read this book as a story about certain people who
appear for an hour or two to be alive in their own world you will
have done everything that your faithful friend, the author, asks of
you.

Yours affectionately,

HUGH WALPOLE.




CONTENTS


PART I

JANET AND ROSALIND


I.  Party

II.  The Silver Tree--I

III.  Beaminster at Home

IV.  Halkin Street

V.  Wildherne

VI.  A Family Affair

VII.  March: London

VIII.  Wedding


PART II

JANET AND WILDHERNE


I.  Down in Wiltshire

II.  Up among the Bachelors

III.  Wintersmoon: Morning--Janet and Wildherne

IV.  A Carnation in a Silver Bottle

V.  Janet's Heart

VI.  Rosalind pays a Visit

VII.  Wintersmoon at Evening

VIII.  English History


PART III

WILDHERNE AND HUMPHREY


I.  Beaminster pays Two Calls

II.  At Halkin Street

III.  White

IV.  Rosalind is Rosalind

V.  The Streets in Spring

VI.  The Duke is unhappy

VII.  Pages from Janet's Journal

VIII.  A Puff of Wind


PART IV

JANET, ROSALIND, AND WILDHERNE


I.  An Old Man in a Dry Month

II.  Wintersmoon: Autumn Night

III.  The Chapel on the Hill

IV.  Journey in Rain

V.  The Moon obscured

VI.  Janet goes North

VII.  The Sea-captain walks his Deck

VIII.  The Silver Tree--II.  Watendlath




PART I

JANET AND ROSALIND




CHAPTER I

PARTY


'I am asking you again to marry me as I did a fortnight ago.'

Janet Grandison turned towards him and said:

'Yes.  You've been very honest.'

'I believe,' he said, 'honesty to be the only thing for us.  From
the beginning I have always known that you valued that--honesty I
mean--more perhaps than anything.  I value it too.'

She smiled.

'I believe you do.  But we all do.  We make a fetish of it.  It
seems to me sometimes almost the only good thing that has survived
the war.  Well,' she went on, 'I have had the fortnight I begged
for.  A fortnight ago you asked me to marry you.  You said you
weren't in love with me but that you liked and respected me, that
you thought we would get on well together. . . .  You want me to be
the mother of your children.'

'Yes,' he said.  'I am not in love with you.  I have been in love
for a long while with somebody, somebody whom it is impossible for
me to marry and someone who would not marry me even though it were
possible.  With the exception of this one person I would rather
marry you than anyone in the world.  I like you.  I admire you.  I
think we could be good companions.'

Her face was grave.  'I don't know about that,' she said slowly.
'I have been very little with men in my life.  I don't know how it
would be.  Giving you frankness for frankness the other day I told
you that I did not love you in the least.  But I like you.  I would
do all I could to make you happy if I married you.  But my sister
comes first--she will always come first.  I loved my father--and I
love my sister.  Those have been the only two emotions in my life.
Love her!  I adore her.  I am not exaggerating or using words
without thinking about them when I say that I would die for her if
it would give her what she wanted.  And so if I marry you to give
her what she wants, that isn't perhaps surprising so long as I tell
you exactly how things are.  And the way things are can't go on
much longer.  We've been alone now for ten years, she and I, and
the last two have been--well, impossible.  You promised me that if
I married you she should always live with us.  It should be her
home.'

'Of course.  That is part of the bargain.'

'Yes, it is a bargain, isn't it?  Not romantic.  But all my romance
is for my sister.  And yours--'  She broke off, hesitating.

'Yes, mine is as I have told you.  But how many marriages ever
remain romantic?  It is a platitude that they do not.  The best
thing that comes of a happy marriage is companionship.  That I
believe we shall have.'

He hesitated, then went on:

'I want to put it all fairly before you.  There isn't very much
money.  It won't be a gay life, you know, or a merry one.  The
place down in the country, although I love it, won't seem very
lively to you or to your sister, I'm afraid.  It's all in pieces,
and I see no likelihood of my ever having money enough to do much
to it.  One day perhaps--for my son. . . .  And then I am not at
all what I should be in the country.  I moon about.  I don't do any
of the things I ought to.  I am an ass about affairs.  And then so
long as my father is alive we would have to be a good deal in
London.  We would have to stay in Halkin Street with them, and
that, as you know, wouldn't be very lively either.  You know
exactly what life in Halkin Street is like.  They'll be very glad--
my father and my mother--if you'll marry me.  They like you so
much.  You belong to the family.  Your mother was one of my
mother's greatest friends.  But it will be no sort of escape for
you--except for actual escape from money troubles.  But we would
all be kind to you and your sister.  Everyone would be glad and
would try to make you both happy.'

'It will surprise everyone very much,' Janet said slowly.  'I have
known you so little.  You've been away so much.'

'Yes.  But we can trust one another.  I'm sure of that.'

'I believe we can.'

Then, looking him honestly in the eyes, she said:

'I will marry you, and I will be a good friend to you.'

He took her hand.

'Thank you,' he said.  'You have made me very happy.'


In old Lady Mossop's vast and draughty drawing-room life pursued
its decorous way.  There were perhaps a hundred human beings in the
room, but had you listened at the door in the intervals of music
the sound proceeding from their conversation would have resembled
nothing so much as the stealthy spinning of a bemused and
industrious top.  No more and no less.  A very large painting by
Sir Edward Burne-Jones of Grecian ladies gathered about a well,
portraits of a number of glazed Mossop ancestors, a huge fireplace
of spotted marble, a great gold clock, a copy of Holman Hunt's
'Scapegoat' (it gazed across the floor into the indifferent faces
of the Grecian ladies), these held, as they had done for many a
past year, command of the situation.  No human being, however bold,
however arrogant, would dream of antagonising them.  And they knew
it.  All the guests of Lady Mossop would also have known it had
they thought of it.  They did not think of it.

Little Felix Brun, seated uncomfortably on a little gilt chair, did
not pretend to listen to the old lady with untidy white hair who
was in the act of manfully demolishing Schumann's 'Carnaval' at the
enormous piano in the room's further corner.  He was not listening.
He was, as always throughout his life it had been his practice,
observing.  In earlier days he would have stood up against the wall
whence he might more efficiently have taken his notes, but he was
now seventy-six years of age and his legs too often defeated him.
He was nevertheless intensely interested.  He had seen nothing like
this before.

He had not been in England for many years, not since the year 1911,
and it was now the year of 1921.  Ten years, and ten such years!
The war had moved him to a patriotic participation that would have
once seemed to him incredible.  He had thought himself detached
from his country--a cosmopolitan philosopher with Socratic vision.
But the German invasion of Belgium had torn his Socratic isolation
to ribbons, and for the next six years he had lived only in, and
for, his beloved France.

Then with the disappointments and ironies of the Peace some of his
cynical detachment returned.  He was not wholly French--there was
Austrian blood in his veins--and it was this same Austrian blood,
perhaps, that led him, hating Germany as he did, to criticise
France with a frankness that infuriated his Parisian circle.  And
so, rather happy that he had regained once more his impersonality,
he returned to his once-so-beloved London.

The impression that he had had of it during his absent post-war
years--impression gathered in the main from English novels and
newspapers--was that his dear London was running swiftly to the
dogs, the Upper Classes drinking cocktails and dancing eternally to
the jazziest of music, the Middle Classes hopelessly and aimlessly
impoverished, the Lower Classes rebellious, revolutionary, idle,
and dole-fed.

He found, to his pleasure, his old rooms in Clarges Street vacant,
and the stout, amiable Forrester, landlord, valet, and gossip,
older but otherwise unchanged.  The cost of living had doubled, of
course, but so it had everywhere, and for the rest, in his first
week's survey he could not, save for the congestion of traffic and
the ruin of Regent Street, see that his London was very greatly
altered.  There were still the flower-women round the fountain in
Piccadilly Circus, still the lions and Nelson, still the decent-
looking fellows outlined against the freshness of the Green Park,
still the sanctum by the fireplace under the stairs in St. James's
Club, still Big Ben and the chastity of Curzon Street, the higgledy-
piggledy of Shepherd Market, the Christian Science Church, and the
cloistered shabbiness of the Albany.  His superficial landmarks
were all there.

He was taken after the theatre to a place where they danced, and it
seemed to him extremely English and decorous.  He could find in it
none of the dazzling wickedness and abnormality that the English
novels of his reading had led him to expect.  The Unemployed,
bursting into music in the streets, struck him with their exceeding
rosiness and physical vigour.  He remembered faces seen by him
recently in Berlin, Vienna, and Prague that had besieged
successfully even his cynical indifference.  He saw no such faces
here.

And then, coming out one day of Colnaghi's in Bond Street, he
encountered old Lady Mossop, with her large spectacles and larger
nose, her broad unwieldy figure, her hat a little askew, just
exactly as she had been ten years earlier.  She recognised him,
told him in her deep, rather wheezy voice (she always talked like
an old cab-driver whose life had been spent in rain and fog) that
he was looking older, and asked him to her party.

So here he was to-night.  He had realised at once on entering the
room that for the first time since his return to London he was in
the world that he had known before the war.  Once in the old days
of the South African War he had divided the English ruling classes
into three parties--the Autocrats, the Aristocrats, and the
Democrats.  The Autocrats--the Beaminsters, the Gutterils, the
Minsters--had been the people with whom, at that time, he had
mostly lived.  The old Duchess of Wrexe had been their queen, and
for a time she had ruled England.  She was long dead, and the
Autocrats, as a party of power in England, were gone, and gone for
ever.  The Democrats--Ruddards, Denisons, Funells, Muffats--there
were plenty of them about, he supposed.  The war and its
consequences must have helped them to power.  It was they, and the
members of the old Autocratic party whom disaster and poverty had
driven into their ranks, who danced and kicked their way through
the illustrated papers.  He didn't know and he didn't care.  He
felt in his bones that, at the present time at least, they were
unimportant whatever they might become.  He dismissed them with a
shrug.  They were food for the novelist who wanted dazzling
pictures with post-impressionist colours and Freudian titles.

Remained then the Aristocrats--the Mossops, the Darrants, the
Chichesters, the Medleys, the Weddons.  He had once said of them,
'I take my hat off to them.  All those quiet decorous people, poor
as mice many of them, standing aside altogether from any movements
or war-cries of the day, living in their quiet little houses or
their empty big ones, clever some of them, charitable all of them,
but never asserting their position or estimating it.  They never
look about them and see where they are.  They've no need to.
They're just there.'

He didn't remember, of course, that he had ever said that, but it
was what he still at this day, twenty-two years later, felt.  And
they were of infinitely more importance now than they had been
then.  They were all--positively all--that was left of the old
Aristocracy of England, that Class and that Creed that, whether for
good or ill, had meant a great deal in the world's history.  They
were (he couldn't as yet be sure, but he fancied that he felt it in
the air about him) engaged now in a really desperate conflict.
This might be the last phase of their Power, or it might lead
through victory to a new phase of Power, greater than any they had
yet known.  If they were as poor as mice then, twenty-two years
ago, they were, they must be, a great deal poorer than any
reasonably fortunate mouse now.  He fancied that he could see
something of that too as he looked about him.  But they would say
nothing at all about it.  They would have, above everything else,
their dignity and self-respect, qualities that the Democrats had
lost long ago.

The possession of those qualities might make for dullness, but a
little dullness was sometimes not a bad thing.

He had reached this point in his commentary when the untidy lady
buried the 'Carnaval' with a sigh of relief and everyone rose to
the surface of the room.  Brun turned to discover his neighbour and
saw (on the gilt chair next to his) a nice young man whose face
seemed familiar to him.  A moment later someone from behind them
bent forwards and said, 'Hullo, Seddon!  How goes it?' and the
young man, amiability all over him, turned back to talk.

Seddon . . . Seddon . . . Seddon. . . .

Little Brun swept his brain.  The name was familiar enough, the
face too.  Ah! he knew.  He had it.  He turned to the boy, who was
about to get up and go, and said:

'I beg your pardon.  Forgive an old man a liberty.  But I heard you
addressed. . . .  I have not been in London for many years; I am
quite out of touch with everyone.  But I once, twenty years ago,
had two friends, Sir Roderick Seddon and his wife.  You resemble
her a little.  My old affection for them, the memory of their
goodness to me, makes me perhaps impertinent. . . .  Pray forgive
it. . . .'

The boy smiled.

'Yes,' he said.  'That must be my father and mother.  I'm Tom
Seddon.'

Brun held out his hand.

'It's very exciting to me,' he said, 'to meet Rachel Seddon's son.
It's a good omen for my happy return to London.  You tell your
father and mother when you see them that Felix Brun took this
liberty with you, and that he is going to call if he may.'

'My father's dead, sir,' the boy answered.  'He died before the
war.  But of course I know your name.  When I was quite a kid I
used to hear mother say that you knew more about European politics
than anyone in Europe.  At that time,' he smiled delightfully, 'I
didn't know I was going into the Foreign Office, where as a matter
of fact I am--the only thing I wanted was to play the Australians
at cricket--so what mother said didn't mean as much to me as it
ought to have done.  But it means an awful lot now.  You could tell
me some things I most frightfully want to know.'

The boy was so charming that little Brun was entirely captive.  He
had been so long away from England that he had a little forgotten
how pleasant a pleasant Englishman can be.  Young Seddon, with
every turn of his head, every spoken word, every smile, brought
back to Brun a world of memories.  Here was something that he could
find nowhere else in Europe.  He had been, yes, surely he had been
too long away.

