Title:      Wintersmoon (1928)
Author:     Hugh Walpole
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WINTERSMOON

Passages in the Lives of Two Sisters

Janet and Rosalind Grandison

by

HUGH WALPOLE

1928

"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

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, un-ravished 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 did not therefore join them, because his shyness about the things for which he cared caused him to detest publicity of any kind.

It was about this time that his love for his father acutely developed. He liked his mother, but it was his public personality with which she was concerned. She did not seem to be aware that he had any other. His father was as shy as himself, and their true communication with one another might have been long delayed had it not been for a serious attack of pneumonia that kept him prisoner during a whole summer at Wintersmoon when he was seventeen.

One summer evening, when he was convalescent, lying in a chair looking out over the lawns, the woods, the gently rising hills, he poured out all that was in his soul to his father, and from that moment they were companions.

He had always intensely admired his father, but until now he had never thought of him as human in the way that he himself was human. He was omnipotent, omniscient, something of other bodily make from himself. This evening it was as though his father's body stepped into view for the first time--blood and muscles like his own, the eyes real eyes, the chest with its breadth and thickness, a man's chest, thighs and sinews of a man like himself--and when that night his father's hand closed on his he could feel the pulse beating through the strength of the palm. He twisted his fingers between his father's fingers. He kissed his father on the mouth. He had never kissed his father before, only been kissed by him.

Now he was alive to many things in his father's character that he had never seen before. He had always perceived his courtesy to others, his gentleness and yet his authority with the servants in the house and the men on the estate, but now he realised that this courtesy came from a deep modesty that would have been shyness had there been in the character more egotism.

He perceived another thing. On Sunday mornings they sat--his father, his mother, Aunt Alice, any guests--in the deep family pew in the old sixteenth-century church just outside the Wintersmoon gates. That had become a ritual so common as to inhibit consciousness. His second personality on these mornings would gladly swing itself free and he would be away far over England, far over Europe, lost in a beauty and a wonder that he had never had self-discipline enough to analyse.

But on this morning he was watching this new father of his. It was his first morning in church for months, the first bold step of his convalescence. Old Beatty, the white-bearded rector, was reading the First Lesson, and it was a Cursing Lesson--'I, the Lord thy God'--and the wretched Jews were cowering down on to their desert sand while the plague devastated them, fiery serpents assaulted them. . . .

On his father's face was written disgust, and at the 'Here endeth' he moved his thick stocky shoulders as though he would shake some evil spell from off them.

Packed off to bed early Wildherne lay there wondering. He heard his father pass his door and called to him. He urged him to the bed, made him sit down on it, put his arms around him drawing him towards him.

'Father, you hate Jehovah. So do I. I loathe him, dirty bully.' He was conscious that he was whispering this, and he knew that he was whispering lest his mother should hear. They were drawn then into an intimacy closer than any they had yet encountered.

Wildherne's mother had always dominated Wildherne's world, and in nothing more completely than in religion. His outer self had acquiesced utterly. When anyone was as certain as his mother was in these things, so sure about every detail so that no place in heaven was too distant for her vision, how could anyone as uncertain and wondering as Wildherne question?

But now, behold, his father questioned. His father had also his own private life sacred to him, reserved from all the world and from his wife. He let his son in. Loyal to her they were, both of them, but here they escaped her and they knew it.

Wildherne was only seventeen and, weakened by his long illness, looked the small child that, in many ways, he still was. His father held him tight to his heart that night. Who could know for how many years he had been longing with passionate desire for this?

'Remember your mother is the best woman I have ever known or am ever likely to know. Without her I should be nothing. I love her, Wildherne, as I hope one day you will love some fine woman--but at the end of it, in spite of the most perfect intimacy, we are alone--always, every one of us. It is the condition of life.'

Wildherne went up to Balliol; his uncle died, and his father became Duke. He did all the things that his companions did. He was considered 'a jolly good fellow. Not stuck up at all. A bit absent-minded.' He rowed in his College boat, took a second in Greats. He came down having many acquaintances and not one friend. For his exterior self, which he gave readily to anyone, he cared so little that friendship could not possibly go with it. His interior self he gave only to his father.

In 1914 there was the war. He was wounded in 1916, and again in the spring of 1918--tiresome wounds involving pain of the wearying, irritating kind that seems to teach you nothing but exasperation. He used to think about himself during his long hours in hospital, and it surprised him to perceive that if it had not been for his love for England he would have been, long ago, a conscientious objector. He loathed war, but he loathed the thought of a foreign-ridden England still more deeply. There was, he supposed, an intellectual flaw in this somewhere. Had he been of the intellectual calibre of, say, Bertrand Russell, he would have perceived that this love of country was exactly the thing that held back the world's progress--this selfish clinging to one small fragment of earth. But he could not help it. When he thought of Boyton Church or Figheldean Village, or the stretch of the Plain, or the old stones of St. Anne's Gate in Salisbury, or the grey stretches of Longleat, or the lawns of his own adored Wintersmoon, he simply knew that he would fight to the last trouser-button to prevent their domination by German, Frenchman, or Spaniard.

He wished those Frenchmen and Spaniards all the luck in the world, and he would gladly join with them to help them keep their own pastures free, but Figheldean was like his mother or old Aunt Alice--it looked to him with the love born of centuries of association to keep it free from harm.

So he came out of the war with this dominating him above all else--his love of England in general and of Wintersmoon in particular.

He discovered then that this same love of his country was held by almost everyone to be old-fashioned and tyrannous. His trouble was that two camps now were formed and he did not seem to belong to either of them. The advanced camp was international, Socialistic (but not Bolshevistic), anti-Christian, anti-marriage, and anti-sentimental. The reactionary camp was named Die-hard and cursed by everybody. Certain old gentlemen with whom he talked at the Club belonged apparently to this camp and were caught in a perfect mist of despair. The world was at an end, delivered over to robbers, degenerates, and sadists. He was, he found, neither socialistic nor reactionary.

He had no wish to go back to the old times when servants slept in cubby-holes, when children were abused and terrified with prospects of a fiery hell, when sanitation was in its infancy, and science was considered blasphemous. But neither did he wish to deliver Wintersmoon up to the first ignorant band of labourers who came to demand it. Nor did he believe that the traditions and heritage of England were so much discarded offal. He was alone, as always. He seemed to fit in nowhere at all.

He had always read a good deal, but in a desultory fashion, picking up what came his way. Now his love for England directed all his reading energy--Chaucer and Spenser, Shakespeare of course, Marlowe, and Beaumont and Fletcher, The Spectator, and Swift and Sterne, Fielding and Richardson, Jane Austen, and then all the Victorians, Macaulay, Carlyle, Froude, Landor, Wuthering Heights and Henry Kingsley, Hardy and Meredith, and so to the moderns. And the poets--Wordsworth first and best, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, Swinburne and Browning, Tennyson and Rossetti--all of them for the things about England that they could give him. But his great discovery was the accidental finding in the library at Wintersmoon a volume of John Clare. At that time in 1919 Clare was a forgotten poet. In the following years, thanks to the generous enthusiasm of Edmund Blunden, he was rediscovered and beautifully reissued, but to Wildherne that chance finding of a third edition of the Poems descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery seemed a miracle. He devoured the book, discovered then that no one had ever heard of Clare, and further that no one found the poems anything but trivial and commonplace. Even his father failed him here.

No matter. He would keep that to himself, as it seemed to him he must keep almost everything that was of importance. Hunting discovered for him the two volumes of The Village Minstrel, and this was of especial value to him because the first volume contained a steel engraving of Hilton's painting of Clare. That strange, beautiful, pathetic face became now part of Wildherne's life. It seemed to him that he had somewhere known him and been his friend. He knew nothing as yet about his history, but he saw the tragedy in those eager gazing eyes and that gentle mouth. To that man at least he could have bared his soul.

He led now his public social life in London, and there was no one to whom he could speak about his reading. When he encountered, as he did at times, men who cared for the Arts, they seemed to him to be so wise and to know so much that his modesty held him back. He felt, too, that there was something about his social position which led them to disbelieve that he could be interested in the Arts.

Some of his Oxford acquaintances moved among writers and painters, but these seemed to care for things that he did not understand. He was not modern at all. When your favourite poets are Wordsworth, Arnold, and Clare, your novelists Fielding and Sterne, your artists Cotman and Bonington and Girtin, what place had you in this other world of eccentricity and revolt? The modern arts, when he touched them at all, seemed to him all negation. His incomprehension seemed to him his own stupidity. He felt himself slow, behind the times.

Meanwhile neither the social world nor the religious world of Halkin Street realised that he cared at all for these things. His good looks, the courtesy that he inherited from his father, a certain gentleness that was never effeminacy, retained for him in London the reputation that he had had at Oxford: 'Poole's a good sort. A bit absent-minded, hard to know exactly, but one of the best really.'

Then, early in 1920, came his meeting with Diana Guard.

Before this women had meant little to him. His love for his father had been the only emotional experience roused by another human being that he had known.

He fell in love with Diana Guard at sight. She was not a beautiful woman. She was so fair as to be almost without colour; she was not graceful, nor did she dress with any especial care. She gave, in general, the impression that she was indifferent entirely to what anyone thought of her, and that impression was the true one. She did not care.

She had married Charlie Guard when she was eighteen, and he had been unfaithful to her within a month of the wedding ceremony. They were quite good friends, and stayed together for a week or two when they had nothing better to do. Her father, old Prentiss Merriman, had left her plenty of money; Charlie always borrowed from her when he was in need. She had a beautiful flat in Charles Street, and a little house near Reading.

She was in love with Wildherne for about six months, and after that liked him very much.

He was swept by a storm of passion that blinded and deafened him to the outside world save in this, his desperate fear lest his father and mother should know of his intrigue.

Miraculously they did not. They lived, both of them, quite outside the gossiping world of modern London, and Wildherne was too well liked for anyone to think it worth his or her while to carry tales. All London knew. He was by no means Diana's first lover, nor would he be the last. Wildherne did not blind himself to this, nor did Diana attempt to hide anything, but when the six months were over and she loved him no longer, and told him so, he suffered tortures only possible for the constant lover. She wished that he would not be so constant. She was often bored with him. And yet she liked him. She often wished that she did not.

He was on his way now to tell her about Janet.

He feared, most deeply, this interview. He feared it because he knew even now as he drove to Charles Street that with every step nearer to Diana Janet's image was fading. As he went up in the lift Janet vanished. There was left only a promise, a message, a given word. And yet Diana's sitting-room was as colourless as it always was. The wall-paper was of a stiff dull bronze. There was only one picture, a Walter Sickert oil of one of his Montmartre music-halls, smoky grey with a spread of dingy red, out of which twisted faces supported by crooked arms emerged. The only other ornament was a dark Epstein bronze of a woman whose eyes were full of longing, hatred, and chagrin. There was a piano; there was a long book-case crammed untidily with foreign books in paper covers. In a chair covered with a dark green tapestry Diana was sitting. Her faint hair, pale face, and dress of dark red-gold were as still and quiet as a pool in an autumn wood. The eyes of the Epstein woman were the only things in the room that had movement.

Wildherne came and sat down opposite her. No, he didn't want tea. He smoked a cigarette. He didn't look at her. As always when he was near her his heart hammered as though it would beat him down on to his knees before her. He could never be with her without instant memory of all the details of the intimacies of the six months that they had had together, as a drowning man is supposed to see his past life. Each separate detail flicked him with its sense of some loveliness lost for ever.

'Well, Wildherne--you've come to tell me about your engagement.' She spoke very kindly; she liked him so much, and especially now that he was to belong to some other woman.

'Yes, I have.'

'Very right and proper. I've met her, of course, but always with her sister, who is so pretty that she blinds one to anyone else.'

How like Diana! At once to make Janet obscure and faded.

'Now tell me all about it, what you said to her, what she said to you, whether everyone is pleased (which, of course, everyone is), that you're happy, that she's happy--everything.'

'There isn't very much to tell,' he answered. 'When I proposed to her I said that I didn't love her, that I couldn't love her because I loved you.'

At that Diana made a slight movement. 'Oh, Wildherne, how like you! But why did you? Did you have to do that?'

'It seemed to me that I had. I couldn't marry her without telling her. Of course she had heard about us already, but that made no difference. I had to tell her everything.' He paused.

'And it made no difference? She accepted you at once?'

'Not at once. I proposed to her three times. She was as honest with me. She told me that she didn't love me either, that the only person in the world that she loved was her sister. It is partly for her sake that she is marrying me.'

'I see. A thorough mariage de convenance.'

'No,' he answered. 'Not altogether. We are excellent friends. I like her tremendously. She likes me, I think.'

'Most satisfactory,' Diana said, 'in this world where there is so little honesty. But there, you are an honest person, Wildherne. Too honest sometimes. I have told you so before now. You deserve to marry someone honest as yourself. You wouldn't be happy with anyone else.'

He stood up, terribly agitated. 'Diana--this is good-bye, you know. I can't see you again. That won't matter to you, but to me--it's something rather sharp--something torn out of me . . .' He broke off. He was trembling.

She looked up at him smiling. He looked very handsome standing there, with his yellow hair, the fine way that his head, thrust back, in its carriage and poise spoke of strength and courage and pride. Fine English. That's what he was. Dull as compared with Fine French or Italian or Spanish, but reliable in a way that no other aristocracy was. Diana liked him very much indeed.

'But, Wildherne--how foolish! Part? Why on earth? We're friends now, not lovers. We've had all this out over and over again. You know that you'll need me sometimes, just to talk to, to laugh with. Married men do need their women friends once and again. Part? What nonsense!'

'No! That's easy for you to say, but not for me. You are out of love, yes, and small trouble it has cost you, but I am as I was from the first. It must be broken. How often we've agreed about that! Haven't you told me again and again--"Wildherne, you must marry! You must marry! You must marry!"--We've repeated it, both of us, one to the other, like parrots. Well, now I'm doing it at last. And the condition is--I've told you always that it would be! I've told you. . . .'

He broke off, hesitated, then fell on his knees at her feet, burying his face in her lap. She stared out into the room above him, as so often before she had stared, stroking his hair gently and wondering, not about him but about herself--why she was for ever wanting what she could not have, why the savour went instantly from anything secured. An old wonder, and eternal so long as the human heart beats!

He raised his head, looked with aching desire into her eyes.

'Oh, Diana, help me! Send me away now and let me never return. You don't want me. You're bored with me. You'll be glad to be rid of me.'

She took his head between her hands, bent down and kissed his forehead, then, moving, stood up, and he also, they both, side by side, before the fire.

She caught his hand and held it tightly in hers.

'No, Wildherne, I don't love you. That's true enough. But I love no one, and most certainly not myself. Love eludes me. At most I see it a room away, always out of touch. But friendship, that's another thing. Of all the nonsense this stupid post-war time has brought us that at least is our merit, that we've learnt the value of friendship between men and women, how to manage it and hold it so that it lasts. I want you as a friend. I can't trust anybody around me. They are false, and so am I. But you are not false. I can trust you altogether, and so I want you for a friend. Your Janet can't grudge me that. Besides, if all I hear is true, she's not a grudging woman.'

'Well enough for you,' he answered impatiently. 'You will use me at the times when someone has deserted you or spoken ill of you or irritated you. Good enough. But for myself, no. I tell you I love you, with my body as well as the rest of me. That being so I will see you no more. Stop loving you I cannot, but stop seeing you I can.'

She looked at him. Then something she saw in his face caused her to smile a little cynically.

'Well,' she said, holding out her hand. 'Au revoir.'

'No,' he answered her. 'Good-bye.'

'Oh, I never say good-bye,' she said, turning carelessly away from him and looking into the little round gold mirror above the fire. 'Things crop up again and people return. . . .'

He made as though he would speak, then swiftly, not looking back, left the room.

CHAPTER VI

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Janet was ready for the great family party.

In half an hour's time she would have surrendered herself to Purefoys, Darrants, Mellons, Medlers, Chichesters. In half an hour's time she would be standing there simply that they might gaze upon her, make their comments, deliver their judgements.

And she was not afraid.

That was the astonishing thing. Rosalind declared that were it her she would be terrified. Going as nobody at all--simply as the sister--of course she did not mind.

But Janet was surprised at her own absence of fear. She had been anticipating this event for many days; she saw in Wildherne's allusions to it that he was himself nervous. She had expected to be afraid and, with joy she knew it, she was not.

She was not afraid, because other things of a more serious nature were occupying her mind, and the most serious of them was Rosalind. She knew as she stood at the window of their little room and looked down at the pattern of lights threading the dusk below her that she was in one of those moods described by Rosalind as 'melodramatic,' those moods that Rosalind so deeply detested. She only knew these moods in relation to her sister, and they came always when she doubted Rosalind's love for her. There were times--and of late they had been frequent--when she seemed to lose touch with Rosalind altogether, when there was nothing to feed the hunger of her love. Calm, sensible, controlled as she could be with everyone else, with Rosalind she was sometimes like a desperate lover. She knew well when these moods were upon her and she hated them, but hate them as she might they gripped her with a dreadful and torturing pain as though the fingers of some animal were laid upon her heart.

Rosalind came in, lovely in a white dress cut low enough to startle the Purefoy world. Janet was in black, a necklace of small pearls round her throat.

'Rosalind--you never turned up at lunch after all.'

'No, darling, I couldn't. I'd have telephoned but. . . . How grand you look. Carrying yourself like a queen, the papers would say.'

'Yes, you might have telephoned. Why didn't you?'

Rosalind's eyes were restless, saying, 'Oh where can I escape?' She hated more than any other thing in her life these moods of Janet's.

'I don't know why I didn't. Oh, Janet, don't be tiresome. Not to-night. And I'm so sick of "Where have you been? Why didn't you? What were you doing?" Can't you see how irritating it is?'

Janet's voice trembled. 'And can't you see how selfish you are? Doesn't it occur to you that these last days--the last that we shall have alone--matter to me, that I want to be with you, and that you are always escaping me?'

'Yes, I am escaping you if you want to know. Just because you bother so. Why can't you let it all be natural? You are always forcing everything. You are natural enough with other people. Why not with me?'

'Because I love you so, because I love you more than all the rest of the world put together over and over again. That's why. Rosalind--darling--don't withdraw yourself now, now of all times, when I need you, when I want your love--'

'But I'm not withdrawing myself. You're so melodramatic, Janet. Always with me, never in the least with anyone else.'

'But I'm lonely, Rosalind. Without you I haven't anyone. No one in the world. I must have you--I must--I must.'

'That's a nice thing to say a month or two before your marriage. Oh, I know you don't love him, but you're always telling me what wonderful friends you are. Surely you don't need me so much now you've got him.'

'Not if you're happy.' Janet drew her sister close to her. 'You haven't been happy for ages. And you won't tell me anything. Of course I'm miserable when I see there's something the matter.'

'There's nothing the matter.' Then Rosalind went on more gently. 'There's the bell. The taxi's there. Don't worry, Janet, dear. I'm quite all right, and you're going to be Queen of the Evening and I one of your humblest subjects. Now let's be happy. I'm sorry about luncheon. I am truly. But you know what I am, never in the right place at the right time. I'm hopeless.'

They kissed and went together down the dark little stairs.

Inside the taxi Janet was miserable. Combined with her unhappiness about Rosalind was also the consciousness that she was being terribly unfair to Wildherne. It was true that he and his family, the Duke, the Duchess, and all the Purefoy world, might slip into the nethermost pit, and if only Rosalind were spared she would not care. Not at all? Well, only a very little. Oddly with that thought came the knowledge that she would miss Wildherne. He had been very good to her during these last weeks, and her heart, hungry for affection, always responded to any kindness. But one kiss from Rosalind outweighed all the kindness in the world from others. And this uncertainty. Why would Rosalind never tell her anything?

She made one more attempt.

'Rosalind, will you promise if there's anything the matter--even a little thing--to let me know at once?'

'Of course I will. You old goose, what could be the matter?'

'Anything might. There isn't anything, is there?'

'No, I tell you. No.'

'It isn't Tom Seddon, is it?'

'Tom Seddon?' Rosalind laughed. 'Heavens, no! It will be a long time before Tom keeps me awake!'

'He's most tremendously in love with you.'

'Is he?'

'You know he is. Put him out of his misery, Rosalind, if you don't care for him. It isn't fair to leave him in doubt.'

'Darling, you talk just like a Victorian novel. And here we are. Now for the fun!'

Wildherne, standing behind his mother at the top of the staircase, had a new impression of Janet. He was always just now receiving new impressions of her. It was as though someone were forcing him to realise that this affair of marriage was more complicated and subtle than he had as yet acknowledged to himself.

How many Janets was he marrying, and how many Wildhernes would marry her?

The crowd pressing up the staircase was very great. Janet, taller than most of the women, seemed, with her carriage and simple clothes, to be set apart from them. She looked proud, aloof, almost inhuman. He did not know that even now she was still thinking of Rosalind.

He had beautiful jewels waiting for her, but he was pleased to-night that she should be so simple. Her black hair, piled high, had no ornament; her neck and bust were superb. Yet she was not beautiful--kindly and a little remote; to-night she was finer than he had ever seen her, but at once she was always extinguished when you saw Rosalind. Rosalind's perfection of beauty did not mean monotony; she was saved from that by her delicate shell-pink colour and by the gold of her hair that, in its waves, hid shade upon shade of light.

As she came up the stairs, her eyes shining, her lips a little parted with her anticipated pleasure, her body moving with perfect grace and rhythm, she seemed to Wildherne the most beautiful creature ever seen by him. And yet not a pulse in his body beat the faster at the sight of her. Diana, if it had been she! And she would not of course be here to-night. Janet was speaking to his mother; with a little unexpected clap of pleasure he realised that he was glad that she was there, that she was his friend; there was already a sort of homeliness, a fireside feeling in his thought of her. Poor, dark Janet! lonelier, far lonelier than he knew.

The Duchess greeted her very kindly, and then Wildherne came and led her into the long ballroom.

To Rosalind, following the happy pair, the party seemed at first sight a rather dowdy one. The room was very fine with its white walls, shining background to the family pictures, and its glitter and sparkle of light, but nobody was very smartly dressed. Very few young people. No naked people at all. A great many old men with ribbons and orders. Faces stood out--the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Of course there would be lots of clergy. . . .

And then it came to her slowly that the whole had something of an air, something rather grand, but something unreal as though it were a pageant. No one seemed to move; voices were low; very dimly from some obscure distance stole the murmur of a band, and the eyes of the stout mild gentleman and lady in the Purefoy Gainsborough stared down at Rosalind's golden hair and slim body and naked back as though they wondered what she was doing there.

Whether it were the Gainsborough or no she was aware, for the first time for many a month, that her clothes were unlike any others in the room. She did not care, but she did hope that soon she might find a friend, someone with whom she could laugh a little, just a little, at all these quaint old people.

Janet meanwhile had little time for observation. At the sight of the Duke, so square and sturdy, so aristocratic and at the same time so romantic with his square-cut white beard, piratical to-night as though this shining floor were the deck of his vessel and these all his captives, wearing his decorations with an air and yet also with an adorable absent-mindedness--she felt love for him flood her heart. The loneliness that all day had been so heavily oppressing her fled at sight of him. He drew her arm through his, nodding to Wildherne over his shoulder.

'I must capture her for five minutes: maybe we'll never return!'

She pressed her arm against his side and liked to feel his heart beating steadily through the stuff of his clothes.

Her love for him was growing apace. It was extraordinary how sheltered and protected he made her feel.

'Nervous?' he asked her as they passed out of the room.

'Not a bit. But where are you taking me?'

They had paused for a moment in a dimly lit alcove.

'First for this.' He drew her to him, put his arms around her and kissed her on the lips. 'I've longed to have a daughter--all my life--and now when at last I've got one I make the most of it. It had been almost too late, you know!'

She caught his hand, pressing it between both of hers.

'Oh!' she whispered. 'Let me see you often, very often. There are going to be some things that will be difficult. I love you already so much. I think I could tell you anything.'

'It's a compact,' he answered, looking into her eyes. 'We'll be together in everything.'

'And now,' he went on gaily, 'this is the second reason I took you away!' He opened a door and led her into a little room, plastered so heavily with bright 'marine' water-colour drawings that a large marble bust on the mantelpiece of Georgiana Duchess of Romney (1760-1822) looked extraordinarily solid and, beside so many waves and sea-horses, astonishingly static. Beneath the bust, sitting very straight and stiff in a cloth tapestry chair, was a little old lady in a lace cap. This was Lady Anne Purefoy, nearly a hundred, thoroughly alive and interested in everything.

Janet had never met her before. She kissed her. The lace cap nodded approval. She was a very gentle old lady, and had a voice like a musical-box, very sweet and true but distant so that you must bend your head to listen. Janet sat down beside her, and the Duke, in his favourite position with his thick legs squarely spread and his hands behind his broad back, stood over them benevolently.

'I have to stay in here, my dear. All those people in there rather too much for me. I'm ninety-two. So many relations. Fatiguing. And so you will marry Wildherne and the family will carry on. Take care of the first year. That's the difficult one. Never been married myself, of course, but have watched others. You've a sensible face. I like your hair. Forgive a very old lady her impertinences. The Queen said to me once, "Anne, you'll be impertinent to the last"--and so I shall be, to the very last. Shan't I, Geoffrey?'

'I'll tell you that, Aunt Anne, on your hundred and fiftieth birthday,' he answered her.

'Ugh,' she gave a little sarcastic shrug. 'Don't threaten me. Lived much too long already. This noisy, distracting, adorable world. But tell me a little about yourself, my dear. Are you happy?'

'Very happy, Lady Anne,' Janet answered softly.

'That's right. You should be. Wildherne is a dear. Are you economical? Can you run a house?'

'I haven't had a great deal of experience. My sister and I have been alone in the world for some years.'

'Ah, your sister. She's very beautiful, they tell me. Is she here to-night?'

'Yes.'

'Someone must bring her to see me, Geoffrey. I love to look at pretty girls. And are you very modern, deny God, and laugh at the King and Queen? You've plenty of clothes on your back, I'm glad to see. Not that I'm against a little fun. We old Victorians weren't by half as dull as they make us out to have been. Not by half. And do you rush about everywhere in a motor car?'

Janet laughed. 'All my friends think me very old-fashioned,' she said. 'I'm quite ordinary, Lady Anne--ordinary and slow.'

'Well, I'm glad you are--so glad you're not clever. We were just as clever sixty years ago, but we didn't make such a hullaballoo about it. If Mr. Disraeli and Huxley and Mr. Gladstone (although I never liked him) weren't clever, I wonder what they were. Show me anyone as clever to-day. Lloyd George and the rest. However, that's what we old people are for ever doing, running down the present. I don't want to, I'm sure. I find it very amusing but transitory. Selfish too. In the old days we believed in something greater than ourselves. A little too much in earnest, perhaps, but we had our little jokes.'

'I must be taking her back, Aunt Anne,' the Duke said. 'She's the heroine to-night, you know.'

'So she is. So she is. I like her. I like her very much indeed. Kiss me, my dear. May God bless you and keep you and give you fine children worthy of their grandfather.'

Her hot trembling hand rested for an instant on Janet's cool forehead.

Soon she was standing in the long drawing-room, the Duchess on one side of her, Wildherne on the other. This was not an official reception; they stood there casually as though accident had placed them, and yet in a moment it was official, as official as though it were a Court Drawing-Room.

And so, in its Purefoy world, it was. Yes, and further than that, in its section of England ruled by the Purefoys, Medleys, Chichesters and Darrants it had that significance, for the Duke and Duchess were King and Queen of that section and Janet bride of the Heir-Apparent.

She had not realised--she had had as yet no opportunity of realising--how immensely self-sufficient, self-important, and secure this world was. It was disregarded almost entirely by the Press of the day. Its house parties, receptions, journeys were scarcely recorded. The illustrated papers, the novels of the time, the scandals, the fashions had no concern with it. Any account of the England of the moment was preoccupied with a Post-War Society, apparently conscienceless, heartless, and creedless, and yet this Post-War Society was numerically minute and potentially inorganic compared with this unperturbed, resolved, static Society that, infinitely poorer of course than before the war, yet carried on its creeds, its ceremonies, its responsibilities precisely as though no other Society existed.

And it was into this Society that Janet was now irrevocably to be plunged! Yes, irrevocably. She could see as she faced them that they had claimed her for their own, that she belonged now utterly to them, not they to her, and that they had no doubt whatever that she was exceedingly fortunate to have been so chosen.

She caught the tone of it exactly from the Duchess. It was her luck that she should know all these people and that they should accept her so swiftly as one of themselves, and she knew now that it had been from the beginning the root of the Duchess's satisfaction, the foreknowledge that she would be so accepted.

One of her deepest impressions was of kindliness. On other casual visits either to Halkin Street or Lady Medley's or Lady Blanche Chichester's or wherever, she had not been sure of that. She had been outside their world. And in the society of Rosalind's friends she had known that there was no kindliness at all. Camaraderie, perhaps, but always a horror of sentiment, emotion, and above all a preoccupation with self that insisted on freedom at all and every cost.

To-night again and again she caught that look of shy, almost diffident friendliness. There were more young people than she had expected, girls with whom she felt she could establish very pleasant relationships, but for the most part her new uncles, aunts, and cousins were elderly and, as Rosalind was surely somewhere confidently asserting, 'too established for words.'

No one was difficult to talk to. They evidently had no desire that you should be clever; Janet did not feel, as always with Rosalind's set, that she was two sentences behind and that everyone was aware of it.

One fact gradually emerged from the tangled confusion of words--her great fortune, they all felt, in having Wintersmoon for her home. Wintersmoon was the house in all England. What a tragedy that in these monstrous days of impossible taxes some of it must be closed, but perhaps, as times were better and we left the horrible war behind us, they would be able to throw it all open again. Wintersmoon . . . Wintersmoon . . . Wintersmoon . . . with its history and stories and tradition and colour, with its great Oak and lovely Minstrels' Gallery and Queen Elizabeth's bed, and the wing where Charles I stayed for a whole fortnight before Edgehill, its three ghosts, and its Spanish Walk. She must indeed be too gloriously happy in the prospect of such a home!

'And you'll suit it, my dear,' said old Clara Darrant, with her bushy eyebrows and high lace collar (it was said that she believed herself the reincarnation of Queen Elizabeth). 'I can see that you are going to be just right for it. Dear Wildherne has chosen well.'

She could tell that there was something in her of which they all approved. What this was she did not know, but in the midst of all her preoccupation this private thought rather miserably attacked her--that Wildherne had seen just this same quality and had chosen her for that as you might choose a chair or a table to go into a certain room because it suited the Period!

And then his kindliness drove that thought away. Never before, in her knowledge of him, had he been so right, so exactly feeling for her and with her in all the twists and turns of her situation, and when, at long last, she could move away with him slowly to another part of the room, she smiled at him her gratitude.

'You're tired?' he asked.

'Yes, a little--naturally. But they are all kinder than kind. Wildherne, do you approve of me? Is everything all right?'

'Everything is perfect. They all like you so much. Father's eyes are shining with pride. And mother's telling the Bishop of London this very moment what a fortunate thing it is that I've shown so much wisdom. . . .'

But it was odd with what an eagerness of discovery she saw, a moment later, Rachel Seddon. It was like coming home. The Duke, Rachel, Rosalind were the three in that house that evening who could make her feel that. Not Wildherne.

She caught Rachel's hand with an impetuosity unlike her accustomed gravity. Old John Beaminster, who was sitting on the little gilt sofa beside his niece, wondered. He had not seen Janet Grandison many times before, and never like this with her head up so finely, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed. Why, she was almost a beauty! The old man, a little a fish out of water to-night, the Beaminster world being even in these degenerate days much gayer than this Purefoy one, had just been murmuring to Rachel, 'Damned lot of parsons here--I'm going to clear,' and then, struck with the drama of Janet's presence, decided to stay on.

Rachel Seddon, looking more alien than usual in this so-English company, bent her dark eyes on her friend and then drew her close to her on the little sofa. 'Janet, darling, you're such a success. I hear murmurs on every side of me: "But isn't she charming? Just the wife for Wildherne. So quiet . . ." Oh yes, you're a success. You're doing it all to perfection. My dear, if you'd only seen me at my coming-out ball years ago. Do you remember, Uncle John, how terrified I was and how kind you were to me? That was the night I fell in love with Roddy. . . . Ah dear! Tout passe. . . . Tom's somewhere; have you seen him?'

No, Janet had not. Had Rachel been talking to Wildherne, because if not she must.

'Yes, we had a delightful time. I like him so much. I find that we think alike about almost everything, even about yourself. And his hair's such a nice colour. It would be a fortune to a woman. Ah! here's M. Brun. Do you know Miss Grandison? Janet, this is M. Felix Brun, one of my oldest friends, and the only man in Europe who knows anything about politics.'

Little Brun was excited to-night. He had never before seen gathered together under the one roof so many of 'the True English.' Yes, in most of the other London houses to-day your companions might be of any European nationality, or at least American. But here, in what he called to John Beaminster 'this rocky fastness,' the English type was astounding. There was a foreign diplomat or two, but otherwise--all English. And, most amazing of all, not an American to be seen anywhere! Oh, but he was excited! And how odd they all were! So many clergymen in their black silk waistcoats and high white collars, so many old ladies, so many young ones without paint and powder, such dowdy clothes, and yet--something so fine and definite, something so unimaginative that it had all the clarity of a single-eyed vision.

Single-eyed! That's what they were, with England right in the middle of the picture. No cheapness, no haste, and a pride that only the aristocracy of his own country could equal.

And now here was this tall, dark, plain girl about to marry that tall, fair, handsome man, ultimately with God's grace and the permission of the Bolsheviks to reign as queen of this Purefoy country. A nice girl but stupid, he fancied. Naïve at least. But then how naïf everyone around him looked to-night! English naïveté hiding perhaps deep subtleties. It was precisely of that that the clever people of other nations could never be sure. It was precisely of that that Brun could not to-night be sure. Was this great roomful as simple as it looked? On the whole, he believed not.

Janet was able to spare but little attention on M. Brun. Her eyes were roving everywhere for her sister. Never for an instant through all the evening's happenings had she forgotten her, but she had not been simply free to go to her. Now she was free and she would go. Then she saw her--slowly crossing the room with Wildherne. Janet knew instantly that things were going ill between them. She knew exactly that expression of Rosalind's when, her temper piqued, she was like a naughty insulting child. Wildherne's courteous patience was easy enough for anyone to see. All eyes were drawn to Rosalind as she passed. Her dress, or lack of it, the lovely movement of her body, the easy almost insolent gaze with which she honoured the room, it would have been strange had she passed unnoticed. Then Janet saw her eyes flash with relief. She broke away from Wildherne almost without a word and in a moment was speaking to a tall gaunt woman resembling a young friendly crocodile--Althea--Althea Bendersley, a great friend of Rosalind's, here to-night because she was a first cousin of Blanche Chichester's. They greeted one another with eager laughter and moved away. Janet's only too active imagination followed them into some corner where, eagerly ferocious, they would pull the party to flakes and shreds.

Wildherne seemed for an instant bewildered by her so precipitant desertion, then old Clara Darrant attacked him and he was attentive courtesy once more.

Ancient M. Brun was talking, but Janet did not listen. How could she ever have supposed that Rosalind would be happy in this world? She had been so eager to extricate Rosalind from the discomfort and unhappiness of their struggling poverty that she had not thought at all of the new life into which she was drawing her.

Her chief demand of Wildherne had been that Rosalind should share their home, but how could she have been so blind as to suppose that Rosalind would for a moment do so? She had lost Rosalind by this step that she had taken, lost her, not secured her.

A desperate restlessness possessed her.

"Excuse me, M. Brun, but I must find my sister. Rachel, I'll be back in a moment. I simply haven't set eyes on Rosalind all the evening.'

'I saw her with Althea Bendersley a moment ago,' Rachel said. Had Rachel seen Rosalind and Wildherne together? Rachel saw so much. It was as though the Slav part of her gave her some kind of second sight. She knew so constantly just what Janet was feeling, but then this barrier of her dislike of Rosalind came up between them and separated them. Janet knew that Rachel was feeling that now--distrust, dislike that would quickly be hatred if Rosalind injured her adored Tom.

Janet moved away, unhappiness in her heart. The people around her were all in an instant ghosts to her. Not one of them save the Duke belonged to her. She wanted him with a sudden desperate need that was only, as she well knew, the precursor of many future needs. But she did not see him. The room thickened and darkened around her. She had made some horrible mistake. She would be punished all her life because she was selling herself, body and soul, for comfort. That it was not her comfort made no difference; and surely she saw clearly enough to-night that it would not be Rosalind's comfort. Why had she done this thing? What crazy impulse had driven her? The consciousness of her friendship with Wildherne had left her. Friendship when he was madly in love with another woman?

She looked everywhere for her sister; then found herself face to face with the very last human being whom at that distracted moment she wished to encounter, the Duchess's protégée, Caroline Marsh. The girl was standing against the wall by herself. She looked plain and awkward in her white dress, her pince-nez ill-fitting so that with a perpetual nervous movement she was for ever pushing them back against her eyes.

At the sight of her lonely silent figure Janet's heart went out to her.

'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she said, holding out her hand and smiling, 'how are you? I do hope you are enjoying yourself.'

'Oh yes, thank you, Miss Grandison,' with great nervousness. 'It's lovely, isn't it? I'm sure you ought to be very happy, Miss Grandison, seeing everyone so pleased. I'm sure it's a great occasion. And Lord Poole's been so kind. He brought me a cup of tea. I wouldn't have bothered him for the world, but he is so thoughtful, always thinking of others.'

'Let's sit down for a moment,' said Janet, 'here on this little sofa. You must have seen many friends here this evening.'

