*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fraternity, by John Galsworthy*
#12 in our series by John Galsworthy
Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.
*It must legally be the first thing seen when opening the book.*
In fact, our legal advisors said we can't even change margins.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below. We need your donations.
Title: Fraternity
Author: John Galsworthy
August, 2001 [Etext #2773]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fraternity, by John Galsworthy*
*****This file should be named frtrn10.txt or frtrn10.zip******
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, frtrn11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, frtrn10a.txt
This etext was prepared by David Widger, < widger@cecomet.net >
Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an
up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has
a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
new copy has at least one byte more or less.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text
files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+
If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users.
At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly
from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an
assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few
more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we
don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.
We need your donations more than ever!
All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie-
Mellon University).
For these and other matters, please mail to:
Project Gutenberg
P. O. Box 2782
Champaign, IL 61825
When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director:
Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
We would prefer to send you this information by email.
******
To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser
to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by
author and by title, and includes information about how
to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also
download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This
is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com,
for a more complete list of our various sites.
To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any
Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror
sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed
at http://promo.net/pg).
Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.
Example FTP session:
ftp metalab.unc.edu
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext01, etc.
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g.,
GUTINDEX.99]
GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
***
**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
(Three Pages)
***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other
things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
net profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
University" within the 60 days following each
date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
We are planning on making some changes in our donation structure
in 2000, so you might want to email me, hart@pobox.com beforehand.
*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
This etext was prepared by David Widger, < widger@cecomet.net >
FRATERNITY
by JOHN GALSWORTHY
CHAPTER I
THE SHADOW
In the afternoon of the last day of April, 190-, a billowy sea of
little broken clouds crowned the thin air above High Street,
Kensington. This soft tumult of vapours, covering nearly all the
firmament, was in onslaught round a patch of blue sky, shaped
somewhat like a star, which still gleamed--a single gentian flower
amongst innumerable grass. Each of these small clouds seemed fitted
with a pair of unseen wings, and, as insects flight on their too
constant journeys, they were setting forth all ways round this starry
blossom which burned so clear with the colour of its far fixity. On
one side they were massed in fleecy congeries, so crowding each other
that no edge or outline was preserved; on the other, higher,
stronger, emergent from their fellow-clouds, they seemed leading the
attack on that surviving gleam of the ineffable. Infinite was the
variety of those million separate vapours, infinite the unchanging
unity of that fixed blue star.
Down in the street beneath this eternal warring of the various soft-
winged clouds on the unmisted ether, men, women, children, and their
familiars--horses, dogs, and cats--were pursuing their occupations
with the sweet zest of the Spring. They streamed along, and the
noise of their frequenting rose in an unbroken roar: "I, I-I, I!"
The crowd was perhaps thickest outside the premises of Messrs. Rose
and Thorn. Every kind of being, from the highest to the lowest,
passed in front of the hundred doors of this establishment; and
before the costume window a rather tall, slight, graceful woman stood
thinking: "It really is gentian blue! But I don't know whether I
ought to buy it, with all this distress about!"
Her eyes, which were greenish-grey, and often ironical lest they
should reveal her soul, seemed probing a blue gown displayed in that
window, to the very heart of its desirability.
"And suppose Stephen doesn't like me in it!" This doubt set her
gloved fingers pleating the bosom of her frock. Into that little
pleat she folded the essence of herself, the wish to have and the
fear of having, the wish to be and the fear of being, and her veil,
falling from the edge of her hat, three inches from her face,
shrouded with its tissue her half-decided little features, her rather
too high cheek-bones, her cheeks which were slightly hollowed, as
though Time had kissed them just too much.
The old man, with a long face, eyes rimmed like a parrot's, and
discoloured nose, who, so long as he did not sit down, was permitted
to frequent the pavement just there and sell the 'Westminster
Gazette', marked her, and took his empty pipe out of his mouth.
It was his business to know all the passers-by, and his pleasure too;
his mind was thus distracted from the condition of his feet. He knew
this particular lady with the delicate face, and found her puzzling;
she sometimes bought the paper which Fate condemned him, against his
politics, to sell. The Tory journals were undoubtedly those which
her class of person ought to purchase. He knew a lady when he saw
one. In fact, before Life threw him into the streets, by giving him
a disease in curing which his savings had disappeared, he had been a
butler, and for the gentry had a respect as incurable as was his
distrust of "all that class of people" who bought their things at
"these 'ere large establishments," and attended "these 'ere
subscription dances at the Town 'All over there." He watched her
with special interest, not, indeed, attempting to attract attention,
though conscious in every fibre that he had only sold five copies of
his early issues. And he was sorry and surprised when she passed
from his sight through one of the hundred doors.