'You know,' young Seddon confided, 'this is a jolly dull party.
Wasn't that woman awful on the piano?  I wouldn't be here if it
weren't for a special reason . . .'  He paused for a moment looking
eagerly about the room.  'There's somebody here I'm looking for . . .
Ah! excuse me a moment . . .  One moment. . . .'

He was off, threading his way across the room through the little
gilt chairs.  Brun followed him with his eyes.  Two girls were
standing talking to Lady Mossop.  They were striking enough
standing there together.  Striking even by contrast.  They were
both tall, but one was very dark and the other very fair.  The dark
one seemed to be the older of the two; she was very tall, and held
herself magnificently.  Her face expressed great sweetness; the
eyes, the mouth showed so striking a spirit of kindliness and
gentleness that Brun, arrested by this, for a time forgot
everything and everyone else in the room.  He would like to know
that girl.  He was no sentimentalist, but kindliness and goodness
of heart had their value in this world, their positive international
value.  And this was English kindliness (the girl was so English
that it was almost shocking), a little dull perhaps but restful,
reliable in a degree that during these late unstable years of his
life had seemed non-existent.  He would like to know that girl--she
would be courageous, faithful, simple, perceptive of only a few
things, but seeing those things clearly without a tremor of her dark
protecting eyes.

The girl beside her was prettier, younger, far more sexually
disturbing.  They were sisters.  That was assured by the
resemblance of the forehead, carriage of the head, general pose and
attitude to the world.  The fair girl was beautiful, which the dark
girl was not.  The fair girl had the English beauty of a Reynolds
or a Gainsborough.  She was not naked, as now so many English girls
were, so much more naked than complete nudity.  But then of course
in this set, in this room, nudity would not be fashionable.

Young Seddon was talking to these two with great animation, talking
to them both but looking always at the fair girl even when his eyes
were turned to the older sister.  THAT was his reason, then, for
coming to this stuffy party.  Little Brun felt a gentle stir of
romantic, if rather cynical, pleasure.  He wished him luck.  They
would make a handsome pair.

And then someone clapped him on the shoulder:

'Felix . . . Old Felix!  It is!  After these years!'

He turned round and looked up and there was old Johnnie Beaminster--
Johnnie Beaminster, eighty or ninety or a hundred surely, but
looking as neat and as round and as complete with his white hair
and rosy unwrinkled face as he had been twenty, thirty, forty years
ago!  How these English people didn't change!  It was, one must
suppose, the lives they led or didn't lead, their baths and
exercises and simple innocent minds!  But Felix was delighted.
There had been times, in the old past world, when he had found
Johnnie Beaminster a bit of a bore, but now in this new,
unfaithful, hysterical world old Beaminster was a pearl of great
price, and it was a beautiful, round, shining, gleaming pearl that
he looked, his smooth, good-tempered, stupid face crinkled into
smiles.

'And you've been here ever so long and you've never told me.  I
call that too bad.  You could have found me in a minute.'

'No, but, Johnnie, I haven't been here so long.  I'm only now
settling in.  I'd have bothered you soon enough.  And I'm old.  Mon
dieu! how old!  And snappy . . .  You don't know how snappy.  I'm
kind to keep out of people's path.'

'You were always snappy.'  Beaminster's chair leaned over to
Brun's.  He had his arm on the other's shoulder.  'I'm damnably
glad to see you.  It's old times come back.  I daresay they weren't
really as good as we fancy them now, but it's an odd world these
days.  One would be lost in it if it weren't for a few good
fellows.  Still taking notes, Felix? There's lots for you to be
observing nowadays.'

Brun laughed.  'The old Duchess has gone, though.'

Beaminster's face crinkled again.  'Yes.  She wouldn't work now.
It's all too exposed.  You couldn't carry on a mystery stunt like
that these days.  That's young Tom Seddon over there, Rachel's
boy.'

'I know.  He's just been talking to me.  Real English.  None of
Rachel's Russian complexities.'

'Oh, he's a good boy.  There isn't a nicer in town.  I'm leaving
him my goods and chattels.  He doesn't know it, though.  He's got
brains.  He'll go farther than poor Roddy ever did.'

'And who are those girls he's talking to?'

'Miss Grandisons.  Janet and Rosalind.  Rosalind's a beauty and
Janet's a treasure.  Nicest girl in London.  They are poorer than
poor.  Their mother was a Ludley.  Can't think why they don't
marry.  They've been orphans for ten years now.'

'And who is that--just joined them?  Good-looking.'

'That's Wildherne Poole.  Old Romney's son.  It's a pity he doesn't
marry, but there's been some affair . . .  The old Duke's always
pressing him to.  He's the only son and there's got to be an heir.'

'Romney . . . Poole.'  Brun sorted the names.  'I don't remember
when I was here . . .'

'No, you wouldn't.  Romney came into the thing very late.  His
elder brother had it.  And he was always down at the place in
Wiltshire.  The present man doesn't cut any figure socially.  They
are poor and Church of England.  Parsons, soup-kitchens, mufflers
for the old women.  Their house in Halkin Street is deadly.  All
the same he's a dear old boy.  Too good and simple for these days.'

The music began again.

After a sleepy while Beaminster and Brun stole away.  As they
passed down the stairs to the cloakroom the stir and whisper of the
music faintly, wistfully pursued them.  The hall-door opened for an
instant and a vision of snow and a muffled amber lamp swept in with
a rush of cold biting air.  The door closed.  Brun, fumbling for
his cloakroom ticket, looked up at a huge, naked, badly-jointed
Hercules that stuck out over the racks of coats and hats.  It had
its fig-leaf, but it had been pushed into that corner years ago
because it wasn't quite decent.  The only sound in the house was
the faint tinkle of the piano and the unhurried ticking of a marble
clock on the other side of the hall.

'It IS jolly to be back,' Brun confided to Beaminster.  'Very
touching.  I could cry for twopence.'



CHAPTER II

THE SILVER TREE--I


It was very good of the kindly old thing to offer the girls a lift
in her four-wheeler.  Four-wheelers were now remarkable and even
romantic phenomena--you saw them so seldom and were in them simply
never!  But old Lady Anglish supported the old man with the side-
whiskers who drove this one, yes, and his whole family!  As she
explained to Rosalind when they were all settled inside, it wasn't
only that she had never been in a motor-car yet and never would,
but that Mussel's grandchildren were the sweetest children, and
that when she went to see them she knew that there were at least
half a dozen human beings in the world who were glad to welcome
her.

More people, Rosalind reflected as the cab crept like a sleep-
walker over the snow, would be glad to welcome her if she looked
less odd and didn't talk so continuously about herself and her
plans.  Her oddness was interesting seen at a dispassionate
distance, but embarrassing as soon as you were in any way
responsible for it.  However, to-night the cab was positively a
blessing.  Otherwise they must have taken an omnibus.  This
disgusting poverty, this loathsome compelling of every reluctant
penny to do its uttermost 'bit'!  And then the beauty of the night
seen very dimly through the frost-dimmed panes of the cab drew
Rosalind from those sordid thoughts.  She was always easily drawn
by any beauty--or by any ugliness for the matter of that.  Life was
what she wanted--to savour it, fully, utterly, to the last
intensity, never to miss a thing, never to escape an experience,
that would be the ecstasy of enjoyment--if it were not for morals
and other people's feelings.  She had not, she considered, any
morals herself.  Nothing shocked her.  She had heard the most
dreadful things and had never turned a hair.  Nor did she care,
when she looked into it dispassionately, very much for other
people's feelings.  Unless she loved them.  There was the rub.
This love.  How tiresome it was, forcing you to be considerate and
unselfish and yielding when you so definitely did not wish to be!
Perhaps one day when she was older she would conquer this feeling
and not care for anybody, only for herself.  How satisfying that
state would be!

The vast white space of Hyde Park Corner encircled them like a
crystal lake.  St. George's Hospital was black and forbidding like
a jutting crag.  The cab stopped to allow the motor-cars to pass,
and with glaring fiery eyes like wolves out on the hunt they
slipped by.  Rosalind looked at her sister Janet, and saw that she
was sitting back in her corner of the cab, her eyes closed.
Something had happened to Janet!  Rosalind knew it at once.  The
sisters always knew about one another.  But something had also
happened to Rosalind.  Young Tom Seddon had as good as proposed to
her.  Only a few words, but they had been enough to tell her.  And
she didn't want him to propose.  He mustn't propose, because if he
did she would only refuse him and then all the pleasant friendly
companionship of the last few years would be changed.  She would
refuse him because for one thing she didn't love him, and because
for another and a more important thing he hadn't any money.  His
mother had just enough to keep herself and her son in that decent
genteel poverty that Rosalind so thoroughly loathed.  It was true
that Tom was clever and might one day be an Ambassador, but all
that was far distant.  Moreover, there was something else about
Tom.  He was old-fashioned; he didn't believe in Socialism nor
Freudian theories of abnormality nor modern painting, novels, and
poetry.  That is, when one said that he didn't believe in these
things one meant that he considered them all and found them
wanting, or, if not wanting, at least not perfection.

Especially with regard to Free Love he was too irritating for
words.  It was not that Rosalind desired lovers--far from it--but
she believed in the theory of freedom, freedom for everybody to do
just what they liked provided they left herself alone.  But Tom had
a hampered, restricted mind.  He thought things 'horrid' or 'bad
form.'  As a husband he would be too tiresome.  As a friend he was
charming, courteous, unselfish, humorous, gentle.  He was
intellectually 'behind the times,' a quite impossible thing for a
modern husband.

They had arrived.  Old Lady Anglish kissed them both and asked them
to luncheon two days from now.  They didn't know.  They couldn't
say.  They would telephone.  It was too kind of her to have brought
them like this.  They WERE grateful!  The cab tottered off.  They
mounted the stairs to their little flat, and once in the sitting-
room Rosalind sank into the arm-chair with the crimson peacocks,
stretched her arms, yawned, and shivered.

'Of course Frances has let the fire go, although you especially
told her.'

'It's late.  Nearly three.  We'll go to bed and be warm in no
time.'  Janet stood up, staring in front of her, seeing through
walls and walls and walls far into Destiny.

'Ugh!  How I detest this flat!  It's shut in like a mortuary.
Everything wants re-covering.'  Then Rosalind smiled.  She had
remembered something.  She got up, disappeared into the next room,
returned, a parcel in her hand.

She stood up against her sister smiling very prettily.

'Three o'clock in the morning is an absurd time to give you
anything.  But I can't wait.  I got it this afternoon.'

'For me?  A present?'  Janet's eyes shone, because like all good
people she adored presents.

She took the little gilt scissors from the table, cut the string (a
wicked proceeding); there was a thin wooden box with a lid, then
cotton wool, then--

'Oh, take care!' Rosalind cried.  'You'll drop it!'

But not Janet.  Slowly, with all the eager awfulness of
anticipation, she drew out the treasure.  She held it out.  She
gasped.

It was the loveliest thing, QUITE the loveliest thing ever seen.
It was a little tree, silver and white and green.  Its leaves were
of coloured metal, its flowers of silver, and it stood in a
porphyry bowl.  It was perfect.  It was enchanted.  Already, held
there in Janet's hand, it had a life of its own, a magical life,
gleaming, glittering under the electric light, but encased too in
its own shining armour that held it apart, by itself, in its own
natural and unstained beauty.

Janet gazed and gazed.  She could not speak.  Tears filled her
eyes.  That Rosalind should have given her this, Rosalind whom she
loved so utterly, Rosalind--

She placed it on the table, then caught her sister into her arms
and held her, cheek against cheek, held her as though it were for
life.

'Why, Mops dear, you're crying!'  Rosalind gently withdrew herself.
'You DO like it, then!  I thought you would.  I was at a little
sale this afternoon--you know, Marie Haik's thing--and I saw one or
two of these, and I had to get one.  They were made by Mrs.
Somebody-or-other, I forget the name, but she's married and got
lots of money and just does them for pleasure.  I saw it and I HAD
to get it.  It was too awfully sweet.  I said to myself, "That's
just the thing for Mops!"'

She spoke a little eagerly, a little nervously.  To see Janet in
tears, controlled and wise-minded Janet, was embarrassing.  And she
didn't want to be thanked.  It made her remember all the wicked
selfish things she was always doing.

Janet wiped her eyes.  But still she couldn't speak.  The thing was
too lovely, but lovelier still was it that Rosalind should have
bought it, bought it of her own generous volition without any
prompting and given it her now, of all times, just when she had
SUCH a piece of news to deliver!

'Oh, Rosalind . . . I'm so glad.  It was wonderful of you, but more
than that . . . just now . . . I would rather that you gave me
something just now than at any other time in all our lives.'

She turned round to it, gazing at it, drinking in its beauties.

'It makes me feel safer, your giving me that just now.  It makes me
feel that perhaps I've done right.  It's a sign.'

'A sign!  Of what?'  Rosalind was now watching her sister.  'I knew
all the time that we were coming home that something had happened
to you.  What is it?  Have we come into money?'

'Yes, in a way.'  Janet's eyes lingered passionately on her
sister's face.  'But that's a horrid way to put it.  I told
Wildherne Poole to-night that I would marry him!'

'Oh! . . . Oh!'