'Well, Miss Grandison, friends . . . one can't expect to have many of them, can one? But acquaintances, oh yes, ever so many! Trying to help the Duchess as I do of course I meet a lot of people. And may I ask when the day for the wedding is fixed? Oh, I do hope you don't think me impertinent.'

'Of course not. The wedding will be towards the end of April, I expect. No one likes being married in May, although of course it's only a superstition.'

'Silly, isn't it? Oh, I do think superstitions are very foolish, don't you? And if I may say so your sister's looking perfectly lovely to-night. Quite a vision! Everybody's been commenting on it. Mr. Pomeroy thinks her lovely too. Don't you think Mr. Pomeroy's a delightful gentleman, Miss Grandison?'

'Well, really,' Janet answered, laughing, 'I have seen so little of him so far.'

'Oh, I think he's splendid! Everything he does is so fine. The Duchess wouldn't know how to get on without him, she wouldn't indeed! It just does one good to be near him.'

And then Janet realised a strange thing. This plain, awkward, common girl, whom, as she had fancied, she had pleased by noticing, disliked her--yes, disliked her intensely. She did not know how she was aware of this, but she was quite certain of it. It emanated from the girl like a faint but unmistakable perfume. What was it? Jealousy? Or fear? Or hurt vanity? Had Janet done or said something?

Absurd how this knowledge added to her depression. This girl looked upon her as an invader, and there would be others, perhaps many others, who would do the same.

She got up.

'We must be friends,' she said, smiling. 'There are many things that will be difficult for me at first. I do hope you will help me sometimes.'

Miss Marsh got up awkwardly, nervously pushing at her pince-nez.

'That's very kind of you, Miss Grandison. Of course if I can be of any assistance to you in any way--'

Mr. Pomeroy appeared, very elegant, very urbane. He had friends whom he wished to introduce, and then there were others. But people were leaving. Soon, ah soon, she would be able to escape. Wildherne found her, and together they moved into the next room.

Together Rosalind and she were in a cab. She was so tired that life--her life, all life, any life--jumped up and down before her like a Jack-in-the-Box. Rosalind said not a word.

They were in their little sitting-room. As Janet turned towards her bedroom Rosalind cried: 'Janet, how awful!'

Janet stayed. 'Awful! What do you mean?'

'This evening--the people--everything.'

'Oh, don't now, Rosalind. I'm too tired to listen. Make your clever criticisms in the morning.'

But Rosalind flung her arms around her sister's neck, keeping her.

'Listen, dear. I know you're tired now. I won't be long. But if ever I was serious in my life, I am now. Janet, you've got to give it up. You've got to tell him to-morrow that you can't marry him. Never mind if they talk. Never mind if we're poor. We'll go abroad together somewhere--Mentone or somewhere--it will be after the season soon and cheap. Anything--only you've got to give it up! You can't go on with it.'

Janet dragged herself from her sister's embrace.

'Rosalind, are you mad? What on earth do you mean?'

'I mean what I say. You've got to give it up, all of it. You're doing it for me, and you can't make that sacrifice. I won't let you. They are dreadful, these people--quite dreadful. You'll run away from them in a week. Why, they're awful! They haven't an idea in their heads! They're pompous and stupid and impossible. And you don't love him, not a bit. You're bored with him already, and as for that idiot his mother--'

'Stop, Rosalind!' Janet's nerves, already strained to the thinnest thread, snapped. 'How dare you? I should have thought it would be enough that on this evening, when it was so important to me, you shouldn't take the least little bit of trouble and should be rude to everybody. But it isn't. Have you no sense of anything decent? Can't you see anything except your own selfishness and your own vanity? Remember, now and always, they are my people, and when you laugh at them you laugh at me!'

'Oh well, then'--Rosalind moved to her room--'if they are yours they are not mine, and, thank God, never will be!'

And she banged her door behind her.

CHAPTER VII

MARCH: LONDON

ROSALIND--JANET--ZANTI--WILDHERNE

Janet had no sleep that night. The sulky strokes of the church of St. Matthew grumbled the quarters and then, with slow annoyed reiteration, hammered out the hours. She knew the little church with its grey-white walls, its tower like a candle-snuffer, its old woman who had a flower-stall a little to the right of its door, the hairdresser, Emanuel Giles, just opposite to it, and, as she lay there, she could see these details as though they had all pressed forward into her room out of vulgar curiosity as to why she wasn't sleeping.

Her most vivid emotion was one of surprise that she felt so hotly in defence of those people whom Rosalind had attacked. She had not expected to feel that, but, as the ones whom she knew best, the Duke, Wildherne, old Lady Anne, Clara Darrant, Blanche Chichester, Mr. Pomeroy, yes, and even Caroline Marsh, came before her, she had a strange protective feeling towards them all. It was true, perhaps, that they were slow and stubborn and complacent, but she saw Rosalind's bright young horde advancing down upon them, charging them, sweeping them off the field and replacing them--with what? With carelessness, selfishness, cynicism, pessimism, intolerance.

And then in reaction her love for Rosalind surged up in her. What could she do to reconcile the two worlds? Some way she must find.

But to go back on her word to Wildherne never for an instant occurred to her. It appeared to her, she found, infinitely less possible now than three months ago when she had first given it.

And then she felt again the terror that had conquered her towards the end of the evening. This job would be perhaps too much for her. Although she would not have them insulted, she could not have them acclaimed as hers. Her loneliness and her terror of greater loneliness came from just that, that she seemed to belong neither to the Purefoy world nor to Rosalind's.

But then neither did Wildherne. Her safety lay in coming closer to him, in helping him to understand her difficulties and in learning from him his own. And so at last, as it were under the protection of his friendly arm, in the grey ghostly morning she fell asleep.

When she woke Rosalind was sitting on her bed. She bent forward and kissed her. 'That's right. Now you're awake. I've brought your breakfast, and while you're eating it we're going to talk.'

Janet sat up and rubbed her eyes. Then she pulled Rosalind's head towards her and kissed it, burying her face in the fresh golden locks.

'I'm sorry I was cross last night. I was tired to death.'

'Now don't you start that terrible humble apologising.' Rosalind, one leg of her blue silk pyjamas over the other, puffed angrily at her cigarette. 'I'm furious with myself. You were perfectly right. Last night I was as selfish and mean as I could be. I failed you at one of the most important moments of your life. I was disgraceful.'

Janet knew that Rosalind always enjoyed these scenes of self-recrimination; but they were not the less genuine for that.

And, this time, there was something serious behind their difference. The quarrel could not be kissed away and forgotten as so many had been in the past.

'Yes, Rosalind dear, you did behave badly last night. Not so much when we came home but before that, at the party. You weren't nice to anybody. What happened to you? You were determined to be charming when you went, and then something changed your mood. What was it?'

'It was that pig of a Duchess. Oh, I beg your pardon, Janet. I forgot. But she was insufferable to me, Janet, really she was, patronising me as though I owed her the very clothes on my back. And all the old women round me looking at me as though I were a prize mannequin! After that Wildherne saw fit to take me in to see an old lady of about nine hundred and ninety, who lectured me about the sins of my generation as though I were responsible for them. She spoke exactly as though Lloyd George were my little boy whom, against the advice of all my relations, I'd sent to the wrong boarding-school. By this time I was a little upset, and then of course tumbled straight into Rachel Seddon and Tom and that idiotic old Beaminster man--the last people in the world I wanted to see. Rachel looked down her nose at me, as she always does--how she hates me, that woman!--and Tom made sheep's eyes until I could have throttled him. Then Tom asked me to come and drink some tea with him as though we were in one of Jane Austen's novels, and I said I wouldn't, and turned round and tumbled--into whose arms do you think, my dear--why, the Bishop of Polchester's--you know, that fat red man like a peony in full bloom who was staying at the Conistons' when we were there last year. You remember. The man who played tennis so absurdly. So just to spite Tom Seddon I went off with the Bishop to have some lemonade, and he made up to me like anything, and asked me down to stay in the Palace at Polchester, and promised to play croquet with me. And then--oh then I don't know what happened except that it was all awful until, by a miracle of luck, I found Althea Bendersley. After that it was better. We could sit in a corner and have our little joke. But it's all very well; I don't want to excuse myself. There's no excuse possible. I was disgraceful. I meant so well when I started, but I can't endure to be patronised, Janet, I can't indeed. It rouses everything evil in me. And how dare they? I have never asked their charity or indulgence! Oh, there I go again. . . . But, Janet, what are we to do? That's the point. They're not my sort, and never will be. I never can be happy with them. And you--although you're so much better than me and so much quieter--can you be happy with them, settle down with them, make them your own people, can you?'

Janet, staring in front of her at the liquid blue March sky beyond the window, waited a long while before her answer.

'That's my job, Rosalind,' she said at last. 'That's what I've got to do. Of course it isn't easy, but I think I like it because it's hard. I'll agree that I wouldn't have the courage to try if it weren't for two things. One is the Duke. I'm beginning to love him as though I really were his daughter, and I think he's beginning to love me. The other, of course, is Wildherne. You said last night that I don't love him and that already I was bored with him. The first of these things is of course true. Real love I feel only for you in the whole world, and I think that I am perhaps one of those who can only love one person at a time and that I couldn't begin to love Wildherne until I ceased to love you. I don't know how that is, but I do know that I am not bored with Wildherne, that I like him better every time I see him, that I admire him and trust him as I admire and trust no one else. You think him dull or slow or quiet, but then that suits me. We are alike, he and I, in many ways. We are old-fashioned perhaps, certainly we're slow and mean what we say. We have both given our word in this. It's our adventure. Of course we're taking risks, but that makes it more exciting. It may seem a tame sort of excitement to you, but it is not so really. There are great possibilities in it, and for more than ourselves.'

'And Diana Guard?' asked Rosalind.

'Yes. I've faced that from the beginning. That isn't changed. He loves her, I suppose, just as he did. If I loved him I could not endure it, of course. But as it is--'

Rosalind got up and began to pace the little room, flinging back her head as she walked.

'All very well, then, but that hasn't settled the rest of them. Think of it. All the clergy and all the old women and all the long weeks down in Wiltshire. Wintersmoon may be a very beautiful house, but don't I know the kind of place it is! Half of it shut up, with nice little ghosts with chains clanking up and down the empty passages, then the rooms that are lived in damp and mouldy, crammed with family portraits and armour. The garden and park overgrown and neglected, and the Duchess always coming down for the week-ends to see that you are doing as you ought to! Oh, Janet dearest, I didn't realise it until last night, but now that I do, let me show you what you're in for! Give it up, Janet! Give it up! You're doing it for me, I know you are, although you talk so much about Wildherne and adventure. Wildherne and adventure! The two simply don't go together. You're doing it for me and I don't want it. I won't live in your mouldy old Wintersmoon anyway. Let's go on as we are. As I told you last night we'll go abroad to Mentone or somewhere. Perhaps I'll pick up a rich Spaniard or an Italian Marquis. I tell you, Janet, if you do this thing you'll just plunge me into temptation. Anything that happens to me afterwards will be your fault. I warn you.'

'But, Rosalind,' Janet said, 'two months ago you were wildly delighted that I had done this. You were off your head with joy.'

'Yes, but I didn't see what they were all like. I thought I could live with them, and now I see that I can't. I shall be all alone, and I'm not good when I'm alone.'

'Darling, you won't be. You'll never be alone as long as I'm alive. You shan't go a scrap more to Halkin Street than you wish, and you won't find Wintersmoon so bad as you think. And then there's the Duke. You don't know him yet. You'll love him when you do.'

'Old! old! old!' Rosalind chanted. 'I've no use for anyone over sixty be he beautiful as Lucifer himself. It's no good. I haven't. I can't bear their hot dry hands and parchment skins. Sorry, Janet, but so it is. Well, there we are! You won't get out of it?'

'But of course not.'

'It's your last chance.'

'But, Rosalind, I don't get out of things. What I say I'll do, I'll do.'

'Then you've ruined me. I warn you. I'm a ruined woman.'

'Rosalind, don't be so idiotic. You can only ruin yourself. Don't pretend you're so weak.'

'I am weak. Of course I'm weak. It's because of my adorable weakness that I'm so attractive.' She looked back once more before she left the room. 'I abandon you, then, to the Duchess and the Bishop of Polchester. Never say I didn't warn you.'

Wildherne and Janet had arranged to meet that afternoon in the London Museum, a place to which she had never been. He said that it was pleasant because in the top rooms, where the models and the old views were, no one ever came and they could talk uninterruptedly.

Now this morning, thinking of Rosalind's words, it struck her that already she and Wildherne were fleeing from the family. Did he realise that? The wedding was fixed for the end of April, a month from to-day. St. Margaret's and wedding presents, small Purefoy cousins as train-bearers; it was all arranging itself into the regular ordained pattern. The March wind raced across the strip of blue sky dragging with it three discontented clouds who, busily engaged on their own private business, had been snatched up and worried off all against their poor wills. They tried to lag behind just as they passed Janet's window; all bulged and protesting they were. But no. Nothing to be done. They clung to a chimney and then, their skirts streaming behind them, were pulled away. Well, then, as Rosalind had said, here was Janet's last chance. To-day in that funny tucked-in Museum, buried in the heart of old grey buildings, she might extend Wildherne's eyes with horror by simply saying:

'Wildherne, I find that after all I cannot marry you.'

Yes, and that little sentence quietly delivered, fine consequences there'd be! Everyone of course would say that, having discovered about Diana, she had thrown Wildherne over. The Duke and Duchess would hear with the rest--Wintersmoon ghosts would groan with disgust. The vast neglected garden would wail through all its grasses. No. And again No.

But, beyond that, she clung to Wildherne. She had never, in all her life, had a man friend, and already in these few weeks she had discovered that there were ways in which you could trust a man more than a woman. Simple men were often indifferent when your spirit ached for some sort of a scene, but certainly to be trusted. As a friend, of course. As lovers she knew that they were most uncertain.

She had a strange fancy as she sat there--to stroke the back of his neck where the hair grew short and lay in gold sparks of light against his fair skin. She knew why she thought of that. Because his hair was like Rosalind's, the same colour of glowing and glinting gold, the same fair gold with deep shadows that passed and repassed as the head turned. How many many times she had adored to busy her hands in Rosalind's lovely hair, to pull the head slowly back to her breast and then bend over and kiss the smooth forehead and the closed soft eyelids! When Rosalind was weary she liked that.

And so that was the physical link that Wildherne had with Rosalind--the only physical feeling she had about Wildherne. How strange that, in that same instant of discovery of this feeling, she should be conscious of a short quick stab of jealousy of that other woman! The first. It passed as quickly as it came. Had Diana Guard entered her room at that moment she would have felt nothing but friendliness towards her. Nothing else? Well, only with it an increased sense of loneliness because this Diana could draw human beings towards her so easily.

That power had never been Janet's. Rachel loved her, and now, perhaps, the Duke. Rosalind at moments. But who else in all her life? Was it her own shyness that kept them away? Was it the absence in her of sexual feeling? Was it a prudishness? Was it her own so long absorption in her sister?

Whatever the reason, something had always shut her away from other humans, and now perhaps this marriage with Wildherne would open the door for her and give her freedom.

A letter fell with a soft thump into the little letter-box. She went to rescue it and saw at once that it was in Tom Seddon's sprawling, childish, but attractive hand.

'DEAR JANET'--she read--'I'm writing this so late at night that there'll probably be no sense in it. I'm writing after your party--I call it your party because it was for you, wasn't it, and anyway I shouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for you, if you understand what I mean.

'I'm writing of course about Rosalind. Oh, Janet, I am so miserable--so miserable and so ashamed. I am ashamed because I have broken down like this, but I have only to you, and you are so kind and understanding, and you love Rosalind so much that I am sure you will help me. 'If I knew that my case was hopeless I could, I think, bear it. Of course I could bear it. One can bear anything. But it is uncertainty that takes all my control away. I have asked Rosalind twice to marry me and each time she has refused me, so that you would say that there isn't much uncertainty there, wouldn't you? But although she has refused me she has spoken and behaved as though at any time she might change her mind. Sometimes she has been so kind to me that it has seemed as though she must mean "yes." But to-night at the Halkin Street party she would have nothing at all to do with me, until just at the last when I said "good-night" she told me not to be angry with her and always to be her friend. I know that she doesn't love me, or doesn't most of the time, and then there are moments when I think she nearly does or would love me if she were with me a little more. Janet, tell me truly what you think. I can stand the truth. You must know what is in her mind. She must talk often to you. If you are certain that there is no chance for me at all, tell me. I must be more sure--my mother and old John Beaminster (who is a sort of Uncle to me) are so unhappy about it, and I try to pretend that there is nothing the matter, but it is very difficult when they know that something is!

'Then there is another thing. Of course she must have spoken to you about this man Ravage--Charles Ravage. Probably you know much more about it than I do. I don't want to be stupid and jealous. Rosalind has the right to make all the friends she wants to, of course, and for a long time I have tried not to worry about this. But now so many people talk that it is no longer a private affair. Everyone knows Ravage's reputation. To do him justice he does not attempt to disguise it and says frankly, anywhere and everywhere, that there is no code of morals to-day except the code of one's own pleasure. Rosalind seems to like to be seen with him. I don't think that she really cares for him; it is a sort of bravado. But what is anyone so fine as she is doing with such a man at all? Forgive me, Janet, if I have interfered here when I have no business. I know that it is a dangerous thing to write letters as late as this. But I can't resist it. No one but you can help me. Tell me if I have any chance. If I have, I will wait for ever. If you tell me that I have not I will conquer myself. I will. I must.--Your affectionate friend,

TOM.'     

The last words of the letter were scrawled across the page.

She was dropping down the hill into St. James's, a clock striking half-past two just behind her, when the name of Charles Ravage really confronted her.

Until then--through the last scraps of notes hurriedly written in the flat, through a confusion of shopping and a strange luncheon in Harrod's somewhere between the Daffodils and the Dogs, Parrots and Monkeys--again and again the thought had been, 'Rosalind tells me nothing,' and then, stepping forward and crossing with it like a figure in a dance, the other thought, 'Poor Tom. I'll have to tell him she doesn't care'--and it was only now that Ravage confronted her. Perhaps it was because she was stepping down into his world--this funny men's world of silver clocks and riding-whips, mountains of tobacco, eighteenth-century pictures, and red leather bedroom slippers. She was invading his castle and so, ogre-like, he leaned out of his tower window and glared at her.

She had heard of him often--never in connection with Rosalind--and seen him once. That 'once' was very vivid to her. It had been some two years before at a Sunday evening performance of Venice Preserved. Rachel had taken her.

At the end of the first act, when the lights had gone up, she had seen this short, dark, frowning man standing in the dusk of the passage by the stalls' entrance. She had asked Rachel who he was. Oh, didn't she know? That was the famous Charles Ravage. She was disappointed. She had heard of him as a man of great fascination and impudent courage. Impudent he might be, but surely neither fascinating nor courageous. He seemed to her shabby in a grey suit, a dark blue linen collar. His scorn of the play, the theatre and everyone in it, was manifest enough. She had told Rachel that she thought him disappointing. Rachel had asked her what she had expected, and she had been ashamed to confess to her school-girl fancy of a modern Byronic desperado. Desperado, yes, but not Byronic.

And then, as the lovely tragedy had proceeded, he seemed to slip past her and take his place on the stage. She could have sworn that she saw him staring out from between the curtains of cloth of gold, watching cynically the loyalties of the two devoted friends. He would not believe in that nor in any other fine motive. All the evening he haunted her.

Rosalind had never once mentioned him to Janet, and yet it was common London gossip that he was her familiar friend. Janet thought no longer of Tom--only this, that with every half-hour of the passing day Rosalind seemed more surely to elude her. There was yet half an hour before her meeting with Wildherne; she panted to hasten it that she might put her trouble to him. In Rosalind's urgency that she should break her engagement with Wildherne and that the two of them should go abroad somewhere and hide, had there been perhaps a longing to escape from a situation that was rapidly becoming dangerous? Why had Rosalind told her nothing? Only surely because she had been afraid to tell her, and if she was afraid . . .

In her trouble she found herself staring, without seeing anything, into an old curiosity shop. She did not know where she was. Although it was not yet three o'clock the March afternoon had wreathed the London streets in a brown sunny mist that was not a fog, that obscured nothing, but transmuted the old grey stone, the windows and doors with an amber light.

On such an afternoon London becomes of more importance than its inhabitants. The geniality is that of an old gentleman taking his ease in his club window and watching the world go by. No other city has that masculine geniality--New York moves too fast, it cannot afford the time; Paris is too feminine; old Rome too conscious of modern Rome to be light-hearted; Stockholm too physically material; Petersburg--alas, poor Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, sinking back into its marsh whence so recently it climbed!--but your old, brown, smiling gentleman, rotund-stomached, clear-eyed, too unimaginative to be disturbed by the strange mutterings beyond his window, he is still there, the guardian of the world's tradition.

Janet, looking into her window, was conscious dimly of beautiful things--of porcelain and precious stuffs, of gold and silver boxes, of a crystal bowl, a silver crucifix studded with jewels, an ivory cabinet.

Absent-mindedly, thinking bitterly of Rosalind, she stepped back and saw over the shop only the word in large gold letters--'ZANTI.'

These letters were stamped upon the front of the neat little shop with its dark blue door, having in their simple inevitability a kind of cheeky independence. No more words were necessary. You could take 'Zanti' or leave him.

For the second time that day Janet had an odd sense of her last chance being offered to her. She must escape from her situation within an hour's time or submit to it for ever, and as though a step or two forward would assist her decision, scarcely knowing what she did, she walked into the shop.

Within the shop there was dusk, a dusk flung into radiance at different points by splendid fragments of colour, gold and purple and amethyst. Out of the dusk there emerged an enormously fat man.

'Madame, how can I zerrve you?' he asked.

He was of course a Southerner, jet-black hair fitting tightly his round, pale, many-chinned face like a skull-cap. He was not short, but rather tall and extremely broad. On his stomach you could have laid a tea-tray. His eyes were small and sparkling like black diamonds. The effect of him was, in spite of his stoutness, not unpleasant. His fingers were slender for so fat a man. His black suit was clean and well brushed. His smile friendly but not sycophantic. Janet thought that he was perhaps an Italian.

When he asked his question Janet was confused.

'There was--I thought I saw in the window a rose-coloured bowl.'

'If you think you zee it, Madame,' he answered her, 'then it is there, but as a matter of fact there is no such bowl in the window.'

Had she seen it? She now almost believed that she had, a lovely porcelain bowl of the most delicate rose. 'I am sure I saw it,' she said, 'a porcelain rose-coloured bowl.'

'If you zee it,' he repeated, 'it is there. Madame is lucky. It is Madame's possession for ever. She will always have her rose-coloured bowl. I am glad my shop has been so fortunate as to provide her with it.'

'But if it is true,' Janet continued, 'may I look at it, please? Would you mind getting it from the window?'

'It is not there in the window,' he answered her, smiling, 'but certainly in Madame's imagination. How much better for Madame! No one can take it from her, no careless servant break it--her lovely rose-coloured bowl.'

'Then,' said Janet, 'why do you have your shop? Why should anyone buy anything?'

'Why indeed!' He nodded his head gravely. 'But alas, zo many people have not Madame's imagination! They cannot own anything unless they have it physically in their hands, unless they can touch and feel. Fortunate for me, otherwise I starve--unfortunate for them. They must pay. . . .' Then he added after a pause, 'I can show Madame zome beautiful unreal things, things she may touch and feel and must pay for.'

She sat down and allowed him to show her some things, very lovely things, a vase of crystal, some cups of jade, a chain of old gold and pearls, a diamond snuff-box. She looked at them gravely one after another. Once or twice she asked the price; it was always enormous.

'You are very expensive,' she said.

'For these things, yes,' he answered. 'I don't care whether I zell or no. I have enough money for my own wants.'

'Don't you love these beautiful things? Don't you hate to part with them?' she asked him.

'No,' he answered. 'Nothing I can zee has so much value for me. Here am I, an ugly fat man--ugly, isn't it so? But this is not myself. I have learnt through a long life hunting for treasure where are the valuable things.'

'Hunting for treasure?' Janet asked. 'Do you mean real treasure?'

'Certainly. I have been everywhere. I am a citizen of the world. For a long time I was in Cornwall, then in London. I had a bookshop. That was in the days of the good Queen Victoria. Then I went to Spain, hunting for my castle, you know. In the war I fought for my country, Italy. That was a treasure hunt, I can tell you. Then I came to London. It was not difficult for me to find things for my shop. I know where they are. And I settle here, resting. I am at peace.'

'You have found what you were searching for?' Janet asked him.

'Not found, no. But I go now in the right direction. I waste no time over what I can see with my physical eyes. I have also a rose-coloured bowl.' Then, smiling at her in the friendliest fashion, he said: 'But excuse me, Madame, I bore you. It was when you asked for the rose-coloured bowl that I was tempted to talk. I hope if you ever wish to rest for a moment you will come into my shop. There is no need to buy anything.'

She got up, looking about her at all the beautiful things. 'Thank you,' she said. 'I will remember. Do you apply your philosophy also to people?' she went on. 'Are none of the qualities and defects that we see in our friends real, but only the things that we cannot see?'

He shrugged his heavy shoulders. 'Certainly they are real, our qualities and defects. Most tiresome their reality. Their reality obscures the thing behind just as, Madame, that vase and chain and cup obscure your rose-coloured bowl if you consider them too closely. We waste our time too much with these realities when the true purpose of life is beyond them. Do not look too often at that crystal vase, Madame. It is not worth your trouble.'

'It is very beautiful,' Janet said.

'Only for a moment, Madame. When you have bought it and taken it home and zee it on your mantelpiece, then you know all about it and your pleasure is satisfied. So it is with people. We must make it our business to search for the things that we shall never find. After the full summing-up something always remains. It is only that that is of value.'

'Do you always,' Janet asked, 'entertain your customers with your philosophy? You must sell very little if you do.'

'Ah no, Madame,' he answered her. 'But you came into my shop in trouble.'

At that moment a lady and a gentleman entered the shop. The cup of jade pleased them. They asked its price. Bargaining began. Mr. Zanti was, Janet saw, sharp and extremely commercial. A fine dust of haggling filled the air.

Janet said 'good-day' and sped away to the Museum.

Wildherne was there waiting for her. They went into the Museum together. A sigh of wistfulness trembled and was gone. Even the large red-cheeked family coming in through the turnstile, then slowly wandering up the spreading staircase, paused and listened a moment as though they had heard something.

The dresses rustled ever so slightly in their glass cases. All the drinking vessels swayed a little, and the ink-horn found in Threadneedle Street shivered. The death-mask of Oliver Cromwell stirred not, nor did the extended hand of the sewing wench in the old Inn waver, nor the fires of burning London diminish.

But little ghosts were for ever troubling those floors, trying to find garments and furniture and pictures that had on a time been their friends. The old, old men who guarded the rooms, being themselves so nearly finished with this world, were often disturbed by dreams, by whispers, by the touch of eager fingers upon their dried old hands--hard for them to distinguish between one world and another--all alike, all alike, save for the sixpence pressed into the palm. The little ghosts did no tipping. Their coinage was of another sort.

So Wildherne and Janet found their way up the cold little staircase to the room where the cold little models were, and they sat there looking down on to the green trees of the Park that, hushed by the March wind down into the dusk of the afternoon, were shaking their feathers and preparing for sleep.

'. . . because,' Janet was saying, 'he never pressed me to buy a thing, which you'll admit, Wildherne, is very unusual. Indeed, he would have hindered my buying anything had I wished. But I could not have wished, because everything was so expensive.'

'And he talked philosophy to you?'

'Well, if you call it philosophy. Nothing very new, at any rate.'

'And his point was--?'

'His point was that there are two lots of people, the lot who believe in the things they see and the lot who believe in the things they don't see.'

'And he was of the second lot?'

'He was of the second lot.'

'Did he want to sell you something he couldn't see?'

'Not to sell me. To give me.'

'And did he give it to you?'

'My dear, I don't know. In any case I suppose I took it without asking him, a lovely rose-coloured bowl.'

'Can I see it?'

'I don't know. It depends how our marriage goes.'

She jumped up. 'Oh, Wildherne, what nonsense we're talking! Or are we? I don't know. In any case we've little time and much to settle. Or is everything settled?'

'Everything? What?'

'Bridesmaids and their dresses, thankings for wedding presents, best man, going-away clothes, and "I think, Miss Grandison, that a little looser in the sleeves--just the leetlest--" I've been engaged in such things for weeks. No, it's something else that we must talk about here. Wildherne, I've been nearly as nothing running away.'

He did not seem disturbed.

'So I expected after our party. I knew that Rosalind would urge you. She did, didn't she?'

'Yes, she did.'

'Why was she so cross last night? We all tried to be nice to her.'

'Your sort aren't her sort.' Janet sat down beside him again. 'It's no use. I ought to have seen it long ago. Oh, Wildherne, I'm going to lose her! I'm going to lose her! Oh, what shall I do? I must keep her--I must--I must.'

She began to cry, she who never cried. The strain of the last weeks, the multitudinous movements that she seemed, by her own action, so unexpectedly to have started, the sense of her responsibility, the dim feeling that she was unjust and unfair to those she loved, all this broke down her discipline. He put his arm around her as a brother might have done.

'Listen, Janet, dear. Don't cry or, if it helps you, cry, but don't feel desperate about this. You haven't learnt to trust me yet, but you can, indeed you can. We are both, I think, shy people, and we haven't learnt yet to depend upon one another. And remember when we first determined on this we saw only the big issue. Now that we have gone further we see more in detail. I suspect that everyone is frightened before marriage, and just because we have been honest with one another we are not blinded by any evasions. . . . But the big thing remains. We are going to marry because we mean to make something fine out of our lives, for others besides ourselves. No big thing was ever taken on by anybody without big difficulties. But while we are true to one another and see something also beyond ourselves and our own happiness, all is well, no one can touch us.'

'Well for ourselves, perhaps.' Janet dried her eyes. 'But for others. Who will look after Rosalind when I have you?'

'But you will be there to look after her.'

'Not if she won't come near me. And as it is, she is keeping everything from me.'

'What things?'

'Do you know a man called Ravage, Charles Ravage?'

'Yes, a little. Rather an outsider.'

'She's a great friend of his. Apparently she goes about with him everywhere. She has never so much as mentioned his name to me.'

'Of course she has her own friends.' He took her hand and closed his over it. 'She's different from us, from you and me. We are older, staider, more old-fashioned. She can't lead our life, of course, but we can show her that we care for her and are there to help her. If we try to tie her in, of course she will be off. But we needn't do that. She's not a baby. She knows life. Every modern girl of her kind can look after herself if she wants to, and Rosalind is fundamentally decent. She doesn't like me at present, but she will perhaps when she knows me a little better. Janet, I expect you've been fussing her a trifle. You've been living too close to her.'

Janet sighed. 'Yes, perhaps I have. Wildherne, I'm not very wise. I seem to know so little about people. And I'm not sure enough of myself. If someone dislikes me, I think they're right and take their view of myself. Caroline Marsh, for instance. She hates me.'

Wildherne laughed. 'Caroline Marsh! Is that worrying you? Well, really, Janet. I wouldn't have believed it of you. If she does dislike you, which I don't suppose is true for a moment, what does it matter?'

'But it does matter. She's going to be part of my life now.'

'Caroline Marsh part of your life? Not if I know it!'

'Well, your mother is, and she's part of hers.'

He put his arm around her again.

'Janet, dear, now be sensible. You've got stage fright, and I don't wonder. If you were alone in this there'd be some justification, but you're not alone in it and never will be again. We are together in this--and everything else.'

'In some things, but not in everything.' She spoke rapidly, looking down at the floor. 'I want to tell you everything that's in my mind this afternoon. I feel as though in some way or another it is my last chance. Are we perhaps wrong after all, Wildherne, to take up this thing when--when you're in love with somebody else? Won't that make it after all something too difficult for us to manage?'

'I'm glad you've spoken about that,' he said quietly. 'I was going to tell you in any case. I went the other afternoon and said good-bye to her--finally.'

'Oh, don't think,' Janet broke in eagerly, 'that I'm going back on my word. I said I would accept that. You can't kill your love for her, and I would not, except that I think it makes you unhappy and can lead to no good end. But I'm realising now, as I didn't at first, that as we grow closer to one another, even though it's only as friends, the thought of her will be more difficult to me. I have discovered that, and I knew that I must tell you.'

He stayed quietly, thinking.

He said at last: 'I can't promise you that I will not love her any more. I think that could only be killed in me by some other great love. Janet,' he caught her hand again, 'if you give me a son! . . . Oh, if we have a boy!'

His face was irradiated with a smile so beautiful that Janet, looking at him, caught her breath. It transformed him. It made of his quiet, rather uninteresting features something so strong and buoyant that he seemed someone new to her. Had he that ecstasy, might she not--? She caught her breath again. There was not, and must not be, any thought of that love between them.

He went on: 'Janet, I will always be honest with you. I will tell you of my temptations, and if they are too much for me I will warn you. That is an oath between us.'

'Does she,' Janet asked, 'does she hate me?'

'Hate you? No! She doesn't care for me enough! And yet that struck her the other day. That you have something now that she has never had--my friendship.'

'That she never had?'

'No, we were never friends. We have never trusted one another, never strengthened one another--always weakened and disappointed and estranged. That is what some love can do.'

Janet stared about the room, slowly filling with dusk. 'I have never known love like that,' she said slowly. 'Just think, Wildherne, no one has ever loved me with passion, no one in all my life, man or woman. Well, I must do my best with friendship.'

She spoke against her intention with bitterness. It took her by surprise, as though someone had spoken those words for her. He put his arm around her and held her.

'Don't speak like that, Janet. Let's take on our adventure with glad hearts. After all, whether it is because we are old-fashioned or stupid, or whatever our reasons may be, we both believe in good things--we believe in our fathers who went before us and the England that they made. We believe, in spite of her faults and stupidities, that England is worthy of all love and devotion, and we believe that our class, in spite again of faults and stupidities, can do something for her by keeping what is good in that class and using it. And we believe in more. We believe in things unseen, and that life is a battle between good and evil, and that we can help one another to fight on the right side in that battle. These are things, Janet, bigger than our personal history. We may be making a mistake. We may spoil our lives by this. But it is worth the risk to try.'

Janet nodded. 'Rosalind would mock at you if she heard you,' she said. 'It is very old-fashioned to talk about good and evil. I'll do my best, Wildherne, I won't look back again. I'm with you in this whatever may come of it.'

They kissed. One of the old, old men, a voice in the shadow, whispered that it was time to go. Closing--

Going--going--gone. . . .

CHAPTER VIII

WEDDING

Mrs. Beddoes, charwoman to Janet and Rosalind, knew before she opened her eyes that it was a fine day for the wedding. Resting her hand gently upon the broad sickle-shaped back of Mr. Beddoes, she raised herself on her elbow and looked about her.

The touch of the warm rough stuff of Mr. Beddoes' nightshirt seemed to tell her that it was a fine day. Early hours as yet, of course, to be certain, but on a wet morning he would lie with the clothes all huddled about him, right up to his chin, and now there he was lying over on his side with the whole back part of him exposed, victim to any merry little draught that might come his way. He was a cautious man even in his sleep; you wouldn't get him lying like that did he not know there was sun in the air.

The little tinny clock downstairs chirruped seven. Five was Mrs. Beddoes' accustomed hour, but to-day, being the wedding, was a holiday. The wedding--her wedding--Mrs. Beddoes' wedding--one of the great days of all her life.

When that kind Miss Grandison had first suggested to her that she should be present at her wedding, Mrs. Beddoes had accepted it as one of that nice lady's ('a lady as is a lady') pleasant little jokes.

Present of course she would be, but present as she had been at many another (yes, she adored weddings), outside St. Margaret's near the railings, or facing the steps of St. George's, Hanover Square.

But no, there was that card propped up against the looking-glass as natural as natural:

THE DUKE AND DUCHESS

OF ROMNEY

REQUEST THE PLEASURE

OF THE COMPANY OF

Mrs. Beddoes

ON THE OCCASION

OF THE MARRIAGE OF

THEIR SON

WILDHERNE FRANCIS POOLE

TO

JANET

DAUGHTER OF THE LATE . . .

'The Duke and Duchess of Romney request the pleasure . . .'

Mrs. Beddoes at this point, had she been a charwoman in proper literary tradition, should have taken a gloomy view of social conditions, reflected painfully on ways and means, resented her husband's drunken habits, and sighed heavily. But she did nothing of the kind. She had no sense of social injustice at all, nor of injustice of any sort. She was a happy woman in spite of Beddoes' inability to keep his job (not through drunkenness, but rather through laziness). She did not feel that the world was an unjust place. She never pined to let birds out of their cages or to have a bath three times a week, nor was she tempted to steal her employers' silver, nor had she a fear of policemen. From her observation of situations in which she worked, it all seemed to her 'much of a muchness,' and it was as likely as not that you would be happier as a charwoman than as a duchess. Less cares, more freedom, fewer people bothering about what you did. She had a sore leg, and her charing frequently wearied her; on the other hand she had her cup of tea, her old man, and lying late in bed every Sunday morning.

What she did wish over and over was that Beddoes would allow her more of the bed. He was a large stout man, but, as she had told him again and again, there was no need for him to lie 'crossways.' She was for ever waking with the hard sharp edge of the bed pressing into her, and that gave her bad dreams, she couldn't but fancy. Nevertheless, he hadn't treated her so wrongly during these twenty years. He had never so much as winked at another woman. For this his laziness was in the main responsible. He was half asleep most of the time; but indeed she was fond of him--yes, she was. She dragged his head round now and gave him a kiss. She knew that it would take a great deal more than that to wake him. Then slowly, for fear of hurting her leg, always at its most feverish first thing in the morning, she got out of bed.