The thought which spurred her into Messrs. Rose and Thorn's was this:
"I am thirty-eight; I have a daughter of seventeen. I cannot afford
to lose my husband's admiration. The time is on me when I really
must make myself look nice!"
Before a long mirror, in whose bright pool there yearly bathed
hundreds of women's bodies, divested of skirts and bodices, whose
unruffled surface reflected daily a dozen women's souls divested of
everything, her eyes became as bright as steel; but having
ascertained the need of taking two inches off the chest of the
gentian frock, one off its waist, three off its hips, and of adding
one to its skirt, they clouded again with doubt, as though prepared
to fly from the decision she had come to. Resuming her bodice, she
asked:
"When could you let me have it?"
"At the end of the week, madam."
"Not till then?"
"We are very pressed, madam."
"Oh, but you must let me have it by Thursday at the latest, please."
The fitter sighed: "I will do my best."
"I shall rely on you. Mrs. Stephen Dallison, 76, The Old Square."
Going downstairs she thought: "That poor girl looked very tired; it's
a shame they give them such long hours!" and she passed into the
street.
A voice said timidly behind her: "Westminister, marm?"
"That's the poor old creature," thought Cecilia Dallison, "whose nose
is so unpleasant. I don't really think I--" and she felt for a penny
in her little bag. Standing beside the "poor old creature" was a
woman clothed in worn but neat black clothes, and an ancient toque
which had once known a better head. The wan remains of a little bit
of fur lay round her throat. She had a thin face, not without
refinement, mild, very clear brown eyes, and a twist of smooth black
hair. Beside her was a skimpy little boy, and in her arms a baby.
Mrs. Dallison held out two-pence for the paper, but it was at the
woman that she looked.
"Oh, Mrs. Hughs," she said, "we've been expecting you to hem the
curtains!"
The woman slightly pressed the baby.
"I am very sorry, ma'am. I knew I was expected, but I've had such
trouble."
Cecilia winced. "Oh, really?"
"Yes, m'm; it's my husband."
"Oh, dear!" Cecilia murmured. "But why didn't you come to us?"
"I didn't feel up to it, ma'am; I didn't really--"
A tear ran down her cheek, and was caught in a furrow near the mouth.
Mrs. Dallison said hurriedly: "Yes, yes; I'm very sorry."
"This old gentleman, Mr. Creed, lives in the same house with us, and
he is going to speak to my husband."
The old man wagged his head on its lean stalk of neck.
"He ought to know better than be'ave 'imself so disrespectable," he
said.
Cecilia looked at him, and murmured: "I hope he won't turn on you!"
The old man shuffled his feet.
"I likes to live at peace with everybody. I shall have the police to
'im if he misdemeans hisself with me!... Westminister, sir?" And,
screening his mouth from Mrs. Dallison, he added in a loud whisper:
"Execution of the Shoreditch murderer!"
Cecilia felt suddenly as though the world were listening to her
conversation with these two rather seedy persons.
"I don't really know what I can do for you, Mrs. Hughs. I'll speak
to Mr. Dallison, and to Mr. Hilary too."
"Yes, ma'am; thank you, ma'am."
With a smile which seemed to deprecate its own appearance, Cecilia
grasped her skirts and crossed the road. "I hope I wasn't
unsympathetic," she thought, looking back at the three figures on the
edge of the pavement--the old man with his papers, and his
discoloured nose thrust upwards under iron-rimmed spectacles; the
seamstress in her black dress; the skimpy little boy. Neither
speaking nor moving, they were looking out before them at the
traffic; and something in Cecilia revolted at this sight. It was
lifeless, hopeless, unaesthetic.
"What can one do," she thought, "for women like Mrs. Hughs, who
always look like that? And that poor old man! I suppose I oughtn't
to have bought that dress, but Stephen is tired of this."
She turned out of the main street into a road preserved from commoner
forms of traffic, and stopped at a long low house half hidden behind
the trees of its front garden.
It was the residence of Hilary Dallison, her husband's brother, and
himself the husband of Bianca, her own sister.
The queer conceit came to Cecilia that it resembled Hilary. Its look
was kindly and uncertain; its colour a palish tan; the eyebrows of
its windows rather straight than arched, and those deep-set eyes, the
windows, twinkled hospitably; it had, as it were, a sparse moustache
and beard of creepers, and dark marks here and there, like the lines
and shadows on the faces of those who think too much. Beside it, and
apart, though connected by a passage, a studio stood, and about that
studio--of white rough-cast, with a black oak door, and peacock-blue
paint--was something a little hard and fugitive, well suited to
Bianca, who used it, indeed, to paint in. It seemed to stand, with
its eyes on the house, shrinking defiantly from too close company, as
though it could not entirely give itself to anything. Cecilia, who
often worried over the relations between her sister and her brother-
in-law, suddenly felt how fitting and symbolical this was.