It was Rosalind's turn.  She threw her arms around Janet, kissing
her, kissing her, kissing her:

'Oh, oh, oh! . . .  Oh!  How lovely!  How beautiful!  How perfect!
I've been longing, been hoping, been aching for it to happen!  You
darling, you pet, you Perfect!  Oh, Mops, you'll be a Duchess--my
Mops will be a Duchess.  You'll have everything you want and be
happy for ever.  And I'll be Wildherne's sister--good old Wildherne--
and no more of this beastly flat.  Oh, Mops! how heavenly!'

Then she saw, through her joy, the tears still standing in Janet's
eyes.

'But you're happy about it, Mops darling, aren't you?  You love
him, don't you, and he loves you?  It's all going to be perfect?'

'I don't know,' Janet answered slowly.  'Nothing's perfect ever, is
it?  And I don't love him.  I love no one in the world but you.
Perhaps it's a wicked thing I've done.  It WOULD be wicked if I
didn't love him and he DID love me.  But he doesn't love me either.
We were both quite honest about it.'

'Oh, of course.'  Rosalind's voice was slow.  'There's Diana Guard.
I'd forgotten.  But Diana doesn't care for him any longer.  The
whole world knows that.'

'Yes, but he cares for her.  The only one he's ever loved, and he
will love her always, he said.'

'Janet!  Have you done this for me?  Tell me--because if you have--'

'No, dear, of course not.  A little for you perhaps, but a great
deal for myself.  I like him--better than any other man I know.
And he likes me--better than any other woman except that one.  I
don't know that love's so important--not in these days.  To be good
companions is the thing.  And I want to do something with my life.
Here I am wasting away, getting old.  I shall never love any man,
not passionately as people mean by love.  But I will be good to him
and he will be good to me.  And I can be of use to other people as
well.'

And Rosalind, reassured, was brilliantly happy again.  Surely it
was the most glorious, glorious event!  No more this old flat, no
more wondering where the next penny would come from.  'We shan't be
rich, you know,' Janet put in.  Lots of amusing people.  'We shall
have to be often in Halkin Street,' Janet interrupted again, 'and
THAT won't be very amusing.'  Her darling Mops a Duchess.  'They
are both very alive, and long may they be so,' Janet remarked
again.  Oh well, anyway, a Marchioness, and even if those things
didn't mean very much these days, and nobody minded, still it was
better than being cooped up in this hateful little flat. . . .

But at the end of her triumph she folded her arms around Janet.

'You are sure.  You swear it isn't for me you're doing this?'

'I swear,' Janet answered.  'If I didn't like him nothing would
induce me.'

She turned to the little silver tree as though invoking its
friendship.


Alone in her room, brushing her hair, gazing into her glass, Janet
considered everything.  Rosalind's joy had reassured her.  There at
least was happiness.  But for herself?  A little chill caught her
body.  She shivered, dropping the brushes, pressing her hands to
her breast, staring into the glass as though passionately demanding
from the face that she saw there a comforting answer.  Marriage?
And with a man whom she did not love?  It was a reassurance to her
that he did not love her; she would not have to submit to his
passion, but he wanted children, and what would that intercourse be
for them both deprived of passion?  Would he not close his eyes and
imagine that in his arms he held another dearly-loved woman?  And
she?  Could she shelter herself enough behind her liking for him?
Did she like him enough for THAT?

She had not met him so seldom.  She knew his courtesy, his
kindliness to others.  She liked him best in his relation to his
father and mother, to whom he was devoted.  But then who could help
but be devoted to the old Duke?  No difficult task for any son.

Did she care for Wildherne Poole in any physical way whatever?  Did
she like him to be near her, was she happier when he took her hand,
did her heart beat if he entered a room where she was?

No, none of these things.  It was many years now since she had felt
the stirring of her blood for any man.  During these ten years since
her mother's death all passion, all longing, all unselfishness, all
ambition had been buried in her sister.

From the very first days when Rosalind had been carried out by the
nurse on to the bright lawn at Sopover, and the sun, enmeshed, had
glittered in her hair, that passion had burned.  Rosalind had
always been so lovely, so amusing, so alive, so PACKED with charm.
It had always been Rosalind whom everyone had noticed, and during
that last awful week when Pamela Grandison had realised that she
was leaving her two girls alone, and almost friendless, to fight
their hard battle, it had been 'Rosalind--Rosalind--Rosalind. . . .
Look after her, Janet darling.  She hasn't your character.  She
can't put up with things as you can.  Look after her--'

Janet switched off the light, got into bed, lay down, staring into
the darkness.  It was true.  Rosalind had not the character.  Janet
was no fool about her sister; she knew that she was selfish,
comfort-loving, hard in sudden unexpected places.  She, Janet, was
never quite sure whether Rosalind loved her or no.  Sometimes she
did, and sometimes most certainly she did not.  She was elusive,
always just out of Janet's reach.  And was not that very
elusiveness partly responsible for Janet's passion?  Do we not love
the most those persons of whose love for us we are not quite sure?

But darling Rosalind, there was more, far more, than that in
Janet's love for her.  The struggle of these ten years, the
increasing struggle as prices had gone up and up and the tiny
investments had gone down and down, the sense that there was no one
in the world who cared, no one but distant Ludley and Grandison
relations, no one at least whom proud Janet would humiliate herself
to beg from.  Her own best friends--Rachel Seddon, Mary Coane, Ada
Darrant, Constance Medley--all women, by the way, older than
herself, had they ever realised AT ALL how desperate the struggle
was for Janet and Rosalind?  And were not they themselves also hard
up like all their set, like all their world?  Wasn't the need for
more money the one cry that nowadays you heard on every side of
you?  Hadn't Connie Medley her hat shop, and wasn't Ada Darrant
dressmaking, and hadn't Janet herself spent months of her life
turning old shoes into new ones?

The same with all of them.  Why should they then demand more
charity than the rest?

Charity!  No!  Hateful word!

But wasn't it charity that Janet was about to receive from
Wildherne Poole?  Was she going to him for any reason but the
mercenary one?  Would she have considered marriage with him for a
moment had she and Rosalind been rich?

Yes, she would.  The answer came to her with astonishing clearness
out of the darkness.  She wanted to do more with her life than she
was doing.  She wanted (strangely, pathetically she knew it) to
care for somebody who would quite definitely care for her.  She
wanted to feel affection for someone who would not, as Rosalind
did, at one moment accept her, at another violently reject her.
She wanted some sort of society in addition to the excitement of
her love for Rosalind.  This other thing would not be exciting at
all--quite orderly, safe, rather humdrum.  But always there and to
be relied on.  And she would be there for him too.  He had his
passion elsewhere and that would make him, as passion always does,
restless and unhappy and unsatisfied.  And she would be there for
him to come home to.  Someone upon whom he could absolutely rely.

She could not sleep.  She turned on her light and lay, watching the
pool of purple shadow encircling the little table, the three or
four books, a photograph of her mother in a silver frame.  Life!
What was it?  Why did she make so much of this step that she was
taking?  What matter it if it gave Rosalind happiness, Wildherne
Poole a son, the old Duke and Duchess comfort?  She felt herself
deprived of all personality.  She lay there without body, without
soul.  Only a tiny impetus pushing others who were alive into more
agreeable positions.

Then her life leapt back into her veins.  She was NOT negative.
She was as alive as they.  For ten years, nay, for twenty years she
had given herself wholly to others.  Now her own time had come.

Then, as though there were disloyalty in this, she felt an aching
longing for Rosalind.  She must see her, know that she was there,
touch her ever so gently.

She rose from her bed, found her dressing-gown and slippers, and
stole from the room.

She opened Rosalind's door very gently and then stood there
silently listening.  From beyond the windows came that strange
purring rumble of the London traffic.  Once and again some heavier
vehicle broke up the murmur and scattered it and the flat quivered,
ever so gently, as though it were responding to the life beyond it.
Above the murmur was Rosalind's regular soft breathing.

Janet moved forward very gently, felt the hard line of the bed,
touched the pillow with her hand, then sank down on to the floor
gathering her dressing-gown about her.  She rested her head on the
bedclothes without touching her sister.

Something deep, deep within her prayed.  'Make her happy, God.
Make her happy.  If I'm doing wrong in this punish me but not her.
Give her a lovely life.  Give her everything.  Make her happy.'

She did not know whether she believed in a God.  It was the fashion
now not to.  But sometimes it seemed to her that someone bent down
and gathered her up and warmed her heart.  A weak sentimental
illusion, her friends would tell her.  But to-night she was not
thinking of her friends.  In that dark murmuring room the outside
world could not have its say.

She felt comforted and warmed.

Very very softly she leaned forward and kissed her sister's cheek.
Then returned to her bed and slept.



CHAPTER III

BEAMINSTER AT HOME


Lord John Beaminster had had chambers for more than twenty years
now at 90 Piccadilly, which is at the Piccadilly end of Half Moon
Street, and the doors thereof confront the windows of that
excellent haberdasher's, Messrs. Dare and Dolphin.

Lord John had lived there so long because he liked the view.  He of
course looked over the Green Park into the very eye of her late
August Majesty Queen Victoria, and on the left of her there were
the towers of Westminster and on the right Buckingham Palace.  He
stood, his legs widely planted, his thick back steadily set, like a
captain directing his vessel, and for more than twenty years now
had he thus sailed over that green misty sea, and always the
farther he sailed, the farther did her August Majesty discreetly
withdraw!

But he was not ruffled by this frustration.  He rejoiced in it, and
he rejoiced also in the spume and froth thrown up at his very feet,
and felt, as he looked down at the cascades and jets of humanity
tossed fruitlessly at his walls, all the pride of a good old
mariner in his taut and seaworthy vessel.

To a visitor primed with his best cognac tossing his head he would
say:  'Just look at 'em!  Pretty busy, what?  And yet in here with
the windows closed you can't hear a sound.  And even with 'em open
it don't worry you.'  And here he would look round upon his walls,
upon the reproductions of Wheatley's 'Street Cries'--the
mezzotints, the 'Ladies Waldegrave,' and the others were in the
little dining-room--and the old French clock with the naked Diana
in gold, and the Louis XVI sofa and chairs, and the glass bookcases
with the bound sets of Madame de Sévigné and Saint-Simon, and the
ten volumes of The Mistresses of the Kings of France, and, primed
also with his own excellent cognac, would feel kindly and amiable
and entirely optimistic about everything.

That had always been his 'note,' that confidence in his own
seaworthy vessel.  Neither the little South African War nor the big
World War with all the social changes that followed them really, he
maintained proudly, disturbed him, although for convention's sake
he would complain of the 'changed times,' and that 'things were
not, dammit, at all as they used to be.'  But because his digestion
was still so excellent, and because he had that best of all gifts,
the power to enjoy a good moment to its full consciously at the
very instant that it was occurring, nothing but a collapse in his
health, he asserted, would ever disturb him.  It was not that he
was selfish or hard-hearted.  The sorrows of others grieved him,
and he did many kindnesses in a quiet unobtrusive way, but life now
in his seventy-seventh year was as good and rich to him as it had
been in his seventh when his father had put him for the first time
on his first pony.

When he did think of social conditions--and it was hard enough in
these days to avoid them--he felt sure that the miseries of other
people as recounted by other people were greatly exaggerated.

He had been told that he must read the novels of Mr. James Fossett,
and faithfully he had read four or five of them.  But he would read
no more.  Partly because they seemed so closely to resemble one
another--there was a Policeman in all of them--and partly because
the picture they presented did not at all resemble any life that he
himself knew.  The characters seemed to be in a sad repressed
state, held down firmly by the cold hand of their author.  He
longed to watch them all out at play when Mr. Fossett had no longer
his eye upon them.

Nor was it his experience that the Lower Orders were always
unhappy.  The Policeman on the corner of Half Moon Street--four to
twelve one week and eight to four the next--was a good friend of
his--he invited him sometimes when the weather was bad to the
enjoyment of a glass of whisky--a very cheerful individual with a
charming wife and two handsome little boys.  Old Fullerton--head
man in these Chambers for the last thirty years--found life
anything but depressing; and the old man who sold the Evening News
by the 'In and Out' could be heard whistling to himself any fine
evening.

One morning he awoke, as ever, to the consciousness of Fullerton's
soft and unobtrusive entrance just as the clocks in the sitting-
room (the golden Diana) and the dining-room were chanting the eight
o'clock hour.  Fullerton moved very lightly for so stout a man, and
always now for twenty years Beaminster had wanted to snap out at
him, 'For God's sake, Fullerton, you're not a cat!'  A solemn
notion, when you looked into it, that this had been the first
thought of your day for more than twenty years!

But sleep had not vanished far enough for such daylight energy, and
also lying on the bed close to hand was the virgin Morning Post,
unravished as yet by the sighs, curses, aspirations, triumphant
discoveries of any vulgar reader.

He was older now also.  He did not move so easily nor so swiftly as
he had once done; his body seemed to be cast into the mould of the
sheets and blankets that had cherished him so lovingly all night.
He might just lazily stretch his arm and draw the Morning Post
towards him, and this movement coincided always with Fullerton's
rasp of the cherry-coloured silk curtains that once on a day Adela
had insisted upon, 'because this room's so grisly--you MUST have
some colour,' and was followed by the vision of Fullerton's broad
beam as he bent forward to gather together the discarded evening
clothes.  Next step through the advancing hour was the question,
'What sort of a day?' and then Fullerton's straightening body, the
sudden projection of his round red face, and the thick, rather
husky answer:  'Not bad, my lord,' 'A little foggy this morning, my
lord,' or 'Nice bright morning, my lord.'