It was not until she was on the point of departure that he realised what she was about. He was sitting there, last Sunday's Lloyd's News on his knees. He was resting between two jobs. She stood there in her black bonnet, the locket with the hair of their child (Louis Allen died of croup aged four years six months) lying placidly on her bosom. She was wearing her black silk.

'Wot's up?' he asked.

She had told him over and over. She looked at him, broad and thick, his shirt open showing his hairy chest, his fat red face with the eyes half closed, his eyebrows like sand, his hair (what there was of it) like sand, his fat hands planted on his fat thighs. She loved him. Lord, how she loved him!

She came over and gave him a kiss.

'I've told you over and over. To-day's the wedding.'

'Wot wedding?' He pinched her stout arm in the sleepy animal way he had, then he scratched the bald part of his head, leaning back with all his weight, tipping the chair on to its two back legs, and then yawning hugely.

'There you are!' she said, pushing him forward. 'You'll 'ave that chair broke as surely as goodness! 'Ow often am I telling you, Louis . . .?' (Whenever she said his name, even to this day, it gave her a half-sensual, half-snobbish thrill, it was so foreign.) 'Why, the wedding. . . . My Miss Grandison as is going to marry the Marquis of Poole.'

'Well, she bloody well can marry him for all I care.' He felt vaguely in his pocket for his pipe. 'All the same, I don't see why you should lose a day's work for it. Any excuse for idleness with you women.'

'I'm going inside,' said Mrs. Beddoes huskily, the locket rising and falling tumultuously. 'Inside St. Margaret's.'

'Oh, you are, are you?' He seemed to be roused a little by that. 'And 'ow long before they shove you out again?'

'I've got my card.' She had shown it to him already a thousand times. 'I've as much right as the Prime Minister 'imself.'

Beddoes looked at her with admiration. He had always admired her from the moment of his first meeting her (in the gallery of the Old Tivoli Music Hall). Everything she did was admirable. And since the death of the boy he had loved her. He did not know that, and his love for her was not so strong and powerful that it forced him to do anything especial for her. But it was love nevertheless. He was proud of her, had tender feelings about her, was sometimes excited by her, and had the fright of his life once when she was ill in bed for a week.

He rose now, and, planting his legs wide apart, stretched himself as a cat might.

'Well, so long, old girl.' He caught her round the neck and kissed her. 'See you later.'

As she went on her way she was vaguely disappointed because he had not shown more curiosity. But he never did show curiosity about anything. It was not his way. Better that he should be like that than get excited and beat her as Fred Simpson beat Eliza or Will Faulks kicked Clara. Something shameful. Yes, she was one of the lucky ones, only her boots hurt her something cruel. It was fortunate that she didn't wear them on ordinary working days. Should she bus it? Why no, it was only down Shaftesbury Avenue, through the Circus, Haymarket, and Whitehall. No distance at all on a bright day like this.

She forgot her boots in the general splendour of the morning. There it was, striking eleven, and the wedding was at twelve. It was not often that she was in the streets at this gay and busy hour. She liked to see people happy, and gay and happy they all certainly were. What a difference a little bit of sun could make to everyone, and all the taxis--how could people afford them?--and half the steps not properly cleaned either!

But now she was passing the theatres, and was compelled to stop and look at the photographs clinging like barnacles to the theatre walls.

Pretty creatures! Her heart went out to them all. Pretty dears! And after all it wasn't real, all that fuss and unhappiness! Why, there was a young lady being pushed back on to a sofa and a young gentleman in evening dress threatening her with a revolver! And here, only a few yards away, were at least a dozen young women with almost nothing on dancing round a short fat man dressed for golfing! You certainly could pick and choose--that is, if you had any money to do it with.

But in no time at all she was standing waiting for Piccadilly Circus to allow her to cross. She did not pause nervously like a country cousin. She did not know it, but London belonged to her, Eros belonged to her, and the stout flower-women, and the omnibuses that plunged like elephants through the jungle of traffic, and the Criterion Theatre and the Pavilion--these all belonged to her, were of her family and she of theirs. When she moved quietly and with dignity on her way her world moved with her--London solemnly rose up and strayed after her, a family of children after their mother. Her thought was: 'Nice fine day. I'd like to ride on top of a bus.'

Passing the mighty buildings of Whitehall her heart gave a bound. That was where the War was made--right inside one of those grey buildings, and then inside again until you entered a room with a table in it, and then round this table several gentlemen, like the Hon. Fotheringay whose lady she used to char for, dressed in black tail-coats and top-hats, made the War. She didn't blame them. As she always said about the War, it was easy enough to criticise, but one thing led to another; that she had often found in her own affairs.

Her idea of it was that first one gentleman in a black coat had, feeling peevish in the morning, as so many gentlemen in black coats did, said something vexing to another gentleman in a black coat, and he'd answered back, and the first gentleman had said, 'I dare you!' and--there you were.

But although no one was to blame (except afterwards those dirty Germans sinking ships full of women and children without a word of warning), she did hope that it would never occur again.

She would never forget the way Lady Clara Manning cried one morning after getting a telegram, or Bessie Ford in the same house as herself when she lost her only boy, or poor Captain Frederick Somer, whose wife she still sometimes worked for, coming out of hospital with his sight gone and having to have his food cut up for him.

The thing was for everyone to keep their tempers and not act hasty, which surely they would do now they'd seen what the last time led to.

Then her heart almost stopped its beating. She was approaching St. Margaret's, and a crowd was already gathered there. Would she ever have the courage to mount those steps and pass beneath those doors? The line of red carpet seemed to rise and laugh at her. Had it been a wet day things would have been easier; everyone would have been under umbrellas. She could have just slipped in. But here with all this glittering sun and everyone staring. . . . She held the card tightly. After all it wasn't any good for people to look at her rudely and ask her questions. Miss Janet was her friend. Many's the time she'd talked to her just woman to woman, and many's the time she'd been grumpy enough answering Miss Janet back and saying to her quite sharply, 'Well, Miss, if you think I've got four pairs of 'ands.'

Oh no, they were friends all right, and Mrs. Beddoes had given her word that she'd be there, so be there she would be.

Her feet were on the red carpet. She felt a world of eyes upon her, but once she had started upward it was easy enough. There were gentlemen at the church door. She showed her card. In another moment she was inside the cool dark church.

There were, as yet, very few people present. A young man, most beautifully dressed and wearing a large white flower in his buttonhole, was walking up and down the centre aisle showing everyone where to go, but Mrs. Beddoes escaped him, slipping round to the left up a side aisle and then, quite collectedly, as though she had been doing this all her life, choosing a place where, obscure herself, she could see quite clearly the altar steps and choir.

She settled down, put her hand over her face for a moment and said a prayer, gave a little pull to her bonnet and a jerk to her jacket, and then breathed freely.

She had a sudden dangerous impulse to shed tears. Churches always made her feel like that. They caused her to remember her childhood, and her little brother who had been killed by an omnibus, and her mother who had died of a decline after being beaten by her third husband one evening after a party. She loved to think of sad things, and that was why she liked churches. Why, also, she liked weddings, because if weddings weren't sad, what were? A funny thing when you came to think of it that funerals generally ended in a lot of drink and laughter, and weddings in tears and a sense of disappointment. Funerals were more definite somehow.

The church was looking beautiful, the lovely glass of the windows, the shining gold of some of the brasses, and then the flowers! Such flowers! A pretty penny they must have cost! To think of Miss Janet, who had lived as poor as anything with her sister in those three rooms, having all those flowers! That came of marrying a title. They'd all come up from the Duke's country place, she shouldn't wonder. She'd like Louis just to have had a sight of those flowers. If there was one thing he cared for it was flowers, and he'd stare into the flower-shop windows as any other husband would stare into a public-house. They made her feel a bit sleepy. Indeed, so tired was she after her work that whenever she sat down she felt a bit sleepy. Good thing for her the seat was so hard or she might have gone right off.

And now the people were beginning to come in! The church filled so quickly that it was as though they had all been waiting outside for the doors to open!

Mrs. Beddoes regarded them critically. The first thing that the women stood for was whether they'd be good mistresses. You could tell in a moment. Characteristics hidden from the rest of the world were revealed in a trice to Mrs. Beddoes.

There is an old game that people in more tranquil days were fond of playing, a game in which you gave your friends so many marks for their qualities. Eighteen, say, full marks--six for character, six for intelligence, six for physical attraction. In the same way Mrs. Beddoes gave the ladies who sat now on every side of her marks--six for good temper, six for hoity-toity, and six for being a Real Lady--and then something after that for paying wages promptly. She saw no one near her who received very high marks, but then they would be at their very worst at a wedding, pushing one another, chattering in loud voices, giggling and laughing--'like a lot of monkeys in a cage'--not as though they were in a church at all.

Mrs. Beddoes was especially indignant at a conversation of which she caught some fragments.

'But of course! Why, what do you think? Of course she knows.'

'Well, then, I call it disgusting!'

'My dear, you'd do the same if you hadn't a penny to bless yourself with and lived in a poky little flat--not getting any younger either.'

'. . . let him go . . .?'

'Not she. She'll hold on to him tighter than ever. She's that sort.'

'Oh no. Of course the Duchess is delighted. She's always been afraid that he'd pick up somebody who'd snap her fingers at her. But this Grandison girl is as meek as a mouse. She'll be swallowed by the family before she's finished the honeymoon.'

'The . . . Duke . . . like it.'

'Oh, the Duke? He's an old darling, but of course he knows nothing. Never has. He's too good for this naughty world, if you ask me.'

'. . . ---- . . . ----?'

'The sister? Oh, she's lovely! Oh no, really lovely. The prettiest girl in London. And knows it. She'll give some trouble before she's done. . . . Oh yes. . . . Didn't you know? . . . Charles Ravage. . . . She's everywhere with him. What people see in him. . . .'

At this moment Mrs. Beddoes turned right round and stared. Turning, she looked straight into the hard and glassy eyes of two beautiful ladies whose clothes were exquisite, lips very red and faces delightfully pale. They glared straight through Mrs. Beddoes, but their voices sank, and they had indeed little opportunity for further conversation because the crush became now most turbulent, and on every side ladies and gentlemen were forcing their way and urging that room should be made for them. The organ was playing, and everywhere now there was colour--pink and saffron and heliotrope, deep purple and palest cream, silky black and ivory white--and faces, faces bold and impudent, faces mild and shapeless like unsuccessful puddings, faces like birds, hawks and eagles and robins and vultures, faces like dogs, Pekinese and bull-terriers and an occasional Airedale, faces like teapots and doorknobs and candlesticks, faces like vegetables, cabbages and cauliflowers and turnips, and all of these faces lacking in something for beauty--the nose too large, the eyes too small, the mouth too straight, the forehead too low, but all of them, under the paint and the ambitions of the moment, human faces with something attractive, something pathetic, something lonely but endearing.

But Mrs. Beddoes was now in arms for her Miss Janet. That was the way in which they spoke of her? How dare they, not knowing her at all? She knew her, had seen her in every circumstance of daily life, had watched her joys and sorrows, struggles with finances, struggles with her sister, struggles with all the little worries that were just like all the little worries that Mrs. Beddoes herself was forced to encounter.

Mrs. Beddoes, as she looked now about the church packed and wedged with flesh and millinery, wished that she could find Miss Janet for a moment and put her arms round her and tell her not to mind--that everything came all right in the end.

But the moment was approaching. Dimly beyond the hats and hair she could see Lord Poole's back as he stood at the choir steps. A little rustle ran through the congregation. The bride was approaching.

A rustle like the wind through corn swept the church. Everyone pressed forward and sideways. Janet Grandison on the Duke's arm came, under the gaze of them all, to do her duty.

At the sight of her--very tall and pale--Mrs. Beddoes choked. What you saw were her eyes, which glowed with just that same gentle kindliness that in ordinary day-by-day business they showed. She was a success because of them. Rosalind, following as a bridesmaid, so much more beautiful, was almost unnoticed. Janet was the success of the day, because everyone who saw her thought, 'She'd make a good friend if one's trouble became too bad. . . .' Everyone having, of course, that one special trouble.

But she was Mrs. Beddoes' property. The church and everything in it turned into soup for Mrs. Beddoes, because her eyes filled with tears. That kind Miss Janet! And so often that grumpy, reluctant Mrs. Beddoes! Now Miss Rosalind--she deserved as good as she got. Mrs. Beddoes was shedding no tears for her, nor would she when her wedding day came, haughty domineering thing, and all because her nose was straighter than some people's! But Miss Janet! Murmurs came from the choir steps. Something was going on. The church was hushed.

Dear, dear, the thing was done--only to be undone by an agony of complications and scandals. Miss Janet Grandison was the Marchioness of Poole.

Mrs. Beddoes settled herself more comfortably after that. Her heart ceased its thumping. While they were in the vestry signing the register she could look about her. Ah! there was the Duchess hurrying across the aisle, and the Bishop of London. . . . There were other faces recognised by Mrs. Beddoes because of the illustrated papers. Then she saw Lady Hermione Ispel, for whom she had, at many periods, done a little bit of work. Lady Hermione, in purple and gold, with her old face like an ivory mask and her eyebrows half a yard from where they used to be. A good old thing, always at her last penny and full of tips for the races: 'Now, my good soul'--that was what she used to call Mrs. Beddoes--'you tell your husband from me that Timothy Trot is a sure thing. If he's got a penny or two . . .' which was more than Lady Hermione ever had! Oh, the trouble of getting wages out of her!--blood out of a stone, as you might say--and the mess her flat was always in--playing-cards and cigarette ends, and those dolls that smart ladies stuck about their sofas, and liqueur glasses, and flowers done up in blue ribbon and all faded, and chocolate boxes. . . .

Hush! They were coming back. There she was on Lord Poole's arm! And didn't she look happy? Really she did, smiling at her friends as she passed down the church, stopping for an instant here and there. The church was soup for Mrs. Beddoes once again, and she saw Lord Poole spread out waveringly into an obscure haze.

A tear trickled down her cheek. Well, let it. Poor lamb! Little she knew! Mrs. Beddoes could tell her one or two things about marriage, and she, you might say, had been one of the lucky ones. Oh, would he be kind to her? Would he now? Men! You could never tell with men. Tired of things so quickly, and of women quickest of all. But then at the end, if you held on hard enough, they came back to you. At the beginning they wanted love, in the middle they wanted change, at the last they wanted a home, and if only drink didn't ruin them they always came back.

And now the scramble was beginning. Everyone was pushing to the door. What indecent behaviour, and in a church too! There was old Lady Hermione one of the worst. Mrs. Beddoes could hear her cackle above the rest, that funny voice like a jockey's!

Slowly Mrs. Beddoes went with the tide.

Slowly she faced the sun, the expectant crowd; slowly she slipped away between the cars, the policemen, and the little boys.

Slowly she realised her boots again.

She was tired, but it had been a marvellous occasion.

END OF PART I

PART II

JANET AND WILDHERNE

CHAPTER I

DOWN IN WILTSHIRE

Janet Poole looked up at the silver birch and caught without turning her head the pearl-grey shadow of the corner of the great house--the silver birch, the silver walls--should she pray to them for patience?

On the terrace on either side of her sat the Duchess, Miss Crabbage, and Caroline Marsh. The Duchess, Miss Crabbage, and Janet were in white, Miss Marsh in modest dove-grey. In the hot summer weather the silver birch moved its leaves very slightly, as though gently fanning itself.

'Therefore, Cecilia,' the Duchess said, not raising her eyes from her work (something very small in white silk), 'I think Wednesday will be the best day for Mr. Pomeroy.'

'Wednesday,' said Miss Crabbage; 'very good.'

Janet looked at the silver birch and said, 'I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid we shan't be able to have Mr. Pomeroy next week.'

Everything followed as she had known, for the last half-hour, that it would. The grey turban seemed very slightly to circulate as though it were spinning in the sun. That was merely the effect that the Duchess gave when she raised her little head from her work and said very gently:

'Why, Janet dear?'

'Only because Wildherne and I are not going to have anyone down here just yet. It's still our honeymoon, you know,' she ended, laughing. How she wished that her voice had not at that moment a little trembled!

'Mr. Pomeroy is hardly just anybody, dear,' the Duchess said, her little fingers busy again with her piece of silk. 'But it's of course for you to say. Then, Cecilia, we must go up on Tuesday. You must tell Hignett.'

'Tuesday afternoon the Blanchards are coming over,' said Miss Crabbage.

'Oh well, put them off. I shall be coming back--that is if dear Janet invites me.' The Duchess laughed, Janet laughed, Caroline Marsh smiled. The silver birch smiled.

Conversation went on, but the challenge had been flung down and accepted. Everyone knew it. Wintersmoon, overlooking so superbly the four ladies, also knew it.

Janet after a while went into the house. She passed through the long drawing-room, out through the high windows at the far end, down the upper terrace, along the green walk, through the little wood, and was free and safe sitting by herself in the little round temple that overlooked the pond with the water-lilies. Through all these she must pass to be free.

Sitting there, looking at the faint blue mirror of water on which the flat leaves lay like thin plates of jade, she was surprised to find that her whole body was trembling. The words re-echoed again and again:

'I'm afraid that we shan't be able to have Mr. Pomeroy.'

She had pulled Wildherne into it because he ought to be in it, because during these last weeks he had not been in it enough. Had she strength, even with his support behind her, to carry it through? There had been times again and again lately when she had been tempted simply to give it all up, to lie down and let them run everything--the Duchess, Miss Crabbage, and the rest. That abnegation was so easy. They would all be so kind to her, they would applaud so warmly her handsome recognition of the inevitable, everyone would be pleased. Indeed, had it not been for the House she must have surrendered. The coils within coils were too many, the machinery too vast and all-embracing. But the House was as strong as they, its roots went deeper than theirs. And the House (she knew it beyond any question) supported her. She would think, if ever she doubted, of the long high gallery with its odd tessellated floor of white and grey, its forty or fifty Purefoys, its windows with the view of the lawn, the lake, the clustering trees, and the thin line of Down beyond: all this supported her.

Supported her? Yes, but she needed something human. Rosalind was not here--and Wildherne? Even while she thought of him some stir made her look up and she found him standing there.

'Wildherne!' she cried.

He came and sat beside her.

'Yes,' he said. 'I wondered where you were.'

'I came here to think things out. I've told your mother that we can't have Mr. Pomeroy next week.'

He made the gesture that was now so familiar to her, pulling a lock of his hair, dragging it down over his forehead, then pushing it back again.

'We can't, can't we?' he said, laughing. 'Well, then, we can't.'

'It isn't as simple as that,' she replied. 'You know that it is not.'

They had been married now for five weeks, and the physical intimacy that marriage had brought them had given them an odd shyness of one another that they had not known while they were engaged. This shyness had come because they had both so thoroughly realised that in physical intimacy kindness was not enough. They had faced that possibility before marriage, but the actual realisation of the fact had made them more eager than before not to hurt one another, an added tenderness because each had denied the other something that should have been there. They could not help themselves. This absence had been an admitted part oftheir bargain: nevertheless they were farther from one another than they had been before marriage and desperately eager to deny that added distance. Honesty was not so easy as it had once been.

'Why isn't it simple?' Wildherne asked.

'Because it's rebellion,' Janet answered gravely.

'My mother never expected,' Wildherne said, 'that after my marriage she would have the same authority here as before.'

'Of course she expected it,' Janet answered abruptly. 'She has always expected it. That was why she was so pleased when you married me. She thought that I would do exactly as she wished.'

'She loves you very much,' Wildherne said.

'Yes, if I help in the Great Cause. But I can't. I don't believe in it.'

'And what is the Great Cause?' asked Wildherne.

In his voice there was the slightest touch of indulgence, even--her nerves already strained were eager to assure her--of patronage. She had noticed it before, and it had always irritated her.

'Wildherne, dear, I'm not a child. I know exactly what is happening.'

'And what is happening exactly?'

She moved away from him a little. 'You know that your mother is head, queen if you like, of a whole world. Mr. Pomeroy is her Prime Minister, Cecilia Crabbage her Home Secretary, Mr. Crawford her Minister of Foreign Affairs, and so on. Through her and her ministers, quietly, unobtrusively, a whole section of English life, social and religious, is moving. The organisation is immense. God is served: England is kept against Democracy, Bolshevism, America, Roman Catholicism, the Hun, Jazz, cocktails, immorality, and Christian Science. We are poor but strong. We recognise no element of modern evolution as anything but dangerous and of the Devil. There is no such thing as Time and Progress. There has been unfortunately a War, but we will disregard all consequences of it save those that help us back to where we were before the War. We are blind and deaf and dumb to everything that the so-called New World is concerned with. There is no New World. Vive l'Albert Memorial!'

She spoke bitterly. She rose and confronted him. 'There are splendid things in your mother, splendid elements in her world, but her world is not mine--not ours, if I am to believe in all that you said once you meant to do with our lives--yours and mine!'

'Why, Janet, you're angry!' he said, looking up at her with surprise. 'And you are talking like a Times leading article. If I believe in all that I once said . . .! But of course I do. I haven't changed in the least. I'm behind you in everything.'

She softened.

'We don't talk together as we did,' she said. 'We are alone so little. Do you know that your mother has been here for four weeks out of the five since we were married? And that Miss Crabbage has been here. And Caroline Marsh. And do you know that all the servants here, save only Mrs. Beddoes and Forster, do precisely what she says and never at all what I say? You must have noticed that during these weeks, but you have never said anything to me about it.'

'Yes, there I've been wrong,' he said. 'I've been so accustomed to my mother. . . .'

'Of course. But it is difficult for me, isn't it?'

'That can be put right in a moment. I think the best thing would be to have Hignett here. He is longing to come. He is never happy when he is away from me, as a matter of fact. And, oddly enough, he likes you.'

'Why oddly?' she asked, laughing.

'Because he doesn't care about women. He thinks them of no account--even my mother. He shall be our Major-Domo here, and he will serve you with a fidelity that will amaze you.'

'And your mother?'

'She can find someone else. As a matter of fact Mrs. Persis, the housekeeper at Halkin Street, and Hignett fight cat and dog--it will be much better to part them. The only thing will be father--he is greatly attached to Hignett.'

'He must come here more. Oh!' she sighed, 'I wish he were here for ever!'

'You love him so much?'

'More than anyone in the world save Rosalind,' Janet answered. 'He knows me in a way that you don't, Wildherne; he always has from the beginning.'

'Yes, I believe that's true. But it's easier for him.' He broke into a tone in which there was a curious note of passion. 'Janet--you're unhappy!'

'Sometimes,' she replied steadily. 'I miss Rosalind.'

'And then?' he asked her.

'I feel always that perhaps we have done a wicked thing, Wildherne. To have married without love. . . .'

'Look farther! Look farther!' he cried. 'Let's think of ourselves less and take our little troubles with a laugh. What does it matter if for a moment things need adjusting? We are both playing a longer game. And, Janet, you're my friend. I've never had a friend before. I find myself turning to you now at every step. I am always saying, "I must tell Janet that," or "Where's Janet?" or "Janet must know." That's new to me, and it's fine. If I am blind sometimes and slow to see how you are feeling it's because I've had so little practice in friendship. It's an art. You are teaching me. And, like every teacher, you must be patient.'

Her eyes glowed.

'Oh, Wildherne, when you talk like that I am with you again, at your side, everything is well, everything is possible! If I too am sometimes alarmed or lonely it is because this is new to me. You must be patient with me. And together--oh, together! What can't we do?'

With arms around one another, close, like lovers, they walked slowly up the soft sun-flecked path.

But, in this life of telephones, telegrams, and butchers' grisly bills, the big moments yield so speedily to the small ones. For Janet especially, who was moving now in a strange country, it seemed impossible to combine one phase of this life with another. At dinner on that same evening it seemed to her as though she was seated with human beings who were all strangers to her, who, also, were combined against her.

The dining-hall at Wintersmoon, with its quaintly carved Minstrels' Gallery, its Van Dyck of Sir Walter Purefoy, its torn flags from the Marlborough wars, its superb panelling, was one of the historic sights of England, but it was not an intimate dining-room for a small party of five human beings. The table at which they were sitting was like a boat adrift in a sea of oak and amber lit with the reflections from the candles (there was no electricity allowed at dinner).

Janet knew of a little room at the end of the Long Gallery that would be perfect for herself and Wildherne when the Duchess was gone, but meanwhile the Duchess was there. She was there forgetting, as she always did, her food in the interest of the many arrangements that must be made. Nor was she one to leave anything vague or undefined.

Any situation that arose must be settled and tabulated so that she might move swiftly on to the next one.

'Wildherne,' she said, smiling, 'I am going up to Halkin Street on Tuesday. I have to see Mr. Pomeroy, and Janet doesn't want him down here.'

'Well, mother dear, do what you have to do and come back quickly,' Wildherne answered cheerfully.

'I can't understand, Janet,' said the Duchess, 'what you've got against Mr. Pomeroy.'

'Got against him!' said Janet. 'But nothing, of course!'

'He wouldn't disturb you here in the least--you'd see nothing of him.'

'But I like him!' Janet said. 'Only I want to have some time alone here with Wildherne. I want to get to know the house, the people in the village.'

'Alone!' said the Duchess. 'Then you'd rather, dear, that just now I wasn't here?'

'For a week or two I want to be alone with Wildherne,' Janet repeated, her heart thumping, her hands tightened on her lap.

She knew enough already to be exactly aware that it was characteristic of the Duchess to have conducted this little campaign in the open. Anyone else would have fought her privately. Anyone else would have hated her. Janet knew that her mother-in-law admired and liked her.

'Well, that settles it,' said the Duchess. 'Cecilia, we are banished.'

'No, mother,' Wildherne broke in, 'of course not. You're welcome here as often as you can come--always and ever--save for these next weeks. Janet and I intend to be hermits. Do you realise the crowds of people who've come over lately? We've been invaded as though we were a Country Fair with the Fat Woman and the Man with Three Heads. Janet's right. We want this place alone to ourselves for a bit.'

The Duchess nodded her turban. 'You shall have it, and we'll none of us come back until we're sent for--shall we, Cecilia?'

Miss Crabbage smiled. 'The Duke will benefit. And it will be lovely at Purefoy in this weather.'

'Yes. We'll go down to Purefoy. And then we can get on with that Bankstead Crèche business.' She paused, then, looking up brightly, she asked, 'But how is it, Janet dear, that Rosalind hasn't been to see you yet?'

Again, in spite of herself, Janet's voice trembled as she answered:

'Rosalind's been so busy. She's been moving into a new flat. And I think that at present she is a little afraid of you. She fancies that you don't like her.'

'Afraid of me! Nonsense. Besides, Rosalind's afraid of no one. A look at her's enough to see that. But what an unpleasant person I seem! In the way here, a bully there! Am I a bully, Caroline? You ought to know, if any one does.'

Miss Marsh, drawn thus publicly on to the battle-ground, blushed and murmured, 'Why no, of course not, Lady Poole was joking--'

'But,' Janet broke in indignantly, 'that's unfair. You're all kinder than kind. Rosalind doesn't want to push herself in too soon, that's all. It's natural. She'll be here often enough.'

'Of course, dear,' the Duchess murmured. 'You must miss her after living so long together. I understand perfectly.'

She did. She understood everything. Janet was her sort. Perhaps, after all, it would be a case of allies rather than monarch and subject. Better, possibly, that way.

That night Janet wrote to her sister:

DARLING ROSALIND--I got your note this morning, and a note it truly was. Hadn't you time for more than that? And you tell one nothing. I seem to be for ever complaining, but for a week you hadn't written, and in a whole week in June in London surely something happens? News is news down here, you know. Seriously, soon you have got to visit us here. Not for the next three weeks, because after a most public battle I've driven the Duchess away on the score that Wildherne and I want to be alone, but at the beginning of July, even for a night.

Don't you miss me at all? Are you so gay and so busy that you never think of me? Whom are you seeing, what dances, what theatres? You tell me nothing, not even very much about the new flat.

What am I to do? If I preach to you, scold you, you are angry and push me away. Is pleading with you any good? It should be, because I believe in your heart you love me. You must. What have we been through everything together for if we are not to stay together to the end? Who cares for you as I do? I care for you too much, I know, and worry you with my affection, but, Rosalind, I'm hungry now for love. Something has happened to me, something in my heart. I can stand alone no longer. Wildherne is good to me and cares for me, but you must love me, Rosalind. Do what you will but love me--want me--need me. Perhaps I've made the greatest mistake of my life in what I have done, but I will carry it through as though it were my greatest success. That I swear. But you must stand beside me. Even though you find this new world of mine impossible, you must not find me impossible. Is all this incoherent? I dare say. But your letters are so short that I seem to be out of touch with you altogether. You must come down here. Get to know Wildherne. You will like him. He has magnificent things in him--things that you especially will admire. Good-night. I'm tired, and if this letter sounds cross it is only on the top. Underneath I love you, love you, darling. And I miss you horribly.--Your devoted sister,

JANET.       

Her letter written, she went to the high windows of her room, standing wide open on this lovely June night, and looked out. The purple sky set with frosted stars lay in a great cup between the trees of the park to the left and the high Wintersmoon woods. Clear in front of her rose the Downs, very gentle, lifting like a sigh, a murmur, in quiet acquiescence to the sweeping heights of air. All around her was the house. In the next room was Wildherne. At a moment he might come in to her. She wondered rather that he had not, after the little scene at dinner. It was like him, though, that he should not. There was a certain weakness in him that she well knew by now. He detested quarrels. He liked, when people could not agree, to find some point of agreement, suggest it to them, and then tell himself that they had agreed. At any rate he had given them the opportunity, and he would stay away until all was well again.

He was loyal to her, and he would defend her always, but he liked her better, she knew, when she did not force him to take a stand. That was why to-night she was lonely. She felt that there was no one upon whom she could rely. She missed desperately those little talks with Rosalind. Rosalind, who moved always with impulse, could yield herself generously and warmly when the mood was upon her. That mood was intermittent, but when it was there it had force and power. Wildherne had, as yet, no force. She had fancied that she would not need it. She had not known.

The beautiful silence was broken with little sounds, the whisper of a stream heard and then lost, the faint rustle of trees as the breeze rose and fell, the multitude of hushed voices of the night that could not be defined, that were secret, of their own world and apart.

All around her was the house, and in the night all the old life that the noisy day subdued had now its full existence.

She seemed as she stood there herself to reach back and touch countless strange and inchoate things and persons. The Elizabethan pageant, with the famous Wintersmoon Dwarf with the yellow ruff; Elizabeth herself, gaunt face and swearing tongue; colour, torches, flags, jewels, fountains playing, the Satyrs in the Long Walk leering down upon Elizabethan loves, the songs and the bawdy talk, the feast with the famous pie from whose heart silver birds rose singing into mid air, the minstrels in the gallery and the madrigals, the torturing of the kitchen boy by three drunken gentlemen of Elizabeth's Court who burnt out his tongue and snipped off his nose in the merriment of the moment, the marriage of Giles Purefoy to Eleanor Garden when the festivities lasted seven weeks and the Grey Hunchback of Wintersmoon appeared to seven astounded courtiers at the same moment, the Masque of 'Endymion' when twenty naked virgins bathed with twenty naked Elizabethan gentlemen in the lake where the statue of Pan still is, at five of a summer morning, and caused some (but not overmuch) scandal, Elizabeth herself flirting for her week's stay with young Geoffrey Purefoy, a boy of seventeen, and his splendid cloth of silver studded with rubies and his baby face and his ruined character. . . . So they came, crowding into that old room with its dark, panelled walls and silver mirrors and tapestry of Venus and Adonis. They pass, and for an instant the unhappy Monmouth, haggard of face, peeps through the door and vanishes; Godolphin takes his evening meal and rides on to London. The young Francis Poole, another Henry Esmond, lives here alone, walking melancholy about the paths and woods, and soon is deep in the plotting of '15. His face, shining through the still bright colours of his portrait, yet seemed to dominate the house, so wistful, so beautiful, so unhappy.

Janet to-night felt that unfortunate boy standing at her side. She knew every incident of his story, his life with the Jesuits, his return to Wintersmoon, his love for a girl in the village, Jane Woodley, the family rage, the illegitimate child and the girl's death in childbed, his own self-murder, hanging in the Wintersmoon woods on an icy snowy morning, that gentle patter of his bare feet down the Wintersmoon passages, the sigh and the faint closing of a door that was not there. . . .

As he vanished he was followed by the Twelfth Duke, that stout red-faced ruffian who in the last decade of the eighteenth century gave Wintersmoon a brief record for orgies that the old Hell-Fire Club could not have exceeded. Here dark colours stole upon the scene, hints of abnormalities and terrors, of villagers debauched and shamed, of the Regency rakes, and the last orgy ending in that duel at dawn when three rascally gentlemen (one of them the Twelfth Duke himself) vanished from this earthly scene to nobody's regret.

Then lighter colours again--Lady Arabella Purefoy, the Blue-stocking, with her published verses The Looking Glass, The Windows of Fashion, and her romance The Baron's Keep in the Horace Walpole manner; the village genius of a week in the Bloomfield style with his volume published by subscription, The Village Green; then the Fourteenth Duke, also of a literary mind, corresponding with Southey about 'Roderick' and going to London to hear Hazlitt lecture; Thackeray's visit to Wintersmoon (and who knows how much the pages of Esmond owe to that visit?); the crinolines of the Purefoy ladies, and the great dance given for the coming of age of the Fourteenth Duke, the present Duke's father, and the appearance once again of the kindly Hunchback sitting cross-wise with his little yellow dog at his side in the moonlight on the Wintersmoon lawn. . . .

And now? Janet turned from the window with a shiver. She was to become part of this tradition. And what part? Had it been only fancy on her side that the House loved her? Had she strength and character sufficient to turn this adventure of hers into success, even triumph? Success for herself and Wildherne and the Duke, success for Wintersmoon, success even for England?

She lay in bed, looking out to the stars, praying to what God she knew not, but praying.

Was there someone in the room? Was that young Francis Poole smiling good-will? Was that the Twelfth Duke with his little pigs' eyes, his bloated cheeks, his sensual lurch? Was that, dim by the window, Arabella with her horse face and mildly intelligent gaze?

Before their questioning Janet sank down, down, and as she sank her last vision was of the little turban-headed Duchess and Mr. Pomeroy showing her gravely her proper seat in his church, somewhere at the back among his poorer parishioners, the ones who, alas, could not subscribe as they would to his splendid financial efforts.

CHAPTER II

UP AMONG THE BACHELORS

There is an hour in St. James's and the summer when the guardian saint of all bachelors takes his evening walk. It is the hour when he can observe most pleasantly the happy doings of his devotees.

There is probably nothing pleasanter than this hour of the afternoon when the sun has done his hardest work of the day and is tempted to linger lazily among the twisted chimney-pots, crooked roofs, and odd angles of Ryder Street and Duke Street, when the smoke from those same chimneys is coloured with a faint plum-shadowed purple, when the sparrows as they sit in somnolent rows on the telegraph wires find their feathers flecked with colour, and when errant scraps of paper scattering over the tiles in the afternoon breezes glow with a sort of tinsel iridescence very satisfying to their almost submerged vanities.

During this happy hour or two St. James's is pleasantly and complaisantly busy. Doors are for ever opening and shutting. Unlike the Piccadilly world at the top of the hill everything of the motor savage hinterland is here softened and advanced a step in civilisation. Horns that have shrieked outside the Royal Academy are hushed to gentility outside Christie's, and Princes of the Motor Blood Royal are contented to steal modestly from street to street once they are south of Jermyn Street. With this result, that in St. James's at this hour you hear everywhere human voices. There are still many streets and squares in London where the human voice can be heard (in Paris, New York, Rome, Berlin it has gone the way of other outmoded functions), but nowhere can it be more pleasantly heard than here in St. James's. Page-boys, valets (either thin, spare and sharp-nosed or stout, purple-veined and amiable), barbers, newsmen, dog-fanciers, racing touts, and the white-haired Prophet of a Newly Revealed Religion (he has a place always at a quarter to five of an afternoon at the corner of Ryder Street with his placard saying 'WATCH AND PRAY FOR THE LORD COMETH'), all these have their proper places and functions in this afternoon hour. They step, they stroll, they wander (all with the exception of the Prophet, who is stationary) from door to door. The public-house half down the hill in Duke Street knows them well: everyone in fact knows everyone and social amiability is extreme.

Within doors, in and out of these warrens of chambers, among these Master Bachelors, thousands of teas are taking place; at any rate, even though whisky and soda is the drink, the spirit of the hour is the Tea spirit.

Some of the Bachelors are having tea in ladies' houses--tea and coffee and macaroons--a kind of cake I much love--but many more are themselves entertaining ladies--or not even ladies, simply their own vulgar sex--or again not even that, simply their own vulgar selves. There is a sad amount of secret tea-tippling in St. James's just about this time.

And in the world outside, as the sun slowly falls with a glittering profusion of sparkle among the roofs and windows, what a life there is! Nobody is busy, and yet there is a perpetual stir. All the newspapers outside the newsvendors at the corner of Jermyn Street quiver with the information about racing, cricket, and horrid murder that they have to impart. The windows of the shops shining in the late sun glow with the pride of their eighteenth-century marines, their snuff-boxes, and their little figures of ivory and silver. The silversmith's at the corner of Ryder Street simply blazes with his chains and watches. There is a twitter of birds, a distant ringing of bells, a patter of footsteps, a cry rising from the heart of London, sharp and piercing, and then again, like a bell plunging into clear water, once more that melodious striking of the clocks, the intimate echo of a small country town hugging its own secure intimacy.

At this moment Charles Ravage was entertaining in his room two rather ancient gentlemen, one Mr. Felix Brun, and the other old Canary Proffet, who founded the Selemite Club in the 'sixties and has shaken hands since with more Titled Hands than anyone else in England.