But, mistrusting inspirations, which, experience told her, committed
one too much, she walked quickly up the stone-flagged pathway to the
door. Lying in the porch was a little moonlight-coloured lady
bulldog, of toy breed, who gazed up with eyes like agates, delicately
waving her bell-rope tail, as it was her habit to do towards
everyone, for she had been handed down clearer and paler with each
generation, till she had at last lost all the peculiar virtues of
dogs that bait the bull.
Speaking the word "Miranda!" Mrs. Stephen Dallison tried to pat this
daughter of the house. The little bulldog withdrew from her caress,
being also unaccustomed to commit herself....
Mondays were Blanca's "days," and Cecilia made her way towards the
studio. It was a large high room, full of people.
Motionless, by himself, close to the door, stood an old man, very
thin and rather bent, with silvery hair, and a thin silvery beard
grasped in his transparent fingers. He was dressed in a suit of
smoke-grey cottage tweed, which smelt of peat, and an Oxford shirt,
whose collar, ceasing prematurely, exposed a lean brown neck; his
trousers, too, ended very soon, and showed light socks. In his
attitude there was something suggestive of the patience and
determination of a mule. At Cecilia's approach he raised his eyes.
It was at once apparent why, in so full a room, he was standing
alone. Those blue eyes looked as if he were about to utter a
prophetic statement.
"They have been speaking to me of an execution," he said.
Cecilia made a nervous movement.
"Yes, Father?"
"To take life," went on the old man in a voice which, though charged
with strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, "was the chief
mark of the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days. It
sprang from that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the
permanence of the individual ego after death. From the worship of
that fetish had come all the sorrows of the human race."
Cecilia, with an involuntary quiver of her little bag, said:
"Father, how can you?"
"They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure
they had all eternity to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to
enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences. Love could never
come to full fruition till it was destroyed."
Cecilia looked hastily round; no one had heard. She moved a little
sideways, and became merged in another group. Her father's lips
continued moving. He had resumed the patient attitude which so
slightly suggested mules. A voice behind her said: "I do think your
father is such an interesting man, Mrs. Dallison."
Cecilia turned and saw a woman of middle height, with her hair done
in the early Italian fashion, and very small, dark, lively eyes,
which looked as though her love of living would keep her busy each
minute of her day and all the minutes that she could occupy of
everybody else's days.
"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace? Oh! how do you do? I've been meaning to
come and see you for quite a long time, but I know you're always so
busy."
With doubting eyes, half friendly and half defensive, as though
chaffing to prevent herself from being chaffed, Cecilia looked at
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whom she had met several times at Bianca's
house. The widow of a somewhat famous connoisseur, she was now
secretary of the League for Educating Orphans who have Lost both
Parents, vice-president of the Forlorn Hope for Maids in Peril, and
treasurer to Thursday Hops for Working Girls. She seemed to know
every man and woman who was worth knowing, and some besides; to see
all picture-shows; to hear every new musician; and attend the opening
performance of every play. With regard to literature, she would say
that authors bored her; but she was always doing them good turns,
inviting them to meet their critics or editors, and sometimes--though
this was not generally known--pulling them out of the holes they were
prone to get into, by lending them a sum of money--after which, as
she would plaintively remark; she rarely saw them more.
She had a peculiar spiritual significance to Mrs. Stephen Dallison,
being just on the borderline between those of Bianca's friends whom
Cecilia did not wish and those whom she did wish to come to her own
house, for Stephen, a barrister in an official position, had a keen
sense of the ridiculous. Since Hilary wrote books and was a poet,
and Bianca painted, their friends would naturally be either
interesting or queer; and though for Stephen's sake it was important
to establish which was which, they were so very often both. Such
people stimulated, taken in small doses, but neither on her husband's
account nor on her daughter's did Cecilia desire that they should
come to her in swarms. Her attitude of mind towards them was, in
fact, similar-a sort of pleasurable dread-to that in which she
purchased the Westminster Gazette to feel the pulse of social
progress. .
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark little eyes twinkled.
"I hear that Mr. Stone--that is your father's name, I think--is
writing a book which will create quite a sensation when it comes
out."
Cecilia bit her lips. "I hope it never will come out," she was on
the point of saying.
"What will it be called?" asked Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. "I gather
that it's a book of Universal Brotherhood. That's so nice!"
Cecilia made a movement of annoyance. "Who told you?"
"Ah!" said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, "I do think your sister gets
such attractive people at her At Homes. They all take such interest
in things."
A little surprised at herself, Cecilia answered "Too much for me!"
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace smiled. "I mean in art and social
questions. Surely one can't be too interested in them?"
Cecilia said rather hastily:
"Oh no, of course not." And both ladies looked around them. A buzz
of conversation fell on Cecilia's ears.