Followed on this the bomb-like intrusion of the world from China to
Peru.  The Himalayas leaned their snows across the dressing-table,
the torrents of Niagara tumbled over the wardrobe, the rivers of
China trickled across the little rug from Teheran in front of the
fire-place, the shouting multitudes of Wall Street shattered the
glass of the Queen Anne mirror.  Impassively Lord John surveyed
chaos, only once and again for Fullerton's benefit murmured, 'Those
damned Balkans again,' or 'That feller that buried his girl in a
chicken-run is going to swing,' or 'No knowing where these
Bolsheviks are going to stop,' and Fullerton would reply, 'Yes, my
lord,' or 'No, my lord,' or entering more fully into the question
would remember once when he had been with Sir Asprey Farthingale or
how Colonel Meadows, who had the floor above this in 1913, used to
say that . . . and to this no answer would issue from the bed.

Then the Bath and the Exercises.  Beaminster was proud of his body
as, stretched on his toes, he slowly raised his arms and counted
ten.  A decent, white, plump, symmetrical body it was, everything
moving a trifle more slowly than it used to, but no rebellion
anywhere, no refusal to function.

Once in a while there was a twinge of something, and if this twinge
occurred twice or thrice Barley Harter would be consulted, there
would follow perhaps a change of diet, port would be dropped, or a
fortnight at Bath or Harrogate recommended; but for the most part
things proceeded smoothly enough, and soon there would be that
slippery sliding into that bath with blue tiles so that your body
like a round white fish flapped and slithered and ever so gently
rolled. . . .

At nine o'clock precisely there came the best moment of the day
when, clothed and in his right mind, dark blue suit, pearl pin in
black tie, hair so snowy white that it seemed to glow with some
internal light of its own, face rubicund, round, kindly and smooth
in spite of its reputed years as any baby's, John Beaminster sat
down to his breakfast.

On this particular morning snow lay over the land and a bright sun
shone in the heavens.  The landscape before the windows lay in a
whiteness unbroken save by gentle purple shadows between the avenue
of crystal sparkling trees that stretched down to the Victoria
Memorial, and the reflected light of this whiteness shone into the
little room of the flat with its ivory walls, gleaming tablecloth,
and low white bookcases.

Beaminster sat in this temple of glittering crystal before his
coffee and eggs.  He sat there smiling like the image of some
Egyptian king of the 18th Dynasty--some Tutmose or Rameses--carved
there in a crystal of ivory and purple for immortality.  Then the
egg was tapped, the coffee poured out, the letters opened, and
immortality was shattered.

His thoughts, shot through with the sunshine, danced through his
brain.

This was pleasant, this lovely morning, and he was in excellent
health, and the coffee was hot, and the letters were agreeable.  He
opened them slowly one after another.  Old Lady Mossop, Hartop, a
tailor, a wine merchant, a race-meeting, an invitation to dinner,
to a house party, to Scotland. . . .  Then a note from young Tom
Seddon:


DEAR UNCLE JOHN--I shall pop in about four to-morrow (Tuesday) for
an hour if I may.  I've something to tell you.  Just ring Grosvenor
4763 if that doesn't suit.  I'm in till eleven.--Yours
affectionately,

                                                         TOM.


He regarded this piece of paper covered with the big, boyish,
sprawling hand affectionately, and when his breakfast was finished
carried the letter with him into the other room, leaving the others
upon the table.

He loved that boy.  Standing motionless in a pool of sunlight, his
white hair shining, he reflected upon how deeply he loved him.  Now
in his old age at last, when he might have yielded up all desire
for human contacts involving as they must human trouble and self-
sacrifice, this deep attachment had come to him.  Come to him
without his asking.  He had always been interested in him, of
course, Rachel's boy, but it was only during the last three years
that he had been aware of this deep, yearning, unsatisfied
affection.

Unsatisfied because the boy could not respond in that way.  Why
should he?  He was not his son, no, nor his nephew, although he
called him Uncle.  His great-uncle.  What an awful word, implying
such a deadly distance of age and experience.  How could they be
friends with all those generations between them?  And yet they
had achieved something.  The boy was a good boy, responding
spontaneously, warmly, to kindness, not selfish like so many of his
generation, warm-hearted, and not afraid to show his feelings.

But--Uncle John!  A good old codger, wonderful for his years,
remarkable how he keeps up with things.  Oh yes.  Beaminster knew
what the point of view must be.

Nevertheless the boy came to him for help when he was in
difficulty.  Here he was in love with this girl who, likely enough,
cared nothing for him.  Funny life was--you cared for somebody and
somebody cared for somebody else, and that somebody cared for
somebody else again. . . .  Perhaps the point was in the caring,
not in the returned affection.  Look out, Uncle John!  That's a
platitude, most despised of all creatures in this our wonderful
age!

But Uncle John, standing in his pool of sunlight looking at the
rough scribbled note with eyes of pride and affection, thought
nothing of platitudes.  By God, he was a good boy, and if the girl
didn't like him she should be made to!

This girl (he sat down to continue his reflections), this Grandison
girl, with what had she caught the boy?  Well, she was good-
looking, beautiful even, and John Beaminster had loved enough
beautiful women in his life to realise what beauty could do.  But
had she anything else but beauty?  He had talked to her but seldom,
and on those occasions he had fancied that her eyes had been
restless, searching about the room for others who were younger or
more interesting.  He had fancied that, perhaps.  When you were
over seventy, if you still cared for life you did fancy things
sometimes.  She was poor.  Every one in London knew how poor were
she and her sister.  And she would be extravagant.  A girl with
that hair and those obstinate ambitious eyes!

But he fancied also that she did not care for the boy.  She was
flying, he fancied, after higher game, and if that were so wasn't
the boy in for a bad time?  Nonsense!  We all go through it.  It's
good for the young.  Teaches them self-control.  The young, yes.
But his own particular Tom!  He did not wish him to suffer.  He
wanted him to have the happiest time!  And that was not a boy to
take things lightly!  He would feel it.  This was no passing fancy
of his.  The old man, looking back to an earlier evening,
remembered how Tom had said to him, 'Uncle John, I love that girl.
I must marry her.  I must.'

And here a strange feeling, new to Beaminster, twisted his heart.
A twist of jealousy.  That was it.  Jealousy of a girl like that, a
lightweight?  No, jealousy of love, wanting someone to love him,
almost anyone, someone to whom he might still be everything . . .
as he had once been, yes, and several times . . . but now, when you
were old. . . .

The sunlight struck his chair, stroked his face.  He chuckled.
Why, he was like any old woman with his love and the rest.
Straightening his shoulders he got up, crossed to the table, and
sat down to write his letters.


Later on he went out.

As he turned the corner into Piccadilly the frosty air, the
brilliant sunlight, confirmed him the more readily in the
conviction, long held and never seriously threatened, that this
Town belonged to him.  Many men, passing along that same road, held
that same conviction--and the conviction further that as this their
Town was the finest, grandest, most beautiful, and most civilised
Town in the world, that world also was theirs.

They held this conviction with no arrogance, and did not even know
that they held it.  Had you attacked their conviction and informed
them that the slums in this Town were among the worst in the
universe, that the streets were seething with extreme Socialism,
that the organisation and Councils of the Town were incompetent and
old-fashioned, that the ladies who paraded Jermyn Street from five
in the evening until five in the morning, were a disgrace and a
scandal, they would have, pleasantly and courteously, agreed with
you.  Only had you attacked the Police Force of their stronghold
would they, but yet courteously, have objected.  And your
objections, completely admitted by them, would only have confirmed
them in their confidence.

Beaminster did not consciously think of London, but, taking his
part in that admirable procession moving slowly and haughtily (but
not arrogantly) on its way, his heart beat in unison with its every
movement; every tree in the Green Park was his tree, every
cigarette in every tobacconist's shop, every shirt in every
haberdasher's, every stone in the Devonshire House wall (doomed so
immediately to destruction), every flower in the florist's beyond
the Berkeley Hotel--they were all his.

Once and again he would stop at a shop window and glance.  His
pause was slight, his gaze swift and comprehensive.  Some
daffodils, snatched from the Scillies, stirred his heart.  They
cost, had he wished to inquire, two shillings a bloom--but what
matter since already they were his?  He approved of their presence
there, and that was enough.

From the corner of Bond Street to the Circus the procession of the
possessors of the Town was democratised.  Only here and there it
appeared intermingled with other processions--the Procession of the
Tourists, the Procession of the Hewers of Wood and the Drawers of
Water, the Procession of the New Rich, the Procession of the
Scavengers, the Procession of the Thieves and Vagabonds, the
Procession of the Upholders of Morality, the Procession of
Freudians, the Procession of the Thoroughly Married.  With none of
these did Beaminster have any concern.

He approved benevolently of the shop where they sold cheap
stationery, of the haberdasher with the silk dressing-gowns, of
Thomas Cook's Agency, and he glanced happily across the street at
Mr. Hatchard's Bookshop, the establishment of Keith Prowse, and
Prince's Restaurant.

Then came the sight that every day made his heart beat a little
faster--St. James's Church, sheltered by its trees now crystal-
silver against the sky, protected by its ivory-grey wall.

Always, every day, it was the same; he was drawn, as it were
against his will, to cross exactly there, just when the picture
shop with the sketch of the Prince of Wales in the window and
Sackville Street with all its Tailors implored him to remain.  No,
just there he must cross, look up for an instant at the clock, and
then pass on.

HIS church.  It had been so for seventy-seven years.  It was
looking very well this morning, thank you.  It did him justice.

The Processions tumbled into Piccadilly Circus, scattering into
tangled patterns only resolved into unity by the superb Police
Force under the tender beneficence of the Protecting Eros.

But thence it was Beaminster's Town no longer.  When he had time he
preferred to turn down St. James's Street, and so, along Pall Mall
and up into Leicester Square again, could keep his Town around him
for a little while yet.

During his walk through Coventry Street he considered his affairs
and looked no longer at the things and persons around him.  He did
not feel himself now superior to his surroundings, but it was
another world, a world that would not thank him for his attention.
Had he thought of them with observation he would in all probability
have felt them to be superior to himself, because this was a
working world and his was not, or had not until lately been.  But,
lacking imagination, he did not perceive that these people were
quite real; they resembled the figures of the cinematograph which
on occasion he visited.  They were all in one dimension,
unaccountably vanishing and reappearing, obeying no known law.

Down Leicester Square, past the little garden sparkling white under
the sun, he flung off on the one side the cheap journalism of the
newspaper shop and on the other the gleaming canvases of the
Leicester Galleries, and so reached his bourne.

He stood patiently, amiably, before the oak door, with the grille
unobtrusive like its superior members, of the Zoffany Club.

He looked at his watch.  Until a quarter to one precisely that door
was closed.  He heard, gently harmonious across the clear winter
air, the chimes of Big Ben sounding the quarter.  The door opened
and he passed inside.

The Zoffany Club is famous and precious because it is so very
ancient and so very small, and because the heart of London lies
within its ebony and silver casket; this is one of the six Londons,
London being divided under the six Poets--Virgilius, Horatius,
Catullus, Ovidius, Tibullus, and Sappho.  Here we are under
Horatius.

There is but one room, long and lofty, of black oak, scattered with
the gleaming silver of Georgian bowls and Caroline jugs.  There are
Whistler etchings and Hogarthian prints and Baxter simplicities,
and the wide, deep bow-window looks out on to the trees and traffic
of that happy Square embracing the Alhambra, the Garrick Theatre,
the National Portrait Gallery, and the best (if occasional) Punch
and Judy show in England.

Young men who are fortunate enough to be elected to the Zoffany
pass through three very definite stages; and this is reasonable
enough, because the Zoffany, as everyone knows, is like a friend or
a lover, and in every friendship and every love three stages of
progress are inevitable.  At first the young men are pleased
because they are chosen, membership being difficult.  They like the
look of the room, the kindliness and discretion of the servants of
the Zoffany (who are all called Edward, whether that be their name
or no); they sniff the genial air with happy anticipations, that
air of the Horatian London compounded of snuff and wax candles,
cognac and fog, ancient leather and the most aromatic tobacco.
They like to see the lights steal into the lamps beyond the bow-
window, to watch the trees darken against the evening sky, and they
may fancy if they please that Gainsborough and Reynolds, Hogarth
and Romney, crowd the windows of the National Portrait Gallery, and
watch the sky signs of Trafalgar Square and the stiff German angles
of Nurse Cavell with bewildered wonder.

They are pleased also maybe to sit at the long table with the most
Ancient of Living Diplomatists, the most honourably battered of
British Generals, the most beautifully silent of London Exquisites,
and to find these great figures among the kindest and most genial
of the human race.

But the Second Stage is swiftly reached.  The world is full of a
number of things; there are clubs not faraway with cocktail bars
and Turkish baths; the company of the Diplomat, the General, and
the Exquisite may seem a trifle too monotonous in its regularity;
there is but one room, one table, one Edward, one grill, one fire-
place, one sofa.  They vanish and pass away.

And then with some, but not with all (the Zoffany quietly chooses
its own), the Third Stage is reached.  Something draws them back.
Other clubs may have their gaiety and splendours, their cards and
diversions, their Point-to-Point and Golfing Gymkhanas, their guest-
rooms and their Ladies' Chambers--there is only one Zoffany.  For
them there will be to the end of their long London club days no
other club from world's end to world's end, no other grill, no
other Georgian bowls, no other Edward, no other bow-window, and so,
in their turn and in their own good time, they will become the most
ancient of Diplomats, Generals, or Exquisites, sinking gently in
the tender arms of the Zoffany to their eternal rest.