'That,' thought Ravage, considering him gloomily, 'is your only distinction, and I wish you would gather your miserable thin shanks together and take your departure.'

Ravage had his rooms at the very back of one of the Ryder Street warrens, so much at the back that it seemed to hang on to the main building as though it had been slung out from the wall like a cage. To reach it you had first to satisfy the superior patronage of an elegant door-keeper, then tread dark red carpets (if you disdained the lift) up broad stairways between pots of ferns, all of the finest order--and then, in a flash of time, on reaching the third floor you were in a world of almost incredible shabbiness. Over the banisters of the fine staircase hung innumerable pantaloons waiting to be pressed, or resting, after that, for them, so attenuating process; little staircases like the entrances to mouse-traps appeared mysteriously, and while you examined them vanished; carpets dim with faded roses and emasculated sunflowers were worn so threadbare that every step was a danger. On chairs and shabby tables, among the clothes, cleaning bottles, and brushes, dishes with battered metal covers and plates greasy with fat showed that gentlemen had that day been lunching. Two cats mewed from door to door, their eyes flaming and twisted with the eternal expectation of miraculous fish-bones.

At the back of this disorder Charles Ravage lived in a mysterious silence. After stumbling over carpet holes and black little stairs and the dust-pans of itinerant maidservants, you came suddenly to his door. You entered, and at once there was such a silence as perhaps no other spot in London could provide. It was a silence as in the heart of deepest Africa (one can but imagine). It was a silence that had something of the impenetrability of a padded cell. You could whisper and be heard clearly from one end of the place to the other.

They were funny twisted rooms, four of them wriggling out of a narrow and dingy little hall. Not much view. From Ravage's bedroom, bathroom, and spare-room only chimney-pots, and from the sitting-room a slanting furtive glimpse of Ryder Street (with everyone falling apparently on to their noses). This sitting-room was bare save for a shabby sofa, four chairs, a table, and a bad and very large photograph of Niagara Falls. There was one bookcase with books carelessly heaped about it rather than on it.

The three men were not well assorted. Felix Brun knew Ravage too slightly and Ravage knew Canary Proffet too well. That bag of bones, elegantly attired in black stock, high white collar, black braided coat, grey trousers, and little shining shoes sat perched up on one of Ravage's uncomfortable chairs, clinging on with his thin bony fingers to a world that was swiftly abandoning him. In the Merry Days of Merry King Edward he had been a fine social figure. His gaunt body, with its staring protuberant eyes, might often be seen standing at social attention in those handsome groups of Edwardian house parties.

He was everywhere--so ubiquitous that he was said to have solved the secret of perpetual motion. He had a 'little place down in Hampshire,' two plain sisters as bony as himself, and the Selemite Club. This last was the success of his life. He had founded it in those old dark days when club life was anti-social and he had introduced certain innovations--tea on certain afternoons for ladies and true shower-baths; he gave afternoon parties there at which foreign dukes from places with names like Schwellenburg, Mecklenburg, Strelitz appeared, and, on occasions, certain minor Royalties. It was the time after Lily Langtry and after the Duchess of Wrexe, when educated Society was reading the novels of John Oliver Hobbes and raving about Pelléas et Mélisande.

That was Canary Proffet's period. His only one. The War had killed his world stone dead, as it had that of his friends old Absalom and Pretty Farquhar. Absalom and Farquhar had passed away under the shock of the change, but Canary was of sterner stuff and refused to pass away. He hung on anxiously with straitened means and a damaged liver. But so long as a duchess remained on the horizon he would be there waiting to be noticed.

Felix Brun surveyed this relic with serious attention. This London world seemed just now to be full of such relics, as the glittering sand is strewn with gleaming fish-bones. He had known so well the day when London was filled with Canary Proffets all exultant and important. A day never to return. Whatever was to be the future of this London world, there would be no room ever again for Canary Proffets. And yet who could tell? Might not Comrade XY 2343 be the Canary of 1965, wearing his red tie and Union badge with a super-traditional air and awaiting the gracious attention of the wife of the Minister of Public Works? It well might be.

Ravage, shabby, and listening indifferently to the talk of his guests, wished heartily that they would depart. What had induced him to invite old Brun he could not tell, but then he never deigned to discover the origin of his irrational impulses.

Someone was coming--Rosalind Grandison, in fact; and although, as usual, he did not care a damn what happened, nevertheless he would just as soon that these two old chatterers should totter away before her advent.

But Brun, as usual, was interested in the exposition of his own ideas, and took it for granted that, wherever he might be, he was wanted.

'This London of yours,' he was saying, 'intrigues me more than any of the old Londons ever did. You seem to have lost your spirits, all of you. On every side of me I hear and read nothing but complaints. Complaints of your Government, your morals, your workmen, your taxes . . . voilà. There never was such a country for abusing itself!'

Ravage yawned, staring darkly through the bones of old Canary into the thin walls of his rabbit warren.

'What would you have?' he said. 'It's all true enough. What they grandly call "England's Day" is over. And so is the day of everyone else. Thank God for it. Now the private life has its turn. . . .'

'But over! Over!' Brun cried excitedly. 'Where? How? Some few of you have lost your money and have learnt to work. Your women went to the War and there killed British hypocrisy. And thank God for that! But your national character--that does not change. Your policemen. . . . Mon Dieu, how I admire your policemen! And you grumble . . . because for the moment you pay high taxes and the papers discuss Birth Control! Birth Control? An admirable thing in this so overcrowded world.'

Old Proffet sighed.

'My dear fellow, honestly you don't know what you're talking about. Things are awful, positively awful. There's no reverence left for anything, I assure you. One's shoved about . . . why, it's too terrible. You should go in a Tube, my dear fellow. . . .'

'I do,' said Brun. 'Try the Paris Underground if you want to know what real democracy is. Besides, your governing classes are as strong as ever they were! Take a wedding like Lord Poole's and the Grandison girl a few weeks ago. There's your governing classes! In all their glory. And more active and alive than ever they were in the old Duchess of Wrexe's day. They have to do something to-day to keep themselves alive . . . and they do it!'

'Yes,' said Ravage sulkily. 'The women set up hat-shops, dance all night, play Bridge all the afternoon, and expect to make the thing pay. They smash, and some fool of a man pays the bill.'

'Yes,' said Brun eagerly. 'You, like your plays and your novels, are estimating the whole of English life by a small crowd of people who are as abnormal as they are unimportant. I, who speak to you, have watched those people. I have been to your Quadrant Club and The Pharisees and The Dandy Lion and the rest of it. And what do I see? Always the same young men and girls, the same six or seven old women--and even then how innocent! You English, when you are really depraved, play tennis and write memoirs of eighteenth-century politicians and grow roses in the country as you have always done. What is this immorality? The same as it has always been, only now you come more into the open. But not even now by half as much as you did before the reign of the good Queen Victoria. When will you see that that was a short interregnum of hypocrisy carried over from Protestant Germany? Your Queen was a great queen and the Church of England a great church. They have had their time, and it was short enough as history goes. But you speak of that period, all of you, as though it had covered the centuries. You have jumped back to your proper character--Eighteenth Century.'

Proffet sighed. 'My dear Brun, I remember you twenty, thirty years ago. You talked in the same way then. The Eighteenth Century was the time of English Gentlemen. The English Gentleman is dead.'

Ravage broke in. 'Yes, and a damned good thing too. English this, that, and the other. Too much of this English. Have another whisky, Proffet, and cheer up. I should have thought you'd be glad to have finished with some of your climbing up staircases and kissing the fat hands of ridiculous duchesses. You should be, seeing what a long life of it you've had.'

'Then England means nothing to you?' Brun asked. 'Its lovely country, rivers and hills and castles? I'm international, perhaps, but yet when I think of a place in Normandy I know my heart beats.'

'That's because you're never there,' Ravage answered. 'Our rivers and hills! Yes, and what about our climate, with its pretty fogs and its charming drizzle that lasts for months on end? My God!'

'And yet you live here,' Brun answered. 'I know your type, Ravage. There are millions here like you. You curse your country, but you love it; you despise it with your tongue, but in your heart you so deeply admire it and all that it does that your contempt for all other countries in comparison with it is unfathomable. You laugh at your fellow-countrymen, but you believe that there are none like them. You say that England's day is over, but she is for you the mistress of all the world, and you watch these changes going on around you with no doubt at all but that through them she will be greater than ever.'

'It may be,' said Ravage languidly. 'I've never thought about it.'

How bored he was with these old men! They carried the odour of the grave with them. He was waiting now for someone whose beauty and youth and freshness stirred him, in spite of his will, his cynicism, his selfishness, to some new bound of experience. Of what experience? He could not tell. He had waited for many months now on the edge of things, preferring it so. He believed that, with a wave of his hand, the merest gesture, he could take possession and enjoy at his will. But always then came satiety! With what remorseless swiftness! Perhaps, for once in his life, he would hold his hand.

Not that he was any ruthless Don Juan. In spite of his reputation the women in his life had been few. He did not attract them in the way that rumour supposed. And ideas were more to him, always, than human beings. Or, until now, they had been.

He regarded Proffet with lowering gaze. For twopence he would snap those bony members and rid the world of a pestilent old fool.

The telephone bell rang. He went to it. 'Yes, will you ask her to come up, please?'

'I must be getting along,' old Proffet mumbled. Then he waited. Through many years of social effort he had acquired the trick of pausing after he announced his departure because he expected then: 'Oh, must you go, Mr. Proffet? . . . Oh, if you must, won't you come to us on the twelfth, only one or two people, all friends. . . .'

It was true that that agreeable sequence, once so consistently regular, was now more honoured in the breach than the observance, but habit was habit.

On this occasion there was no sequence. Ravage, who was not noted for his manners, simply waited.

'Yes, I must move on. . . . I promised the Hartshorns. . . . Well, well . . . Yes. Have you heard about the Langrishes? Of course nobody thinks that the boy is his, and the whole of the Langrish property. . . .'

Brun also made a movement. 'Why do you allow your papers to wash your dirty linen so publicly?' he asked. 'I can't understand it. It isn't like you. Columns and columns of sexual abnormalities. . . .'

'Human nature, my dear Brun,' Proffet murmured. 'Only human nature. Skeletons, you know. Other people's skeletons. . . .'

The door opened.

'Miss Grandison,' someone announced.

Rosalind stood there, so young and lovely in her white clothes and shining health that the two old men were revenants from dead and dusty worlds. They did not feel that. They smiled with pleasure. They were as young and attractive as ever they had been, one look at Miss Grandison assured them.

'You know Miss Grandison, I think,' Ravage said with ill-concealed disgust.

The old men smiled, bowed. Then slowly, reluctantly they departed, convinced that Miss Grandison would wish them to have remained.

'Pheugh!' Ravage threw the windows yet wider open. 'I'm sorry, Rosalind. I did my best to get rid of them. To banish Canary Proffet is harder than keeping a bank balance. Never mind. They'll soon be dead.'

But Rosalind could never think of more than one thing at a time. The old men were nothing to her.

'Charles,' she said, 'I wish I hadn't come. I'm out of mood to-day. I shall lose my temper, you will lose yours. I shall leave abruptly and so--one more day wasted.'

'What's the matter?' he asked her. She was lovely. White and gold against his shabby, faded sofa cushions. Her colour and grace and form were so delicate that he could not believe in their reality. He was moved by beauty only when it touched his imagination more than his senses: he always felt the power of beauty most when physically he was not regarding it, but Rosalind had for him this especial quality that she was more imaginatively beautiful than actually, although the Lord knew she was actually beautiful enough.

'I've had a complaining letter from Janet,' she said. 'I ought to go to her, and I don't want to.'

'Why don't you want to go?' he asked, watching her.

'The depths of Wiltshire,' she answered. 'Old house half shut up, woods, ponds, peacocks, Salisbury Plain in the distance. And then I don't like Wildherne Poole, and he doesn't like me. I'm being disgustingly selfish. I adore Janet. I'm a pig.'

'Of course you're selfish,' Ravage answered. 'You're one of the most selfish people I know. Certainly you ought to go. Your sister has done everything for you.'

She looked up at him inquisitively. 'Why do I spend so much of my time with you, Charles?' she asked. 'I'm not in love with you. I don't even very much like you. Everyone thinks that I'm another of your victims. That's what distresses Janet so.'

'We have something strangely in common,' he answered. 'Or we seem to have. Whether we should have after we'd lived together for a while I don't know. You're the only real companion I've ever had.'

'That's what Wildherne says about Janet,' Rosalind answered. 'Janet takes it as a compliment. I don't. Besides, I don't think it's true. I'm too much frightened of you to be a good companion.'

'Frightened?' he asked. 'Are you?'

'Yes, of course. You've always known it.'

'I would wish you not to be. There's nothing of me to be frightened of. Except my absurd reputation, which really does me altogether too much honour.'

'Well,' she said, speaking quickly and nervously, 'I've come to tell you something. I think I'm going to be engaged to Tom Seddon.'

He neither moved nor spoke.

'Why don't you say something?'

'What am I to say?' he answered quietly. 'What you are going to do, you are going to do.'

'And that's the end to our friendship,' she went on.

'If you wish it--certainly,' he answered. She coloured angrily.

'Ah, you always provoke me so with your pretended passivity!' she cried. 'You think it's the grand manner, I suppose. I wanted your opinion. But if you have none--well, I'd better be going!'

She got up.

'What kind of opinion do you expect me to have?' he asked her. 'You know before I tell you. I never heard of anything more foolish, but--if it seems wise to you--do it!'

She sat down again.

'Foolish? And why?'

'You know what he is and you know what you yourself are. He is a boy with silly idealistic ideas. He is all enthusiasm and expectation. You are never enthusiastic and only expect things for yourself, never for people in general. He is in love with you, which bores you. He will remain in love with you because you don't love him, which will bore you still more. You detest his revered and widowed mother.'

But she answered gravely:

'You don't know him at all. He is more interesting than you think. Perhaps he will do great things one day. And then he is safe. I shall know exactly where I am. With you and in this life I'm now leading I don't know where I am at all. And dear Janet will be delighted.'

He laughed.

'You love your sister enough to sacrifice your whole life to her, but not enough to go and visit her for a few days in the country. . . . Well, if that's the way you see things, I'm not the one to stop you.'

She beckoned him towards the sofa. 'Come and sit down near me, Charles, and help me a little. You are the wisest person I know. Yes, whatever else you are, you are that. I want to climb out of this selfish, grabbing, ugly life I've been leading for months. Tom Seddon would help me there. Of course I'm not in love with him. I sometimes think that in spite of what I said just now you're the only human being I could ever be in love with. Don't we both know that one day that might happen, and haven't we both been holding back for months, and isn't there something wrong about us both that we can be so cold-blooded about a thing like this for so long?'

Her questions came out a little breathlessly. He came and sat down, near her but not touching her.

'Do you want me to make love to you?' he asked. 'I could very easily.'

'No.' She drew back a little. 'No, never! How unhappy we should be! So soon over and then hatred, disgust!' She shivered a little. 'We are a poor breed, Charles, beside Janet--and Wildherne, perhaps. We are cleverer--and smaller.'

'I deny that,' he said lightly. 'It is easier for them because they are old-fashioned. They believe in things that seem to us childish.'

'For instance?' she asked.

'A benign deity, eternal love, the essential decency of humanity, England's destiny. . . .'

She looked up at him as he crouched in the corner of the sofa, huddled, his thin knees perked up towards his chin.

'Do you believe in nothing, then?'

He stared across the room.

'I don't know. I keep an open mind. But when you come to it, what have our generation left to them to believe in? A God? A first cause? At any rate not benign. Eternal love? We have reduced love to chemical equations. Essential decency of humanity? After the War? No, thank you. England's destiny? The words are so old-fashioned that they make one think of wax flowers under glass. There remains oneself. Also a chemical equation. . . . And yet. . . .'

'And yet?' she asked him.

'Yes. That's the devil of it!' he broke out, jumping off the sofa and beginning to pace the room. 'That remains. One can't get rid of it. Or I can't. And you can't. Our resolve is to strip ourselves of all nonsense. But the nonsense remains.'

He stood close to her, staring at her. 'If I were to begin to make love to you, here and now, we should begin to believe in certain things--for a moment or two--certain beautiful things. And then--so quickly the disappointment! That's the matter with our modern kind. We can't stand the disillusion. We aren't brave enough to face it, and so we avoid, or laugh at, the things that produce it.'

He stood looking at her. He bent forward, put his hand on her throat, and very gently kissed her.

She said nothing.

She got up from the sofa, her hands, as he saw, trembling.

'I must go. . . . I have things to do. You shouldn't have done that, Charles. That isn't our kind of thing.'

'It may be--any time,' he answered huskily, looking at her.

'It mustn't be.' She took his hand, held it for a moment. 'Well, good-bye. I'll tell you what happens.'

But he didn't reply. He had turned his back to her and was standing at the farther end of the room.

She went out.

She was frightened. She stood for a moment in Ryder Street looking about her, but seeing nothing. She felt as though she had been close to some danger that most narrowly she had for the moment escaped. But only for a moment. The danger remained.

She had never, until now, been conscious of any peril, and it was for her a new emotion. The peril was within her. For the first time she distrusted her own strength.

As she moved up the hill London seemed to threaten her. The lovely evening was golden, suffused with that soft gentle light that is so especially English, that was lying now beyond the chimney-pots and pathways of the town, over fields and hedges, hedges dark with purple shadows, and flowers were scenting the air, streams softly running through the light with slumberous chatter, field animals gently stirring from shade to shade, and the moon somewhere cherry-coloured, horn-shaped, stealing over wood and hill.

But that gentleness nowhere touched her. She was angry at her own agitation, it was as though she were hurrying to some place or person that would give her security.

At the corner outside Fortnum and Mason's she paused bewildered, as though she had lost all sense of direction, then heard a gentle 'How are you, Miss Grandison?' and looking up saw the amiable features of John Beaminster.

She was delighted. She took his hand as though it were her only hope in a desperate world.

'Isn't it lovely weather?' he asked her.

'Yes,' she answered gratefully, as though he had done her some great courtesy. How charming he was! That sort of courteous kindness was the best thing in the world. As they moved towards the Green Park together she found herself chatting to him as though he were her dearest friend.

'And where have you been, and what have you been doing?' he asked her. He was delighted with her friendliness. She had always, he fancied, been impatient with him, thinking him a tiresome old fogey, burdening an overcrowded world with his presence.

And there was nothing he liked better than walking down Piccadilly on a fine evening with a beautiful girl. He had been to Hurlingham to see the polo: he told her about it.

'And how is your sister?' he asked her. 'Is she in London?'

'No, she's down at Wintersmoon.'

'Ah! that's a place I should like to see.'

'You must go down some time, Lord John. My sister would love to see you.'

'Yes,' he said. 'I don't really know Poole very well. I know his father better.'

'We'll go down together, shall we? And it must be in the summer. I'll admit to you frankly that I'm no good in the country in the winter. I don't hunt, and otherwise what is there to do?'

'No. Quite.' He smiled at her. How beautiful she was! Did he dare put in a word for his boy?

They were coming to Half Moon Street. He looked across the thundering tide of traffic.

'I cross here. I have rooms in 90 Piccadilly. Can I get you a taxi?'

'No, thank you. I shall walk to Hyde Park Corner.'

His heart thumping he said: 'Have you seen our young friend Tom Seddon lately?'

She looked at him, at the swinging strip of green flowing beneath the trees, at the pearl-grey buildings opposite. Here was a crisis. She knew it. She knew that with her next words something most critical would be decided. On the one side the safety, friendliness, assurance of that green sward lit now with a saffron glow, on the other that road with its plunging traffic, roar, and ruthless arrogance.

She looked at him, her eyes searching his.

'Tell him to come and see me, Lord John--39A Maypole Street--to ring me up. I want to see him.'

'I will.' The old man's face shone with happiness. He raised his hat and started across the street.

CHAPTER III

WINTERSMOON: MORNING--JANET AND WILDHERNE

Hignett, as the Wintersmoon clocks struck nine, stepped out of the long dining-room windows, stood on the terrace and surveyed the world.

This world was glittering and shining, dew-soaked, under the sun. Between the trees of the woods the light was a sparkling fire and on the long green surface of the lawns the sparks scattered from blade to blade. Birds, small and dark in the shining splendour, hopped from hunting-ground to hunting-ground. The great house spread fan-wise, clear and sharp against the faint white-blue of the morning sky. Smoke curled in spirals, still, unflecked by wind, heavenwards. The peacock stood at the far end of the terrace, at sight of Hignett spread his fan, then turned and strutted away, his greeting royally given.

Hignett sniffed the air, went back into the dining-room, saw that all was well, then passed into the hall and, with an air of abstraction as though in spite of himself he must be a philosopher, stroked the slumberous gong. The sound, very soft and musical, stole up the broad staircase and gently died away.

Hignett in fact, although his thick body showed no emotion, was well pleased with himself. He was pleased to be here with his master once more. He had no objection to Halkin Street, but living was only half living when he was separated from the one and only human being who, apart from his son, was of importance to him.

He would have been surprised had he ever thought of it, which he did not, at the indifference with which he regarded the rest of the world. There was his work and Lord Poole and his boy. Nothing more.

But, as he saw Lady Poole coming in from the garden, some faint interest stirred in him.

He had, in the beginning, disapproved of the marriage. No one could say whether jealousy lurked in that disapproval, but at least here, as it seemed to him, was a girl who was nobody, no money, no position, arrogating to herself the possession of the most perfect human being on God's earth. That was how he saw it.

But these last weeks at Wintersmoon had disturbed a little that superiority. No one could deny but that she was a charming lady. All the servants in the place knew it. She was mistress and friend, both relationships perfectly maintained. There was something, too, that appealed to Hignett's chivalry. She was a little lost, a little desolate, and for the first time in all his days Hignett questioned, ever so slightly, his master's conduct. This lady also recognised the quality of Hignett's devotion to his master. It was as though she had come to him, held out her hand to him and said: 'I think your loyalty and devotion to my husband one of the finest things I know.'

Hignett was one of those who, disdaining flattery, like their best points to be suitably recognised.

Finally, there was nothing too small for Lady Poole's attention. She never worried the servants, leaving everything that ought to be left to Hignett and Mrs. Craddock, the Wintersmoon housekeeper (a very submissive alternative to the housekeeper of Halkin Street), but she was aware of everything and cared that things should go well. The trouble, for instance, that she took over that old Mrs. Beddoes, who was sometimes at Halkin Street and sometimes at Wintersmoon and was never very useful anywhere because her feet hurt her and she had spasms! There was not a gardener's boy or kitchen-maid of whom Lady Poole was not aware, and always humanly aware, her heart being, say what you like, one of the largest. And Hignett, disdain the open avowal of it as he would, placed a value on hearts.

'Has Lord Poole come down, Hignett?'

'No, my lady.'

'Thank you. Aren't these flowers lovely?'

'Yes, my lady.'

'Just put them in that bowl for a moment. I'll arrange them myself afterwards.'

'Yes, my lady.'

'Oh, I think Mrs. Craddock knows. We shall be six for luncheon. Sir Arnold and Lady Burnett and a friend of theirs, a Mrs. Mark, are coming. They are motoring over from Salisbury.'

'Yes, my lady.'

Janet went on into the sun-drenched dining-room. She stood at the window, looking out. She should have been happy. She was not. She had now her desire. She and Wildherne were alone; but she was strange to-day. Something the matter. She was in a hysterical, emotional mood. Even now as she looked out on to the glorious garden her eyes filled with tears. She did not know why.

Her letters were on the table and there was one from Rosalind. She opened it eagerly and read:

DARLING JANET--Be happy. Last night I told Tom Seddon I would marry him. I am coming very soon to tell you all about it.--Your loving sister,

ROSALIND.       

Wildherne at that moment came in.

'Wildherne! What do you think? Rosalind is going to marry Tom Seddon after all! Isn't that splendid? Oh, I am glad! I am glad!'

He put his arms round her and kissed her. 'So am I. Delighted! That's the best news you could have. Tom Seddon's a capital fellow.'

Janet's face darkened. 'It's only Rachel. She won't like it. She can't bear Rosalind. But she doesn't know her. She hasn't had a chance of knowing her.'

'If Rosalind treats Tom well,' Wildherne said, 'it will be all right.'

The moment the words left his mouth he cursed himself for a fool. The idiot he was! And whence came it that always during these last days he was saying something to hurt her?

'You're never quite fair to Rosalind,' Janet said. 'You don't know her.'

'She hasn't given me much chance of knowing her,' Wildherne said brightly. 'She hasn't been down here since our marriage.'

'That's quite natural,' Janet replied, 'when she knows you don't like her.'

'Oh, come, Janet,' Wildherne answered, 'be fair. I'm ready to like her if she'll give me the chance.'

'I don't think you are,' Janet answered. 'You are prejudiced.'

Hignett was in the room and they were both aware of it.

The pause between them was vocal with irritation. Then Janet said:

'Oh, by the way, don't forget the Burnetts are coming over from Salisbury for luncheon. You like him, I know.'

'Yes. He's a good fellow.'

'And I'm interested too because they are bringing over an old friend of Rachel's, a Mrs. Mark. Rachel has often wanted us to meet. She was a Miss Trenchard and made rather a romantic marriage, eloping or something. Rachel says she's a dear.'

In her heart she was saying: 'Rosalind engaged to Tom. . . . Oh, I am glad! Am I? Isn't it dangerous! Why can't he be more sympathetic to me in this? He always hated Rosalind. . . . What's the matter with me this morning? I'm a bundle of nerves.'

Hignett had gone. She went and stood by the window. Wildherne came and put his hand on her shoulder.

'I'm sorry,' he said, 'if I seemed unsympathetic about Rosalind. I want to be a true friend to her, and mean to be, if you'll let me.'

'I know you do,' Janet said, turning round to him and smiling. 'I don't know what's the matter with me this morning. I'm nervous, disturbed--as though something were going to happen.' She laughed. 'I'll start about my household duties. That will set me right.'

If Janet was unhappy, so too that morning was Wildherne. Unhappy and burning with a strange fire. As he stood there in the library having his daily talk with Beresford the land-agent, a little bow-legged man with a face of brick-red, he could not tie his mind to the details of the interview. He answered so absent-mindedly that Beresford showed his surprise.

'Yes, it's no use, Beresford, this morning. . . . I have something on my mind. But there's nothing very urgent, is there?'

'No, only the Planter's Row Cottages and they're not really urgent. Only something must be done about them soon.'

'We'll have it out to-morrow morning, then.'

Beresford gone, Wildherne stayed in the middle of the room, his thoughts chaotic. What was the matter? He knew what was the matter. For the last three days he had known. He was being urged to take the next train up to London, and from London a taxi to Charles Street, then the lift, the ring of the bell, the little room with the dull bronze wall-paper and the Walter Sickert, and then. . . . He could see nothing but this. For nights and days (and especially nights) he had seen nothing but this. He had not wished for it, nay, rather he wished far otherwise. To be happy here and tranquil with Janet in perfect companionship, loving the house and the things to be done on the land and the English country. Happy and tranquil! But he was neither happy nor tranquil. This thing had driven down upon him like a hot wind, enveloping him, suffocating him with his desire. He must see her. He must see her. He must see her. Over and over again the words clanged and clanged in his brain.

Each morning he had hoped that on waking the desire would have died, but this morning it was yet fiercer and he was stilling it with that old plea for vicious pleasure that it must be satisfied to be quieted.

And after all, was he not honest with Janet? He had told her from the first how it would be, but as, in his heart, he heard the echo of this whisper he thought of her fine trusting gaze, her frank carriage as she stood beside him shoulder to shoulder--yes, she would accept it as part of the bargain, but how that acceptance would hurt her!

He was walking in the woods: they were black to him with a sort of fiery darkness. Even while he fought for all his decency he knew, as though he were watching the struggles of some other poor mortal, that he would yield.

He tried to fix his mind on Janet, on her goodness and kindliness and friendship, and he arranged round her his beloved English landscape with the Plain and the Downs and the lawns green at the foot of the house; but there was a dead star, its lights all out, cold under sculptural moonshine, and to his right did he but turn his head a whistling fiery planet of aching passionate need.

When he came from the wood he felt as though he were crawling, his head hanging. The battle, that he had never truly fought, was simply lost.

They met, therefore, over the commonplace bodies of the Burnetts. The Burnetts were stout and cheerful, laughing at everything, eating and drinking everything, on her side surprised at everything, on his, fine English avoidance of agitation. It seemed that he knew about horses and tomatoes, and she about Madeira (the island) and Church movements. She knew, for instance, all about Mr. Pomeroy.

But it was Mrs. Mark who interested Janet. She interested her in the first place because she was a friend of Rachel Seddon's, but secondly because she resembled in certain ways, Janet fancied, herself. This was a quiet, gentle, kindly woman with at first not much sign of personality and character. This was because she held herself quiet behind the torrents of Burnett chatter and laughter. Then Janet secured a word from her. They talked about Rachel and Tom. Katherine Mark had not heard of the engagement and was deeply interested.

'My husband,' she said, 'has always been so fond of Tom. Philip, now that he is in Parliament, can help Tom in some ways. And then they talk about books by the hour.'

Janet asked her whether she herself read a great deal, did she find time?

'Well, we are all in the middle of it, you see,' Katherine Mark answered. 'My sister Millie married a novelist, and my only brother, Henry, is a novelist. With us novelists are as common as peas.'

'What is the name of your brother-in-law?' Janet asked her.

'Westcott, Peter Westcott. I expect you have read some of his novels. Reuben Hallard is the name of his most famous one, although he wrote it years ago.'

Of course Janet had read some of them. How interesting to know authors, to live in such an exciting world where people were really doing things! I am afraid that Janet said all the commonplace things.

'Well, no,' said Katherine Mark, laughing. 'I don't know that it's very interesting. I don't think that it's more valuable to create a mediocre novel than to create a bunch of fine tomatoes in your greenhouse--not so valuable. Peter writes good novels, though, and is a dear besides--but Henry! I'm afraid Henry's two productions are nothing to be proud of. Perhaps he'll do better later on. And Millie, my sister, is much prouder of her baby than of all the books Peter has written.'

'It seems a wonderful world to me,' Janet said. 'Here we don't deal in anything so interesting as books.'

There was more bitterness in her voice than she had intended, and she knew that Katherine Mark was aware of it.

'I suppose we all envy one another,' Katherine Mark answered lightly. 'You'd be surprised if you knew how I've longed to see this marvellous house. Will you show it me after luncheon? Or perhaps you are tired of showing it to people.'

'No, indeed,' Janet answered, ashamed of her depression. 'I love this house, every inch of it. I feel as though it belonged to me entirely and had never belonged to anyone before--especially mine--and that's pretty arrogant considering that I've only just been brought into it.'

'I understand that,' Katherine Mark answered, 'about places, I mean. We grew up in Cornwall, in a village with the charming name of Garth-in-Roselands, a large number of us, dozens of aunts and uncles. And I loved that old rambling house as I shall never love anywhere again. I haven't the courage to go back and see it, especially as I ran away with my husband from there, and I don't think it has ever forgiven me. Places are more alive than many people.'

Meanwhile Janet was increasingly conscious of Wildherne. It seemed that even though people did not love one another it was possible, if they lived much together, to mingle spiritually--not in harmony but rather in discord--and so be bound together for ever afterwards in a dreadful jangling relation. She was jangling with Wildherne to-day. She saw his fair hair, his fine clear-cut nose, mouth and chin, heard his courteous, rather boyish voice with nothing but irritation.

What was the matter with her to-day? She seemed not to recognise herself. The real Janet was absent, and here was someone discontented, peevish, and, above all, uneasy with some undefined alarm.

Luncheon was over. The house was to be displayed.

They started on the familiar ground. There was not much in the occupied part of the house to be shown--the staircase, some pictures, the water tower, the famous painting in the Long Gallery by an unknown artist--'The Dark Knight in Silver Armour'; but soon the heavy black door at the end of the Long Gallery closed behind them, they were in another world, a world of silence, shadow, and fading colour. As they stood there a moment before going on the shrill scream of the peacock came, penetrating the thick walls, through to them.

'You see,' Wildherne explained, 'the part of the house that we have left--the part we live in--has been rebuilt by the different dukes again and again, although the last one--my uncle--had the good taste to make it fit in with the older part of the house fairly well. But the part that we are in now is exactly the building that it was in James I.'s day, and some of the rest is Henry II., and a very little of it Anglo-Saxon. Many of the rooms, of course, are empty and deserted--we simply haven't been able to afford to keep them up, but Elizabeth's room with the famous Peacock bed, James I.'s chapel, and the three rooms of Aubrey Poole have been kept as they were. Aubrey Poole was Elizabethan, exquisite, euphuist, courtier. He was a sort of minor Leicester; there is a story of a kind of Amy Robsart here--her name was Lucy Tourneur--and if the tale has any truth, he poisoned her in these same rooms and her wailing ghost may be seen any night at midnight about this very passage.'

Lady Burnett shivered, and then in her hearty, cheerful voice cried: 'Aren't these old stories too terrible? That brocade there, Lord Poole, must be worth a pretty penny.'

But Aubrey Poole's bedchamber hung with tapestry of grey and gold was exquisite. They all stood silent there. The small latticed windows looked out on to a little lawn of bright green bordered on one side by a thick hedge carved with the heads of birds and two grinning unicorns. The four-poster bed had hangings of cherry colour. On a chair was a lute, and hanging on the wall facing the windows Aubrey's portrait, a pale lantern-jawed young man in cloth of silver.

Wildherne stepped out of the room and found that for the moment he was alone with Janet.

'Janet,' he said, 'I've got to go up to town to-night. I shall be back by mid-day to-morrow. I've told Hignett.'

He had tried to speak quite easily, but at once he knew that she was aware of everything. They looked at one another. She dropped her eyes.

'Right,' she answered. 'Don't hurry back. Send me a wire if you're kept.'

'Oh no,' he said, 'nothing will keep me.'

They turned back to the others. They went on to James's chapel.

'Have you seen a ghost here yet, Lady Poole?' Lady Burnett asked.

'Oh no,' Janet answered. 'I don't think I'm the kind of person to see ghosts. I'm too matter-of-fact.'

'Well, I'm matter-of-fact enough,' said Lady Burnett cheerfully, 'and I saw a ghost once. It was when we were staying at Poulteney Burrow with the Mannings. There's an old passage at Poulteney . . .' The story went cheerfully on. Janet heard none of it. Well, what had she to complain of? Had not this been always part of their bargain? Was he not free? Had not this very moment always been expected by her? And yet how it hurt! How desperately it hurt! Was it her pride? Was it her heart? Was it her pride in him or in herself? Was it her heart or his? Was it something maternal in her that longed to put her arms around him, as a mother her child, and to hold him back from something that would soil and hurt him? And what was this anger and indignation? What right had she to be either angry or indignant? She could analyse nothing. She was in a whirl of agitation and dismay. If he left her thus so soon after their marriage, and then, as the months passed, increasingly, what remained for her? What was this strange yearning desire that at this instant she felt, to hold him, to put her arms around him, and, with that, anger so that, had they been alone, she could have attacked him, abused him? But what right had she? No right. . . . Nothing. . . . No hold on anyone. . . .

An odd feeling of faintness overcame her. She stayed behind in the dark light of the passage outside the chapel. She stood back against the wall, her hand over her eyes. Mrs. Mark was there.

'Lady Poole, aren't you well?' Her gentle voice was like that of an old friend.

'Oh yes, thank you,' Janet answered, smiling. 'There's something stuffy about this part of the house, isn't there? Don't you feel it yourself?'

'Shan't we go back?' Mrs. Mark said. 'Show me a little of the garden. I love gardens so.'

'Yes; if you like,' Janet replied. She went into the chapel.

'Wildherne,' she said, 'Mrs. Mark and I are going round the gardens for half an hour. Don't keep Lady Burnett too long in this dusty air, will you?'

She looked up at him, smiling. He caught her hand for a moment in his.

'No, dear. We won't be long.'

She went back with Mrs. Mark. She knew what he had meant by that touch of the hand, that look into her eyes. It was as though he had said: 'Don't judge me too hardly. This is too strong for me. Be patient.' She fancied that he had meant that, but was there not something contemptible in that appeal for pity? Her anger was rising with every step that brought her back into the other part of the house. She would rather that he had defied her, taking stand on his bargain. 'I told you that this would come. Well, why make such a fuss about it? Are we not modern husband and wife in a modern world? Have I pretended to love you?'

No, but if he had not loved her his arms had been round her, she had given him all that she could, she would perhaps bear him a child. . . . She was glad that Mrs. Mark was with her. That would help her pride, her poor pride that was so nearly breaking that, had she been alone with Wildherne, she might have thrown herself at his feet, begging him to stay with her, not to leave her alone when she had no one. Hating her self-pity, her head up, as they turned down the long drive towards the walled kitchen gardens, she said to Mrs. Mark:

'It's odd, but I feel as though I had known you a long time.'

'That happens, doesn't it?' Katherine Mark answered. 'Every once and again someone comes who seems at once to belong to one's life. I felt the same about you the moment I saw you. And then Rachel is a great link.'

'Yes. I wonder that we haven't met before. And now I hope that we will meet often. I am so seldom impulsive--not often enough. I enjoy the luxury of it when it comes.'

'The great thing,' Katherine Mark answered, 'is to be natural about it, isn't it? We like one another at first sight--why shouldn't we say so? We have something in common, I know.'

'Yes,' Janet said. 'I've heard of you so often from Rachel as Katherine. May I call you that? And will you call me Janet?'

'Of course,' Katherine replied quietly. 'I don't make friends very often. My sister Millie is the one for that. And after you've been married for a long time you're lazy.'

'I don't make friends very often either,' said Janet. 'All my life I've lived with my sister, and we were orphans and had very little money. Managing everything took up all one's time.'