"Have you seen the 'Aftermath'? It's really quite wonderful!"
"Poor old chap! he's so rococo...."
"There's a new man.
"She's very sympathetic.
"But the condition of the poor....
"Is that Mr. Balladyce? Oh, really.
"It gives you such a feeling of life.
"Bourgeois!..."
The voice of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace broke through: "But do please
tell me who is that young girl with the young man looking at the
picture over there. She's quite charming!"
Cecilia's cheeks went a very pretty pink.
"Oh, that's my little daughter."
"Really! Have you a daughter as big as that? Why, she must be
seventeen!"
"Nearly eighteen!"
"What is her name?"
"Thyme," said Cecilia, with a little smile. She felt that Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace was about to say: 'How charming!'
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace saw her smile and paused. "Who is the young
man with her?"
"My nephew, Martin Stone."
"The son of your brother who was killed with his wife in that
dreadful Alpine accident? He looks a very decided sort of young man.
He's got that new look. What is he?"
"He's very nearly a doctor. I never know whether he's quite finished
or not."
"I thought perhaps he might have something to do with Art."
"Oh no, he despises Art."
"And does your daughter despise it, too?"
"No; she's studying it."
"Oh, really! How interesting! I do think the rising generation
amusing, don't you? They're so independent."
Cecilia looked uneasily at the rising generation. They were standing
side by side before the picture, curiously observant and detached,
exchanging short remarks and glances. They seemed to watch all these
circling, chatting, bending, smiling people with a sort of youthful,
matter-of-fact, half-hostile curiosity. The young man had a pale
face, clean-shaven, with a strong jaw, a long, straight nose, a
rather bumpy forehead which did not recede, and clear grey eyes. His
sarcastic lips were firm and quick, and he looked at people with
disconcerting straightness. The young girl wore a blue-green frock.
Her face was charming, with eager, hazel-grey eyes, a bright colour,
and fluffy hair the colour of ripe nuts.
"That's your sister's picture, 'The Shadow,' they're looking at,
isn't it?" asked Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. "I remember seeing it on
Christmas Day, and the little model who was sitting for it--an
attractive type! Your brother-in-law told me how interested you all
were in her. Quite a romantic story, wasn't it, about her fainting
from want of food when she first came to sit?"
Cecilia murmured something. Her hands were moving nervously; she
looked ill at ease.
These signs passed unperceived by Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose
eyes were busy.
"In the F.H.M.P., of course, I see a lot of young girls placed in
delicate positions, just on the borders, don't you know? You should
really join the F.H.M.P., Mrs. Dallison. It's a first-rate thing--
most absorbing work."
The doubting deepened in Cecilia's eyes.
"Oh, it must be!" she said. "I've so little time."
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace went on at once.
"Don't you think that we live in the most interesting days? There
are such a lot of movements going on. It's quite exciting. We all
feel that we can't shut our eyes any longer to social questions. I
mean the condition of the people alone is enough to give one
nightmare!"
"Yes, yes," said Cecilia; "it is dreadful, of course.
"Politicians and officials are so hopeless, one can't look for
anything from them."
Cecilia drew herself up. "Oh, do you think so?" she said.
"I was just talking to Mr. Balladyce. He says that Art and
Literature must be put on a new basis altogether."
"Yes," said Cecilia; "really? Is he that funny little man?"
"I think he's so monstrously clever."
Cecilia answered quickly: "I know--I know. Of course, something must
be done."
"Yes," said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace absently, "I think we all feel
that. Oh, do tell me! I've been talking to such a delightful
person--just the type you see when you go into the City--thousands of
them, all in such good black coats. It's so unusual to really meet
one nowadays; and they're so refreshing, they have such nice simple
views. There he is, standing just behind your sister."
Cecilia by a nervous gesture indicated that she recognized the
personality alluded to. "Oh, yes," she said; "Mr. Purcey. I don't
know why he comes to see us."
"I think he's so delicious!" said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace dreamily.
Her little dark eyes, like bees, had flown to sip honey from the
flower in question--a man of broad build and medium height, dressed.
with accuracy, who seemed just a little out of his proper bed. His
mustachioed mouth wore a set smile; his cheerful face was rather red,
with a forehead of no extravagant height or breadth, and a
conspicuous jaw; his hair was thick and light in colour, and his eyes
were small, grey, and shrewd. He was looking at a picture.
"He's so delightfully unconscious," murmured Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace. "He didn't even seem to know that there was a problem of
the lower classes."
"Did he tell you that he had a picture?" asked Cecilia gloomily.
"Oh yes, by Harpignies, with the accent on the 'pig.' It's worth
three times what he gave for it. It's so nice to be made to feel
that there is still all that mass of people just simply measuring
everything by what they gave for it."