It was thus precisely that Beaminster felt about the Zoffany.  But
to-day, entering the room, he saw at a glance that he had no luck.
Seated one on either side of the long table were the two men whom,
of all the Zoffany company, he liked the least, Pompey Turle and
Charles Ravage.  Pompey was not the Christian name given to Mr.
Turle by his godfathers and godmothers in baptism, but rather by
his critics and detractors (of whom there were, alas, many) in his
later years.  He was a stout, heavy, lowering, over-moustached
Foreign Office official who had written a small book on Shelley,
reviewed a little in the more eclectic weeklies, and reduced the
art of bad manners to an ignoble science.

Because of his self-satisfied pomposities he was christened Pompey,
and because of his intolerable self-satisfaction and priggish
superiorities men fled from before him as from the wrath of God.

Beaminster loathed him with all the loathing of one who had been
taught to value courtesy before riches and kindliness of soul
before intellect.

But Pompey Turle was important to no one save himself.  Charles
Ravage was another matter.

Ravage was the only child of Colonel Forester Ravage and Lady
Evelyn Garth, whose history is public property and a very ancient
story.  Because of that same story Charles Ravage was now alone in
a world that adored him, living on an income allowed him by his
uncle, Lord Cairis, who loved him beyond reason.

Why the world adored him and his uncle loved him Beaminster had
never been able to discover.  He was nothing to look at, a little
black man none too carefully groomed; he had never very much to say
for himself, but stared at you, with his blue-black eyes set like
buttons in his blue-black face, as though he considered you too
foolish to be possible.

He made many people uncomfortable, and especially old gentlemen of
John Beaminster's age and tradition.

He had thirty years, a small flat in Ryder Street, a loose
reputation, and the adoration of his set and generation.

Here, then, were the two men whom of all others Beaminster detested--
the only two men in the long, mellow, sunny room.  He made the
best of it, sat smilingly down with them and listened to Pompey's
oration on the present state of China.  But while Pompey, like a
complacent bluebottle, boomed his way along, Beaminster's thoughts
were busy.  He had come here to-day with a very definite purpose,
and that purpose was to make sure that Tom Seddon was safe for
election next month when his name would come before the august
Committee.  Neither Turle nor Ravage could be of any reassurance to
him in that, but he hoped that someone--Barty Sonter or Monmouth or
Felchester--on the Committee would soon appear and give him the
comforting word.  Not that he had any real doubt.  No one had
anything against Tom; he was a popular lad; they wanted youngsters
in the club; he, Beaminster, was reason enough to ensure Tom's
election, but the old man must catch the words from someone in
authority:  'Young Seddon?  Oh, he's all right!  Just the kind of
boy we want!'

Then, as he sat there, ordering a steak from Edward and a pint of
his own particular Zoffany claret, facing the dark countenance of
Ravage, the strangest intimation crept over him that Ravage was, in
one way or another, threatening his peace and security.

He had never been a man given to intimations or warnings, he had
never before felt any especial connection with Ravage save that
Ravage despised him (and, like the rest of us, he did not regard
with favour those who despised him), but to-day there was something
much more definite, something that made him physically uncomfortable,
as though his collar-stud had slipped down the back of his neck or
his shoes were pinching him.

He could not take his eyes from the other man's face, and he
felt as though Ravage knew of this and was maliciously and
contemptuously pleased at it.  At last he asked Ravage some
question or another, and on the man quietly answering it he went
on:

'By the way, a young nephew of mine whom I think you know is coming
up here next month--Tom Seddon--I wish you'd write your name on his
page.'

'Oh yes,' said Ravage.  'A nice boy.  I like him.'

He smiled at Beaminster.

'Isn't he rather young for this place?' boomed Turle.  'Still got
to win his spurs, hasn't he?'

Anger boiled in old Beaminster.  Quietly he answered:

'We want some young fellows here; too many old fogies like myself.
Club will die out if we don't take care.'

'All the same, the Club doesn't want babes in arms,' Turle
pleasantly continued.  Beaminster choked.  Edward, alarmed, hurried
towards him.  Ravage amazingly came to his rescue.

'Glad you're not on the Committee, Turle,' he said.  'We'd have a
nice lot of duds in here if you were.  Young Seddon's just right
for this place.  No need for me to write my name.  He's safe
enough.  And I don't know that my name's much help to anyone
either.'

He got up and went with his funny, rather lurching walk over to the
Candidates' Book.  As he stood there looking at it he revealed the
odd shortness of his legs, short, thick, stumpy, out of proportion
to his body.  Better-looking fellow had he longer legs.  Funny
chap, with his short, black, scrubby hair, his blue-black
countenance, his staring eyes.

Then Felchester came in.  Beaminster was greatly relieved.  He was
in his own world once more.

But until Ravage left the room he was not truly comfortable.
Something dangerous about that fellow!  Something threatening!

About a quarter past three he withdrew from his beloved sanctum
where, half asleep, he had pleasantly listened to old Porter
Carrick's hunting adventures in Leicestershire, and quietly
proceeded to possess himself of a corner of Trafalgar Square, half
Pall Mall (including the Athenæum Club), and the whole of St.
James's.

St. James's was his own especial and inviolable property, and
never, he was pleased to see, had it looked better than on this
especial winter's afternoon--'all frosted over like a cake,' he
thought appreciatively, 'with a red sun cocking its cheeky
countenance over the Ryder Street flats, and all the chimneys
smoking like hell.'

He was to-day greatly appreciative of Mr. Spink's fine array.
Spink's shop window was his favourite in the whole of London--he
gave it a look once a week at least when he was in town.  In other
days he had purchased charming things there, but now--well, there
were not many women left now to whom he cared to make presents.
This thought, coming to him quite unexpectedly, depressed him for a
moment.  He stared with a sentimental fixity at the god Horus whose
beak-shaped countenance returned him stare for stare.  Not many
women in his life any more, by God!--and Horus answered him,
'There's a time for everything!'

So there is!  All his spirits were back again as he strode off up
the happy little hill towards Jermyn Street.  Here indeed was for
him a land of memories!

Every step was consecrated ground, consecrated to this passion,
that hazard and folly, this exquisite surprise, that plot and plan,
this discovery and that thundering disappointment.

And not only his own memories, but every masculine enterprise had
here its consecrated triumph.  Ghosts, recognised by him from the
long years of his own adventure, crowded in upon him--dapper ghosts
with their hats a little cocked, their moustaches twirled, their
canes fluttering, their eyes boldly exploring.  He could name them--
Datchett, Cobham, Harry Winchester, Fordie Munt, Tinden, Rake
Lacket, Borden-Cave, young Ponting Beaminster his cousin, poor Will
Reckets--yes, ghosts, and soon he too would join their gathering
and would hang like the rest about the windows of White's, the
chimney-pots of Ryder Street, the haberdashers and bootshops of
Jermyn Street . . . but what mattered it!  Plenty of life in the
old dog, and young Tom to carry on the tradition after him when he
was gone!

Young Tom was there already waiting for him when he came in.  The
boy was quite at home, seated, his long legs stretched out in front
of him, his thin nose stuck in the Evening Standard.

He jumped up at the sight of his uncle and stood there smiling, and
Beaminster also smiled, thinking what a nice boy he was, the
straightest and cleanest and handsomest in all London.

Fullerton came in to draw the dark purple curtains, the tea was
placed at their side, they drew close to the happy fire.

'And now, Tom, what's your news?'

'Why, Miss Grandison, the older one, is engaged to Lord Poole!'

Here WAS a piece of news!  Beaminster, who had been leaning towards
the fire, sat up with a jerk.  His round pink face seemed to swell
with astonishment.

'To Poole!  But--' then checking himself because the boy was too
young for current scandal.  'When did you hear this?  Is it sure?'

'Quite certain.  It was three nights ago at Lady Mossop's.'

'Why, then, he--But what will she--The old Duke WILL be pleased.
Just what he would like.  But I never dreamt that Poole--'

He stared at the piece of buttered toast between his fingers,
slipped it into his mouth, wiped his fingers on his silk
handkerchief, felt blindly for the blue enamel cigarette-box at his
side.

'Poole!  Good heavens!'

'Yes, don't you see?' Tom Seddon broke in eagerly.  'That leaves
her sister all alone.  While she's had her sister, who adored her,
she wouldn't want anybody else, but now she's certain to marry.'

'Who's certain to marry?' asked Beaminster, still thinking of Poole
and his private affairs.

'Why, Rosalind--Miss Grandison, the young one.  She'll think of me
now.  She won't like being left.  I'm sure she cares for me.  She
couldn't say the things she does--Oh, Uncle John,' he sprang to his
feet.  'She will take me.  She MUST.  Why shouldn't she?  She'll
never find anybody who loves her better.  I'll make a career.  With
her to work for I could do anything.  Uncle John, you don't know
what it feels like.'

Uncle John nodded his head.

'Don't I?  Do you suppose because I'm over seventy I've forgotten
anything?  That's the time you begin to remember.  And I've got
plenty to look back to.  Although I'm a bachelor it doesn't
mean . . .'  He broke off and looked up, his eyes full of affection.

'Tom, my boy, don't set yourself on this too completely.  Keep
yourself a bit outside of it if you can until you know she cares
for you.  It's easy enough for someone who isn't in it to advise
you, but all the same you're yourself.  Nobody can touch you.  I've
learnt that from life.  Life can hurt like the devil, and the more
it sees it hurts the more it uses its power.  I remember there was
a woman once. . . .'  He broke off again.  'No, what's the use?
You've got to take your own medicine.  If she did marry you what
would you live on?  She hasn't got anything, has she?'

'No, she hasn't, but I've got my Foreign Office pay and--and--don't
laugh at me, but I fancy I can write a bit.'

'Write?  That's a new idea.  Write what?'

'Well, articles--politics.  I'm frightfully keen on politics, Uncle
Tom.  I mean to go into Parliament later on and then--'

'Politics!' Beaminster shook his head.  'It's a dirty game,
especially nowadays the way things are going.'

'No, but that's just what it oughtn't to be.  There are a number of
us--Forsyte, Harry Grendon, Godfrey Maule, Bum Chichester, the
Darrants, Humphrey Weddon--we've formed a club of our own; we all
have the same idea.'

'Oh! and what's that idea?' Beaminster inquired.

Tom Seddon began to pace the room.  'It's this way.  There's all
this class trouble, and then there's downing of the Upper Classes,
every book and paper saying they're no good any more, that they're
all rotten, never doing anything but dance and drink all night, and
if they're not like that, why, then, they're so reactionary that
they're right behind the times and selfish, only caring to keep
their own class on top.  We're all of us under thirty and we know
that that's tommy-rot.  We aren't always drinking cocktails, and we
believe that our class and its traditions means a lot to England,
and that if you keep the fine side of it you'll be making better
history for England than if you let it all go.  What we feel is
that we can do more for England, and for the world too, by being
ourselves instead of pretending to be parlour Socialists and sham
Bolsheviks.  We KEEP our class with all that's been best in it for
hundreds of years and co-operate with the other classes for the
good of all of us.  Of course, everyone's got to work now, and
there's got to be co-operation instead of selfish prerogative, but
we're not going to be ashamed of our class and our family and our
tradition, and we won't be ashamed of England either.  It sounds a
bit vague,' he went on apologetically, 'but there's something real
at the back of it.  We all feel pretty deeply about it.'

'Well, well,' said Beaminster.  He loved the boy so truly, as he
saw him striding up and down the floor, his head back, his eyes
shining, that he found it difficult for a moment to speak.  What
had happened to him, to his old selfish ways, his avoidance of
sentiment?  Sentiment?  For two-pence he would have jumped up,
flung his arms around the boy's neck and kissed him.

'What does your young woman say to all this kind of talk?'

'Oh, she's all right.'  Tom hesitated.  'I haven't said very much
to her about it yet, I'm a bit shy of boring her.  But she's
clever.  She'll be as interested in it as I am.  Of course she'll
have her own point of view about it.  She has about everything.'

'I expect she has,' said Beaminster rather drily.  'But her sister,
the older one who's going to marry Poole.  Does she like you?
She's going to be important now?'

'Janet?'  Tom laughed.  'Oh, she's splendid.  She's the best sort
in the world.  Of course she isn't lovely like Rosalind, but she's
the best sport anywhere.  She adores Rosalind, and anything
Rosalind wants she'd want too.'

'Very bad for Rosalind,' Beaminster commented.

'Oh, I don't know.  Rosalind isn't spoiled, not a bit.  They've had
too hard a time to be spoiled, either of them.  It will be grand
for Janet now.  The old Duke can't live very long and then they'll
have a great time.'

'That's right,' Beaminster growled.  'Push us into the grave.
We're finished.'

'No, you know I don't mean that.  The Duke's splendid.  Everybody
loves him.  But there's something rather fine in being Duchess of
Romney even in these days.  All that history behind you and power
to make more.  There IS something in a family, and something in
loving the same soil so many years; you get something back--
something your ancestors have given. . . .'

He stopped and prepared to go.  He had to dress and be at the
Carlton Grill by seven--going to a play.

'By the way,' said Beaminster, his hand on the boy's shoulder as
they stood by the door, 'it's all right about Zoffany's.  I went in
there to-day.'

'Oh, thanks awfully.  Uncle John, you are a brick to me.  I wish I
could do something for you in return.'