'And now,' said Katherine. 'You have so much more to manage. It must be wonderful suddenly to have the opportunity to do so much. . . .'

'So much? I don't know,' Janet interrupted. 'I don't think I'm managing very well. It was easier once, I expect, but now these big places seem to have hardly the right to exist. The world has changed so. Everyone is attacking everything that this house stands for. And yet if it went there is nothing that quite takes its place. It stands for something very beautiful. It ought not to be destroyed. It ought to play its part in the new world. And that's what Wildherne and I--'

At those words she stopped. Wildherne and I! What mockery! She turned round to Katherine:

'Tell me . . . Did you find marriage difficult at first?'

They had come to the little temple where some weeks before Janet and Wildherne had had their talk. They sat there, looking down at the pool with the water-lilies.

'Yes,' said Katherine slowly. 'Everyone does, I suppose. Or, at least, not at first. When you are in love, as my husband and I were, nothing is difficult. But then there come the more prosaic days. Compromise is hard for some people; it wasn't hard for Philip while his romantic mood was on him, but one can't be romantic always, especially when one has to earn a living.'

'Didn't you make a runaway match or something of the kind? Tell me if I'm impertinent.'

'Of course you're not. Yes, that was all very unhappy. I was deeply attached to my mother, who was very strong-willed and determined. She was jealous of Philip, and I had to choose between her and Phil, and of course that made me very unhappy.'

'But your mother was reconciled afterwards?'

'No, never. She wouldn't even see me when she was dying.'

'Ah, that I can't understand!' Janet cried. 'That was selfish. That was wrong.'

'She thought I was traitorous,' Katherine answered. 'She thought Philip had dangerous ideas--he had lived for a long time in Russia--and would do me harm.'

'Is he very foreign, then?'

Katherine laughed. 'No, indeed. I'm afraid an English wife and English children have killed the Russian part of him altogether. Besides, the Russia that he knew and loved has gone now so completely.'

'In what way did you find marriage afterwards difficult? It will be a help to me, anything that you can tell me.'

'Well, Philip was ambitious--quite rightly so. He wanted to get on. He was clever and terribly hard-working. After a while his career was everything to him, and I think he forgot me a little. Then two children came, and I began to think more of them than of him. We really began to drift apart. Then one summer in the Lakes we had it all out. I said he cared only for his work, and he said I cared only for the children. We had a terrible quarrel, and in that quarrel found one another. We had never really known one another before. Since then we have been wonderfully happy.'

'Then you think that love can come through marriage?' Janet asked. 'Might two people marry without love, do you think, and find love later--perhaps a long while later?'

'There are so many sorts of love,' Katherine answered. 'I'm not clever about these things. Millie and Henry, my brother and sister, think they know all about it, but really they know very little; but Peter, Millie's husband, is the wisest man I ever met. Life has taught him. Love, he says, is unselfishness, and simply that. He thinks that you don't begin to love anyone until the other person is much more to you than you yourself are. That's a commonplace and a platitude, of course, but in actual working life I believe it to be entirely true. Most people seem to think that love is only grasping, getting something.'

'Yes. That's all very fine,' Janet answered. 'But you have to keep your own personality. You are somebody, you yourself. If we all surrendered ourselves it would simply mean that the Tramplers were always successful, and life would be horrible if the Tramplers had it all their own way.'

'Of course,' Katherine answered. 'But that isn't quite what I mean. In an odd fashion it seems that if you love someone or something enough to live in them or in it, your own personality grows and develops all the more. When you think of yourself you diminish; when you think of others you grow.'

'All my life,' Janet answered, 'I have done what you say. I have lived absolutely for my sister, given her everything, thought always of her. Now I think that I have done her only harm--and myself too. Now I want my own life. I want to be loved for myself. I want to play my part as myself, not as someone else's shadow. But no one cares whether I do or no. No one cares what I do. Perhaps I have sunk my own personality for so long in some other that I have none left. I'm a shadow, changing with the light of the sun.'

She rose.

'Let's go back to the house. I've spoken more personally to you than I meant, but you happened to catch me to-day rather at a crisis of my affairs, and you've been so kind to me that I let myself go.'

'You're unhappy,' Katherine said. 'I saw it at once.'

'Yes,' Janet answered, 'I'm unhappy. I'm on the edge of doing something very foolish. They don't want me here unless I do as they wish, unless I become part of their pattern. They were glad when I married my husband, because they thought I would fit in. Well, I don't intend to fit in. They must realise it.'

Katherine put her hand through Janet's arm.

'I'm older than you are. Perhaps I can help you a little as, in the old days, Rachel helped me. Our problems--yours now and my old one--are rather the same. But things work out. One worries oneself and tries to make life do the thing that one thinks it ought to do. That's never successful. Life has its own way of dealing with us. I've learnt better now how to be passive--not sluggish or lazy--but rather to try and make the best of each position as it arrives, not to try and force a square peg into a round hole. Of course I fail again and again, but I know what the right attitude is. There is something bigger, grander than ourselves, something that we must submit to.'

'I can't see it to-day. I'm sure that what you say is true, but it sounds to-day copy-book. You've been through your problems, I'm only starting on mine. I want something for myself. I've given and given and given. Now I'm out for myself.'

'Don't think of me as always copy-book,' Katherine answered, smiling. 'I'm myself so often rebellious that it's perhaps absurd that I should talk so primly. But although I live selfishly and rebelliously I know that what I've said is true. Millie is always laughing at me for my slowness when I think I'm as energetic as an active volcano, but that's because she's so much younger than I. And you are younger than she. I was never very young. I was dominated by my mother, as I've said, and then I had to act as her kind of lieutenant in the family. Then came Philip, then the children, so I've never had my own way as I would have liked--save just that once when I carried Philip off. When I saw you to-day I thought to myself, "That's what I would have liked to be--someone tall and grand, dominating, taking one's place at the head of things." And now you're not that at all. How little one knows of people!'

They stood for a moment under the shadow of the trees before advancing on to the brilliant, shining, sunlit lawn.

'You must be a friend of mine,' Janet said. 'You promise? I want a friend terribly.'

'Of course I will,' Katherine answered. 'If you'll have anyone as dowdy and ordinary for a friend.'

They mounted to the terrace, where the others were waiting for them.

Standing in the sharp light they were unreal, figures blown from glass in dazzling colours--Burnett purple-glazed, his wife a white sheen, Wildherne light grey, the colour of fair stonework.

Lady Burnett said: 'It fits in so well, Lady Poole. Lord Poole can catch the connection at Salisbury if he goes with us.'

'That's very kind of you, Lady Burnett,' Janet answered, and looked at Wildherne. She had not intended it, but her look was challenging and hostile, and as it met his eyes it hardened. She saw him as her enemy.

She did not see him again--nor indeed any of them. She stood there, spoke, smiled, waved her hand, but was automaton save to the house, which swooped down in great white folds, wave following wave. Then the walls stiffened, hardened even as her eyes had done, hemmed her in, coming closer and closer with the courtyards, the long dark passages, the little rooms with their latticed windows, the Twelfth Duke and the Fifth Duke, Aubrey Poole and Lucy Tourneur, the jesters, the pastry-cooks, and the boy whose tongue was cut out, dust rising on the deserted floors, tapestries tap-tapping against the cold stone of walls room-thick, the gay-nosed apothecary with his squint and love-philtre, and, last of all, the present Duchess with her train of sycophants. . . .

Well, what did it matter? She was alone in a vast silence. She stood there, on the terrace, her hand to her brow. The loneliness of this place was awful. Awful. Yes, she could not endure it. She had never bargained for this. Was she sick to-day? What moved in her so that she saw unnaturally, double-visioned, as they say men are before their death?

She turned and saw Hignett.

'I beg your pardon, my lady, but will you be alone for dinner to-night? Would you prefer it in your own room?'

Ridiculous man, final specimen of an obsolete tradition. Was he not a man with blood and bones and passions, and yet he stood there, thick, set-square, expressionless. If she pinched his stout arm would he not slap her face, and if he slapped her face would he not lose his job, become sottish in public-house piggeries, beat his wife and sell boot-laces? And all because she pinched his arm. She was tempted to try. How indignant the Peacock would be!

Then her eyes met his. She realised that he liked her: 'You can keep all your body in shape, Master Servant, save your eyes. . . . Your eyes betray you.'

'No, Hignett,' she said, 'I am going up to town also, I shall meet Lord Poole later in the evening. We shall probably come down together to-morrow morning.'

'Very well, my lady.'

'I shall want the small Daimler to take me to the 5.30. Tell Hawes. We shall both be back for luncheon to-morrow. There won't be anyone else unless Lord Poole brings someone down.'

'Very well, my lady.'

His eyes regarded hers. She thought that they said: 'You're troubled. I should like to help you. I know my master so much better than you do. One day I'll be of some use.'

She was being rather clever about eyes to-day. She went into the house.

She sat down and wrote:

DEAR WILDHERNE--If I'm not here when you get back it is only that I also went up to town for the night--to see Rosalind.

Don't be anxious. I'm not quite the thing to-day and the Peacock is noisy. I can't see the Peahen anywhere.--Yours,

JANET.     

She went out again on to the terrace. Hignett was just coming in.

'If by chance I should be kept a few hours longer in London,' she said, 'and Lord Poole returns before I do, will you let him have this note?'

'Yes, my lady.'

She paused before going in again. 'Do you miss London, Hignett? Don't you find it a little sleepy here?'

'No, my lady, I can't say that I do. I'm very partial to Wintersmoon myself. London isn't what it was.'

She stood looking about her.

'This is a very beautiful place.'

'Yes, my lady, one of the finest houses in England.'

'I'm glad you're here, Hignett. My husband can't get on without you.'

'Thank you, my lady. I would do anything for Lord Poole--or for you either, my lady.'

'Thank you, Hignett. I'm sure you would.'

She went up to her room.

CHAPTER IV

A CARNATION IN A SILVER BOTTLE

Wildherne Poole sat alone in a first-class carriage and stared in front of him. He was aware at first of nothing save that the railway carriage seemed of a burning heat, and of a sentence of Lady Burnett's: 'It was rash of me, considering how difficult it is nowadays to get a decent servant, but impertinence of course one can't stand. . . .'

Impertinence of course one can't stand. . . .

No, of course one cannot. One can't stand impertinence. But why had Janet looked at him like that? She had no right. Had it not been part of their bargain? Was he to go on for ever with passion unsatisfied, with the fiery heat of life banked down?

His hands clenched, his heart leapt to that coming moment, that moment when, having first gazed into her very heart, he would sink on to his knees beside her, abase his head, and then feel the soft gentle touch of her fingers against his forehead, the cool clasp as the hands closed about his eyes, the drawing of him upwards to her breast. He saw nothing but that; he had for three days seen nothing but that. That he must have. He was parched for it, his throat dry for it, his eyes burning for it.

It was not his fault that Janet stood on the other side of that fire, not his fault that, with all their intercourse together, passion had never come to either of them.

Friendship, comradeship. Fine things. Now as he stared in front of him they were as distant as the shadowy ice of the spectral Poles.

But Janet's eyes were there. He moved uneasily. What right had she to reproach him? They were modern men and women, and must learn, as other men and women were learning, to adapt marriage to modern needs.

He gave Janet something precious, something he had never given to any one before, friendship. He had told her, and had told her truly, that he had never known what friendship was before he knew her. That had made her happy. But he was healthy in all the vigour of his strength, and his body had needs that must be satisfied. In these days, thank God, we were frank about these things. But it was more than bodily passion. He loved Diana: he could not be absolutely without her. And Janet knew that. Diana also knew it. With an upward sweep of shame he saw her as she had said 'au revoir' that last time. Yes, she had known that he would return. . . .

He beat down his shame. He allowed the heat of his desire to lap him round. He bathed in it, staring into that room, seeing again and again that moment when he would sink on to his knees and feel her thin cool fingers draw his head upward. . . .

Somewhere, in some novel by some Scandinavian, he had read that a lover thought of his lady as 'a dark carnation in a silver bottle.' That was Diana to him, and not only Diana, but all the world of passion and desire. 'A dark carnation in a silver bottle.' That dark crimson glowing above the frosted silver. What had Janet to do with that? Why should he not leave her for a brief moment? Was he for ever to be tied to her and she to him? Was it not the power and glory of modern marriage that you were both free, tied only by mutual affection and understanding?

But the sense of shame swept upwards again. He wished to God that he had gone off without a word, just written a note for her. Why had she looked at him like that? She could not give him this. She knew that she could not. Well, then . . .

Was it his fault that their last weeks together had not been happy? Had he not done everything that he could for her? Perhaps he had made a ghastly blunder in marrying her. She would never be happy in his world. Was it his fault if she was, at times, lonely? Had he not warned her? Was he to blame if her sister was selfish and preferred her London life to the quiet Wintersmoon one? How was he to blame?

Shame still swept up as the wires beyond the window danced and rose. Far, far away, hidden beyond the vanishing landscape, a faint muffled cry tapped the window: 'Wildherne--Wildherne. Where are you? Hold back. I'm coming to you.'

The heat gathered round him. How he had missed Diana during these months! There was a room in Wintersmoon, empty, long deserted, where, as a small boy, he had gone once, escaping his governess, to play, and looking through the grimy window had seen into one of the kitchen pantries. On this same winter's afternoon it had chanced that, his nose pressed to the pane, he had caught sight of one of the grooms kissing and fondling one of the kitchen-maids--his first vision of that world. For years afterwards he had been haunted by the picture of the man, crimson-faced, pressing his lips into the girl's neck, her abandoned drooping form, the man's hands about her breasts. That small dusky room, quite naked, glowed always in his memory as though it were a blazing furnace of fire.

He was in that same room again now and Diana was with him. They two at last alone and together. The train, staggering and jolting, drew into London.

He found a porter and walked slowly towards the taxis.

For the rest of his life he would remember that moment--the summer's light filtering through the dusk and haze of the great station, the row of cabs huddled together like waiting cattle, the piled luggage and hurrying men and women, the shriek and blare and clatter of the traffic.

The cabman leant towards him: 'Where to, sir?'

Someone else spoke (he would always swear that it had not been his voice): 'Three Halkin Street.'

Halkin Street! What had come over him? Halkin Street! The cab was already leaving the station, and he sat there, stupid, like a drunken man. Halkin Street! He made a movement as though he would pull at the window that he might lean out and give the man another direction. His hand touched the window and fell back. Well, what did it matter? He would see his father for half an hour and then go on. But perhaps his father was down at Purefoy. Then, most strangely, someone, other than he, prayed: 'Let him be at Halkin Street! Let him be at Halkin Street!'

The cab had stopped before the familiar door and, a moment later, a meek-faced bony man (meagre substitute for Hignett) stood before him.

'West, is my father in?'

'Yes, my lord.'

He stood in the hall.

'Will you be sleeping here, my lord?'

'Yes--I don't know. Take my bag up to my room anyway. Is my mother here?'

'No, my lord, she's at Purefoy. His Grace goes down to-morrow.'

He crossed the hall to the library, opened the door, and then stood there, held by the familiar picture of his father, spectacles on the end of his nose, deep in the green leather chair, a huge tome on the reading-desk beside him.

'Father!'

The Duke looked up.

'Wildherne! But it can't be! You here? Anything the matter?'

'No, father.'

Wildherne crossed the room, put his hand on his father's firm shoulder.

'Are you staying the night?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'Lucky you caught me. I'm going down to Purefoy early to-morrow.'

'Yes. . . . Look here, father.' Wildherne's words came suddenly with a rush. 'You've got to dine with me to-night. Yes, we'll have a tip-top dinner and go to the theatre.'

The Duke sighed.

'What for? Dine with me here quietly. What have I to do with theatres at my age?' Then, looking at his son, he went on quietly: 'What's up, Wildherne? You're excited about something. Nothing wrong, is there?' Then more anxiously: 'Nothing wrong about Janet?'

'Nothing. Nothing. Only--don't think me an ass--I want you to look after me to-night. We'll dine at the Zoffany and go to a good show. I shall sleep in your dressing-room; haven't done that since I was a kid. . . . Do you mind?'

'Mind?' The Duke slowly and reluctantly closed the vast tome. Then he took his spectacles off his nose. Then he stood up and shook himself:

'Mind? No. If it pleases you. I'm honoured at the attention. What time do we dine?'

'About half-past seven, I should say.'

'It's half-past six now. I'll go up and dress. Sure Janet's all right?'

'Absolutely. I'm going down again to-morrow morning.'

They went out together arm-in-arm.

In his bedroom he undressed swiftly, as though his movements kept back his thoughts. Then, lying flat in his bath, his eyes staring at the ceiling with the faded Early Victorian cupids, some of that heat that had for three days invested him withdrew.

As he looked at his long body, shadowy pale against the gleaming white of the bath, he seemed after many hours to spring free of it. This flesh that he could hold between finger and thumb, this knee that as he raised it protruded white and bony out of the water like a sudden sea-monster, this wall of skin and bone, these thighs, ludicrous toes, fantastic stretching arms: was it these absurd phenomena that had during these last days subjected him to a kind of witchcraft?

Fantastic, indeed, these cracking, creaking, slipping bones, this heart hammering behind its wall! As he stood, naked, his legs apart, the towel stretched across his back, he seemed with that gesture to send the obscene spells that had held him in a misty cloud to the rose-bottomed cupids! He was free once more.

But he was not.

As the stiff crackling shirt enveloped his head, staring into that starchy imprisonment, he was aware that Diana had returned. When his head was free again, looking about him he would see Diana standing there looking at him with her queer indifferent smile. Ah, but if he did! What could he do but go to her, crush her against his heart, kiss her hair, eyes, mouth, hold her, hold her. . . . He looked desperately about the room.

What was this farce that he was playing? Why was he here? He had come to London to see Diana. What if he were a cad and a false man of no honour! He had come to London to see Diana. What was he doing here in Halkin Street? To spend a long evening with his father when he might be with Diana? To have that trouble with Janet and then never to have seen Diana at all? And would Janet believe him? Of course she would not.

But there was no reasoning in him. With trembling fingers he tied his tie; he would be off. He would tell his father that after all he would not disturb him. He should have his quiet evening. Sorry to disturb him. Sorry to disturb him.

In the long glass he could see now his body, clothed in black, its fair hair crowning it, its foolish shining toes, its stiff white bosom with one small pearl like a dead malevolent eye. Ah, but that was not the real body! The real body was Diana's--the fantastic limbs and bones and lumps of skin, these were for Diana. . . .

The door opened and the Duke was there looking the King of all the Sea Captains. 'Your father,' old Lady Anne once said to Wildherne, 'sailed with Drake and has never, in his heart, forgotten it. He's never been quite happy since.'

'Ready?' said the Duke.

Wildherne then realised that this stocky aristocratic adventurer had also some hold on his body, a hold as strong in its own way as Diana's was in hers.

Something physical. His instinct was to move towards his father, to put his hand on his shoulder. He liked to be near his father, and he knew that his father liked to be near him, and he knew too that because they were both Englishmen they were both shy of this. His father's power over him was strong, and his power over his father. He had a power over his father that his mother had not, and the power was partly physical; it was as though there was some secret bone that joined them. It was out of his mother's body that he had come, but it was to his father's body that he belonged.

He knew now why it was that, to the taxi-man at the station, he had said 'Halkin Street.'

Furthermore, as he looked at his father he was terribly proud of him. There was no man in England so fine in his bearing, so noble in glance of eye and carriage of head, so pure and true in colouring, in bone-shaping, in flash and turn of every feature. He should have ruled England had he had a wish. But he was more than that. His soul was finer than his body. As with all great men you could see that soul, gleaming like a shining fire behind the barricade of the imprisoning flesh. Dark heat within armoured strength. The dark carnation in its silver bottle again, but this time the colour of the flower was spirit, not body.

'Ready, then?' said the Duke again, looking at his son with pleasure.

'Yes,' said Wildherne. 'We've plenty of time. Is this an awful bore to you now? Not that I'm going to let you off it, all the same.'

'It's not a bore, it's a surprise,' said the Duke slowly. 'Do you know, Wildherne, this is the first time since you left Oxford you've suggested our having an evening together?'

'Well, I don't know that you've ever suggested it yourself.'

'No, I haven't. That's the truth. One gets in a groove.'

They stood in the hall waiting for a taxi.

'It's a wet night, your Grace,' said West, whose eagerness to please struggled against oppressive adenoids.

'Poor Governor,' Wildherne thought. 'He'll be missing Hignett.'

It was a wet night. As the doors opened the rain came with a wild fling to meet them, and all the rain-pipes of Halkin Street were suddenly vocal.

In the taxi the Duke said: 'Wildherne, I ask you only one question. I know you'll tell me the truth. There isn't anything wrong with Janet?'

Wildherne paused a moment, then answered: 'No, father, I'll swear there's not. She's an angel. If anything's wrong, it's myself. I'm not terribly proud of myself, father.'

'That's all right.' The Duke pulled his beard. 'Damned difficult thing, marriage, especially the first year or two. But I love that girl, Wildherne. I always rather wanted a daughter, you know. I don't know whether you're finding one another a little difficult just now. That will pass. But you can back one thing. She's at the top. Simply the best there is.'

'I know it, father.'

'Well, I'll ask no more. I'm pleased you came to me to-night. Yes, I am. Damned pleased. We'll have a good evening. I haven't been to a play for months.'

They pulled up at the oak door of the Zoffany in a scatter of swirling rain.

Arrived upstairs in the long room, the Duke's pleasure at being there shone out of every part of him. His wife was splendid, his married life as near perfection as married life can ever be, nevertheless it was astonishing, did you ever think of it, how seldom the Duke was free of his wife's interrogations. Had she a fault (which he would never allow) it was that she was invincibly curious, and did he spend the evening away from her he must always on returning endure a tempest of questions. Moreover, she had that gift, common to many superior women, of listening to your account and then reducing all the people and things for which she herself would not have cared to less than the dust.

To-night there would be no questions on returning. Yes, undoubtedly, however great a lover of women you might be, there were occasions when the company of men was a rest and a refreshment.

Wildherne meanwhile looked about him to see who were there. Dick Bennifer, up from Leicestershire, where he was a M.F.H. in excelsis, for whom the summer months had no existence; Beryldon, an ancient peer, collector of Tang pottery and four times married, known to his intimates as 'Bluebeard'; Carlyon, mountainous man, the only survivor of the old school of acting left to us, as kind as he was anecdotal; and that queer fish Ravage, who had been playing around Janet's sister. . . .

No one was ever introduced to anyone in the Zoffany, and two or three of Wildherne's most amusing club acquaintances were unknown to him by name. They had simply a 'Zoffany' existence, never seen or heard of anywhere else, bred of the silver and the Whistlers and the club grill; he met some of them with more pleasure than many of his outside acquaintances. That is what the Zoffany did for men, made them human.

They had a delightful dinner.

Bennifer's pippin-apple face broke into a hundred wrinkles of pleasure; Beryldon moved his ancient wits to chuckles of good humour; Carlyon told some of his best stories, lamenting as ever that the real art of acting had so utterly abandoned the English stage. Only that odd fellow Ravage said little, and that little was uncomfortable.

Shabby saturnine fellow, Wildherne thought him. And then remembered. Of course! This engagement of Rosalind's would hit him hard. Hurt his pride. Strange that a girl should care at the same time for two men so different as young Tom Seddon and this fellow. Dangerous-looking, but interesting. More interesting than young Seddon. Why was it that the decent clean men were always less interesting than the rascals? Ravage was a rascal. You could see it in every inch of him.

But he turned soon from these less interesting speculations to consider his father. As always, in any company, the Duke had at once taken the lead. The Duke had a genius for human beings because he loved them. Had he not been guarded during his long married life by his wife, there is no knowing the mistakes he might have made. And yet, in all probability, no, because with his merry heart there went a shrewd and often disconcerting thrust of observation. The rules he went on were simple enough--'Five minutes' watch and a man's eyes and mouth will tell you everything. . . . The wise men should wear beards as I do.'

Considering his thirst for human beings, it was astonishing perhaps that he had not mingled more with them, but it was probable that, in early life, he had realised that this warmth of heart of his might lead him into foolishness. Moreover, this very love of human nature had caused him many a sharp disappointment. His temper was fiery but swift. When he was angry he knew no compromises. He was, in his old age, often more positive than accurate. And he had certain bugbears--Communism, athletic women, effeminate young men, motor bicycles, Lloyd George, books of reminiscence concerning dead people who couldn't defend themselves, and Prohibition were among them.

But to-night he was happy, enchanted, and enchanting. He would willingly have stayed there all night. 'I've got to go,' he said to them reluctantly as he rose, 'my boy's a bully. Thank you for a delightful time.'

He stumped down the room, humming a tune.

At the door he turned and in a rather husky whisper said to Wildherne: 'What do you say to missing the theatre for once? . . . Very comfortable here.'

'No,' said Wildherne rather sharply. 'If you don't mind, father, I'd rather go.' The Duke remembered then that they were together that evening not only for enjoyment. He helped Wildherne on with his coat, and for a moment his hand rested on the boy's shoulder.

'Who was that rather dirty-looking individual opposite me?' he asked when they were in the taxi.

'That,' said Wildherne, 'was Charles Ravage. He's the feller who's been in love with Janet's sister.'

'Hum,' said the Duke. 'Yes. Well, I didn't like him.'

He began soon, confidentially: 'I'm glad as it's turned out that you've got Wintersmoon. For a long time your mother hesitated between that and Purefoy. Of course Purefoy isn't half the house Wintersmoon is. Ugly barn of a place, if you ask me. But it's more convenient for trains and things--easier to run too. Your mother never cared much for romantic things. I remember when we were engaged she thought me shockingly sentimental. So I was. Your mother was a lovely girl. Yes. Well, there you are. Janet's sentimental, I shouldn't wonder. Got lots of heart, that girl. More than her pretty sister.'

'I don't like Rosalind,' Wildherne said abruptly. 'I've tried to and I can't.'

'No. Well,' said his father, 'it's understandable. She's too modern for you, Wildherne. But take her the right way and she's a good enough girl, I expect. Hum. Yes. It's a funny thing, but I feel rather like a schoolgirl myself to-night. Going out to a theatre, and those fellows at the Club. Very decent lot. Carlyon's been acting a long time. I remember him in those old plays, Oscar Wilde's time. Dirty-looking fellow, Oscar Wilde. But clever talker. Yes. Hum. Poor devil. And old Beryldon. Well, I'm older than he is. I went to his wedding. Married one of the Stanbury girls. Ugly girl like a camel. What sort of a piece are we seeing to-night?'

'It's a musical comedy,' said Wildherne. 'That chap Bunny Hunter is in it. Little chap, makes jokes with carrots and such. He makes me laugh whatever he does.'

Five minutes later they were in the theatre.

The determined pessimists who delightedly find decadence in everything find it easily enough in the Gaiety Theatre and hint darkly at the glories of Nellie Farren and the days of the old Burlesque. Thirty years hence the happy pessimist of the day will be talking in the same fashion of Bunny Hunter and his fantastic world--a world of sofa cushions, soda-water siphons, the male chorus, saxophones and eccentric dancing, a world of light come and light go, of jests vanished as soon as uttered, a kind of Tweedle-dum Humpty-Dumpty world whose centre remains always in the heart of that small twisting body, shining cheerily one moment, pathetically the next out of that crooked mouth, those thin, fine, nervous hands, that shock of untidy hair.

And how the Duke enjoyed himself! From the first moment when, to a clash of discordant music, a whirling mob of young women clad in the brightest and scantiest of bathing-dresses, finding that they had the Plage at Trouville entirely to themselves, proceeded to make hay under the shining tropical sun, he was enraptured.

It was long since he had seen these young women. The intervening years had changed them not at all; they were as they had ever been, with their rhythmical movements, their studied smiles that flitted so easily off and on, their shrill discordant voices, their passion for the pink-faced hero, their inability to move about save in congregations of twenty or more.

Bunny Hunter was at once a personal friend. He seemed to have some important message for the Duke and for the Duke alone, and all through the persistent complications of collapsing chairs, uneasily piled plates (his profession was that of a waiter), and bathing machines with revolving doors, it seemed that, pathetically, he was endeavouring to come to close personal quarters with the Duke. And this was strange, because he had never met the Duke before. And yet not so strange, because there was not a member of the audience but had this same sense of private personal contact with him.

Wildherne was less absorbed and, as the fantastic game proceeded on its way, it failed more and more to catch him into its mazes.

At first the colour and the music pleased him, and then slowly the theatre with its light and heat and eager laughter was removed.

He was alone: he was desperately unhappy. He should not be there. This stupid game that he had played during these last hours was false and sterile. He knew where he should be, and once more he was waiting with beating heart outside that door . . . the door opened, he moved forward in an ecstasy of excitement and happiness . . . the curtain came down, the lights went up, his father turned to him. 'Excellent. Excellent. Well, I enjoyed that. Most amusing.'

He sat there in a chill sweat of terror. One word, one movement would be enough to send him outside. An excuse to his father. . . .

He saw and heard nothing. His father also fell into silence, and they sat there, the two of them, like statues. The lights went down again, once more there was the whirl of movement and the strange discordant music, but Wildherne held himself rigid. She was waiting for him. In some strange fashion she had known that he would come. She sat there, her eyes moving from the clock to the door, from the door to the clock. 'Wildherne . . . Wildherne . . . Wildherne.'

And in the second interval he muttered to his father: 'I think I'll clear. . . . I feel as though I'd seen all this before. Do you mind?' The old man did not turn, but his hand fell on Wildherne's knee. 'It isn't long to the end now. But if you want to go I'll come. Let's watch a bit more of this. I'm enjoying it.'

The pressure of his father's hand held him. Before this he could have left him, but now the abrupt movement that would be needed to shake off that pressure seemed more than he could compass.

He was angry. What was the foolish old man doing keeping him there? Time was slipping by. There, the accursed thing was beginning again, those ridiculous women, that foolish little man with his so-ancient tricks. But he could not move. That hand seemed to hold him with its soft pressure in some unaccountable power. From an infinite distance he heard his father's laughter.

A kind of madness seized him. He would like to get up there in his stall and shout to them all--anything, nothing--something to break this icy stillness that bound him in, and then after that shout he would be free. . . .

But, in an instant, with a kind of click as though a door had been unexpectedly opened, the thing was over.

The thing was over, and he was only conscious of a vast, deep, unfathomable weariness. All desire was gone from him. He was like a man dead.

They were in a taxi again and his father was talking: 'I can't understand people being superior to that kind of show. There was Bennifer at the Club to-night saying that there was nothing worth doing in London. Dull hole, he called it. Upon my word, what do people want? And they've improved marvellously, these musical shows. Colours and dresses and everything. Obviously don't mind what money they spend. Must have cost a pretty penny that thing to-night, and I heard someone saying that that little man--what's his name?--gets six hundred a week. Well, he works for it, I must say.'

He turned and put his arm over his son's shoulder.

'Tired, Wildherne?'

'Yes, sir, damned tired.'

Inside the house Wildherne said that he thought he'd go to bed at once.

'I'm for it too,' said the Duke, yawning. 'Shan't do any reading to-night. Tires your eyes looking at all that colour.'

He rang the bell for West, told him to lock up, and then, a little ahead of his son, stumped up the stairs.

Standing in the little dressing-room off his father's room, Wildherne was conscious of an odd sensation.

The last time that he had slept there had been when he was about fifteen or sixteen. He had been sent home from Eton unexpectedly because of some fever scare. His own room had been occupied, and so he had slept in the little dressing-room. He had wakened, he remembered, when his father had come up to bed, had called out to him, and then his father had opened the door between them and had come in and out as he undressed. He remembered vividly how funny his father had looked in his nightshirt, standing in the doorway cleaning his teeth.

Just the same now, save that his father's hair and beard were dark brown then and he would be wearing pyjamas now. That was not so long ago when Wildherne had been a small boy; his father had taken to pyjamas reluctantly and complained of them still.

Wildherne remembered that he had talked excitedly about Thackeray. He was exploring The Newcomes for the first time, and his father had told him what a brave fight Thackeray had made of it with the tragedy of his married life.

'By Jove, that would be awful!' he could remember the young Wildherne exclaiming in awe-struck tones.

It was the same now. There was his father, half undressed, standing in the doorway; how fine he was with his shoulders set back, the snowy whiteness of his beard, and his deep chuckle as he recalled some of the jests of the evening. 'Well, you're tired, my boy. Mustn't keep you. Sure you want the door open? I snore, you know.'

'Yes. I remember. I don't mind.' Wildherne went in to say good-night. His father was lying, his head in his arm, his eyes half closed. Wildherne bent down and kissed him.

'D'you remember the time,' his father half-sleepily questioned, 'when you slept in that room last? You had scarlet fever at Eton. Autumn of Nineteen Seven that was.'

'No, father. Nineteen Six.'

'Nonsense. As though I didn't remember. Nineteen Seven.'

'Nineteen Six, father. I remember because . . .'

The old man was furious in a moment, as was his custom.

'Nonsense. As though I didn't remember. Nineteen Seven.'

'It was Nineteen Six, because that was the year that mother--'

'Good God!' The old man, his eyes flashing, leaped out of bed. 'The way you contradict. Always think you know everything. I'll prove it to you.'

He paddled indignantly across to a cabinet near the fireplace, pulled open drawers as though his life was imperilled, tossed little books about, found one, turned the pages impatiently.

'Of course it was Nineteen Seven. Ah, here we are! July, September, November. . . . No, dammit, you're right. Sorry. Can't think how . . .'

He dropped the little book on to the floor and stood smilingly looking at his son.

'You've given your old father a splendid evening. Yes, you have. Decent of you. Goodnight, my boy. God bless you.'

Through the open door came a succession of gigantic snores. Wildherne was a small boy again. He sank down, down into a world of cricket bats, doughnuts, and toffee; across the shining Eton fields Colonel Newcome came towards him head erect, magnificent, benevolent . . . and the face of the Colonel was the face of his father.

CHAPTER V

JANET'S HEART

Janet, crossing the hall to the car, encountered Mrs. Beddoes.

'Well, Mrs. Beddoes, how are you getting along?'

'Very well indeed, my lady. Thank you, my lady.'

'Everything quite all right?'

'Yes, my lady. I'm doing a bit of work in 'Alkin Street next week, my lady. It's kind o' convenient, seeing as my 'usband isn't quite 'isself.'

'Oh dear. I hope it isn't anything bad.'

'No, my lady. 'E don't seem to be able to rouse 'isself, my lady. Doesn't take no interest in nothink.'

'Well, I hope that you'll find him better when you get home.'

'Yes, my lady. Thank you, my lady.'

It was when she was in the train that she asked herself, 'What am I doing? Where am I going to?' The train seemed to know: it was moving forward with a very definite purpose. It was as though it had entrapped her and had some plan of its own with regard to her. So for a while she remained bemused, listening to the rhythm of the train's motion--swing--swing--burr--burr--swing--swing.

But Janet had never been one who allowed her mind to remain cloudy for long. She sat now, clearing everything as in despair at some other person's untidiness you clear a room.

In the first place, Wildherne and she had arrived at a crisis in their married life. The crisis had been actually provoked because of Wildherne's action in going to London, but that action had not truly caused it. There had been other things. There had been the Duchess and her following. There had been the isolation of Wintersmoon. There had been the absence of Rosalind. There had been the aloofness of Wildherne. There had been Janet's own wickedness and pride.

Yes, her own wickedness and pride. Would she not confess to herself now that she was seeing clearly into her own heart that it had not been only to help Rosalind that she had married Wildherne, but also because she had wanted to have the fun and splendour of 'being Somebody'? Never before had she owned that to herself: now she saw it quite clearly. Then, very soon indeed after her marriage, she had realised that to 'be Somebody' she must follow in the Duchess's train. Perfectly polite they would all be, amiable and kindly, but she must follow out exactly the line they had marked out for her.

Well, she had rebelled against that and rebelled successfully. She had fought the Duchess and, so it seemed, defeated her. The result of the battle had been exactly what Janet had wished it to be--the Duchess had vanished and all her train with her. And after that what? Had Janet been a step nearer happiness? Wintersmoon had been, all in a moment, wrapped in silence. It might have been the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty. Not a word from Halkin Street save an adorable little letter or two from the Duke. Neighbours, at first such a curse at Wintersmoon, were in a moment removed as though they did not exist.

Janet had what she had wanted, Wildherne and Wintersmoon to herself. The result of that had been that Wintersmoon had begun to terrify her and Wildherne had gone up to London.

She was more alone than ever.

It was part of the fineness of her character that she was able to take facts exactly as they were. She did not sentimentalise over them nor abuse them nor bewail them. Nor did she defend nor attack herself. Those were the facts. In one way or another they must be altered.

She had made this movement to London on an impulse of emotion that had no reason in it. She had made it because she was so exceedingly unhappy, and this unhappiness had to be faced and looked into just as the other facts had been faced. Why was she unhappy? She was unhappy partly because of her own crass failure in this job that she had undertaken. She seemed to have failed in everything. She had failed with Rosalind, and Rosalind's sudden engagement to Tom Seddon did not mislead her. She had failed with Rosalind, because, after all that she had done and sacrificed, Rosalind did not love her. If Rosalind had loved her she would have come ere this to Wintersmoon. But you could not make people love you. Janet did not share the common feminine illusion that if you do enough for people they love you. It was, as she very well knew, generally the other way.

Secondly, she had failed to take her place as Wildherne's wife. It had seemed to her, before her marriage, that this would be easy. She could make friends, she could play very naturally the dignified but human hostess, she would have money enough and a beautiful background. But she had failed because she would not obey orders. She had expected to give orders, not to obey them.