"And did he tell you my grandfather Carfax's dictum in the Banstock
case?" muttered Cecilia.
"Oh yes: 'The man who does not know his own mind should be made an
Irishman by Act of Parliament.' He said it was so awfully good."
"He would," replied Cecilia.
"He seems to depress you, rather!"
"Oh no; I believe he's quite a nice sort of person. One can't be
rude to him; he really did what he thought a very kind thing to my
father. That's how we came to know him. Only it's rather trying
when he will come to call regularly. He gets a little on one's
nerves."
"Ah, that's just what I feel is so jolly about him; no one would ever
get on his nerves. I do think we've got too many nerves, don't you?
Here's your brother-in-law. He's such an uncommon-looking man; I
want to have a talk with him about that little model. A country
girl, wasn't she?"
She had turned her head towards a tall man with a very slight stoop
and a brown, thin, bearded face, who was approaching from the door.
She did not see that Cecilia had flushed, and was looking at her
almost angrily. The tall thin man put his hand on Cecilia's arm,
saying gently: "Hallo Cis! Stephen here yet?"
Cecilia shook her head.
"You know , Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, Hilary?"
The tall man bowed. His hazel-coloured eyes were shy, gentle, and
deep-set; his eyebrows, hardly ever still, gave him a look of austere
whimsicality. His dark brown hair was very lightly touched with
grey, and a frequent kindly smile played on his lips. His
unmannerismed manner was quiet to the point of extinction. He had
long, thin, brown hands, and nothing peculiar about his dress.
"I'll leave you to talk to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace," Cecilia said.
A knot of people round Mr. Balladyce prevented her from moving far,
however, and the voice of Mrs. Smallpeace travelled to her ears.
"I was talking about that little model. It was so good of you to
take such interest in the girl. I wondered whether we could do
anything for her."
Cecilia's hearing was too excellent to miss the tone of Hilary's
reply:
"Oh, thank you; I don't think so."
"I fancied perhaps you might feel that our Society---hers is an
unsatisfactory profession for young girls!"
Cecilia saw the back of Hilary's neck grow red. She turned her head
away.
"Of course, there are many very nice models indeed," said the voice
of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. "I don't mean that they are necessarily
at all--if they're girls of strong character; and especially if they
don't sit for the--the altogether."
Hilary's dry, staccato answer came to Cecilia's ears: "Thank you;
it's very kind of you."
"Oh, of course, if it's not necessary. Your wife's picture was so
clever, Mr. Dallison--such an interesting type."
Without intention Cecilia found herself before that picture. It
stood with its face a little turned towards the wall, as though
somewhat in disgrace, portraying the full-length figure of a girl
standing in deep shadow, with her arms half outstretched, as if
asking for something. Her eyes were fixed on Cecilia, and through
her parted lips breath almost seemed to come. The only colour in the
picture was the pale blue of those eyes, the pallid red of those
parted lips, the still paler brown of the hair; the rest was shadow.
In the foreground light was falling as though from a street-lamp.
Cecilia thought: "That girl's eyes and mouth haunt me. Whatever made
Blanca choose such a subject? It is clever, of course--for her."
CHAPTER II
A FAMILY DISCUSSION
The marriage of Sylvanus Stone, Professor of the Natural Sciences, to
Anne, daughter of Mr. Justice Carfax, of the well-known county
family--the Carfaxes of Spring Deans, Hants--was recorded in the
sixties. The baptisms of Martin, Cecilia, and Bianca, son and
daughters of Sylvanus and Anne Stone, were to be discovered
registered in Kensington in the three consecutive years following, as
though some single-minded person had been connected with their
births. After this the baptisms of no more offspring were to be
found anywhere, as if that single mind had encountered opposition.
But in the eighties there was noted in the register of the same
church the burial of "Anne, nee Carfax, wife of Sylvanus Stone." In
that "nee Carfax" there was, to those who knew, something more than
met the eye. It summed up the mother of Cecilia and Bianca, and, in
more subtle fashion, Cecilia and Bianca, too. It summed up that
fugitive, barricading look in their bright eyes, which, though spoken
of in the family as "the Carfax eyes," were in reality far from
coming from old Mr. Justice Carfax. They had been his wife's in
turn, and had much annoyed a man of his decided character. He
himself had always known his mind, and had let others know it, too;
reminding his wife that she was an impracticable woman, who knew not
her own mind; and devoting his lawful gains to securing the future of
his progeny. It would have disturbed him if he had lived to see his
grand-daughters and their times. Like so many able men of his
generation, far-seeing enough in practical affairs, he had never
considered the possibility that the descendants of those who, like
himself, had laid up treasure for their children's children might
acquire the quality of taking time, balancing pros and cons, looking
ahead, and not putting one foot down before picking the other up. He
had not foreseen, in deed, that to wobble might become an art, in
order that, before anything was done, people might know the full
necessity for doing some thing, and how impossible it would be to do
indeed, foolish to attempt to do--that which would fully meet the
case. He, who had been a man of action all his life, had not
perceived how it would grow to be matter of common instinct that to
act was to commit oneself, and that, while what one had was not
precisely what one wanted, what one had not (if one had it) would be
as bad. He had never been self-conscious--it was not the custom of
his generation--and, having but little imagination, had never
suspected that he was laying up that quality for his descendants,
together with a competence which secured them a comfortable leisure.