'You do, you do,' Beaminster said hurriedly.  'Just by coming in to
see me.  Now cut along or you'll be late.'

Back in his room he stood, looking at the curtains, listening to
the strange spider-like hum of the traffic beyond the windows.

Yes, he loved that boy.  What was the use of it so late?  What the
meaning of it?  What the meaning of anything?

He sat down slowly and heavily, pulled the Evening Standard towards
him, read further details in the history of the young man who had
buried his young woman in his own chicken-run, and in his ears rang
persistently the tones, fresh and clear, of Tom's loves and
ambitions.



CHAPTER IV

HALKIN STREET


When Janet Grandison awakened on the morning after her acceptance
of Wildherne Poole her first conscious sensation was one of
indefinite, unsubstantiated fear.

She was afraid of something.  Something had happened that would
have for her appalling consequences.  Her life was in danger, her
sister's life was in danger. . . .  She must act at once or . . .

The dim room swung like water about her, then settled itself.  The
familiar furniture stepped out from the mist and solidly
contemplated her.  She raised her head, looked across the room at
the open window, a fragment of grey smoky sky, a twisted and
ironical chimney.  The room was very cold, but she liked that.  She
was reassured by the fresh sharpness of the air.  She knew.  Last
night she had accepted Wildherne Poole.

His figure appeared before her standing just in front of the
window, his head cutting the segment of grey sky.  He was there,
and he was a stranger, and she was going to marry him.  He was so
completely a stranger to her that she could look at him with
absolute detachment, admiring his fine carriage, his dignity, his
aristocratic sedateness that would have been complacency had it not
been so entirely unconscious.  She had seen him many times, and yet
she had never seen him before this morning.  Her soul was looking
upon him for the first time.

How could she have given her word?  She must go at once to him
and tell him that she had not meant what she had said.  She sat up
in bed, her heart thumping beneath her thin nightdress, the cold
air assaulting her like a sharp remonstrance.  She felt like an
animal, trapped.  What had she done?  How COULD she have pledged
herself . . .?  Her normality rose like the shadow of an old friend
reassuring her.  There was no need for fear.  What was life meant
for if one was not to engage it boldly, challenge it; and what was
one's own soul engaged upon if it shrank before circumstance?  She
had accepted Poole for reasons that were neither sudden nor ill-
considered.  And then again she shrank back.  She had always been
reserved, impersonal; her life had painted a background for others.
Now she must step forward and take her place.  She would be an
important figure in the lives of many people.  The world would watch
her to see of what stuff she were made, she, Janet, whose soul had
always been shy and reticent and uneloquent save only when love had
stirred her.

And now she would play a part where love could not help her.  She
had dreamt of love in her girlhood, and perhaps if Rosalind had not
possessed her so entirely she would have known by now what love--
sexual love, married love--might be, but she had never known, and
now, by this action, she had shut it out of her life for ever.
Sexual love, yes.  But there were other loves--love of friends, of
beauty, of high deeds--all these were open to her.  She could love
the old Duke very easily--already she loved him perhaps.  And for
Wildherne--it might be that constant companionship with him would
lead to comradeship, and comradeship to a kind of sisterly love.
They would both be tranquilly happy, wise, sensible comrades.
Wasn't that the way that marriages were made in France, and were
they not more successful than our impetuous, hurried, romantic
affairs that had no basis of real understanding?

She understood Wildherne Poole wonderfully.  And he her.  Their
mutual confidence and honesty was a marvellous thing.

The telephone bell rang sharply from the other room.  She slipped
out of bed, looking at her watch as she did so.  Nine o'clock!  She
had no idea that it was so late.

Old Mrs. Beddoes, who came in the mornings to clean up, was in the
other room busy with the breakfast.

'I was wondering whether to wake you, Miss.  I thought I'd leave
Miss Rosalind.  She's sound as sound.  The telephone, Miss.  I was
just a-going to answer it myself.'

Janet raised the receiver:  'Yes?' she said.  'Who is it?'

'Janet, is that you?'

It was Wildherne's voice.  The colour mounted, flushed her forehead
under her dark hair.

'Yes, Wildherne, good-morning.'

'I do hope I'm not too early.  I didn't wake you?'

'No, no.  I've been awake some time.'

There was a pause.  She felt that she should say something.  She
was terribly conscious of Mrs. Beddoes.

His voice, level, kindly, unperturbed, went on:

'It is only that I have told my mother and father.  They are so
happy that it is good to see.'

'I'm glad.'  Her voice trembled a little.

'They want you to come to luncheon to-day.  Will you?  I will come
and fetch you.'

'Of course.  I will be delighted.  What time?'

'I'll come about half-past twelve.  We might walk, if you don't
mind.'

'Yes, I'll like that.'

'All right.  Half-past twelve.  Good-bye.'

'Good-bye, Wildherne.'

She stood there staring in front of her.  She was thinking of the
Duke's happiness.  That was one good thing that she had done, one
splendid thing; she had made the finest old man in the country
gloriously happy, and she would see that that happiness continued.
If she were not happy herself, at least she could make others so.

And then, quite unexpectedly, happiness bubbled up in her own
heart.  She could be, on an instant, like a little child, naïve,
pleased with the smallest thing, credulous, buoyant.  That came
from the simple sincerity of her character.  She had always been
much simpler than her sister.

After all, there would be very pleasant consequences of this affair--
power and friends and comfort and ease from anxiety.

How often in that same little room she had stood there wondering
whether she COULD surmount the difficulties that beat in upon
herself and Rosalind, wondering too whether she were always to be
alone, fighting her battles by herself without aid from anyone? . . .
although there had been friends . . . and one friend. . . .

She went eagerly back to the telephone.  Soon a sleepy voice
murmured out of space:  'Yes?  Who's that?'

'Rachel, darling, I AM so sorry to have wakened you.  It's I,
Janet.  I have some news for you.'

'Oh, Janet.  Wait a moment.  Now I'm awake.  Anything the matter?'

'Well--not the matter exactly,' Janet laughed.  'It's only that
last night Wildherne Poole proposed to me and I accepted him.'

'Oh!'  The little cry of delight pleased Janet, who laughed eagerly
as though her friend were there in person in front of her.  'You
darling!  Oh!  I AM so glad!  How splendid!  Splendid! . . .  Wait,
I'm coming straight round to you.  In half an hour. . . .'

'Yes, that's all right.  I'm not going out.  He's coming to fetch
me at half-past twelve.'  She turned away from the telephone still
smiling, then saw Mrs. Beddoes' eyes fixed on her in a kind of
ecstasy.

'Excuse me, Miss.  I oughtn't to have heard, but I couldn't 'elp
it.  Oh, miss, I AM so glad!  That's Lord Poole, ain't it, the
Marquis of Poole?  Oh dear, I AM glad.  You MUST excuse me, Miss,
but you've been so kind to me, giving Beddoes that introduction and
everything, and sending Janie to the 'orspital, that it isn't in
human nature for me not to show a bit of pleasure when luck comes
your way.  And it isn't as if I was a stranger to Lord Poole
neither, because my sister-in-law goes to that very church, St.
Anne's in Wolverton Street, where all the Duke's people goes to,
and she's seen Lord Poole there many a Sunday, and a fine,
'andsome, well-set-up young gentleman he is, they tell me.  Oh, I
am glad, Miss, and so heveryone will be because a kinder-hearted
lady than yourself no one's ever set eyes on, and that I'd declare
if I was 'ad up for murderin' my 'usband.  You deserve to be 'appy
if anyone does.'

Mrs. Beddoes did not often express her feelings, and in the morning
was inclined to be morose and mournful.

This was pleasant.

'Thank you, Mrs. Beddoes.  I hope you will come to the wedding.'

'Indeed and I will, Miss.'  Then she sighed, her original nature
returning upon her.  'This will mean losing another job for me.
Always losing jobs through no fault of my own.  That's what Beddoes
says:  Why is it, he says, that you're so unlucky, he says; you're
the unluckiest woman I ever come across, he says--and so I am.
It's gospel truth.'

'Well, we'll see,' said Janet.  'Who knows what will happen?  There
may be jobs better than this.'

'There may be and again there mayn't,' said Mrs. Beddoes, wiping
her nose with the back of her hand.  'You never know your luck, of
course, but it's been my experience to find things always worse
than they ought to be, and so it'll go on to the end, I expect.
That's what they call fate.'

Janet departed to have her bath and to dress.  She was speedy in
all her actions (dawdling was abhorrent to her), and soon she was
back in the little sitting-room expecting to find Rosalind, very
beautiful, and still, in spite of her bath, only half awake,
pouring out dreamily the coffee.  'She's dressed and gone out,'
Mrs. Beddoes explained.  'Wouldn't 'ave her coffee.  Said she was
in a hurry.  She's left that note.'

The note was there perched against the silver tree that had been
arranged in front of Janet's place, and the note said:


DARLING--I'm in an awful hurry about something.  Meant to have
waked and didn't.  Look at the tree as you drink your coffee and
know that your wicked tiresome sister loves you and will let no
Pooles whatsoever take her place.  ROSALIND.


Janet smiled.  She took up the little tree and caressed its stiff
green leaves with loving fingers.  The silver buds sparkled even in
the dull light of the grey morning.  Mrs. Beddoes smiled
appreciatively.  'Why, that IS a pretty thing, Miss, I must say.
Awful dangerous to dust, though,' and she disappeared into
Rosalind's bedroom.

Janet sighed.  Rosalind might have stayed just for ten minutes on
this morning of all others.  How characteristic it all was!  The
haste, the affection, her room left no doubt in hopeless disorder,
secrecy, impetuosity, unkindness mingled with the kindness.

As always when Janet thought of her sister that love, hot,
tyrannous, jealous, yearning, tender, angry, arose in her heart,
causing her to forget everything else.  Why does love burn the
fiercer from unfulfilment, why so passionately desired the fruit
that is just without our reach?

Her coffee unfinished, she rose and walked about the room.  She had
forgotten Wildherne as though he had never existed.  What was
Rosalind about?  Why had she not told Janet her preoccupation?  Why
must she always be so secret?  Did Janet ever lecture or scold her?
Did she not always understand, and if she gave advice was she not
always tender and kind?

No, not always.  When you felt such love and watched the loved one
pursuing something or someone unworthy, how could you quiet that
agitation and fear?  She had not always quieted it, and Rosalind
feared those moods when Janet's eyes were sad and reproachful and
her silences minatory.

The little bell rang.  Janet went to the door, and there was her
dearest best friend, Rachel Seddon.

Rachel came in, and the two women held each other in a long loving
embrace; then Rachel kept Janet at arm's length.

'Let me look at you and see whether you're changed.  Not a bit.
But you will be.  Oh, you darling, I am so glad.'  Rachel Seddon
was a woman of fifty, old enough to be Janet's mother.  Therein had
lain some of the charm of their relationship; Rachel was mother,
sister, and friend to one who deeply needed such affection.  And
yet Rachel was strange.  As she stood there in her dark furs, even
in this moment of emotion, she seemed remote, apart.  It was
perhaps the Russian blood in her, something sad and brooding behind
her vitality and fun.  Her life, she said, was over.  Her husband,
after a difficult early married life, she had come deeply to love
(he crippled by a riding accident and so drawing out of her that
maternity that was by far the most passionate element of her
nature); after his death she had rebuilt her life around her son,
but there too there was a remoteness and a final reserve.  Tom was
all English, all his father; some of his mother's nature was so
foreign to him that she could not share it with him.  She could not
share it with any one, and in the very moment of intimate affection
with Tom, Janet, Uncle John Beaminster, she would withdraw herself
and they would fumble blindly for someone who was not there.

Janet knew this, and she knew also that there was another barrier
between herself and her friend.  Rachel did not like Rosalind, had
never liked her.  She would try to conceal it, and of course could
not.  Rosalind, instantly perceptive of all reactions to herself,
had always known it.  Rosalind did not care for those who did not
appreciate her.

But in spite of this Janet loved Rachel more than anyone else in
the world, save only of course Rosalind.

Rachel had great influence over Janet; Janet was influenced only by
those whom she could admire, and her own modesty and self-
abnegation were so deep that she could admire easily.  Even
Rachel's dislike of Rosalind Janet could understand.  Rosalind was
never at her best with Rachel; Rachel did not understand her, Janet
said, saw only her selfish, pleasure-loving side.  That such a side
existed was of course true; Janet was not blind about Rosalind.
Her power over Rosalind would have been greater perhaps had she not
seen Rosalind's faults so plainly.

The two friends sat down and talked, Rachel's hand in Janet's.
Rachel liked him, Wildherne Poole, so much.  She had known him for
a long time and rather well.  He was one of the kindest and most
honourable of men.  He and Janet were splendidly suited.  They were
alike in many ways, Rachel thought, and yet their differences were
enough to make their lives together interesting and eventful.

Then a pause came, and Janet knew why it was there.  But she could
not speak to Rachel of this love affair of Wildherne's.  She knew
that it was of that that Rachel was thinking, and she knew that it
would be of that that everyone in London would be thinking when the
engagement was generally known.  Only the old Duke and Duchess had
heard nothing of it.

The little pause passed and conversation flowed again, but Janet
knew that that extra pressure from Rachel's hand had meant:
'Janet, dear, if you are ever in any trouble, if anything is ever
too difficult for you, I am there.  I am always at your side.'

Then there was another thing.  Rachel got up and, smiling at Janet,
said:

'Tom is in love with Rosalind.'

'I know,' Janet said.