She had failed, thirdly, with Wildherne. He had made her very happy at that moment when he told her that she had become the first friend that he had ever had. Yes, she had been very happy, and then, a moment later, bitterly disappointed. Looking back now she realised that disappointment. Why had she been disappointed? Was it because Wildherne's friendship was beginning to be not enough for her?

At that question she could have cried out there in the railway carriage, 'Oh no, no! Not that! Not that!'

She was seized with a strange dizziness so that the fields beyond the window swam in a green haze and the carriage itself and the stout gentleman alone with her in it lurched and swung as though she were at sea. She controlled herself and held herself rigid until everything was steady once more. What was the matter with her? Was she going to be ill? She who was never ill?

She drove herself back to her stern questioning.

If Wildherne's friendship was all that she wanted of him, why was it that she had suffered so acutely when he had told her of his visit to London? Why had she felt for him at that moment so strange a mixture of tenderness and longing and indignation and wounded pride? Why had she afterwards known that if he had come to her she might have thrown herself on his breast and begged him to stay with her? Why this wild, impetuous flight to London? Wounded pride. Yes, that had been her motive. But no, it was not enough. She knew that it was not.

She turned, gazing out of the window but seeing no landscape, clenching her hands on her lap but not knowing that she clenched them. . . .

Well, she had character, she had strength of will. If she was beginning to care for Wildherne with more feeling than was in their original bond, she would kill that feeling. She would submit to the Duchess. She would fling herself into the Duchess's plans and be, for a time at least, her able lieutenant. There was left to her at least the Duke. He was coming soon to stay at Wintersmoon. Her love for him she could indulge to her full desire and his love for her (that, thank God, was sure in this shifting world) would give her some warmth and fire. But that other. With a little shiver of apprehension she turned from the window to see that the train was drawing into London.

She stepped from the train on to the platform and stood there in bewilderment. The evening light spread in dusty silver shadow from space to space. The station was quiet and almost deserted. Some bell from some church in the streets beyond was ringing. A porter spoke to her. She shook her head. Where was she going? To Rosalind? No. To no one whom she knew. As she stood there the sound of the reiterated bell brought to her memory a little hotel just round the corner out of Jermyn Street where once she had gone to have tea with some friend. She could remember as she sat in her friend's room that the bells from St. James's had been ringing, striking a melodious note above the rhythm of the traffic. The hotel had been called Blanchard's. Her friend had told her that it was very quiet--it had had the air, she remembered, of being almost furtive.

'Blanchard's Hotel,' she said to the taxi-driver, 'off Jermyn Street.'

He seemed to know it. When they came into the streets she saw that it was beginning to rain. There is nothing odder about London than the way in which it arranges itself to suit your condition. When you are rich and powerful it will seem to you a place full of spaciousness, dignity, decorum, and history. The people who serve you (and everyone is there only to serve you) will be fat, well-fed, and self-satisfied. You will walk on red carpets, and all the towers will bend their heads in welcome and the bells ring for you. If you come as a brave and fearless adventurer with all your life in front of you, every side street will promise incident and every house-door a discovery. Strangers will beckon to you, windows mysteriously open, curious advertisements in newspapers will apply only to you.

But if you come to London, as most of us come, with money just not enough, health and strength just not enough, and youth just not enough, London will see that she tests your courage. The skies will drizzle, the mud will gather about your ill-shod feet, strangers will hustle you, shopkeepers pass you by, restaurants neglect you, every street will look like every other street and no street will be home.

So it was suddenly to-day with Janet. Even in the poorest days with Rosalind she had been somebody. There had been the places, posted like rendezvous about the town, where they could go and discover friends waiting for them. They had belonged to London. But to-day Janet belonged to no place and to nobody. Nobody was to know that she was in London nor why she was there. She did not herself know except that she was there to escape from her unhappiness.

She had had, perhaps subconsciously, an expectation that London would close about her with loving, friendly arms. That is exactly what it did not do. As the taxi jogged along the rain came down even more heavily; the mud splashed on to the pavements. The lights had an evil flare. They looked like the illustrations of diseases in medical charts.

As the cab splashed its way through the slanting rain Janet was aware of an odd sensation of relief. For one night she was to be rid of all of them--yes, of Wildherne, and the Duchess, and Rosalind, and Tom, and Rachel, and the servants at Wintersmoon (who from Hignett to Mrs. Beddoes were living, breathing creatures to her, each with a history as dangerous and dramatic as her own). She was no Marchioness of Poole--Janet Grandison perhaps still; at least she could not escape, even for this night, from that little twisted, desiring, lamenting, triumphing midge of a soul that had been with her from some unknown beginning and would go on with her, maybe, into limitless time, or maybe would not but would be snuffed out like a candle-wick between finger and thumb.

Of this small, queer, crawling creature she could not rid herself, but for the rest, for one night she was free, and a sort of melancholy peace, shrouded like the fading day in misty rain, enveloped her. In the impenetrable fastnesses of Blanchard's she would be able to think things out.

Impenetrable fastnesses they were. She stood in the little hall, misted with faint electric light and crowded with green-leaved plants in bright yellow pots. Within a sort of sentry-box a deep-bosomed lady with a most cultured voice and tiny green eyes considered the possibility of a room.

'Well, of course, we are very full at the moment, but we have one on the fourth floor, if that isn't too lofty. Some people like . . .'

She might have been reciting stanzas of Spenser's Faerie Queene. She closed her eyes tightly as she spoke.

'I like to be high up,' said Janet brusquely.

'Very well, madam, if you wouldn't mind signing . . .'

A small Pekinese, sprung apparently from her violet silk bosom, yapped loudly.

'Quiet, Toto. . . . William. William. . . . Where's William, Mary? Ah, William, show this lady number forty-five, please.'

Janet had signed her name 'Mary Harrison, Bexhill,' and going up in the lift considered how easily this might all be represented to Wildherne as the insignia of what the feuilletons call an 'illicit adventure,' then with a little shiver considered still further that Wildherne would not mind whether or no it were true. Yes, for the honour of the family he would perhaps be concerned--that good old traditional motive. And for her happiness? Yes, he would be concerned for that too. Whatever Wildherne was, he wanted her to be happy.

Her room was small and, it seemed, the target for all the rain in London. How it came pouring down! How the water-pipes gurgled and sang! How the lines of water ran up and down the window-panes as though some gigantic composer, frantically impelled by his genius, were writing scores on the glass!

She took off her hat, bathed her face and hands in hot water, and sat down on the bed. She really was not well. That odd sensation of faintness and sickness still pursued her. She lay down. She faded away into a state of half-sleep, when the ceiling of her room seemed to be dragged away by the wind and all the water came pouring down on to her face, but it did not wet her, only stroked her cheeks. She woke to the sound of St. James's clock. She sat up, her hands pressed to her forehead. It seemed to her that someone had waked her. Wildherne! He came to her sometimes at Wintersmoon and, finding her asleep, bent over and kissed her, so rousing her.

A shudder of unhappiness and desolation ran through her. He would be with Diana Guard now. They would be dining together. They would be smiling, laughing. They would have little jests. He would put out his hand and take hers. . . .

'This is your bargain. You agreed to it. Play your part.'

Yes, she would play her part. She changed into a quiet black evening frock and went downstairs.

As she went she was conscious that the place seemed full of whispers, whispers of voices inside, of rain without. London was filled with these little hotels, she supposed--places where you could come quietly and not meet any one you did not wish to see. So many doors, so many little passages leading to nowhere. Nobody visible.

She was directed to the dining-room and here the whispering continued. A little waiter with a high, intellectual forehead but, unhappily, no chin whispered to her, 'Would she take thick or clear, and,' a deeper whisper, 'turbot or sole to follow?' He seemed to be deeply relieved when she decided on clear soup and turbot. That was apparently what he had been hoping.

Mysterious couples, seen only in embryo because of the thick yellow silk shades that guarded the lamps, protected, too, by vases of flowers, drooping and languid, whispered together and gazed into one another's eyes. Everyone was very fond of everyone here. . . . Suddenly she could endure it no longer, but left it abruptly and returned to her room.

She turned on the electric light and sharply turned it off again. She sat on her bed, having flung open the window, and stared out at the faint, fluffy light that came up through the blur of rain from the street below. The rain came hissing down and, mingled with the echo from the Piccadilly traffic, had the personality of a voice.

There must be many others in London to-night who were hearing that same voice and hating its cruel, sluggish indifference. What if she should find it impossible to continue her life with Wildherne because she loved him? What if her pride that she had always held as her one most definite possession, the one that would never abandon her, did now leave her so that she humiliated herself, giving him her love without wishing for any return, submitting to his absence, knowing where he was and tolerating it? Was she beginning to feel love for him, or was it only that he had hurt her pride by leaving her? Was this jealousy that now for the first time had come to her? Did she hate this woman as women hate when they are robbed of their lover?

No, she did not hate her, but she envied her--she who could produce in him something that she could not produce--the little things, the turn of the head, the pressure of the hand, the mysterious smile?

Why had no man ever loved her? Was it because of her absorption in her sister? Must a woman herself think of men before they will turn to her? Or was it because of some lack in her that would keep her for ever outside that happiness? Oh, not that, not that!

At this moment Rosalind was nothing to her, her past life was nothing to her, she wanted only that Wildherne should turn to her with that flame in his eyes that she had never, as yet, beheld.

Then she knew that she loved Wildherne, and she abased her head and hid it in her hands.

After that she did not act quite sanely. She went out into the rain. She walked for a long time, not knowing her direction. And yet she must have known, for soon she was standing outside the building where Diana Guard had her flat. Janet had, for a long time past, known Diana's address, but she was not aware that subconsciously now she had sought it out. She simply found herself there.

She stood there under the street lamp in the driving rain and looked up at the windows. No one passed. She waited for a while staring through the wet mist at something that she could not quite see.

A taxi-cab passed her, and, feeling very ill, she hailed it and told it to go to Blanchard's.

Back in her little room again she undressed, was seized with violent sickness, and at last, in an odd state of languid weakness, was in bed. She pulled the bell at the bed-side and soon a diminutive, white-faced, large-eyed girl appeared.

'Do you think you could get me some tea?' Janet asked.

'I'll try, ma'am,' the girl answered. 'It isn't reely my job.' Then, her eyes widening, she went on: 'Why, ma'am, you do look bad! Would you fancy a fire?'

'Yes, I think I would,' Janet answered feebly.

The child disappeared, soon to return with paper and wood and coal. She knelt down in front of the small grate and seen thus was an infant to whom the Marchioness would have been a grown-up sister.

When the fire was blazing she came and stood beside the bed again. 'A fire's pleasant these wet nights, even in summer time.' She stared at Janet and then smiled. 'Is there nothink I can get you?' she asked again. She had two large black smuts on her cheek from the coal.

'No, only the tea,' said Janet, smiling back again.

The child turned then and moved about the room putting things a little to rights.

'Have you been here long?' Janet asked her.

'What? Blanchard's? Not 'arf. No one stays 'ere long.'

'Why are you in service? You look so young. Do you like it?'

'Like it? No!' The child came close to Janet's bed again. She put out her hand and stroked the quilt. She was suddenly confidential. 'You see I 'ad a baby. Mother couldn't stand for that. Father's dead.'

'What a shame!' Janet murmured. 'Why, how old are you?'

'Sixteen and a 'alf.'

'And isn't he going to marry you?'

She giggled. 'Can't properly say as I'd know 'im again if I saw 'im. It was at a dance out Clapham. Catch me acting silly that way again. But it's a proper kid, though. A boy. I've got 'im kept out in the country.'

Mysteriously in the distance a bell rang. 'That's Mrs. French. . . . I won't be long with the tea.' She vanished.

That child and a baby! The child's large eyes dwelling on her with a look that was oddly friendly, oddly companionable, remained with her.

Then, with a fierce throb of her heart, so that it seemed that within her something spoke to her, she knew.

She was herself to have a child.

She woke to find the room flooded with light and in her heart a great ecstatic happiness. She lay still for a little wondering why she was so happy. Then eagerly she looked at her watch. She must return at once to Wintersmoon. She must be there before Wildherne.

Her watch told her that it was half-past seven. There was a train, she knew, at eight-thirty. She washed and dressed and went downstairs. Sun was flooding everywhere. She said good morning to the little waiter as though she were telling him some wonderful important news. She would wish to have seen the little maid-servant again. She left a note in her bedroom: 'Thank you for being so kind to me last night. You helped me so much.' Then, considering the matter, she rang the bell and waited. A stout untidy woman answered it.

'Can I see the girl who attended to me last night?' she asked.

There was another pause, and she stood, hesitating in great anxiety lest she should miss her train.

The child arrived wiping her mouth on her apron.

'I wanted to leave a note for you and give you this,' Janet said. 'I was afraid that you mightn't get it, though, if I left it.'

The girl stared at the money, then gasped. 'Oh no, ma'am, you shouldn't . . .'

'What is your name?' Janet asked.

'Fanny Eagles.'

'Well, Fanny, I have a friend who might help you. When you leave here write to her. Her name is here. See, I've written it down. Wintersmoon, Wiltshire.'

She bent and kissed the child's forehead, then hurriedly went.

She caught her train and then sat in a dream. She had no thoughts. She was too happy to think. She had telegraphed for the car, and at the sight of Hawes' round red face she sighed with contentment.

Wintersmoon, standing up right in a lake of sunlight, was very silent. She found the note where she had left it. She tore it up. Then, coming into the garden, she saw Hignett.

'Hignett, has your master telegraphed about the train?'

'Yes, my lady. He's coming by the one-thirty.'

'Good. Will you ask him, please, to come to me as soon as he arrives? I shall be down at the temple.'

'Yes, my lady.'

'And we'd better have luncheon at two, tell Mrs. Craddock.'

'Yes, my lady.'

She went down to the temple and sat there, her hands on her lap, staring at the glassy surface of the pond.

There was apparently no interval between that and his appearing. He came towards her, hastening, and she, smiling, went to meet him. He began at once: 'Janet, I want to tell you. I spent last night at Halkin Street. I was with my father all the evening. We went to the theatre and came back to Halkin Street. He's gone down to Purefoy this morning.'

But it seemed that she did not hear him. 'Oh, Wildherne,' she broke out. 'I've wonderful news. We are going to have a child. I'm so happy. Wildherne, I can think of nothing but that. Hold me close. Don't let me go. . . . I'm so happy, Wildherne, that I can't speak. . . . Just hold me. . . . Closer. . . . Closer.'

Hignett waited sternly by the luncheon table, but three o'clock chimed through the house and still they were not there.

CHAPTER VI

ROSALIND PAYS A VISIT

Rosalind, on this lovely October day, looked about her with pleasure. She liked fine weather: it always seemed to her to be an especial compliment to herself. She was the only passenger to alight at the little station: that also pleased her. No tiresome forced conversation on the way up to the house. And there was Hawes, so chubby and clean, coming towards her with that pleased and rather dazed expression with which men so often greeted her.

'Good afternoon, Hawes. Is there anyone else by this train?'

'No, miss.'

'Splendid. What a lovely day, isn't it?'

'Yes, miss. We've been having fine weather this last week.'

She had rather expected that Tom Seddon would be there to meet her. She was relieved that he was not, but her vanity was a little ruffled. He would have to have a splendid excuse!

As she settled herself in the car she was extremely pleased with herself. This was her third visit to Wintersmoon in the last two months. No one could say that she was a neglectful sister. As a matter of truth she had quite enjoyed her other two visits, but then the Duchess had been absent.

On this occasion she would be extremely present. However, Rosalind was not afraid of the Duchess. It was the Duchess's sad loss if she disliked her. The Duchess was too ancient to matter.

She had been herself surprised at her emotion when she heard that Janet was to have a child. There came to her in a flood one of those crises of feeling that sometimes attacked her, that she found so inconvenient. She had reproached herself bitterly for her recent neglect of Janet. Poor Janet! To have a child, how dreadful, how tiresome, how irritating! Rosalind did not believe that Janet cared very much for children. There had never been any signs of it. Rosalind had no feeling for children herself. She had been a horrid child. All children were horrid most of the time. And mingled with this pity for Janet was also a sense of loss. Whether Janet liked the child or no it would occupy her tremendously. Janet was just the kind of woman to be terribly conscientious about her child. Her marriage with Wildherne had not alarmed Rosalind, because Janet did not love Wildherne. That was the reason perhaps why Rosalind had not bothered to go to Wintersmoon, because she was so sure of Janet--but now she could be sure no longer.

And so she had hurried to Wintersmoon and, on her visit, had been quite alone with Wildherne and Janet. That had been most interesting, and for a quite unexpected reason. It had been interesting because of the extraordinary change in Wildherne.

Wildherne had always been to Rosalind the personification of superior dullness. That he had not liked her had not prejudiced her at all. That had been his loss. She bore him no malice for it. He had been dull because he had been so terribly usual: the only unusual thing about it had been that she had been able to put up with him for hour after hour! His good looks, slim straight figure, honest good-natured smile, charming pleasant voice, courtesy to servants, imperturbable English savoir-faire--oh, how dull that all was in this modern, post-war, untidy, individual world! There wasn't anything about him that you couldn't foretell!

And then suddenly this!

She had noticed it in the first five minutes of her arrival. He had not spoken two sentences to her before she had realised that he was different now. He was dull no longer, he was ordinary no longer, he was urbane and charming no longer--he was somebody!

He liked her no better now than he had done before. In her first quarter of an hour she had said something that offended him. But what did that matter? He could dislike her as much as he pleased now that he was interesting. What had happened to him? Had he fallen in love with Janet? No, it was soon clear enough that he had not, although he was charming and attentive, keeping her indeed always in mind, sheltering her, protecting her. . . . Why, of course that was it! It was the child! That was what had altered Wildherne. There was to be an heir (of course the child must be a boy--God could not be so inattentive to the needs of the best British families as to give the Purefoys a girl!). The aching desire of Wildherne's life was to be fulfilled.

With this discovery there came to Rosalind another of those tiresome romantic impulses of hers. Wildherne was touching and moving to her. He was suddenly embarked, she perceived, on a voyage of most desperate danger! The perils that he was about to encounter! How likely that the child would not be a boy, or, if it were one, how probable that it would turn out badly, or die, or be dull and stupid! To put all your eggs into such a basket! But he had. He, now that this hope had come to him, was like some knight-errant in quest of his Holy Grail! He was illumined with an almost consecrated light.

She was touched, too, as she watched more closely, by his treatment of Janet. How good and unselfish and kind he was to her. Had he behaved thus to Rosalind she would have wanted to smack his face, but Janet was different. Janet wanted affection and tenderness--all those silly old romantic Victorian things that everyone nowadays had discarded. Janet had always been old-fashioned.

In the immediate drama of all this Rosalind forgot, for once, to consider her own personal history. Tom Seddon had not been present on these two other occasions, and Rosalind had thought about him as little as might be. With regard to him Rosalind had hitherto been aware of swiftly changing moods. She never tried to make her moods other than they were. When she was bored with him and found him tiresomely sentimental she told him so, and then he would leave her with that pained dog-look in his eyes so often chronicled in fiction that has to do with the devoted lovers of tyrannous females.

Rosalind was a tyrannous female! It was his fault did he persist in marrying her, his fault entirely! Nevertheless there were times when she almost loved Tom--he was such a nice boy, so true and honest and safe--no fool either in his traditional way. Going to him was putting into harbour. Nothing drove her to him like her sense of danger, and nothing irritated her so badly as his sense of safety.

He took it for granted, apparently, that now she had said she would marry him all would be well! He couldn't conceive that anyone would go back on the given word! When she stopped his affectionate impulses he was unhappy, but only because he felt that as yet he did not quite understand her--marriage would put that right. There were times when she felt five centuries older than he! Times again when he seemed to protect her as no one else ever could.

This visit, then, would be an interesting one. The drama was developing on every side. With three people--the Duchess, Wildherne, and Rachel Seddon--definitely hostile to her; two people--Tom and Janet--utterly devoted to her! Well, it would not be her fault if she did not get some amusement out of it all!

There was, finally, something else. As they passed the Lodge gates and started up that marvellous historic drive, the trees now amber and russet against the faint blue sky, the lawns flowing like water down the little hills, the deer seen and then vanishing like ghostly visitants, she was aware that, in spite of its beauty, she hated Wintersmoon. Wintersmoon, the house, did not love her any more than did the Duchess and Wildherne. Rosalind was no sentimentalist about places. Hills and houses were hills and houses to her: she was not so foolish as to credit them with loving personalities. You might just as well believe in ghosts or do spiritualistic writing! But there was something about Wintersmoon that, against her will, forced her to think of it as separate, apart, having some sort of existence away from the people who lived in it.

'Nasty, eerie old place,' she had called it to Althea Bendersley. 'No, it isn't damp and mouldy, as I had thought it might be. Although they can only keep half of it open, the rooms that are shut up are dry enough. Too dry, if you ask me! If houses could be people I'd say that it was above itself, too conceited for words!'

She had stayed once in Switzerland and had loathed the place because the mountains made her feel so small. Wintersmoon would make her feel small if it could, it was that kind of place!

'What do you do in the evenings?' Althea asked her.

'Nothing,' Rosalind had answered.

'Nothing!' Althea had cried, astonished.

'Wildherne plays Bridge so badly that it's a crime to witness it.'

'I should turn up the carpet and dance,' Althea had remarked.

Then Rosalind had laughed.

'The carpets would refuse to turn,' she had answered. 'If they give a dance ever it will be a public one with Sir Roger and the Lancers. Wintersmoon and Jazz! Little you realise!'

She found them, as she had expected, having tea in the hall.

She must herself have been of startling loveliness as she appeared there in her dark furs, her little hat not hiding her shining splendid hair, something virginal in her poise, her ardent daring readiness for any adventure, her smiling challenge to them all to do their damnedest. Rosalind was always more beautiful than anyone expected her to be, her challenge always more daring. At every appearance she seemed to be standing thus for the first time--no one ever before had seen her quite like this!

They were gathered about the big fire in the open stone fireplace, the tea-table between them. Tom sprang to his feet with a cry: 'Here she is!' Janet too rose as though the happiest moment of her life had come.

'Darling! How are you? Was the train very cold?'

'Yes! I'll have some tea right away!'

She came laughing into the middle of them, and there were some there who, when later events gathered shadows around that beauty, looked back to this moment and treasured it.

Everyone was charming--everyone always would be, no matter what occurred. Had Rosalind at that moment gone up to the Duchess and twitched the grey turban, no one would have shown displeasure.

Rosalind took them all in--the Duchess working at some silver-threaded embroidery; Wildherne close to Janet, his hand just touching her shoulder; Rachel Seddon talking to Brun; Miss Crabbage moving off on some important errand; that dear old maid, Lady Alice Purefoy, with her eager hungry look ready to break in upon anybody; the Duke broad and square in his quiet corner; Tom excited and happy, standing over her.

They asked her a few questions and then left her to her tea. She was pleased, because she knew that they all thought her lovely. Yes, whether they liked her or no, they all thought her lovely. She felt that it had all been rather dull for them before she came in. She was glad that it had been.

She proceeded to bully Tom a little.

'I suppose you were too busy to come to the station.'

He coloured crimson.

'I was coming, of course,' he said, 'but something stopped me.'

She knew at once that 'something' had been his mother.

'Oh, it didn't matter in the least. I didn't expect you.'

'I'm most awfully sorry. I really am--'

Rachel broke in.

'Has it been very gay in London, Rosalind dear?'

'Yes--rather gay.' Rosalind gave Rachel one of her most dazzling smiles. 'But everything's so crowded. The world seems to be twice as full as ever it was before.'

Alice Purefoy had something to say: 'Yes, isn't it? London's so crowded. One can hardly move. I saw in the paper this morning that there were five deaths from motor-cars. One isn't safe anywhere, is one? Last week when I was motoring with Charlie Rockby down to Ockham--'

Nobody cared. Nobody ever cared for anything that Alice Purefoy had to say. Conversation, as though it had waited for this sign, became very general.

Soon Janet took Rosalind up to her room. When the door was closed behind them Rosalind gave her sister one of her warmest and most ardent embraces.

'Darling, how are you? You look splendid! You pet--you darling. Yes. You're happy. I can see it. I am so glad.'

Janet smiled.

'We're all very happy. Everyone is in the best of tempers. Tom has been in an agony of impatience all day. You mustn't be angry with him because he couldn't come to the station.'

'Oh, I know how that was! Rachel wouldn't let him.'

'It was her last afternoon with him. She has to go back to town to-morrow.'

'Ah,' said Rosalind, nodding her head. 'That's because she doesn't want to be here with me.'

'Don't be foolish, Rosalind. She's so sorry she has to go. You're a little strange to her at present. She's only half English, remember. She's lived so much by herself these last years. Tom's everything in the world to her, and now she has to give him up. It isn't easy for her.'

'But Tom's so weak about her. He gives in to her in everything!'

They were sitting on the little sofa at the bottom of the bed. Janet put her arm around her sister and drew her closer to her.

'Don't be selfish about her, Rosalind. There are only these few months and then you'll have Tom to yourself for ever.'

Rosalind laughed, then gave a little shiver. 'For ever! Hasn't that a dreadful sound? I don't think I want anyone for ever. Do you want Wildherne for ever?'

'Yes,' said Janet quietly. 'I think I do.'

Rosalind looked at her, kissed her, and then said: 'Why, I believe you've fallen in love with him.'

Janet smiled. 'He's very good to me--better than I ever dreamt anyone would be!'

'And I should think he ought to be!' Rosalind burst out, jumping up and beginning to walk about the room. 'You're the finest woman in the world, and you're going to be the mother of his child. What more can he want?'

Janet drew her down to the sofa again. 'Never mind about me. Let me hear about yourself. Your letters say so little. You haven't been very good in writing to Tom either. The way he watches for the post is pathetic.'

'Ah, now you're going to scold me. You're not to, Janet. I've come down here to enjoy myself. And I will enjoy myself. Every minute. And I'm going to make everyone love me. You laugh. But I can if I want to. Yes, even the Duchess. And I'll be adorable to Tom. Even Rachel will be satisfied.'

'I know,' Janet said. 'You can do anything you like with people, darling. But,' she hesitated, then went on, 'Rosalind, if you don't really love Tom, if you know in your heart that you don't--break it off now, here and now. Never mind the scandal and the fuss. Wildherne and I will stand by you through anything. Better, oh, far better, do that now than marry him if you don't love him.'

'Of course I love him,' Rosalind said impatiently. 'How preachy you are this evening! Why should I marry him if I didn't love him?'

'That's just it,' Janet answered eagerly. 'One doesn't know beforehand--one simply can't guess what it's going to be like. Even you with all your modernity don't know what it's like. Once you're married you're married. It's like being in a box. The intimacy's something fearful unless you love one another. And Tom--Tom would feel it more than anyone I ever met--if you didn't love him, I mean.'

'I do love him,' Rosalind answered, seriously and soberly. 'At least one part of me does. The part of me that wants things to be built up and made beautiful. The other part of me is destructive. It would like to smash all this--Wintersmoon, British tradition, your mother-in-law. I hate it all. There's a fight in me, Janet, between the two just as there's a fight now in the world between the two. A part of me says, "How lovely to marry Tom and settle down, have a nice old house and a nice old garden, and look at English green fields and love England, and make it the leader of the new world that's coming." And the other half of myself laughs at it all, says that that belongs now to a world that is dead, utterly dead. That part of me wants to smash everything up, to be selfish and individual, to believe in none of the past, to hurt and break and mock. That part of me loves no one, neither you nor Tom nor anyone. That part of me belongs to the new world, and your old England is an anachronism and absurd. That part of me believes that when everything has been smashed perhaps there'll be a new code and a new bunch of things to believe in, but it doesn't matter if it doesn't. Life's a silly joke, and one pays it back for its insulting cheek by snapping one's fingers at it.

'But I'm not quite brave enough, Janet--that's the trouble. Part of me clings to Tom and safety. And the world's like me. It can't quite make up its mind. Shall it still believe in those old words--honour, service, discipline, restraint, unselfishness, duty--or shall it see them as tricks and shams and fling them all away and be a nice new nasty world full of selfishness and cynicism and each for himself, but also honest and clearheaded and without humbug? People like you and Wildherne think there's no question as to which is the better--but there is a question. Everyone's been sentimental and traditional long enough, perhaps. Perhaps there's no plan in life, but it's all made up of little pieces of interesting selfishness and coloured fragments of personality--with the strongest on top. That's the question. Dear me, how well I'm talking! You didn't know I could talk like this, did you? And indeed I didn't know it myself.'

No. Janet didn't know. She was absolutely surprised. What had happened to Rosalind? With whom had she been? Janet had a strange sense that here in the room with them, behind Rosalind, there was a shadowy form, someone whose face and figure she could almost discern, but not quite. She had a pathetic desire to hold on to her, to cling to her, crying, 'Oh, Rosalind, don't go. Stay here. You will never be happy where you're going. Stay! Stay!' But all she really said was: 'Yes, that's all very clever. I know that that's the way people talk now, but what it comes down to is that Tom loves you more than I've ever seen anyone love anyone. You've got his life in your hands.'

'How tiresome!' said Rosalind, laughing. 'If I thought that, I'd break it off to-night, but he's stronger than you think, Janet. He'll look after himself. Neither his mother nor you know him. And as to the rest, we'll see what comes. Anything may happen, I'm glad to say.'

That night at dinner she was very happy. She had the Duke on one side of her and Tom on the other. She admired the Duke greatly: she admired his appearance and his sense of fun. She could not imagine how he had succeeded in putting up with the Duchess so long. She chaffed him and he chaffed her. She knew that he appreciated her beauty, and she liked to imagine that he would have been a regular dog in his day had he not married so early. In spite of his proprieties he was a man, and had good whirligig passions like any other strong man. She liked, too, his little sudden bursts of impatience and indignation. She would have married him with the greatest pleasure in the world had he been thirty years younger, and she wouldn't mind flirting with him now a little. How delightful to make the Duchess jealous!

But after a while she perceived that they were none of them--save Tom, and possibly Rachel--thinking of her very much. She was aware, almost with a sensation of frightened dismay, that she was quite outside their deeper plans and purposes. Before dinner was over she had realised with a sharp unbiassed apprehension that was one of her best gifts that nothing that she could ever do would upset the Duchess in the least!

And then she was aware, and admitted it to herself, with a funny little humorous shrug of 'It serves you right,' that it was Janet of whom they were all thinking. Janet counted everything, and she nothing at all.

Of course Wildherne would think thus, and the Duke perhaps too because he loved her, but the Duchess and Miss Crabbage and Caroline Marsh and the servants--Janet was, for the moment, the centre of the world.

Well, Rosalind did not grudge it her, the darling. She had had a poor enough time for long enough, and of course it was not Janet herself, but the fact that she was to provide the great Purefoy family with a son and heir that obsessed them all so.

Nevertheless, before the evening was over, Rosalind was admiring her sister with all the warmth and generosity that was truly there in her heart. Janet was wonderful! How swiftly she had accommodated herself to this situation! How naturally she carried off all the difficulties of her rôle!

Rosalind had always known that she had had it in her. How often in the old days in their stuffy, wicked little flat she had thought to herself:

'Ah, if she only had her chance what wonderful things she would do!' And now she was doing them, living with an ease and graciousness and nobility that, Rosalind was honest enough to admit, would never belong to her younger sister!

Then, watching her, Rosalind was aware that to her, as to Wildherne, something new had occurred. What was it? Rosalind knew her so well that it was not difficult for her to detect this little flame of excitement rising and falling behind her outward serenity and composure. She was moved by some other secret life. It was not the coming of the child that had created it. It had to do with someone near her. Janet's eyes, in repose, were watching for someone. Her thoughts, privately working behind her outward duty, were engaged upon someone. Could it be Wildherne? Had Rosalind's shot in the dark that evening been a true one? Was Janet in love with Wildherne? Oh, but Rosalind hoped that that was not true! To be in love with Wildherne when Wildherne was not in love with her! There was pain, distress, even torture in store for anyone as sensitive and loving as Janet in such a case--yes, and jealousy of that woman in London. No, that must not, must not be.

But she was drawn away from Janet by a strange conversation that she had with Rachel after dinner.

Rachel herself arranged it, telling Rosalind quite definitely when they went into the long, dim Morris-shadowed drawing-room that she wanted to have a little talk with her. The older woman led the younger to a corner of a little sofa near one of the two fires, and there they were cut off from the others, and were able, privately, alone, to give and receive challenges.

A challenge it was. They made a strange contrast on the little green sofa, Rachel, thirty years Rosalind's senior, so dark, so thin, with her impetuosity, foreign restlessness, and urgency, and Rosalind so fair and young and lovely, so triumphant in her assurance that her youth and beauty would carry her through anything.

'Rosalind,' Rachel began at once, 'you hate me--and you mustn't. If you are to be Tom's wife we must reach some sort of compromise. We must find some way to understand one another. I am a very lonely woman. I have only one or two friends in the world--Janet's one of them--and Tom's everything to me. You intend, when you marry him, to take him away from me. You must not do that. I throw myself on your pity. I don't care whether I seem to you silly, sentimental, melodramatic. It doesn't matter what you think, only you must think of me in this. You must use some of your power to help me.'

Rosalind had a sense of tiresome irritation. This was the kind of sentimental appeal that women had long ago discarded, and behind that there was an uncomfortable feeling that it was bad for Tom to have such a fuss made about him. But she replied very sweetly:

'I haven't the slightest idea of taking Tom away from you.'

This was, of course, quite untrue. She intended to take Tom away at the earliest possible moment.

'Yes, I see,' said Rachel. 'It's as I thought. You are determined not to come to any terms. I'm no fool. I was young myself once. I fought my own battles for my own advantage, and I was quite as ruthless as you are ever likely to be. I was a fool to appeal pathetically. I should rather have attacked your common sense. Let me put it like this, then. I believe you'll be happier with Tom if you let me have, too, a little share in your life. Oh, don't think,' she went on, as she saw that Rosalind was about to speak, 'that I'm going to be the interfering mother-in-law. No, never that. But I want you to think of me one day as a possible ally. I am loyal and honest, and I've seen life for thirty years longer than you have, my dear, and was married for twenty of them. You think that I detest you and would do anything to stop this marriage. You are wrong. I admire even if I don't like you, and perhaps my dislike of you comes from my ignorance. I don't understand the modern girl. Tom is for ever telling me that I don't, and it's true. I have never perhaps quite understood English people. They seem to me cold when they should be warm, and impetuous where they should be cautious. You can help me there if you will.'

Rosalind smiled. 'You are wrong, Lady Seddon. We don't know one another at all, do we? But isn't that your fault? The advance ought to come from you. It is partly Tom's fault too. He is always reassuring me about you, as though you were some terrible opponent. I've seen so little of you. This is the first time, I think, that we've had a real talk. And then in your heart you don't believe that I love Tom. Isn't that true?'

(Did she love Tom? Oh, if she only knew!)

'Yes, that is true,' Rachel answered gravely, 'I do wonder sometimes. But then love is very strange--it seems to come and go. Tom is very simple: if he loves he loves, and if he hates he hates.'

(So dull of him! Rosalind thought to herself.)

'I was like you in some ways. There were times in the first part of my own married life when I thought that I didn't love my husband. It's the fashion now, I know, to be entirely frank about things. If you dislike your husband you tell him so, and then when you like him again you tell him that too. For myself, I think there's a good deal to be said for reticences, but anyway, I believe I could help you sometimes, help you both. I want you to let me try.'

Interfering old woman, Rosalind thought, but with a smile she said: 'Why, of course! I shall love you to!'

Rachel sighed. 'No, you don't mean it. I see that you don't. You won't let me come anywhere near you. Well, then, if you won't, you won't. Only, even at that, get it out of your head that I'm your enemy. I won't pretend that you're the kind of woman I had in my head for Tom's wife. All mothers, I suppose, have their own ideas for their sons, and naturally their sons have other ideas. But I'm not your enemy. I want to like you and understand you. I think you're beautiful and clever and kind. Tom cares for you with all his heart and soul. That's enough for me. Just remember that and give me a chance of knowing you a little.'

Something in Rosalind's heart suddenly responded.

'Indeed I will,' she said. 'It must be hard for you to see somebody come along and make a snatch at Tom, but it was inevitable, wasn't it? There would have been somebody in any case, and although she wouldn't have had my faults, she would have had some of her own. I'm sure that you can help me. You know Tom so well and I really know him so little. It is very good of you to be so patient with me. You don't know how impatient I am, over and over again, with myself. I have thought that you disliked me so much that it was hopeless to try and do anything about it. I won't think so any longer.'

They might then have made a movement towards one another that would have altered much later history, but at that moment Tom came up to them. He sat with them a while, then Rachel got up and went away.

He followed her with his eyes for a moment, then turned eagerly to Rosalind: 'You do like her better, don't you?--now that you know her a little. She's so splendid and she's had such a difficult life, first with that beast of an old Duchess, who hated her, and then father being always an invalid. I do want you to like her so. She'll like you if you only like her.'

'We're different generations, Tom.'

'Oh, I know! But what does that matter? Mother's never grown really old. She's so clever and understanding.'

Rosalind shook her head.

'She doesn't understand me--but then, as I don't understand myself, it's not very surprising, I suppose.'

But Tom wasn't listening. He was in that state of love when the eyes have so much work to do that there is little energy left over for thoughts.

He was gazing at Rosalind as though he had never seen her before.

'Oh, Rosalind, how beautiful you are! How beautiful! How beautiful! That silver dress. . . . And to think that I should have had the luck. . . . See, Rosalind, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll creep off. They're all talking there. They won't notice. Do you know the little room by King James's chapel, the little room where the two pages used to wait while he said his prayers? You can see such a stunning piece of the garden from there, and there's a first-class moon. Let's go up there for half an hour. What do you say?'