Of all the persons in his grand-daughter's studio that afternoon,
that stray sheep Mr. Purcey would have been, perhaps, the only one
whose judgments he would have considered sound. No one had laid up a
competence for Mr. Purcey, who had been in business from the age of
twenty.
It is uncertain whether the mere fact that he was not in his own fold
kept this visitor lingering in the studio when all other guests were
gone; or whether it was simply the feeling that the longer he stayed
in contact with really artistic people the more distinguished he was
becoming. Probably the latter, for the possession of that
Harpignies, a good specimen, which he had bought by accident, and
subsequently by accident discovered to have a peculiar value, had
become a factor in his life, marking him out from all his friends,
who went in more for a neat type of Royal Academy landscape, together
with reproductions of young ladies in eighteenth-century costumes
seated on horseback, or in Scotch gardens. A junior partner in a
banking-house of some importance, he lived at Wimbledon, whence he
passed up and down daily in his car. To this he owed his
acquaintance with the family of Dallison. For one day, after telling
his chauffeur to meet him at the Albert Gate, he had set out to
stroll down Rotten Row, as he often did on the way home, designing to
nod to anybody that he knew. It had turned out a somewhat barren
expedition. No one of any consequence had met his eye; and it was
with a certain almost fretful longing for distraction that in
Kensington Gardens he came on an old man feeding birds out of a paper
bag. The birds having flown away on seeing him, he approached the
feeder to apologize.
"I'm afraid I frightened your birds, sir," he began.
This old man, who was dressed in smoke-grey tweeds which exhaled a
poignant scent of peat, looked at him without answering.
"I'm afraid your birds saw me coming," Mr. Purcey said again.
"In those days," said the aged stranger, "birds were afraid of men."
Mr. Purcey's shrewd grey eyes perceived at once that he had a
character to deal with.
"Ah, yes!" he said; "I see--you allude to the present time. That's
very nice. Ha, ha!"
The old man answered: "The emotion of fear is inseparably connected
with a primitive state of fratricidal rivalry."
This sentence put Mr. Purcey on his guard.
'The old chap,' he thought, 'is touched. He evidently oughtn't to be
out here by himself.' He debated, therefore, whether he should
hasten away toward his car, or stand by in case his assistance should
be needed. Being a kind-hearted man, who believed in his capacity
for putting things to rights, and noticing a certain delicacy--a
"sort of something rather distinguished," as he phrased it
afterwards--in the old fellow's face and figure, he decided to see if
he could be of any service. They walked along together, Mr. Purcey
watching his new friend askance, and directing the march to where he
had ordered his chauffeur to await him.
"You are very fond of birds, I suppose," he said cautiously.
"The birds are our brothers."
The answer was of a nature to determine Mr. Purcey in his diagnosis
of the case.
"I've got my car here," he said. "Let me give you a lift home."
This new but aged acquaintance did not seem to hear; his lips moved
as though he were following out some thought.
"In those days," Mr. Purcey heard him say, "the congeries of men were
known as rookeries. The expression was hardly just towards that
handsome bird."
Mr. Purcey touched him hastily on the arm.
"I've got my car here, sir," he said. "Do let me put you down!"
Telling the story afterwards, he had spoken thus:
"The old chap knew where he lived right enough; but dash me if I
believe he noticed that I was taking him there in my car--I had the
A. i. Damyer out. That's how I came to make the acquaintance of
these Dallisons. He's the writer, you know, and she paints--rather
the new school--she admires Harpignies. Well, when I got there in
the car I found Dallison in the garden. Of course I was careful not
to put my foot into it. I told him: 'I found this old gentleman
wandering about. I've just brought him back in my car.' Who should
the old chap turn out to be but her father! They were awfully
obliged to me. Charmin' people, but very what d'you call it 'fin de
siecle'--like all these professors, these artistic pigs--seem to know
rather a queer set, advanced people, and all that sort of cuckoo,
always talkin' about the poor, and societies, and new religions, and
that kind of thing."
Though he had since been to see them several times, the Dallisons had
never robbed him of the virtuous feeling of that good action--they
had never let him know that he had brought home, not, as he imagined,
a lunatic, but merely a philosopher.