'We won't talk about it now.  You have this other thing to think
about.  But sometime . . .?'

Then, with a little sigh, she added, 'He's terribly in love, poor
boy.'

They talked for a little while about anything, nothing.  Then,
clinging together as though to assert against all the world and
anything that it might do their mutual love, they parted.


The time passed swiftly.  The little silver clock on the
mantelpiece struck half-past twelve with so menacing a suddenness
that Janet sprang from her writing-desk and stood waiting as though
some voice had called her.

A moment later Wildherne Poole was in the room.  He came straight
to her and kissed her, not as though it were some duty that he must
perform, but like a friend, someone who had known her all her life
and cared for her dearly.  That action seemed at once to establish
their relation happily.  She laughed, let her hand rest for a
moment on the dark rough stuff of his coat, and said:

'Give me a moment.  I'll have my things on and be back in no time.
How punctual you are!'

When she came back in her dark furs (Rachel had given them to her
two Christmases ago) and her little round blue hat he could have
sighed with relief.  She was fine in her height, her noble
carriage, the good honesty of her eyes, the strength and humour of
her mouth.  He had known that she was, but from the moment of her
acceptance of him the test that, almost against his will, he must
apply to her had been twice as severe as before.

She would have much that she must do for him and his family.  Would
she be able to carry it off?  He knew now, looking at her, that she
would.

She too was reassured by his curly head of hair, the kindliness of
his smiling eyes, the strength of chin and neck, the slimness and
fine proportion of his body, something boyishly confident in his
physical pose and something intellectually mature in his mental
assurance--why was it, then, that she felt no love for him, no
slightest stirring of the pulse, no eagerness, no physical
response?  Was it because she knew that he had none of this for her
and her pride prevented her?  No, she was aware how deeply she
would have recoiled had there been any passion in his glance.
There was only friendliness there, and that she could return to
him, full measure and brimming over.

So, as friends, they walked off.  London was London indeed that
morning, like no other city in the world.  The tang of the frost
was still in the air; there was a thin slime of mud over roadway
and pavement, ancient prehistoric mud as though in the night
palaeolithic monsters--dinosaurs and allosaurs--had invaded in vast
clumsy cohorts the silent streets bringing their forest slime with
them.  Everything was thick, grey, and muffled.  There was as yet
no fog, but soon there would be; the snow was grey and dark, only
shining from roof to roof dimly as though under thin moonlight.
Some light glimmered in shop windows, and all sounds of traffic
were hushed as though the world were straw-covered because of the
mortal sickness of some God.  So to-day; and yet to-morrow the sun
would return and all the town glitter in a network of silver
filigree.  Eternal beauty and wonder of the London moods--a city
where ghosts and living men are both sheltered by that friendly
spirit so that time says nothing here.  Buildings are for ever
rising and falling, streets for ever disappearing, but the kindly
London God stretches his colossal legs, murmurs sleepily his
blessing, and all his children are included in his giant embrace.

Wildherne and Janet walked briskly, a splendid pair.

Janet, wisely, chose at once the impersonal mood that was safe for
them both.

'Wildherne, I want you to tell me everything about Halkin Street.
Of course I have been there again and again, but it was always from
outside.  You have all been sweet to me, but of course I wasn't one
of you.  Now I am to be, and you must tell me certain things.'

He was grateful to her for striking so exactly the right note.

'I'll tell you anything you want to know.  Ask your questions.'

'Well, there are your mother and father.  Then who else is there
permanently?'

'Permanently?  Let me see.  There is Miss Crabbage, mother's
secretary--very important.  There is Hunt, father's secretary--not
so important.  There's Hignett--family butler, factotum, friend.
If you are ever in a difficulty ask Hignett, he has more common
sense than all of us.  There is the Reverend Charles Pomeroy of St.
Anne's--VERY important.  There is my aunt Alice Purefoy--more
important than you would fancy.  There is Dick Beresford, father's
land-agent, not up in town very much but important anyway.  There
is Caroline Marsh, mother's protégée.  I don't like her, and you
won't either.  Watch her.  She's dangerous.  These are the
permanents, I think, and of these Miss Crabbage, Charles Pomeroy,
and Caroline Marsh matter most.  Pomeroy is a good fellow, sincere
and true.  But watch the two women.  Their lives depend on their
power with my mother.  If you threaten that, they'll try to make
trouble.'

'If they don't make trouble between you and me,' Janet said, 'it
isn't very serious.'

'Ah, but it may be.'  Wildherne answered her more gravely than she
had expected.  'This Halkin Street life is very queer.  You'll see
when you get into it more deeply.  I love my father passionately,
and so he loves me, but my mother has always had a strange jealousy
of us both--of his love for me and mine for him.  My mother is not
a clever woman, but she is deeply acquisitive.  She wants to have
everything absolutely for herself.  She would cut herself to pieces
for my father or myself, but she is not clever enough--she has
never been clever enough--to understand either of us.  Don't think
me unkind in this.  I love my mother, but I find her very
irritating to be with because she wants so much more of everything
than she will ever have.  My father has been escaping from her
again and again all his life, and then reproaching himself for
unkindness to her and so being over-tender and good to her.  But
still always escaping her, and she knows that.  You have to pay her
attention and deference, not because she is a vain woman, but
because she is always wishing to be reassured of her power over
people, a power of which she is never truly secure, as she knows.

'She is a strange woman, my mother.  Apparently slow, unintelligent,
conventional, and then, when you least expect it, dominating and
overwhelming.  The whole problem of Halkin Street and much of the
problem of my life revolves round my mother's personality, and that
is why I am emphasising her.'

'I understand,' Janet said in a low voice, following her own
thoughts.  'She is a lonely woman.  She has never had either the
power or the love that she wanted.'

'Ah, but'--Wildherne broke in--'you mustn't judge my father in
that.  He loves her deeply, and has always done so.  He understands
her too better than any of us and, in her heart, she knows it.  She
need not be lonely.  She would not be if she did not want so much
more than any human being has ever been given on this earth, or
ever will be.'

He was silent a moment as they crossed Sloane Street, then went on
again:  'You have seen, of course, how tremendous a part religion
plays with us at home.  Church of England religion, Mr. Pomeroy,
St. Anne's, and so on through a network of charities, societies,
meetings and assemblies.  The difference between my father and my
mother in this is that my father is a saint by the grace of God.
He has the religious beliefs of a little child, but they are
utterly real to him--they make him the happy, tranquil, gentle
person he is.  Many of the Church affairs bore him.  He does his
part for my mother's sake, but his religion is something deep
within himself, something about which he is almost shy.  My mother
is quite different.  She loves all the offices of the Church.  She
adores services and meetings, all the paraphernalia of the external
world of the Church of England.  That is where Miss Crabbage has
her power.  She has all these things at her fingers' ends; she
manipulates with extraordinary skill.  She is like a great general
sitting in his tent, his maps before him, officers coming in and
out for directions.  She is a remarkable person, Miss Crabbage.

'Remember another thing,' he went on.  'As you must have noticed
before now, my mother takes everything literally.  She has no sense
of humour either about herself or others.  What you say you mean,
and by what you say you'll be judged.'

'I'm frightened,' Janet said, putting out her hand and touching his
arm.  'This is all terrifying.'

He laughed and drew her arm through his.  'It isn't terrifying,
because we're friends, because I shall stand by you through thick
and thin, as you will by me.  And you start with immense
advantages.  They have longed that I should marry, and that I
should marry just such a one as yourself.  We are gratifying their
dearest wish.  My mother thinks the world of you, and you will
perhaps be able to do for her what no one else has been able to
do.'

'Oh, I will try!  I will try!' Janet whispered.  'Indeed I will do
my best!'  They were there.  The dark, heavy, faded door of the
Halkin Street house faced Janet as it had often faced her before,
but now, waiting in front of it, her emotions were different from
any that she had ever known.  When that door opened her new life
would begin, begin far more truly than with her acceptance of
Wildherne.  He scarcely seemed to count for her as she stood there,
truly terrified, waiting for her fate.

And yet when it did open and she saw in the doorway the cheerful
rosy face of the young footman (brought up probably from the place
in Wiltshire), and behind him the dark stony hall so familiar to
her with its vast silly-faced clock, its red picture of an
eighteenth-century Romney, its dark shadows and dusky piece of
tapestry, she was at home.  Cold, shabby, echoing house, so bare
and naked here, so overcrowded there, so destitute of all taste and
artistic feeling and yet with so strong a personality, so untouched
by new crazes, fashions and habits, and yet so threatening in its
survival to the flimsiness of this chaotic post-war age--she
understood it, she knew how to approach it, she belonged to it as
she could never belong to Clara Paget's black and yellow bedroom or
Althea Bendersley's drawing-room of cubist reds and blues.

In the dusk of the hall Hignett waited--Hignett, stout, round-
faced, impersonal, thick in the legs, back, and brain, reactionary,
snob, drawing-room slave and kitchen tyrant, faithful, conceited,
ill-educated, intolerant, perfect servant and loyal friend of his
master.  And of his master's son.  His face lightened when he saw
Wildherne as it but seldom lightened for anyone.  The Duke,
Wildherne, his own child Thomas Edward (aged eight) were for him
the three perfect beings.  He despised women (his wife most
emphatically included), and all other servants; he hated
Socialists, Bolshevists, Communists, and the clergy.  He had no
friends.  He wanted none.  He had saved a large sum of money, but
he would never retire until Wildherne, in his own time as Duke,
dismissed him.

He adored Wildherne.  He would sacrifice every human being alive on
the earth's surface in one vast holocaust (save only Thomas Edward)
to please Wildherne.  He loved him more, far more, than he had ever
loved any woman.  He hated especially Miss Crabbage, and between
himself and her there was pursued always an unceasing underground
warfare.  These various emotions were visible to no one.  He never
showed temper, surprise, disappointment, affection (save only to
Thomas Edward), greed.  His wife, a thin-faced sour woman who lived
with the child in some dim street in Bloomsbury, knew nothing about
him but loved him.  He was not faithful to her, but she realised
that his emotions towards women were ephemeral, trivial, and
accidental.

Very little of the soul of Hignett was known to anybody.  He was to
be of great importance in Janet's life.  His love of and fidelity
to Wildherne she would one day know, know in a dark hour when she
needed that knowledge.

Lastly, there was nothing about Wildherne of which Hignett was not
aware.  Wildherne on his side knew that Hignett was a devoted
servant, but that the man cared for him personally never occurred
to him.  The man was devoted because he had been brought up on the
Wintersmoon estate, had a feudal sense, was paid well, knew when he
was well off.  Moreover, all the servants worshipped the Duke.  Of
course they did.  How could they help it?  So much for Hignett.

When Janet passed into the long green drawing-room she saw three
women standing by the wide open fireplace--the little, short, dumpy
one the Duchess, the tall thin one with pince-nez Miss Crabbage,
and the fluffy flaxen one Caroline Marsh.

The old Duchess, mother of the present Duke, had known a spasm of
artistic emotion, and under the influence of that emotion had
covered the long drawing-room with Morris wall-paper.  Now that
paper, green and faded, displaying when closely studied the
unending pursuit by three elegant horsemen of a fleeing deer, was
the background for Victorian water-colours in heavy gold frames and
two enormous oil portraits of the last Duke and Duchess in the
gorgeous splendour of Court display.  The long room was studded, as
is the Aegean Sea by its islands, with gilt furniture.  The high
windows looked out into Halkin Street.

There was very real emotion in the Duchess's voice as she came
forward, embraced Janet, and murmured:  'Welcome, dear Janet, to
your new home,' and then in the funny, husky whisper that was so
especially hers and suggested nothing so much as a kettle on the
boil:  'We are so glad.  We are so happy.  Nothing could have been
better.'

Had the Duchess ever been vain (she had never been so) she would
have worn very high-heeled shoes and dieted madly.  Years ago when
the Duke married her she was pretty in a yellow blue-eyed canary
kind of way.  In those days what she lost in height she saved in
aristocratic bearing, being the eldest daughter of Lord Medley,
whose wife, as everyone knows, was for so long lady-in-waiting to
Queen Victoria.

Now she was dumpy and shapeless, with pale blue eyes, no eyebrows
to speak of, and a strange round saucer of grey hair that stood
over her puckered face like a turban.  But her aristocratic bearing
was still there.  She never of course actively considered her
ancestry, her present position--those were things too familiar to
be thought of--but she was exceedingly quick to recognise anything
that savoured of impertinence or discourtesy.  Many a visitor ere
now, resting happily on the easy and almost fraternal kindliness of
the Duke, had been arrested sharply by the sudden remote
distinction of the Duchess.  That turban of grey hair made up quite
sufficiently for the absence of eyebrows, and those eyes, now so
dimly blue, could be of a sudden terrible as daggers.

But Janet was of her world, and to-day nothing could be fine enough
for her.  The Duchess took her off to a little gilt sofa near the
window, held her hand in her soft boneless fingers, and spoke
straight from her heart.  This thing had made her happy as nothing
had ever made her happy before.  Although she had not heard
directly of Wildherne's so famous intrigue, she was nevertheless
more in the world than was the Duke, and whispers, murmurs of
something, anything, had come to her ears.