She looked at him and thought how good-looking he was. Much better looking than--than--oh well, than heaps of other men. Tom's foreign blood gave him a distinction of his own, and yet in spite of his dark hair he was very English, with all that absolute unconsidered rightness of pose and movement and dress that Englishmen managed so much better than the men of any other country. And how he loved her! No man had ever loved her as he did, and to-night in this world that disregarded her and counted her as someone of no importance it was pleasant to be reassured.

So she agreed to go, although she disliked the historic unused parts of the house and had no great enthusiasm for the moon.

They slipped away.

The little room was bare and ivory white under the moon, which flooded in through the naked lozenge-paned windows, bathing the dull gold tapestry and transforming it with its pattern of hunter and horses and red-brown trees into a dim, flowing, unsubstantial dream. Tom had brought cushions with them and they sat, close, on the little wooden platform under the window and looked out on to the stiff peacocks, ships, and lions of the clipped hedges. Behind were the woods velvet dark.

'I don't often worry you, darling,' Tom said, 'telling you how I love you. It's hard not to sometimes. If I saw you more often it would be easier, but I don't generally have you quite to myself like this. I don't want to force myself on you. I know I'm not worthy to kiss your shoe, but--'

'Oh, Tom,' she broke in. 'Don't be so modest. It's so silly to make so little of yourself. You're worth twice of me: you're much cleverer, and you have a far finer character, and you're going to be a great man. You'll be Prime Minister, I suppose, and I shall have lost my looks then, and everyone will be saying, "I don't know how ever he could have married that stupid girl." Don't you know me well enough yet to know that I don't like you when you run yourself down? I want you to look me in the face and say, "I'm every bit as good as you are. In fact, I'm a damned sight better." Don't love me too much, Tom. I'm not worth it.'

'Well, then,' he answered, laughing, 'I'm as good as you are and a damned sight better.' He caught her to him, kissed her again and again, held her as though he would merge her body with his so that they should never part any more.

That was better. She understood that. She responded with all the happy consciousness that with her senses at least she could give him all that he asked.

'I love you now,' she whispered. 'If it were always like this.'

'But it shall be,' he whispered back to her. 'It need never change. I will always be your lover. Marriage shan't make any difference. We will always be lovers.'

'Ah! if we could!' She sighed, and slowly, gently released herself. 'You mustn't be too good to me, Tom. That was what I was always telling Janet. I'm not one to treat too well. Don't give me everything. Hold something back. Treat yourself better than you treat me.'

'As though I could!' He laughed. 'Why, Rosalind, if I had all the world I'd give it at once to you, and then there'd be the planets. I'd have to get them for you. I'd like to give you things every moment of the day and night. I have nothing now. But I will have. I'm ambitious, Rosalind, doubly ambitious because I have you to work for.'

'Work for yourself,' she answered him. 'You frighten me if you put too much on to me. I would hate to feel that if I ever failed you, you'd stop working or would care less about reaching the top. It's far, far better to do things for yourself. No one else is to be trusted.'

'Trusted!' he cried triumphantly. 'Why, I couldn't trust you enough! You've given your word to me, and because you're so honest you couldn't fail me after that!'

The moonlight seemed to drown her in a cold white flood.

'That's silly of you, like a schoolboy. People aren't to be trusted. No one. Or hardly anyone. Perhaps only you and Janet. And that's what's the matter with both of you. You're so set. Because you've said you'll do a thing, you'll do it. Because you've said you'll like somebody, so you'll like them--for ever and ever and ever. Why, how can you? Everyone changes, everything alters. And especially now when the world is changing so fast that we are all breathless.'

'That's not true of love,' he answered. 'Love doesn't change.'

'Love doesn't change!' she cried. 'Why, it changes more than anything else! How can it stay the same when people themselves change so? You love people for what they are, don't you? Well, if they're suddenly something different you don't love them any more, do you?'

He turned away from her, looking out to the moonlit garden.

'I don't like to think that,' he said. 'I'd be terribly unhappy if I thought that were true.'

'True! Of course it's true,' she answered impatiently. 'And no one changes more than I do. I change every half-hour. You ought to have married Janet if you don't want any change. And even she changes.'

'Do you mean,' he asked slowly, 'that you're not sure whether you love me or not?'

'Of course I'm not sure. I'm not sure about anything. And what is love anyway? How can we tell whether we love one another until we have lived together? You think you love me now, but that's because you think my body is beautiful; but when you've got used to my body--'

'No, no, no!' he broke in passionately. 'That's not true. That's beastly. Love isn't only physical desire. That's not love. I love you because I honour and admire you--you, your soul, not your body. If I didn't admire you--'

'Yes, if you didn't admire me?' she asked quietly.

'Then I shouldn't love you.'

'Then love does change,' she answered. 'You've said it yourself. How do you know that you will always admire me? You can't tell at all. You don't know me.'

'I do, I do,' he answered. 'I know you as no one else in the world knows you.'

She was suddenly touched. She drew his head to her breast.

'Poor boy,' she said. 'Poor Tom. It's wrong of me to take you. It's perhaps the wickedest thing I've ever done.'

Alarm beat up in him in little waves, little waves that he tried vainly to quieten. 'Rosalind, don't say that you've found you don't love me. If you don't, if you think you don't--it's only a mood--wait until to-morrow . . . you'll see then. . . .'

'No, no,' she said, reassuring him, stroking his hair, pressing her hand against his cheek. 'I do love you, Tom. The better part of me does at least.'

'And there's nobody else?'

'No'--she hesitated an instant--'I love no one else--only Janet.'

'No other man?'

'No.'

'Not--not Ravage?'

He knew how foolish it was to press such questions. How often he had told himself that he at least would not be like other men and ask these eternal, never-varying queries--those old queries of the poor unhappy never-to-be-satisfied lovers.

As the words left him his heart trembled. He had done a terribly stupid thing.

But she answered very quietly: 'No, not Ravage.'

He said no more. It was she at last who spoke, gently and tenderly, a Rosalind whom very few in the world had ever seen, the Rosalind that kept Janet at her side through all tribulation and adversity.

'You know, Tom dear, it isn't wise to ask those questions. It's never wise. If I did love Ravage, nothing that you or anyone else could do would stop it. There is a part of me that you don't touch, that perhaps you will never touch. But isn't that true of all of us? Whoever knows anyone else, however close they may seem to be?'

'Yes,' said Tom slowly. 'That's true enough. I had a friend once: he asked me to lend him three hundred pounds. I couldn't. He wrote me a letter abusing me like a thief. After ten years' friendship, too. No, one doesn't know.'

He was frightened, frightened by the silence, by the moonlight, and by a strange sense that the house was trying to tell him something.

'I want you to understand this about me,' Rosalind went on. 'It's important for both of us. I'm two people, Tom, and one belongs to a world that you will never understand. The future world, perhaps. A world of negation and rebellion. Not better than this one--probably worse--but new. Selfish, arrogant . . . I was talking of it to Janet to-day. She wouldn't understand it any more than you would. You want to build up everything on tradition--to evolve things out of other things. This new world wants a clean break--snap--snap. . . . Perhaps you're right. Perhaps you're not. But whenever I'm impossible, selfish, and ill-tempered, remember that it is that other world that's working in me. I shall be restless sometimes. Be patient and wait for me to come back.'

'If you love me,' he whispered, reaching up with his arms and drawing her face to his and pressing his cheek against hers, 'I will wait for ever.'

But as they stayed so lovingly bathed in the moonlight, in her heart something whispered again:

'Poor Tom! Poor Tom!'

CHAPTER VII

WINTERSMOON AT EVENING

Janet, early on the morning following the day of Rosalind's arrival, awoke suddenly, and in a condition of great panic. She sat up in bed, her heart panting with fear, her forehead beaded with sweat.

She was very conscious of her child; it was as though from within her womb it had called out to her, itself afraid.

She had been aware, during the last two weeks, that she must guard perpetually against nervous irritability. She was utterly unlike herself, and it seemed to her that the original Janet Grandison had crept away and deserted her ever since that day when, weeks before her impetuous trip to London, she had had a dim suspicion that perhaps she was going to have a child. She wanted that Janet Grandison back again. She could rely on her, knew that she was controlled and normal. Of this present Janet Poole she knew nothing. A strange, uncertain woman, prey to strange, uncertain, abnormal emotions.

But now, staring wildly about the dim room, she knew only that she was terrified. The moonlight that had flooded the room when she went to sleep was gone, and in its place was a strange smoky haze through which the furniture showed itself as though half submerged by water. In the whole house only the clocks were alive, and they were ticking, clattering, whirring, jumping like mad things. But surely people were listening everywhere? She seemed to be aware of their suppressed breathing, and then, when an owl hooted from the wood, the passages and empty rooms seemed to wake into activity, as though that had been a signal.

What she wanted was that someone should be with her. She could go into the next room and wake Wildherne, and she knew how kind he would be to her and how he would seek to comfort her, how understanding and friendly he would be.

At the thought of that kindliness and friendliness she shivered. It was because he was always so kind and tender to her now that she was irritated. He was kind to her because of her precious burden: she was important to him not because of herself but because of the offering that she would make to him; any other woman, any other woman in the world would have done as well. Would these clocks never cease? Why was this house so vast and she so small? What would the house care if this thing that was coming to her killed her? Death! She had never visualised it as occurring to herself. She had never known a serious illness. The death of her parents had affected her deeply, but because they were her parents, and because at the time of their death she had been very young, there had been a certain inevitability in it. But Death for her--now--within a month or two! Many women died in childbirth, and why not she? And who would care? No one if the child lived.

So she lay there, and with every striking of the clocks the house seemed to step closer to her. She was a doomed woman.

The daylight chases away our fears. But all through that morning she felt as though she were pursued by some stealthy, skulking figure. Rachel departed for London by the three o'clock train. It was a brilliant October day of amber sunlight. Wintersmoon basked in the sun, its grey walls dimly lit with a sheen of colour. Autumn silence was over everything. From the stables came the sound of men cleaning harness and the clatter of hooves on the stones of the courtyard. Within the walls some maid was singing at her work. The doves were gently cooing as though someone was stroking the air to music. And everything was amber coloured, the woods' russet seeming to stretch its shadows like a net over walls and lichened roofs.

Once and again the shrill scream of the peacocks stabbed the air. The purr of the car that was taking Rachel to the station, the last cries and laughter of the group on the steps of the house bidding her farewell, crackled into silence like the sudden scatter of fireworks, then died. The sun, low above the woods, flamed across the lawns, and a company of rosy clouds, close together as though clustered for safety, floated westwards.

Janet, longing intolerably to be alone, found a book and slipped away, as though she were engaged upon some conspiracy. She knew where they would never find her--in the old rosy-walled kitchen garden where there was a small arbour with easy-chairs. She took with her a fur coat and a rug because it was already cold. When she reached the arbour she was pleased as though she had cheated all their intentions. She snuggled down into her chair, warmly wrapped, and opened her book, the most adorable of all stories in English, Persuasion. Again and again in the past Jane Austen had come to her rescue, reassuring her, comforting her, throwing over her that warm cloak woven of common sense and humour and self-discipline and understanding tenderness. Surely it would not fail her now.

She read, with a little sigh of pleasure, the opening words: 'Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt.'

She read on happily, warm and cosy within the defence of the rose-red walls, looking out once and again over her book to where the sharp line of the wall cut across the pale sky, across the long straight rows of the friendly vegetables to the group of little stubbly apple-trees and the clumps of chrysanthemums and homely cottage flowers.

She read on, and then perhaps she dozed a little. She seemed to carry the words of the book with her: '"That you are very likely to do very soon, I can tell you, ma'am," said Charles. "Though he had not nerves for coming away with us and setting off again afterwards to pay a formal visit here, he will make his way over to Kellynch one day by himself, you may depend on it. I told him the distance and the road, and I told him of the church's being so very well worth seeing, for as he has a taste for those sort of things I thought that would be a good excuse." . . .'

The words floated away with her. She passed into a dim dusk and stood groping, her hands feeling the air in front of her. Then with a start she awoke. The same fear was with her that had accompanied her in the night. The fear of sudden disaster, the fear that the child within her womb had seemed to arouse in her, a fear accompanied by a desperate final loneliness. The garden was dimmer now than it had been. The sun had fallen below the walls. The vegetables had strange writhing shapes, thin poles and waving tendrils pushing up like long dark fingers into the pale air. A musty stifled feeling was everywhere, as though she were in some room whose windows had not for many a day been opened.

Worst of all it seemed to her that someone terrible and sinister was approaching towards her from the house. Someone who wished to tear her child from her, or to strangle her and bury her there in the dusk beneath the vegetables, or to convey to her some awful news that Wildherne was dead or that Rosalind had been found, like poor young Francis Poole, hanging from a tree in the Wintersmoon woods.

Fantastic terrors crowded into the little arbour. She knew them to be fantastic, but could not beat them back. As the light fell the garden walls seemed to crowd in upon her, the vegetables to develop some awful life of their own, the cold and clammy potatoes, the damp and indifferent cabbages, the thin emasculate beans. . . .

Someone would come from the house, stealing through the dusk--Geoffrey Purefoy, beloved of the haggard queen, or poor young Francis with his hapless Jane, or the Twelfth Duke with his pig's eyes and rolling belly, or the hatchet-faced Aubrey, having watched with his pale eyes the last struggles of frail Lucy Tourneur.

She could not move. She sat, the book forgotten at her feet; she was shivering with the cold of the evening, and every nerve in her was straining for the sound of the soft velvet-slippered feet.

Why could she not move? What had come to her old courage and fortitude? She clasped the sides of the chair and tried to pierce the shadows with her gaze.

Her fears were true. There were steps on the gravel path. With a cry she shrank back, covering her face with her hands. How ludicrous then to hear the quiet voice of Hignett:

'I beg your pardon, my lady. His lordship sent me to find you. It is nearly five o'clock.'

She looked up, and as she saw his solid sensible figure she could have cried with relief. Once again she saw his eyes, kindly and human, waiting to help her. 'Oh,' she said, with a little shiver, 'I had fallen asleep. Thank you, Hignett. I'll come in.'

Gravely he picked up the rug and the book and followed her.

In the lighted house this mood of strange disturbance was still with her. They were having tea in the hall; she slipped in through the dining-room, and then almost furtively into the long drawing-room. She crossed to the farther fireplace, and there, quietly busy with her silver embroidery, was the Duchess.

The Duchess! The last person whom at that moment Janet wished to encounter. There was nothing to be done.

'Ah, Janet,' the Duchess said amiably, looking up. 'Come and sit down. I shall enjoy a little talk.'

The long room was filled with shadows that crept out from the leaping fires, and then hastily back into them again. There was only a small globe of light over the Duchess's head. Here, like a witch weaving her spells on the edge of a dark landscape, she sat.

'Sit down, dear. I'm sure you must be tired. Do you think you rest enough?'

'Oh yes,' answered Janet cheerfully. 'More than enough.'

'Well, I don't know,' the grey turban continued to murmur. 'However, I prefer it to the other way--too much fuss. Before Wildherne was born you would have thought that the world was coming to an end.'

'And yet,' said Janet, 'I shouldn't have thought that you've ever known what nerves were.'

'Nerves!' the Duchess echoed scornfully. 'When I was young the word didn't exist. I know you read in novels about young Victorian ladies for ever fainting, but that was before my day. Why, I'd have been shut up with bread and water for a fortnight if I'd pretended to nerves.'

'It isn't always pretence,' said Janet quietly.

'If it isn't pretence,' said the Duchess, 'it's next cousin to it. Losing one's temper's the same. I haven't lost my temper for thirty years. I don't know what the Duke would do if I did. He likes to lose his, although of course he never means anything by it.'

The quiet little voice went on, the little boneless fingers moved in and out of the silk, the fire crackled, and the shadows crossed and recrossed. Once again Janet was listening for the step that was to bring her some awful news. The dark figure would stand watching her, then quietly move forward into the firelight. . . .

'I remember on one occasion,' the Duchess continued, 'when Mr. Disraeli was coming to have luncheon with us, the fish hadn't arrived, and my mother was greatly disturbed. At the same moment one of the footmen slipped in the hall and broke his leg. A most unfortunate combination of circumstances. Mr. Disraeli arrived in the middle of it all. "There isn't any fish and the footman has broken his leg," said my mother as quietly as anything, and it turned out that Mr. Disraeli liked a poached egg best of all.'

'Don't things to-day,' Janet asked, 'ever disturb you?'

'What kind of things, my dear?'

'All this labour trouble. The unemployment. All the men who fought so splendidly in the War out of work. And the carelessness of everyone who has money.'

'Why, dear me,' said the Duchess. 'It's always been the same. People are always out of work. And as for the suffering, the splendid things that Mr. Pomeroy is doing show what can be done. Then they tell me that young women are very fast these days, dancing all night, and going out with young men in motor-cars. My dear, it was just the same when I was a girl, only there weren't so many newspapers, and children were smacked more. I don't think, though, that there are quite as many gentlemen as there used to be, and I think the girls ought to wear more clothing. Now I don't want to hurt your feelings, Janet, but I did think that Rosalind was wearing very little last night. However, that's only fashion, I suppose.'

'What would you do if there was a revolution,' Janet asked, 'a real revolution, the kind of thing they had in Russia?'

'Oh, a revolution!' said the Duchess. 'Just pick up that silk for me, dear, will you? Why, what should one do? I'm sure all one's friends would behave splendidly, and it wouldn't last very long. There aren't enough foreigners in England to keep it going for long.'

Janet felt her nervous irritation rising in a flood of rebellion. She would adore to stick pins into that round plump arm.

'Sometimes,' she cried, 'it seems to me that everything is going, that our day is over, and England's day too.'

'That's, my dear,' the Duchess answered placidly, 'because you don't trust in God enough. He knows what is good for all of us and will perfect His will in His own good time.'

'Did He think the War was good for all of us?' Janet broke out. 'What kind of world is my child to live in? What kind of love and charity will there be for him when all this hatred--'

She broke off.

'Oh, it's all right for you. Your trust in God makes you safe. But we are the younger generation, Wildherne and I. What sort of God is there for us to believe in?'

'Janet, dear, you're tired.' The Duchess took the girl's hand in her own plump one. 'I knew you were. Go and lie down for an hour. Don't come down to dinner. Poor child. Your hand's quite hot. Let Miss Crabbage make you comfortable. I always find her wonderfully soothing.'

Janet's rebellion died down. She bent over and kissed her mother-in-law. 'Yes,' she said, 'I think I will go and lie down. But I don't want Miss Crabbage.'

She had a ridiculous panic about crossing the long room. She did not dare to pierce those shadows.

'I'll come with you,' said the Duchess, 'and see you cosy.' Perhaps after all, under that placidity, there was more understanding and perception than Janet's generation realised. They went through the shadowy room together.

At the top of the stairs they met Wildherne.

'Janet's tired,' said the Duchess; 'she's going to lie down.'

Janet turned back to her smiling: 'Thank you,' she said, 'Wildherne will look after me now.'

He put his arm around her and they walked along the passage to the little sitting-room with the rose-coloured paper that Janet especially loved and had made her own. They sat down in front of the fire on the deep rose-patterned sofa, he with his arm still around her, she with her head on his shoulder. For a while she was comforted. They did not speak; she stared into the slumbering fire.

At last she said: 'Wildherne, I've been so nervous to-day. Not like myself at all.'

'I know, dear,' he answered. 'But don't worry about it. It's quite natural just now. We all understand it.'

'You're like your mother,' she said, sitting up and leaning forward, her face resting on her hands. 'Does nothing upset her?'

'Nothing upsets her very much.'

'I wish,' said Janet, 'she'd be upset just a little sometimes. Her placidity moves her such a long way from weak ailing mortals like Rosalind and myself.'

He was immovably patient with her. 'She feels more than you think.'

'Do you?' She turned round upon him. 'Do you feel more than I think? Do you feel, for instance, anything about me at all?'

The attack was so sudden that he had to prepare for a moment before he answered.

'About you? Why, Janet, what do you mean?'

'Yes--about me, me, me! Oh, I know you feel about the child, and therefore you feel about me because I'm the mother of the child, and unless I'm looked after properly just now the child is in danger, but that's not feeling about me--me, Janet Grandison that was, a personality all to herself.'

She saw that he was deeply hurt and wounded, but the nervous apprehensions of the day were piling up now upon her; she was desperately, desperately weary; the calm imperturbability of the Duchess had throttled her like a piece of grey worsted. And because there was something that was true in her accusation, because during the last few weeks he had been thinking of the coming child for every waking and conscious moment, but also because he had, of late, done his utmost in every possible way to please her and thought that he had succeeded--for all this, his pride and his conscience were alike stirred.

Then he remembered her condition, and with great self-control he answered: 'I'm sorry, Janet, if I fail you.'

But she had seen his self-control, and it was an added sting to her irritation.

'No, don't be sorry. Let's be natural, Wildherne. Forget for a moment that I'm in what the papers call an interesting condition. We promised once to be honest with one another. Let's try for a moment. All Wintersmoon is listening. Quiet--you can hear a pin drop or a beetle sigh through the house. They are listening everywhere. Aubrey and Francis and stuffy Arabella, and poor Lucy Tourneur. Open the door suddenly and you'll see them all scatter down the passage. Now make your oath--before witnesses, remember. Wintersmoon at evening. Their time. They count more than we do after five has struck of an autumn evening. Your son is listening too. He'll remind you one day. Now for your oath. Swear by all their ghostly beards that your wife means something to you, that she is not just a child-bearer for the benefit of the great Purefoy family. . . . Swear! Swear!'

She was leaning forward, her eyes staring, her cheeks brightly flushed, her thin straight body trembling. She seemed to him in that moment unknown. He looked back to the quiet, restrained, controlled woman to whom once (and how long ago it now seemed) he had proposed marriage. He was here, shut in, with a stranger. Love could have helped him; but kindness, pity, tenderness, admiration, friendship, all were there--only not love. And he was, for his age, very young.

'I had thought,' he said, 'that we were still honest with one another. I have never been otherwise with you, Janet. Indeed, I am speaking from the bottom of my heart when I say that I honour and revere you as my wife, my truest, dearest companion and friend. Because you are going to give me a child I have been very happy, and of course I've thought of the child very much. It wouldn't be natural, would it, if I had not, but to think that you, you yourself, don't mean everything to me--'

'Everything!' she cried. 'Hush! I want them to hear that! Aubrey, Francis--do you hear? I mean everything to him--more than his family, his child, his father, his mother--more than any of you. Everything! Isn't that splendid? He has sworn. Now you may go. I don't want you any longer.'

She sank back on to the sofa, closed her eyes, lay there motionless. He bent over her. 'Janet, dear, go and rest. Have dinner in your room. I know that it hasn't been a good thing having all these people during these last days. Soon they'll be gone and we'll have the place to ourselves.'

Something very pathetic in her quiescence as she lay there touched him deeply. Some shadow of an emotion different from anything that he had ever known for her came near to him at that instant.

'Janet, dear. Janet, dear.'

But the kindness in his voice exasperated all her unsatisfied need. She sprang to her feet. 'You do your best. Don't I see how hard you're trying? Leave me alone, Wildherne. You're kind; it isn't your fault that you're not more than that.'

He stood beside her, bewildered. He took her arm. 'Let me go with you--'

'Oh, leave me, leave me!' she cried, breaking away from him. 'Don't you see how you're driving me? Do you see nothing? Are you so blind? Will nothing show you?'

She faced him, her whole being stiff with hostility.

Someone had come in. They both turned and saw the Duke.

'I beg your pardon--' He was going. She stopped him.

'No, come in. Wildherne's been doing his best and I've slapped him for it. Poor Wildherne--' She went up to him and rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. 'Try and forgive me. I'll do as you say, not come down to-night. Come up later on.'

He turned and kissed her.

'All right. I will.' Then he left the two of them together.

The Duke put his arm around her. On the sofa she lay with her head on his breast, exhausted, her long thin hands tightly clasped, silent, her eyes veiled. He softly stroked her hair; once and again he bent down and kissed her forehead.

She felt peace and confidence flow out of him. He knew life, this old man, knew it in the only two possible ways, by instinct and by experience. He had brain and heart and passions all buoyantly active. He was child and man, lover and friend and father, master and servant. His thick strong arm tightened about her; his heart beat against her cheek like the sure and benevolent marking of time. His hand that closed about hers was muscle and cool flesh, strength and tenderness, duty and understanding forbearance. She began to speak like a little child. 'I've been wicked to-day, father. I've lost control. I don't know what marriage has made of me--something I'm not proud of.'

'This is a difficult time,' the Duke answered. 'Your first child. You will fancy all kinds of things--and especially that everyone is unjust to you.'

'I'm frightened,' she murmured, and a little shudder ran through her body. 'I'm frightened--of something, anything, nothing. I don't want this child to be born. Into what kind of world am I bringing it? What right have I . . . to this struggle, this unhappiness . . .'

'Are you then so unhappy?' he asked her.

'Unhappy? Ah, that's a strong word. I've lost control. I'm not doing this job as I had hoped to do it. I'm a failure, father--a bad failure.'

He paused before he went on: 'Are you disappointed in Wildherne?'

She moved and then said sharply: 'Why do you ask me that?'

'Once or twice I have fancied that you were. And when I saw you together just now I knew that you had been quarrelling.'

'That has been all my fault,' she answered quickly. 'Wildherne has been an angel. I've exasperated him--'

'My dear--I love you so, and I know that you love me. We've both felt it from the first moment of our meeting. But tell me--don't be angry--or if you must be angry, try and understand beyond your anger. I've been wondering during these last weeks--do you love Wildherne enough? Are you finding perhaps that you don't love him as much as you thought you did?'

She turned round, slipping away from him. She stared at him, then without warning laughed. Laughed and laughed, softly, with very little sound, bitterly, her eyes stern and blind.

'You ask me that?' she asked at last gently. 'You think that?'

She waited, then with bent head went on: 'It is because I love him so much that I am so unhappy.'

The Duke said: 'Because you love him so much? Then everything's well--when he loves you so.'

'He doesn't love me,' she answered. 'He has never loved me.'

'He doesn't? But that's false.' The old man frowned. 'You are seeing things falsely just now, Janet, dear. Wildherne adores you.'

'He doesn't love me,' she answered. 'He never has. We married on that agreement.'

The Duke turned to her sharply: 'You--what?'

'We married on that agreement. It was to be a marriage of liking on both sides--but of nothing else. I married him to give Rosalind comfort; he married me to give his house a fitting hostess and family an heir. We were quite frank and honest. And all would have been well, but, unfortunately, after marriage I fell in love with him. I didn't want to. I didn't mean to. It simply happened.'

She had been selfishly (as how often afterwards she was bitterly and with deep reproach to recall) thinking of her own distress--the Duke had been only to her a loving and tender audience of that--but now the pain in his next words was so sharp that with a thrust of sudden awakened consciousness she realised what she had done.

'What! Wildherne married you without loving you? He told you that? Whom then'--the word was accusing in its attack--'does he love?'

'Whom?' Janet shook her head. 'No one. He doesn't love any woman. He loves you and his child that I am bringing him--and I'm his friend.'

'Janet, that isn't true.' The Duke had caught her arm. 'There's someone else. I knew it, that other night when he came home. And you know it also, Janet. That's why you're unhappy. He is living with some other woman.'

'No! He is faithful to me absolutely. It is my fault, none other's. We made our bargain and I've broken it. But I could not have known. He made me love him before I was aware. He caught me . . . and held me. . . .' She broke off, struggling with her self-control. But she failed. She broke down, crying bitterly, her head in her hands.

He sank on his knees beside the sofa, leaned up, caught her in his arms, drew down her head to his breast. He strained her to him, stroking her hair, murmuring consolation to her as though she were a little child.

But as she cried there his eyes stared above her dark head into the room. He looked frightened, bewildered, and terribly unhappy. Wildherne, the child of his life and power, the heart of his ambition, the pride of his eyes, false, weak, playing the blackguard like any other man . . .

His arms closed tightly about Janet as though he would defend her against all the ghosts of evil and the deadly powers of the obscene world.

CHAPTER VIII

ENGLISH HISTORY

'The afternoons do draw in,' said Mrs. Beddoes to the shadow of Mr. Beddoes. She was on her knees at the end of the Long Gallery, scrubbing the floor. It was a good moment for that early in the afternoon. No one came into the Long Gallery after luncheon, not for an hour at least. The pictures had it all to themselves.

Physically Mr. Beddoes was in London, and (you might bet your boots) at this moment fast asleep with the sporting edition of the Evening News over his face, but spiritually he was with Mrs. Beddoes--or, in absolute accuracy, she was with him.

This was Christmas Eve, and it grieved her sadly that, at such a time, she should be separated from him. Had her adored mistress been well enough (and how deeply Mrs. Beddoes adored Janet even Mrs. Beddoes didn't know) she might have put in a word, Mr. Beddoes being one of those men who really do miss their wives of a Christmas, but as things were she couldn't of course think of bothering.

The child, by rights, should have been born in the middle of January, but during these last two days things had been a trifle anxious (a way that 'things' were always having with 'us poor women').

The London doctor had arrived that morning, and little Doctor Bamfield from Salisbury was also here. Everything in the house was as still as still.

Considering these matters, Mrs. Beddoes had rested for a moment from her work and, looking up, had informed Mr. Beddoes about the drawing in of the afternoon. Although it was not yet three the dusk was creeping upon the Long Gallery like smoke, and you couldn't see the pictures except for here a nose and there a chin and once in a way a gleaming eye. A shivery sort of place at the best of times, and cold and draughty.

Mrs. Beddoes didn't care for galleries. But, looking about her and out through the long high window, she saw, with a thrill of sentimental pleasure, the gentle hesitating fall of the first snow. She believed profoundly that there 'should be a bit of snow at Christmas time', and the warm winters that we have nowadays seemed to her part and parcel of the general conspiracy to make food prices high, give her pains in her feet, and Mr. Beddoes laziness in all his bones.

When, therefore, she saw those grey flakes papering against the heavy sky she climbed on to her feet and went to the window to look out. Yes, it was the right kind of snow, the sort that was going to 'lie.'

At once before her vision danced a kind of Christmas Show of mince-pies, immense turkeys, red-nosed little boys with mufflers round their necks, snowballs, Christmas hymns, the Christmas stockings you buy in the shops with a trumpet staring out at the top, Christmas cards all glitter and robins, waits and carols, London mud, pantomime with Dick Whittington's cat, burning raisins, plum puddings black as night, pains in the stomach, the doors of public-houses opening and shutting, country lanes with somebody's arm round somebody's back, a bright silk bodice, after-dinner slumber, and kind, polite ladies from the Vicarage.

This confusion of early childhood's country memories and later London histories came in one swimming pageant before her eyes. She was for a moment blinded by its glories, then with a heavy sigh turned back to her work.

As she did so she heard steps coming down the gallery, and saw with a little flutter of alarm that it was Hignett. Mr. Hignett was very much grander and more imposing to her than the Duke or Lord or Lady Poole--not so imposing as the Duchess, who was one of her several ideas of God in female clothing. After the Duchess, but after no one else, came Mr. Hignett.

However, she was not one to pretend that she had been working when she had not, so she stood there waiting for him.

'Any news, Mr. 'Ignett?' she asked in her husky, rumbling voice.

He stopped and looked at her kindly. She saw that he was greatly perturbed.

'Her Ladyship's not so well,' he said. It was plain that he was so deeply anxious that a conversation with anyone was a relief.

'Poor lady,' said Mrs. Beddoes. 'It does seem 'ard. The first's trouble enough anyway without 'aving things go wrong.'

'You're right,' said Hignett, looking out of the window. 'But it's his Lordship I'm anxious about. It's hit him something terrible. If anything was to go wrong he'd never forgive himself, feeling responsible in a kind of a way.' Hignett coughed. 'It's snowing, I see. A bit cold in this gallery, Mrs. Beddoes?'

'Well, yes, it is, Mr. 'Ignett, but workin' one sort of forgets the weather. My mind's been on 'er Ladyship all day, so that I 'aven't rightly been thinking of anything else. I was at the wedding, you know, Mr. 'Ignett, 'ad a special card all to myself, 'aving worked for Miss Janet and her sister donkey's years.' (A slight exaggeration in Mrs. Beddoes's narrative was pardonable.)

Hignett moved restlessly to the window and back again.

'It's a strange thing, Mrs. Beddoes, when you come to think of it, that every man's mother had all this pain and trouble to bring him into the world, and nothing much for him to be grateful for when he is in. Being alive isn't much catch these days if you ask me, what with one thing and another.'

To this, however, Mrs. Beddoes would not agree.

'There I'm not exactly with you, Mr. 'Ignett, if you'll forgive me being so free. Of course troubles come alike to everybody, it wouldn't be natural without a trouble or two, but what I've said to Mr. Beddoes many a time (and 'e's something of your way of thinking, Mr. 'Ignett), what I say is that there's always something interesting coming along. If it isn't one thing it's another. If it isn't a railway accident, it's twins, or a Royal Procession, or just a walk down the street to see the shops--if you live in London, that is. That's my meaning, Mr. 'Ignett. Life's always providing something for you.'

Hignett allowed himself to smile. 'That's a very sensible philosophy, Mrs. Beddoes,' he remarked benevolently. He broke off. 'What's that?'

Somewhere a bell rang. Doors opened and shut. There was a faint patter of echoing feet.

'My God! Something's up!' He turned, hurrying down the gallery. Mrs. Beddoes stood staring after him. The snow was falling now in a thick clustered curtain.

Wildherne had walked with his mother out of the dining-room in a bewildered uncertainty. He must do something and that quickly--but what? He was terrified with a fear that he did not dare to analyse. He tried to listen to what his mother was saying.

In the hall she put her arm around his shoulder, drew his head down and kissed his forehead.

'Dear, it will be all right. I know it will. God intends that it shall.'

It was as though he were swimming in black underground water.

'It's her suffering,' he said. 'That she should suffer like this--it doesn't seem fair.'

His mother drew him down to a seat near the stone fireplace.

'Be brave about it, Wildherne. That's what God has put us into the world for, to be brave. And soon, when the child is born, Janet will be so happy. I suffered very badly before your birth, and your poor father suffered still more, but as soon as you were born and were lying in my arm I was happier than I had ever been before. I thanked God then for my pain, and so will Janet.'

'It was about two months ago'--he was fighting his way up through the darkness--'some time in October--that week-end when Rosalind and Tom were here--'

Her ears were sharp to hear whether any sound broke the upstairs silence.

'What, dear?'

'--that something worried her. Nothing went quite well with her after that.'

'I noticed no change in her,' the Duchess said, her little hand patting his knee.

'But I did. And there was a change in father too. Something's been the matter ever since then. Mother, what's happened to father?'

'Happened to him? . . . Why, nothing, dear.'

'Oh yes, something has. He hasn't been natural to me for weeks. I've challenged him about it, but he won't have it out with me. There's never been anything between father and me before.'

'Well,' his mother answered slowly, 'there has been something, dear. Something that will pass, I'm sure. I think that he had some talk with Janet . . . I don't know. . . . He won't tell me anything. But something about Janet distressed him. You didn't have any quarrel with Janet just then?'

'No, no,' he answered eagerly, rising and walking about, 'I've never had any quarrel with Janet, she's always been perfect--' He broke off. 'Oh, the stillness of this house! Why isn't there something for me to do? It's as though the whole house were listening. There's nothing for me to do--nothing.'

His mother drew him down to her again.

'Wildherne, dear, listen. Maternity is the grandest, finest thing a woman can know. However deeply she loves her husband, it isn't the same as her love of her child. Her husband is her child, but just because she hasn't suffered so terribly in bringing him into the world, so he isn't quite hers as her child is. There is no joy like that joy when you put your arm round your child and hold it close to your breast and feel its trust in you.

'I have sometimes thought that I haven't been quite the mother to you that I should have been. Always from a child I've wanted to organise and manage things, and when that opportunity came to me I welcomed it. And sometimes, often perhaps, I've been so busy that I haven't considered your father and you enough. I don't know. The other is important too, and I always pray to God to direct me and try to do His Will, in which, of course, I continually fail. But at a moment like this God shows me that none of this other life weighs at all against my love for you. Believe that I would give everything up for you and your father. And so Janet will feel when she has her child. And be thankful that you love her so deeply and she you. There are many married people who have married without love, and then, at such a time as this, they have nothing to give one another. But because you and Janet love one another you are together in whatever you have to meet.'

He bent down and kissed her very tenderly, then he got up and walked away.

He did not love Janet, even now when she was suffering all this pain for his sake. He was in a terror of distress for her, he would willingly have taken all her pain on to himself, but he did not love her. He knew, and the realisation of it was a lightning flash through the darkness, that in spite of all the longing in him for Janet's safety it was not love that moved him.

'Mother,' he said, turning back, 'won't you go up and see how things are? Perhaps there is something I could do. Anything but this idleness . . . this silence.'

'Yes,' she said. 'Of course I'll go, dear.'

As she went up the stairs Hignett came in from the garden.

'Oh, Hignett . . .' Wildherne stopped as though he had something to say. 'No, no--it's nothing.'

Hignett stood there beside his master, and there was something in the passive attention of his great bulk that seemed to say: 'Yes. Nothing else matters to me but your well-being. If by tearing myself into small pieces I can help at all, I'm quite ready.'

He only said: 'There's nothing I can do, my lord?' The two men looked at one another, and if friendship between one human being and another exists at all anywhere in the world, it existed then.

'No, nothing. Thank you, Hignett. It's all right, thank you.'

'Very well, my lord.'

Wildherne went out on to the terrace. He stood there and looked up to the grey, fathomless sky. He felt then the wet, gentle flakes of the snow caressing his face. He stood breathing in the cold, dun air.