It had been somewhat of a quiet shock to him to find Mr. Stone close
to the doorway when he entered Bianca's studio that afternoon; for
though he had seen him since the encounter in Kensington Gardens, and
knew that he was writing a book, he still felt that he was not quite
the sort of old man that one ought to meet about. He had at once
begun to tell him of the hanging of the Shoreditch murderer, as
recorded in the evening papers. Mr. Stone's reception of that news
had still further confrmed his original views. When all the guests
were gone--with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Dallison and
Miss Dallison, "that awfully pretty girl," and the young man "who was
always hangin' about her"--he had approached his hostess for some
quiet talk. She stood listening to him, very well bred, with just
that habitual spice of mockery in her smile, which to Mr. Purcey's
eyes made her "a very strikin'-lookin' woman, but rather---" There
he would stop, for it required a greater psychologist than he to
describe a secret disharmony which a little marred her beauty. Due
to some too violent cross of blood, to an environment too unsuited,
to what not--it was branded on her. Those who knew Bianca Dallison
better than Mr. Purcey were but too well aware of this fugitive,
proud spirit permeating one whose beauty would otherwise have passed
unquestioned.
She was a little taller than Cecilia, her figure rather fuller and
more graceful, her hair darker, her eyes, too, darker and more deeply
set, her cheek-bones higher, her colouring richer. That spirit of
the age, Disharmony, must have presided when a child so vivid and
dark-coloured was christened Bianca.
Mr. Purcey, however, was not a man who allowed the finest shades of
feeling to interfere with his enjoyments. She was a "strikin'-
lookin' woman," and there was, thanks to Harpignies, a link between
them.
"Your father and I, Mrs. Dallison, can't quite understand each
other," he began. "Our views of life don't seem to hit it off
exactly."
"Really," murmured Bianca; "I should have thought that you'd have got
on so well."
"He's a little bit too--er--scriptural for me, perhaps," said Mr.
Purcey, with some delicacy.
"Did we never tell you," Bianca answered softly, "that my father was
a rather well--known man of science before his illness?"
"Ah!" replied Mr. Purcey, a little puzzled; "that, of course. D'you
know, of all your pictures, Mrs. Dallison, I think that one you call
'The Shadow' is the most rippin'. There's a something about it that
gets hold of you. That was the original, wasn't it, at your
Christmas party--attractive girl--it's an awf'ly good likeness."
Bianca's face had changed, but Mr. Purcey was not a man to notice a
little thing like that.
"If ever you want to part with it," he said, "I hope you'll give me a
chance. I mean it'd be a pleasure to me to have it. I think it'll
be worth a lot of money some day."
Bianca did not answer, and Mr. Purcey, feeling suddenly a little
awkward, said: "I've got my car waiting. I must be off--really."
Shaking hands with all of them, he went away.
When the door had closed behind his back, a universal sigh went up.
It was followed by a silence, which Hilary broke.
"We'll smoke, Stevie, if Cis doesn't mind."
Stephen Dallison placed a cigarette between his moustacheless lips,
always rather screwed up, and ready to nip with a smile anything that
might make him feel ridiculous.
"Phew!" he said. "Our friend Purcey becomes a little tedious. He
seems to take the whole of Philistia about with him."
"He's a very decent fellow," murmured Hilary.
"A bit heavy, surely!" Stephen Dallison's face, though also long and
narrow, was not much like his brother's. His eyes, though not
unkind, were far more scrutinising, inquisitive, and practical; his
hair darker, smoother.
Letting a puff ,of smoke escape, he added:
"Now, that's the sort of man to give you a good sound opinion. You
should have asked him, Cis."
Cecilia answered with a frown:
"Don't chaff, Stephen; I'm perfectly serious about Mrs. Hughs."
"Well, I don't see what I can do for the good woman, my dear. One
can't interfere in these domestic matters."
"But it seems dreadful that we who employ her should be able to do
nothing for her. Don't you think so, B.?"
"I suppose we could do something for her if we wanted to badly
enough."
Bianca's voice, which had the self-distrustful ring of modern music,
suited her personality.
A glance passed between Stephen and his wife.
"That's B. all over!" it seemed to say....
"Hound Street, where they live, is a horrid place."
It was Thyme who spoke, and everybody looked round at her.
"How do you know that?" asked Cecilia.
"I went to see."
"With whom?"
"Martin."
The lips of the young man whose name she mentioned curled
sarcastically.
Hilary asked gently:
"Well, my dear, what did you see?"
"Most of the doors are open---"
Bianca murmured: "That doesn't tell us much."
"On the contrary," said Martin suddenly, in a deep bass voice, "it
tells you everything. Go on."
"The Hughs live on the top floor at No. 1. It's the best house in
the street. On the ground-floor are some people called Budgen; he's
a labourer, and she's lame. They've got one son. The Hughs have let
off the first-floor front-room to an old man named Creed---"
"Yes, I know," Cecilia muttered.