Always she had been haunted by the fear that he, their only child,
the true hope of the world, would marry someone unworthy.  In these
dreadful, godless, democratic days anybody might marry anybody.
And now, after all her fears, he had chosen of all the young women
she knew the one whom perhaps she herself preferred.  A marvellous,
marvellous piece of luck and fortune, and now, as she looked at the
girl, so tall, so graceful, so perfectly at ease and in her right
place, she was more than ever reassured.  Moreover, the girl would
be easy to dominate.  She had been poor, struggling, with scarcely
enough to eat; she would be so grateful for everything, so ready to
fall into any plans, to do what she was told, to follow her mother-
in-law's lead.

'Yes, when Wildherne told us last night it seemed as though our
most anxious prayers had been answered.  You can understand, dear
Janet, our only boy, and the Duke and myself the age we are.
Before we went we wanted. . . .'  Her little fat underlip trembled.
Tears swam in her blue eyes.  She was deeply moved.  Janet also.
Nothing stirred her like the need for affection.  She felt always
so intensely for lonely and unhappy and uncared-for people.  The
Duchess was, most truly, not lonely nor unhappy nor uncared-for,
but at this moment her religious and her family feelings were both
deeply stirred.  She was therefore quite sincere.

'. . . As Mr. Pomeroy said this morning, we must from our hearts
thank God for His goodness.  It is to Him that we all owe this
happiness.'

At this moment the door at the far end of the room opened and the
Duke, followed by Mr. Pomeroy, entered.  Janet rose and, moving to
Wildherne, walked with him towards his father.

As she was seeing, to-day, Wildherne, the house, the Duchess in a
new and more personal light, so now she saw the Duke.  He was a
short thick-set man with a square-cut beard and hair of snow white.
His sturdiness of figure and something of freedom in his walk would
have given him a country air had it not been for the perfect cut of
his London clothes--his black coat and waistcoat, his pepper-and-
salt trousers, his high white collar widely open at the neck, and
the thick gold ring that encircled his black tie.  But you did not
notice these things, his glow of health, his exquisite neatness,
and his emphatic sturdiness--you saw only the kindliness, modesty,
utter unself-consciousness that shone from his eyes and formed the
lines of the mouth above the beard.  He had not, perhaps, in his
youth been handsome, his nose was too snub, his mouth too
irregular; the character of his life had through the actions and
thoughts of his seventy years written itself in his face.

Had he not come so late in life to the Dukedom, and had there been
in him some element of ruthlessness or vanity or selfish ambition,
he would have made more stir in the world.  He had never figured in
the public life of his country, he shrank from the personalities
and falsities of politics, he was still a child in his perception
of modern moralities and standards (or absence of them), but he was
not a child in his wide tolerance, his warm charity, his negation
of self.  He had lived always for those he loved--his wife, his
child, his tenantry, his servants, some friends.  Above all for his
religion, about which he rarely spoke and never argued.  Unlike his
wife he did not care of what sect anyone might be so that God was a
reality; atheists, materialists he did not understand, but was sure
that one day they would find the way.  In God's good time everyone
would find the way.  'Not a sparrow. . . .'

He adored Wildherne.  The boy had never given him a moment's
unhappiness.  He had sometimes wished that he were more practical
and business-like, because one day, now not so distant, all the
Wintersmoon estates must come into his hands, and in these days
land was not easy, but he had carefully placed near him wise,
honest, and capable men--Beresford the land-agent, Charles Robinson
the family solicitor, and Lord Garnet, at one time Attorney-General
and the Duke's oldest and closest friend.

These men would look after the boy when he himself was gone, and
see that he came to no harm.  And now Wildherne had done the one
thing that, above all things, he had desired.  He had not been
anxious about Wildherne's choice as the Duchess had been; he was
sure that his taste and fine feeling would guide him right, but of
all the young women in London he liked Janet Grandison the best.
He had felt from the beginning a father's affection for her, and
now in very truth he was in that relation to her.

So now he came to her and caught her into his arms and kissed her.
Afterwards he rested his hands on Wildherne's shoulders and,
turning to the room in general, said:  'You may as well all know--
this is the happiest day of my life.'

It was intended to be a family luncheon, and Mr. Pomeroy had for
long been one of the family.  He was an austere, dark, tall man,
very neat and straight and silent.  His sermons had made St. Anne's
the most fashionable church in London; he was immensely in request
at social functions, ladies worshipped him, he had large private
means, and a house filled with beautiful things.  Nevertheless he
was entirely sincere and faithful in his religion.  He was not an
ascetic, although he looked like one.  He liked beautiful women and
good food and wine and pictures and music, but he cared for God
more than any of these, and would have given them, all of them, up
immediately had he felt that God wished him to do so.  He did not
feel that God wished it.  He gave away half his income to charity,
worked like a slave at his duties, neglected nothing--and then
enjoyed his Pissarros and Gauguins (he had one tiny one), his
month's holiday on the Riviera, and the chamber music that Lady
Pounder had at 12 Brook Street every Tuesday evening in the season.

He had no interest in intrigue or gossip or the manipulation of
ecclesiastical strings.  He left people like Miss Crabbage to do
those things for him.  He was the Duchess's best friend.

Hignett said that luncheon was ready.  They went in.

Janet had always felt this dining-room to be the coldest and most
uncomfortable room in London.  The walls were papered with squares
of black and white imitation marble; half a dozen portraits hung in
gold frames of a desperate heaviness.  The elephantine marble
mantelpiece supported a huge clock of black marble, and between the
two windows was a marble bust of the late Duke in a Gladstonian
collar and a marble watch-chain.  The high thick curtains that
framed the windows were of a dull lustreless red.

To-day this room depressed her desperately.  It seemed to step
forward and say to her:  'You were pleased and flattered by their
welcome of you in that other room.  But make no mistake, this is
the life that you will have to lead.  This room holds the Halkin
Street atmosphere.  It is here that you will be imprisoned.'

The slightly chilled clear soup, water and fragments of carrot, the
heavy silver fruit-dish that blinked at her from the centre of the
table, the soft restrained movements of the two footmen, all these
things to which she was so thoroughly accustomed seemed to have
some extra meaning to-day for her.  She was sitting on the Duke's
right hand; on her other side was Mr. Pomeroy, and opposite to her
Wildherne, but, oddly enough, it was the women of whom she was so
especially conscious.

Or perhaps it was not odd.  Any other woman would at that moment
have felt the same.  She had always been on good terms with Miss
Crabbage, but she did not like her, and Caroline Marsh she had been
tempted to despise.  There was a sycophant if you liked, with her
pale fluffy hair, her bad streaky complexion, her clumsy figure,
and her swimming eyes fixed always eagerly on the Duchess's face,
ready to agree with everything, to anticipate the slightest wish,
to yield up compliment or reassurance or consolation the instant
that it was demanded.  But, poor child!  Was it not natural for her
to be sycophantic?  The Duchess had found her, a miserable,
frightened little governess to a band of noisy impertinent
children, and, her heart touched, had brought her to Halkin Street
and to Wintersmoon that she might read to her, run messages, be at
hand on any and every occasion.  Was it not natural enough that
this girl should be watching Janet with apprehension, almost with
terror?  If this wife of Lord Poole's did not like her what might
she not do, she with her power over both the Duke and the Duchess?
Poor girl!  Janet would like to reassure her.  Soon she would do
so, would tell her that there was nothing to fear, that she had
made another friend.  Friend?  No!  There was something about those
weak watery eyes, that loose supplicating mouth, that would make
friendship impossible.

As the meal progressed Janet recovered some of her confidence.  Her
neighbourhood to the Duke warmed her.  Strange but true, and
something to be faced by her, that she loved the father more than
the son.  There was some pulse of excitement in her thought of the
Duke, over seventy though he was; he was so fine, so noble, and so
handsome, with his white hair, his clear skin, his sturdy body.
She was his daughter now, and oh, she was proud of him!  He turned
and, bowing, raised his glass of wine to her.  His other hand
closed on hers, and it thrilled her to feel how warm and strong his
grasp was.

'Janet, your health.  And yours, Wildherne.  Many, many happy years
for you both.'

They all stood up, and Janet and Wildherne, sitting, were isolated.
They looked into one another's eyes.  Perhaps with both of them
there was the same thought:  'We are cheating these old people.
They think that we love one another and we do not.  We are marrying
each other for a reason of convenience.  We mean to make the very
best of this, for you as well as for ourselves, but it is not the
glorious romantic affair that you fancy.'

It was this recognition that drove her, afterwards, as though she
was in a way putting all her cards on the table, to mention her
sister:

'You haven't asked about Rosalind,' she said, turning to the Duke.

'Ah, Rosalind,' he answered, smiling.  'No.  I hope we are going to
see her here very soon.  How is the beautiful Rosalind?  You know,
I think she is the prettiest girl in London by far.  I don't see a
very great many, but however many I saw I should still think
Rosalind the prettiest.'

'You must bring her,' the Duchess echoed, 'to see us as soon as
ever you can.  What about luncheon to-morrow--or let me see, Mr.
Pomeroy, isn't it to-morrow you wanted to bring Mr. Brixham and
Mrs. Forster in connection with the Agatha Guild?  WAS it to-
morrow?  I forget.'

'Oh, your Grace,' Mr. Pomeroy answered, 'any of these next days
would do.  There is no desperate hurry.'

'It is rather important,' Miss Crabbage broke in, addressing Mr.
Pomeroy, 'that the Duchess should SEE Mrs. Forster as soon as
possible.  That Agatha Bazaar is on the 22nd, and they are so
ANXIOUS that the Duchess should be there that evening and just open
it for them.  And naturally the Duchess wishes to HEAR from Mrs.
Forster first exactly. . . .'  She had a habit of dealing terrific
emphasis out to certain words as though she were hitting them on
the head with a hammer.

'But really I think it's not so urgent,' Mr. Pomeroy murmured.
'Mrs. Forster can come any time, can she not?'

'I don't QUITE agree with you,' remonstrated Miss Crabbage.  'There
is so LITTLE time, you see.  Almost none at all, and if . . .'

Her voice always died away into a murmur.  The Duchess adored these
little struggles over her so-to-speak recumbent body.  She always
waited for a while to see how things were going, and then sprang up
to settle everything with a dominating word.

'Mr. Brixham and Mrs. Forster can come on Wednesday, Miss Crabbage.
Do bring Rosalind to luncheon to-morrow, Janet, dear.  We shall be
so pleased to see her.'

All this disturbance and then, perhaps, after all, Rosalind might
refuse to come.  Rosalind had no liking for meals at Halkin Street.
However, at this important time. . . .

'Thank you so much.  I'm sure she'll love to come.'

And, after all, in a corner of the drawing-room she had her word
with the Duke.  He put his arm through hers, and drew her to him so
that they stood, body and soul, together.

'My dear, I'm over seventy.  I have done nothing in my life to
deserve that the desire of it should be granted like this.  I have
always loved you.  I have watched you more than you have known.  I
have watched your courage, your unselfish devotion to others, your
loyalty, the fun you've extracted from such little things.  I have
been proud of you.  I have never said anything to Wildherne.  I
scarcely dared to hope that it would be you of all others he would
choose.  But he has shown his wisdom.  I'm proud of him too.  But I
only want to tell you, my dear, that as long as I live, and that
may not be for very long, if there is any trouble of any kind in
which an old man, who has known many sides of life, can help and
advise you, he will give up everything to do so.  God bless you, my
dear child, and keep you in His charge and save you from all harm.'



CHAPTER V

WILDHERNE


Wildherne could remember a day when, in the gardens of Wintersmoon,
aged some six years or seven, he had waded into one of the ponds to
look at a water-lily.  The point had been that he had wanted to
look at it, not to pluck it, and the point had further been that,
pulled out of the pond by one of the gardeners, he had been sent to
bed in disgrace and without his supper.

He had been in no way indignant with his sentence--he knew that it
was wrong for him to spoil his clothes with mud and disobey those
in authority--but for the first time there had stolen into his mind
wonder as to why the things that he wanted were always out of his
reach.  Then, as he grew older, there followed the further wonder
as to why he wanted things that nobody else wanted.

At his private school at Rottingdean he learnt the first thing that
little boys must be--to be like other little boys.  He discovered
that he was NOT like other little boys, and that he must hide this
discovery, so he developed two Wildhernes, one that cared for
football, sardines, and doughnuts in bed at night, and 'scraps'
with other boys, and the other that never knew what it cared for,
had strange feelings about flowers, the sea, and English history,
and a passionate devotion for everything that concerned
Wintersmoon.

This second personality, he discovered, must be seen only by his
father and one of the under-gardeners.  The rest of the world
laughed did he show any enthusiasm for anything that had not to do
with games.  At school above all he must appear to detest work of
any kind.  He liked work, but could not apply himself to it because
thoughts about Wintersmoon and the spire of Salisbury Cathedral and
the way the sea rolled in and strangled the pebbles on the long
beach below the school would keep breaking in.  Meanwhile he loved
the under-gardener, who was called Mitchell and showed him how
flowers grew, told him the names of birds, and was dismissed, in
Wildherne's first year at Eton, for drunkenness.

At Eton he found that he could do what he liked, that nobody cared.
Nevertheless the two Wildhernes continued to develop: he discovered
that the one Wildherne was very useful for covering the other.  He
was good-looking, athletic, and amiable; it was not difficult for
him to be popular, and he learnt that if he never showed enthusiasm
about anything, never talked about anything that was 'odd'--books,
pictures, music, religion, scenery were things never to mention--he
was popular and universally accepted as a 'good fellow.'  When he
was about sixteen he discovered that there were certain other boys
in the school who cared for the things for which he himself cared.
They made a set of their own, but they were all of them 'odd,' and
some of them scandalous: he di