He seemed to be utterly alone. He felt that he had no philosophy, no religion, no character with which to meet this crisis. If the child were born dead, and if perhaps Janet could have no more children, then the dream of his whole conscious, thinking life was ended. And if Janet died, he knew that bitter reproach would be his companion for the rest of his living days. Those were not mere words. That was true. He was of such a character that his conscience was persistent, unsleeping. It was true that he was young and old-fashioned for his time, but age would not change that in Wildherne. There was something of the Priest in Wildherne. He always saw things remorselessly with something of the revenging, inevitable chastity of clear running water. The only passion of his life had been that for Diana Guard, and already (though he did not yet know this) that was supplanted by the passion for his son-to-be. His love of England, of his father, of his home, of such poetry as Clare's, of the long naked shoulder of the Plain, of the weedy rubble under foot in country lanes, of sudden streams, of riding, of early mornings seen from the windows of Wintersmoon--all these (save possibly his love for his father) had been affections, not passions. His feeling of friendship for Janet had been so easy; it was absolutely characteristic of him, characteristic of his loyalty, naïveté, innate purity, English unsexuality.

And so he had in him no recognised force to meet these two overwhelming emotions that had suddenly risen together to meet him--his sense of injustice to Janet, the threatened loss of his longed-for child.

He was torn with misery and apprehension. It was literally a tearing. He was sick with terror. At any moment some figure might approach to tell him that Janet or his child, or both, were dead.

For the remainder of his life, then, he would remember that, at the most crucial moment of it, he had failed. And this sense of failure would not be to him as it would to many more callous men, a light thing. He was always ready to believe the worst about himself. It was the easiest thing to believe. And he was very young. Life had not as yet tested him at all.

He had never known before what it was to be utterly alone. Always there had been someone there. Now there was no one. There was, above all, not his father.

He did not know what had come between them, but something had. The old man was never clever at hiding his feelings, and Wildherne had in the last two months surprised again and again a strangely puzzled, deeply distressed look in the old man's eyes.

Suddenly, in a moment as it were, every kind of change had come into Wildherne's life. He was bewildered, just as the snow, which was falling faster now, was bewildering him. But he stood there without a coat, without any sensation of cold or wet--only the snow stole into his brain and lay there, filling every nook and cranny.

He came back, as in the last weeks a thousand times he had come back, to the child. Was that wrong of him--vile of him, perhaps--not to care finally, at the last turn of the screw, about his father or mother or Janet--to think again and again and again of the child?

He did not know it, but he was repeating over and over the words: 'O God, give me a son! O God, give me a son!'

The snow beat him back, but it was as though he would press forward at every cost to that leafless wood and find his son there. His son! His son! What marvellous, magical words! He could not remember a time when he had been too young to have that ever before him. That had been the purpose always--to serve England by providing a fine son who would love and serve her. Also to serve Wintersmoon thus. Also to serve himself, his heart and mind and soul, thus.

If this purpose went, what went with it? What, for him, could replace it? What love or service were there worthy to be successor?

His heart ceased to beat. The snow swirled upwards in a blinding net. He saw a figure stand in the lighted doorway.

He didn't know then (he only knew afterwards in recollection), but it was little round, pursy Bamfield.

The little man caught Wildherne by the shoulders.

'Lord Poole. It's a fine boy, and she's doing splendidly. She's taken it wonderfully. You can go up and see her very shortly.'

He reeled into the hall, there stationed himself, looking up the wide staircase into the heart of the house.

Then, with long unsteady steps, he began to run up the stairs.

END OF PART II

PART III

WILDHERNE AND HUMPHREY

CHAPTER I

BEAMINSTER PAYS TWO CALLS

Beaminster was never quite the same man again after an attack of rheumatic fever that he had towards the end of nineteen twenty-two.

Although he had apparently quite recovered by the spring of nineteen twenty-three it was noticed by everyone that he had aged, that his carriage was no longer so upright nor so sprightly as it had been, that his spirit was at times sadly broken, and that he had acquired the habit of talking to himself.

People said that he would not in all probability live very much longer and speculated as to how much he would leave. They also said that his disappointment in the result of Tom Seddon's marriage had a good deal to do with his breaking-up.

Johnny Beaminster was not aware that they talked like this. As with all of us, he credited his friends with some of the pleasurable excitement about himself that he himself possessed. He did not realise how dim and distant a figure he was to nearly everybody. He was aware, however, that he was neither so young nor so happy as he once had been. As the months progressed the expectation that he would be yet again young and happy dwindled. The world seemed to have changed.

One thing that saddened him greatly was the departure of Fullerton, who was pensioned off. Instead of that cheerful sight in the morning of Fullerton's broad bending beam, there was a thin cadaverous young chap who was polite and efficient enough, but with whom, for one reason or another, Beaminster could establish no personal relation.

Then Beaminster was seldom now out of pain. Not bad nor incapacitating pain, but twinges, shoots, and spasms, and, behind these, a kind of hovering fear as though something very much more alarming was going to happen shortly.

Then the world was changing most sadly for the worse. This London English world, which was after all Johnny Beaminster's, was not at all as it had been. There was this Unemployment, this Socialist Menace, this perpetual pulling down of well-known London landmarks, this ghastly Income Tax, this impertinence of servants, these masculine women and these effeminate men, this perpetual talk of Bolshevism (as though his beloved England could ever be ruled by Russian Jews!), and, a real daily trouble to him, this rushing and shrieking traffic so that he was almost afraid of going out into the streets of a morning.

Then the world was forgetting him. He would not have minded that in the least had he been able to keep around him his dozen dear old friends, male and female; but they were all dying or dead, and there was no one to take their places. No one invited him out any more, and even in his beloved Zoffany he had a suspicion that some of the men there thought him a dreadful old bore.

But of course none of these things weighed at all on his mind in comparison with his distress and dismay at the consequences of Tom's marriage. These consequences were the more disastrous to him because he could not discern exactly what they were. He was kept away from the truth. Rosalind did not allow him to come within a hundred yards of her. No one told him anything. He only knew that his dear Tom, for whom he would willingly give all the blood that still coursed through his wretched old body, was unhappy and terribly altered for the worse.

Tom and Rosalind had been married in the autumn of nineteen twenty-two, just before Beaminster had his attack of rheumatic fever. It was now the autumn of nineteen twenty-three. They had been married just a year, and things were as bad as they could possibly be.

The problem was to see exactly where they were bad. Certain things were obvious--as for instance that Rosalind got on with her mother-in-law, Lady Seddon, extremely badly, that Rosalind was independent and selfish, that Tom sulked and seemed to have lost all his ambition. But definitely no one would tell Beaminster anything.

Tom swore that 'things were all right'; Rosalind said that 'Tom was a dear'; the world said that Rosalind 'would be off any day.' But no one had any of those stiff, definite, awkward things called 'facts.' It was only in the air that the Seddon marriage wasn't turning out well.

In truth the two sisters, Janet, Marchioness of Poole, and Rosalind Seddon, were very prominent figures just now.

It happens every once and again in London that some personality dominates, for a while, the scene. It is sometimes a domination of deliberate intention, as it had once been with the Duchess of Wrexe. Sometimes it is a domination of character, beauty, or position, the domination of a Disraeli, a Lily Langtry, a Gladstone, or (in the latter years of the War) a Lloyd George. But it has happened sometimes that a personality without any great gift whatever of intelligence, beauty, or wealth permeates the whole world of London, permeates because of its moral truth and its possession of some quality that is ardently desired by many people at the time.

It was something of this influence that Janet Poole was beginning to have in London--dim, nebulous, but constant. People said that that world for which she stood--the quiet, old-fashioned, rather shabby aristocracy--had a fuller and more active life than one supposed, and that Janet Poole was a proof of this. She took no prominent part in public ceremonies; she did not open bazaars nor crèches; she did not speak at political meetings nor organise theatrical matinées. She was not, as was her mother-in-law, connected very definitely with a public and important movement. She spent much of her time in Wiltshire with her husband and little son. She was not a woman with whom people made friends easily; her picture appeared but seldom in the illustrated papers; she had no publicly pronounced views on 'The Modern Young Man,' 'Psycho-Analysis,' 'Should Divorce be made Easier?' It was simply that a great many people were aware of her, were vaguely proud of her, and prophesied that she and her husband would 'be heard of one day.' People liked the idea of her.

She may, of course, have been helped to some of her fame by Rosalind.

Rosalind's beauty had grown and developed since her marriage. Without becoming an actress in the Cinema, or appearing in every paper as an advertisement for somebody's Cream or Powder, without indeed being very greatly photographed or paragraphed anywhere, she was nevertheless known as the most interesting, beautiful woman in London. It was because she was 'interesting' that people thought about her, because, without belonging to any particular set, she was known to be the friend of one or two curious and rebellious personalities--Plan, the sculptor; Lamond, the author of Crust and The Blue-veined Monkey; Charles Ravage, and Hay Ferris, the negro Bolshevist--all men. She did not care about women.

She was not seen often with any of these people--she was not seen often with anyone. She never gave interviews. What she did give sometimes were little parties in the Seddon flat near the British Museum. It was said that the best talk in London was to be heard at these little parties. It was said that Tom Seddon never appeared at them. It was said, moreover, that they were extremely serious and, one or two people asserted, excessively dull. Very little drinking, no dancing, no love-making. But no one knew anything for certain. No one knew anything about Rosalind for certain--save this, that she was very different indeed from her sister.

The only other thing that was said was that Tom and Rosalind Seddon had very little money, that they lived in the very simplest fashion, and that, from having been notable for her extravagance before her marriage, Rosalind since her marriage had become so economical that her enemies (of whom she had a considerable number) called her mean.

Of all these things old John Beaminster was aware, and of some of these things he was thinking on this grey and misty afternoon, November 4, 1923.

He had finished his luncheon and had come into the little sitting-room to sit in front of the fire and have his half-hour's nap. But to-day the nap would not come: he was too deeply disturbed.

He had not seen Tom for a week, nor had a line from him, and, as was often the way with him in these days, a cloud of menacing disaster hovered above his head. This cloud mingled with the thin wispy fog that had penetrated into his room.

He knew that if he went to his window and looked out he would see that wispy fog thinly pervading the trees, dank with moisture, the Devonshire House gates (recently placed just opposite his building), the long line of Piccadilly, the figures of men, the bodies of motor-cars and omnibuses. He knew that he would be depressed by that sight, and that the menacing cloud of his own fears would swell and swell as he gazed. So he sat over his fire, aware that sleep would not come to him, aware of an occasional sharp shooting pain in his right thigh, aware that he had eaten too much luncheon, and that a glass of wine and a biscuit were the best things for him in the middle of the day.

He must see Tom, and that as soon as may be, or if he could not see him in the flesh he must hear of him at first hand. As often now, he spoke to himself aloud:

'I must see Tom. If he won't come to me I must go to him. . . . Devilish chilly in here even with the fire. I was a fool to have that pheasant. Fullerton wouldn't have let me. . . . That fog gets through the windows. Tom won't be there this afternoon. He'll be at the Foreign Office. I might see her, though. . . .'

He had to confess to himself that he was afraid of 'her.' How many times had he struggled to throw off this fear! In the old days he had been afraid of nobody, no, not of the Duchess nor of dry-as-a-stick Adela--neither of man nor of woman nor of child. But to-day--he did not know how it was--he was afraid of a good many people. He was afraid of the modern young man and the modern young woman, who showed you so plainly that they thought everything you uttered an idiocy; he was afraid of the people who moved so quickly that they had not even time to see that you were there; he was afraid of the people who were afraid, the men and women who were so nervous of the future that they made you also nervous. But he was afraid of none of them as he was of Rosalind. It was not that she was ever rude or unkind, but she behaved to him as though he were almost dead, as though she had his little obituary laid out neatly there in front of her and, after considering it, happily flicked it aside.

Whenever he saw her he felt that he had advanced perceptibly nearer his grave; and although he did not care greatly about his death, yet he wanted to live. He clung to life, to the warm crackling fire, to the bright sunny days, to the few friends who were still glad to see him, to the pieces of fun that yet remained to him.

So he shrank from Rosalind. And, thinking of her, his thoughts passed naturally to Janet Poole. Why should he not go and pay her a visit and tell her a little of his trouble? She was devoted to her sister. She must herself be distressed that this marriage was not proceeding happily. He did not know her very well, but when he had seen her she had always been very kind to him. He liked her very much indeed. He was not afraid of her. Surely no one could be that!

He resolved that he would, this very afternoon, pay two calls--one on Rosalind and Tom, the other on Lady Poole. From one or another of these he must surely learn something.

He got up, walked up and down a little to feel confidence in his limbs (he had sometimes a fear in these days lest one of his legs should suddenly desert him), went into the little hall and put on his smart, rough, blue overcoat, found his bowler hat and gold-headed cane and started off.

Outside Dare and Dolphin's he summoned a taxi and gave the man the Bloomsbury address. He sat back in the taxi, confident and happy again. He always recovered very quickly his spirits; it needed very little to cheer him, but then also it needed very little nowadays to depress him. That's what he was to-day, up one moment, down the next. Very foolish.

When the taxi stopped in the rather shabby little street where Tom and Rosalind had their abode he gave a discontented grunt. He knew that it was just now the fashion for clever and extremely modern persons to find their resting-place in Bloomsbury, but, upon his soul, he could not understand them! Dead-and-alive place! Nothing but cats and policemen, and the odour of the British Museum mummies over all!

He climbed out carefully, paid lavishly the pinched-faced driver, and seeing at the side of the door the name Seddon over two others, pushed the bell that belonged to it, found the house door opened and entered the grimy hall.

They were on the third floor, so up the dingy stairs he climbed, but, arrived there, he found their door very smart indeed in shining white paint and a brilliantly polished door-knocker. He was used to this, of course, having paid many other visits, but the contrast between the house in general and Rosalind's flat in particular never quite lost its novelty for him.

The sharp-faced maid, whom he thoroughly disliked, opened the door, and yes, Lady Seddon was in, Sir Thomas Seddon too, and they were both in the drawing-room, and there in another instant was Beaminster also, coming, as he was immediately aware, upon something of a scene.

He fancied, looking back afterwards, that the maid, hating her mistress (she left that very week), threw him in there intentionally, hoping to make confusion twice confounded.

She did not of course do that, because Rosalind was far too clever, but she did, terribly, confuse old Beaminster. He, like all gentle souls, hated above everything a scene. His vision of Rosalind angry quite literally terrified him. And yet she was very beautiful. She was wearing a dress of silver-grey, and it had a waistcoat with jewelled buttons. She was wearing a kind of Elizabethan ruff of stiff silver brocade. Her hair clustered about her head in ripples and shadows of light. As she stood there in front of the green Tang horse on the white mantelpiece, her hands on her hips, she was like a young St. George challenging the dragon. The dragon for the moment was poor Tom, who was too fiercely enraged to be properly pitied. Yes, there had undoubtedly been a scene.

Whatever she thought of the iniquities of the outrageous maid, Rosalind kept her indifferent charm. 'Dear Uncle John,' she said, 'that's lovely of you--to come at such an unusual hour. And it's especially fortunate just now, because Tom and I have been having words, and I've got to go out and haven't time to cool him down. You can stay behind and do it for me.'

Johnny Beaminster smiled and tried to appear happy. He looked, of course, abjectly miserable.

'I hope not serious words,' he said.

'Not serious in the least,' laughed Rosalind, going up and patting Tom on the shoulder. 'We're arranging a compromise, as all good husbands and wives should. I'm perfectly ready to see Tom's point of view, but he won't see mine. However, you talk to him.'

She came close to Beaminster, her lovely eyes gazing into his.

'How smart you look, Uncle John. But then you always are--smarter than anyone else in London--and younger. Dear Uncle John, be kind to Tom. I can't bear him to be unhappy.'

And she went out.

He sat down in the grand chair with its orange brocade near the white-tiled fireplace and looked up miserably at the Tang horse. Tom came and stood near him.

''Fraid I came in at an awkward time, my boy,' said Beaminster. 'Maid ought to have prevented me.'

'No,' said Tom, 'it's all right. We couldn't go on wrangling for ever, and we didn't know how to stop.'

Beaminster's heart ached for the boy so desperately, and he was so anxiously afraid lest he should show his sentiment, that he did not know what to do, so he looked about the room.

'Pretty room,' he said, as though he had never seen it before. It was in fact a very pretty room, although there was almost nothing in it. There were orange curtains, a yellow Chinese rug, and a Chinese woodcut on the white wall. Also a piano.

'Oh, damn the room!' said Tom. He looked about him like an imprisoned animal. He went on: 'Do you remember once, Uncle John, when I came to tea with you at 90 Piccadilly to tell you about Janet's engagement to Poole?'

'Yes,' said Beaminster. 'Of course I remember.'

'And do you remember how happy and excited I was, and how I burst out with all my political and writing ambitions, and the wonderful things I was going to do with my life?'

'Yes,' said Beaminster. 'I remember.'

'Fine, wasn't it?'

'Very fine indeed.'

'Well, it may interest you to know that that's all completely finished and done with. I haven't any ambitions. I'm not going to do anything with my life. Nothing at all.'

John Beaminster raised his eyes to the boy's.

'Isn't that rather weak, Tom, my boy? To give up, I mean? Not like you really. But I'm glad you've spoken to me. I've held back too long--through a sort of shyness. And I've been miserable too--not as young as I was. You're everything I have in the world. If things aren't going well with you I'm upset, devilish upset. I've been a coward--I ought to have spoken to you long ago.'

But the boy was just at that moment selfish. He cared for Beaminster more truly than for anyone else in the world, save only Rosalind and his mother, but just then he couldn't consider him--he could think only of his own misery.

'Weak!' he said, catching one of Beaminster's first words. 'Yes, that's easy to say. I swore to make a success of this and I've failed. Yes, whatever way it goes now I've failed. And it wasn't as though I wasn't warned. Say what you like,' he wheeled round fiercely upon the old man, who sat forward in his chair staring up at him, 'but you can't be unfair to her. She warned me. She told me it wouldn't be a success. I would have it. I longed for her, ached for her . . . and I ache for her still.' It was terrible for Beaminster to see his distress. His heart seemed to stop its beating with his pain and fear. But quietly and without any emotion he said:

'No, I won't blame her, but tell me, Tom, if you can, if you wish to, what the trouble has been. I know something of men and women. I'm old and have seen all sorts. I haven't been married, it's true--but as good as married, you might say. Perhaps I can help you.'

'The trouble? She's never cared for me, except physically. She's found me a bore, sentimental, old-fashioned, awfully stupid. She's been as patient with me as she knew how to be, but everything that I say and do has seemed to her idiotic.'

'Idiotic!' Beaminster was astounded. 'Idiotic! But you're so clever. . . .'

'No. Not in her world. Oh, I'm cleverer than Rosalind at some things, but not at the things that matter to her and her friends.'

'Her friends?' asked Beaminster, catching him up. 'Who are her friends?'

'I don't know. In a way you might say she hasn't got any, she's so by herself always. Even Ravage can't touch her. . . . But they've got the kind of brains she likes--better brains than hers. That's what she says she wants. At first I used to be here when she had her little parties. I thought I could join in and be one of them. But I couldn't. They laughed at every single thing I believe in, and then I would be angry, and then they'd laugh the more. So I kept away. And so I cut myself off from her more than ever.'

He broke off, staring about the room as though here in the things about him he might find some help. 'Then came the worst thing. About six months ago I lost my temper and said that because it seemed that the only use she had for me was a physical one I wouldn't have that, and that we shouldn't live as man and wife again until she could care for me in other ways as well. Oh, as soon as I'd said it I regretted it, but she has kept me to it . . . and it's driving me mad! I've implored her--begged her--humiliated myself--'

He broke off, turned to the window and stood there with bowed head.

Beaminster clenched his hands. 'That's bad,' he said, trying to keep his voice steady. 'But doesn't she care for you in any other way? Is that true?'

'She says it's not true. She says she cares for me in many other ways. But she says that I made my demand, and in return she makes hers. Hers is--' He flung out his hands. 'Impossible! Utterly! Hers is that I tell my mother that she and Rosalind are never to meet again, never to speak again unless other people are there. She hates my mother. She has always hated her. How can I tell my mother that? She says that when I do she will come back to me.'

'Why does she hate your mother?'

'I don't know. She always has. She hates mother and she loves Janet. Save for these two emotions she's aloof, utterly--by herself. And although she loves Janet she doesn't mind hurting her--hurts her a hundred times a week. But she isn't cruel, nor mean. She doesn't bear malice. Hate's too strong a word to use about her feeling for my mother. She, like her friends, doesn't believe in strong emotions of any kind. Cool--calm--unpassionate. They are all like that. They believe in Ideas.'

He paused and then went on:

'And that's their world, the world that's coming. This old one has to go, root and branch, to vanish off the face of the earth, and instead there's to be this new one, cold, unpassionate, scientific, material, accurate, unfeeling. No unkindness, and no kindness either. Physical passion, because the race must be continued, but eugenical passion. No ridiculous generosities, but charity organised by the State. Science the only religion. Not human beings, but ideas. . . . Oh, I've heard them talk--Plan and Ferris and the others. I'm not saying that Rosalind goes with them all the way--they are cleverer than she is. She is frightened sometimes. And then she loves Janet, and even in a sort of way cares for me. She is apart from them--apart from me too.'

He paused once more, then went on again with a rush. 'She's so beautiful. If I didn't see her perhaps I could bear it, but to see her and not to touch her--'

Beaminster, his eyes shining with indignation, said:

'I should ravish her. That's what she deserves. She is playing with you. Master her--whip her if necessary--knock her down. All this rot. . . .'

'No,' Tom shook his head. 'I'd lose her altogether then. She'd go off with Ravage straight. Not because she loves him--she doesn't, I'm sure--but because she's not going to belong to anybody. To nobody. She wouldn't resent my beating her, you know--she'd admire me, perhaps--but she wouldn't stay with me.'

Beaminster urged his plan.

'Try it, my boy, and see. Beat her and shut her up. It's paid over and over again--'

'No, no,' Tom broke in. 'You don't understand. It's more subtle than that. Her body's not important enough to her. It's her brain I've got to get at, and so, through that, at her heart.'

Beaminster shook his head.

'Well, perhaps you know best. I don't understand these young women. In my day it was plain sailing enough. If they liked you they liked you, if they didn't they didn't. But all this talk about brains--'

Tom was better. Some of his trouble had passed. He realised fully now the old man standing in front of him, and with all the warmth of his young and impetuous heart loved him.

'Dear Uncle John, it's splendid of you to bother. You've helped me too. I ought to have gone to you long ago, but I've been sort of keeping my troubles to myself. But just talking to you takes ever so much off my chest. I was wild just now. I'll win this game yet.'

'Of course you will.' Beaminster put his hand on his shoulder. How fine the boy looked with his dark distinction, splendid bearing, noble openness of brow and eye. 'This mustn't beat you. She's difficult, of course, but so all women are, all women who are worth anything. You can take that from me. But come and see me--oftener than you do. I'm a bit lonely sometimes.'

'I will,' Tom said. 'Indeed I will. I'll ring you up from the F.O. to-morrow morning and we'll fix something.'

Beaminster tapped the boy again on the shoulder, cocked his hat on the side of his white head and departed. Half-way down the dingy stairs he wanted to run back, just to see the boy again, to say to him--well, what?--what was there to say?

So, with a sigh of mingled affection and breathlessness, he went on his way.

Seated, half an hour later, in the Morris-paper drawing-room at 3 Halkin Street, talking to Janet Poole, he was able to be himself. He had not been quite natural with either Rosalind or Tom, fear of scorn holding back in one case and fear of sentiment in the other. Now as he sat opposite this tall, dark, quiet woman he was entirely reassured. He was now in his own world, and with a woman whom he could trust.

But how she had developed in these last two years! The rather crude timid girl had become someone commanding, assured, at her ease. He looked back to that party in this same house when Janet had been introduced to the family. He remembered how on that evening, when she had been talking to Rachel Seddon and himself, she had sprung up suddenly and left them, driven by some anxiety about her sister. There had been something girlish and naïve in that impetuous action, something immature indeed about her whole appearance that evening. There was nothing immature about her now. Life had tested her since then.

And how kind she was! He thought that he had never before in his life met anyone so kind. Goodness of heart shone in her eyes, played about the lines of her mouth, expressed itself in every movement of her body. In the first moment they were friends, and soon he was pouring out all his anxieties and troubles before her.

First she had made him talk about himself.

No, he had not been quite so well lately. Rheumatism had troubled him, and a little sciatica in the right thigh. Oh, of course, he wasn't so young any longer. And he didn't know, but he fancied that the world wasn't quite so comfortable a place for old people as it used to be. Oh, he had nothing to complain of, but the traffic was difficult. You had to be quick when you were crossing a road, and it was rather difficult for him to be quick these days. Then he brushed all this aside. He hadn't come to talk about himself. That was of no interest to anybody. He was worried about Rosalind and Tom.

He brought this out timidly. He didn't know. He might have no right to talk about this with her. She might think it impertinent of him. He soon saw that she did not, and he saw too that she wanted him to talk of it, that it was to her too a matter of grave and imminent importance. He had just come from there. They had been quarrelling, and when he had been alone with Tom he had found that the boy was terribly unhappy and didn't know where to turn for help.

'I don't want to be unfair,' he said. 'To take sides in an affair of this kind is generally to do more harm than good. Of course I'm prejudiced. Tom is everything in the world to me. And then in a way I'm a little responsible. I was so glad when she said that she would marry him. It was the one thing in the world I wanted, and I helped it in every way I could. But I'm sure that Tom has been difficult. He's really very young for his age, and he has some of his mother's foreign temperamental nature. . . .'

'Rachel,' said Janet. 'I'm afraid she's part of the trouble.'

'Oh, she is,' said Beaminster. 'I fear that your sister dislikes her very much. She always has done, I believe.'

'Yes,' said Janet. 'She always has done.'

'And then Rosalind's friends,' Beaminster went on. 'They think Tom very stupid. He isn't stupid. Not at all. But he's not one of their kind. He doesn't believe in the things that they do.'

'Nor does Rosalind,' said Janet quickly. 'If Tom would only realise that--'

'He does realise it,' Beaminster broke in quickly. 'He's very just to Rosalind, I think. He excuses her in every way. But he did a foolish thing--'

'Yes?' said Janet.

'No. That isn't for me to tell you. Your sister must speak of it to you. But they are not living as man and wife, Lady Poole. That is at the root of all the trouble.'

'I knew that,' Janet said. 'I know a good deal, although Rosalind tells me very little. The difficulty is, Lord John, that nobody in the world understands Rosalind save myself. I thought that perhaps Tom would. But he doesn't. I've heard him say things to her again and again that I knew were just wrong, and I've longed to tell him, to show him. But it's so dangerous interfering between man and wife, even when the wife is your sister. But I've been too cowardly. I see that plainly. I'm so glad that you've come and talked to me.'

'I've been saying the same thing to myself,' said Beaminster. 'I've not helped Tom enough. I've always said to myself--He doesn't want an old fogey talking to him. But I should have done something.'

They both paused. They were both realising how infinite were the differences between human beings, how dark and lonely every human soul, how dangerous the task of stepping forward into that mystery.

Janet suddenly spoke with an intensity that surprised Beaminster.

'I know that you love Tom, Lord John, but I don't think that you can realise how I love my sister, how I love her and how little I seem to be able to do for her. I don't understand that about life. When one loves so deeply one should be able to have force, power that would carry you over every obstacle. But it isn't so. I have for a moment power with Rosalind, and then it is gone, gone like the wind. I believe that she loves me, but her selfishness drives me out. And it is not a base selfishness. There is nothing intentionally mean nor cruel in it. It is as though she were conscious of some destiny and everything must give way to it.'

'That,' said Beaminster drily, 'is what many of the young people of to-day seem to think, but they can't all of them have destinies of such vital importance as they imagine. The world wouldn't be able to stand up under it.'

Janet spoke, and it seemed to be to herself that she was speaking.

'I seem not to be strong enough nor wise enough to carry through the charges I have been given. I haven't the power . . . the power. . . .'

She got up and stood near to him, looking down upon him very kindly.

'At least we are together in this, Lord John. You for Tom and I for Rosalind, and perhaps both of us for both of them. When we love them so much we must be able to do something for them. We'll try, won't we?'

She gave him her hand.

Before he could reply to her there was an interruption. Beaminster was conscious of the interruption before he was visually aware of it. Janet made him conscious. When she had been talking to him there had been something precise, almost stilted, in some of her words. She had talked to him 'rather like a book,' and he remembered to have noticed that in her before--something old-maidish and old-fashioned.

But now, before his eyes, she changed to something alive, merry, vibrating. Her face was lit with anticipation. She seemed for a moment to forget him, although she had been taking her conversation with him so seriously.

She turned towards the door. It opened. The Duke came in, leading by the hand a small boy.

The boy was short and sturdy. He was dressed in some sort of white blouse and wide 'Dutchman' trousers of dark blue. His head was covered in the right sentimental tradition with bright yellow curls, but there was nothing sentimental about him. His face was brown with health, and just as they entered the room he pulled his hand away from his grandfather's and started to run to his mother. When he had gone a little way he stumbled and fell. He lay flat for a moment, then slowly rose and sat back on his fat little haunches, looking up at the group in front of him with the oddest expression, his face half puckered to a howl, but behind the howl the beginning of a smile, and this smile was mingled with wonder as though he said: 'That hurt. The right thing to do would be to cry, but I must have looked jolly funny tumbling like that.'

He decided not to cry, rose to his feet, then looked up to his grandfather for comment.

Very slowly, and with a suspicion of experienced amusement, he remarked: 'It 'urt.'

'Hurt, darling, not 'urt,' Janet said, coming towards him.

'Nanna says 'urt.'

'I know, dear. She says 'urt and you say hurt. You mustn't say everything that Nanna says.'

'Because why?'

'Because Nanna is one person and you're another.'

This seemed to amuse him greatly. He produced some chucking and gurgling noises which were to him complete and very satisfactory sentences.

Then he saw Beaminster. He smiled at him a most engaging smile. He looked up at him, his whole face alive with interest.

'How are you?' he asked, then at once, as though he had for ever settled that question (the question of manners), he turned round to his mother and cried:

'Oh, mummie, the Heluphunt's been sick in the stummick cos it's eaten itself full.'

'I'm afraid,' said Janet, laughing and looking at the Duke, 'that he's got that from Nanna too. She's an excellent woman, but she seems to be teaching him some terrible words.'

'What a lot he talks,' said Beaminster. 'He isn't two yet, is he?'

'In a month,' she answered, sitting down and taking him on to her lap. 'Poor child, he was born on Christmas Eve, so that people will always be cheating him out of birthday presents. But he hasn't realised that tragedy yet--have you, Humphrey?'

But Humphrey was still working hard at his story.

'The Heluphunt,' he said, 'had jam. Nanna said she could, because why she was a poor Heluphunt. Poor little boys don't have jam, Nanna says. Because why, mummie?'

'Because poor little boys haven't enough pennies to get jam at the shop--'

But his attention had wandered. He was absorbed by Beaminster, who was sitting on the sofa opposite him. He sat rigid on his mother's lap, his eyes staring in his head.

Then, wriggling, he tried to get down. 'Nice old man,' he said. He struggled over to Beaminster.

'Coming up?' Beaminster asked him, stretching out his arms. Humphrey considered, his face twisted with that same humorous speculative expression. Then he decided that the adventure was worth while, climbed on to Beaminster's broad thigh and sat there, straddle-legged, his wide Dutch trousers standing out like wings.

He considered them with great satisfaction.

'Do you like my trousies?'

Beaminster said that he did.

He felt deep in his pocket and produced two marbles, a pencil, and a very minute, naked, black doll. One of the marbles he presented to Beaminster.

'You have that.'

'Thank you very much,' said Beaminster.

He put up his hand and stroked Beaminster's smooth soft cheek, still regarding him with wide speculative eyes.

'Don't bother Lord John, darling,' Janet said. 'Put him down, Lord John, if he bothers you.'

But the old man was delighted. He held the child tightly to him. Humphrey laid his head back on Beaminster's waistcoat, then shouted with delight. 'Oh!' he shrieked, wriggling all over.

He plunged his hand into the pocket, and after some mighty efforts he pulled out a large gold repeater. Here was ecstasy! The gold cover flew open with a click, then the little distant silvery voice sounded, paused, sounded again. He was in an ecstasy. He sat, the watch pressed closely to his ear, his face now intensely grave in the importance of the glorious experience.

'More! More! More!' he cried, and with every chiming of the little voice his whole body wriggled.

He was absorbed. They were all absorbed. But suddenly, before any of the others were aware, Humphrey had tumbled off Beaminster's knee and was running, staggering, almost falling, running towards the door.

'Daddy! Oh, Daddy!' he cried.

Wildherne had come in. He caught the child to him and held him as though he were defying anyone or anything to touch him.

'Oh, Daddy! There's an old man . . .' He began, in incoherent excitement, his story, words and little gasps for breath and chuckles of laughter and sudden little sighs all mingled together. His arms were tightly fastened round his father's neck; his knees dug into his father's body as though they were planted there for ever. The eyes of father and son seemed to mingle together in their complete mutual adoring absorption.

Then, at last, coming forward carrying his son, Wildherne, as though he were pulling himself out of some deep dream, recognised Beaminster.

'Hullo, Beaminster! How are you?' he said.

CHAPTER II

AT HALKIN STREET

Katherine Mark was told that Lady Poole was expecting her and would she wait in Lady Poole's room and Lady Poole would soon be in.

Katherine knew Lady Poole's room well enough and had waited there on other occasions. It was her habit--it had been from childhood her habit--to be punctual to the second, and Janet had in these days many things to keep her. It was not her fault in the least, and Katherine never bore her a grudge.

But as she waited in the little softly-lighted room, conscious of the house on every side of her, the silver clock on the mantelpiece beating like the pulse of the room, she was aware that she was oddly excited. She reflected further that she was always excited when she came into any sort of contact with this strange family. For strange to her they were!

On her way up to this room she had been passed by a little woman in deep black and a widow's veil, and having in her hand a little pile of devout-looking books. Then, at the turn of the stairs on the first floor, a door had for a moment opened, a clergyman had appeared and vanished again. On the second floor, on the way to Janet's sitting-room, another door had opened; there had issued a buzzing whirr of talk, and Katherine Mark had seen through the open door a long table round which a number of very earnest ladies were seated.

She had the sense that, although Number Three Halkin Street was outwardly so quiet, it was inwardly buzzing with active, energetic life.

It was not this life that was strange to her. In her father's house in Westminster, when she was young, there had been as much packed, compressed life as though they had all been confined in a beleaguered camp. What was strange to her was the contrast this devout, eager, clerical business made with the lives and characters of the Duke, Wildherne, and Janet.

Her own family--that is, her husband Philip, her sister Millie Westcott, and her brother Henry Trenchard--had all wondered very much at this friendship of hers with Janet Poole.

It wasn't, they declared, the kind of world to which Katherine in any way belonged. Philip, who was socially ambitious, approved of it, but wondered why, while Katherine was about it, she hadn't made friends with the really smart, powerful aristocracy, not with these old-fashioned and behind-the-times Darrants, Medleys, Purefoys, and the rest. He was not a snob, but he liked to be in the middle of things. The Duchess of Romney and her Purefoy clan simply weren't in the middle of things at all.

Millie and Henry were much more violent. They were bored at the mere idea of Katherine spending her time with such uninteresting people. They were amazed at Katherine for standing it.

It was, as usual, Peter who understood the matter. 'If Katherine's made a friend,' he said, 'that's enough. I'd live perpetually in the middle of a musical comedy if I was going to get a real friendship out of it. Yes, I'd even be the waiter who drops the plates.'

He liked the 'sound' of Janet Poole. He was a little wistful about it. His marriage was a very happy one, but he seemed always at the end 'to walk by himself.' So did Katherine. They were alike in that.

She was thinking of these things as she sat there waiting for Janet. Funny room with its old-fashioned wallpaper and furniture! Janet had done a little to it, but she had never been able to make it hers. The room had never surrendered. Three Halkin Street had never surrendered; it remained the Duchess.

Katherine's friendship with Janet had grown wonderfully during the last year. She had taken--and very sad the knowledge made her--Rachel Seddon's place. As soon as Rachel and Rosalind became so unfriendly Janet's position between them was impossible. She could not be disloyal to Rosalind, and she saw in every meeting with Rachel reproach and criticism.

She was terribly sorry for Rachel, and for Tom too, but Rosalind came first. So Rachel had visited Wintersmoon less and less, and in London came very seldom to Halkin Street. At last not at all.

Katherine Mark had not really taken her place. There would always be for Janet something especial about Rachel that no one else in the world had--her foreign beauty, something tragic in that, something tempestuous in her loves and hates, something tragic in her hopes always foredoomed, something terrifying in her maternity. Katherine, so quiet and sure and domestic, was very different, but in her slow, determined way she was beginning to love Janet as no woman had ever loved her before. Rosalind had loved Janet in spasms. Rachel had loved her when she was not absorbed by her boy or with a kind of desperate Slav self-preoccupation, but with Katherine her affection seemed always there, steady, unchanging, unflinching. Janet was beginning to feel it as a flame, clear, dauntless, unswayed by any breeze.

Katherine, on her side, found Janet's life, with all its problems and possibilities, of thrilling interest. She never went to Halkin Street or Wintersmoon without a forewarning that something quite extraordinary was about to happen. She found the Duke and Duchess, Wildherne and Janet, Rosalind and Tom, characters wrapped in some dramatic atmosphere that other people she knew never possessed. She watched them and the development of their histories as she might watch a play. The beauty of Wintersmoon might have had something to do with this, but around the stories of Janet and Rosalind there was some symbolic air. She did not know why she watched them so intently. Every movement they made was to her dramatic.

The clock struck four: Janet wa