"He makes about one and tenpence a day by selling papers. The back-
room on that floor they let, of course, to your little model, Aunt
B."
"She is not my model now."
There was a silence such as falls when no one knows how far the
matter mentioned is safe to, touch on. Thyme proceeded with her
report.
"Her room's much the best in the house; it's airy, and it looks out
over someone's garden. I suppose she stays there because it's so
cheap. The Hughs' rooms are---" She stopped, wrinkling her straight
nose.
"So that's the household," said Hilary. "Two married couples, one
young man, one young girl"--his eyes travelled from one to another of
the two married couples, the young man, and the young girl, collected
in this room---" and one old man," he added softly.
"Not quite the sort of place for you to go poking about in, Thyme,"
Stephen said ironically. "Do you think so, Martin?"
"Why not?"
Stephen raised his brows, and glanced towards his wife. Her face was
dubious, a little scared. There was a silence. Then Bianca spoke:
"Well?" That word, like nearly all her speeches, seemed rather to
disconcert her hearers.
"So Hughs ill-treats her?" said Hilary.
"She says so," replied Cecilia---" at least, that's what I
understood. Of course, I don't know any details."
"She had better get rid of him, I should think," Bianca murmured.
Out of the silence that followed Thyme's clear voice was heard
saying:
"She can't get a divorce; she could get a separation."
Cecilia rose uneasily. These words concreted suddenly a wealth of
half-acknowledged doubts about her little daughter. This came of
letting her hear people talk, and go about with Martin! She might
even have been listening to her grandfather--such a thought was most
disturbing. And, afraid, on the one hand, of gainsaying the liberty
of speech, and, on the other, of seeming to approve her daughter's
knowledge of the world, she looked at her husband.
But Stephen did not speak, feeling, no doubt, that to pursue the
subject would be either to court an ethical, even an abstract,
disquisition, and this one did not do in anybody's presence, much
less one's wife's or daughter's; or to touch on sordid facts of
doubtful character, which was equally distasteful in the
circumstances. He, too, however, was uneasy that Thyme should know
so much.
The dusk was gathering outside; the fire threw a flickering light,
fitfully outlining their figures, making those faces, so familiar to
each other, a little mysterious.
At last Stephen broke the silence. "Of course, I'm very sorry for
her, but you'd better let it alone--you can't tell with that sort of
people; you never can make out what they want--it's safer not to
meddle. At all events, it's a matter for a Society to look into
first!"
Cecilia answered: "But she's, on my conscience, Stephen."
"They're all on my conscience," muttered Hilary.
Bianca looked at him for the first time; then, turning to her nephew,
said: "What do you say, Martin?"
The young man, whose face was stained by the firelight the colour of
pale cheese, made no answer.
But suddenly through the stillness came a voice:
"I have thought of something."
Everyone turned round. Mr. Stone was seen emerging from behind "The
Shadow"; his frail figure, in its grey tweeds, his silvery hair and
beard, were outlined sharply against the wall.
"Why, Father," Cecilia said, "we didn't know that you were here!"
Mr. Stone looked round bewildered; it seemed as if he, too, had been
ignorant of that fact.
"What is it that you've thought of?"
The firelight leaped suddenly on to Mr. Stone's thin yellow hand.
"Each of us," he said, "has a shadow in those places--in those
streets."
There was a vague rustling, as of people not taking a remark too
seriously, and the sound of a closing door.
CHAPTER III
HILARY'S BROWN STUDY
What do you really think, Uncle Hilary?"
Turning at his writing-table to look at the face of his young niece,
Hilary Dallison answered:
"My dear, we have had the same state of affairs since the beginning
of the world. There is no chemical process; so far as my knowledge
goes, that does not make waste products. What your grandfather calls
our 'shadows' are the waste products of the social process. That
there is a submerged tenth is as certain as that there is an emerged
fiftieth like ourselves; exactly who they are and how they come,
whether they can ever be improved away, is, I think, as uncertain as
anything can be."
The figure of the girl seated in the big armchair did not stir. Her
lips pouted contemptuously, a frown wrinkled her forehead.
"Martin says that a thing is only impossible when we think it so."
"Faith and the mountain, I'm afraid."
Thyme's foot shot forth; it nearly came into contact with Miranda,
the little bulldog.
"Oh, duckie!"
But the little moonlight bulldog backed away.
"I hate these slums, uncle; they're so disgusting!"
Hilary leaned his face on his thin hand; it was his characteristic
attitude.
"They are hateful, disgusting, and heartrending. That does not make
the problem any the less difficult, does it?"
"I believe we simply make the difficulties ourselves by seeing them."
Hilary smiled. "Does Martin say that too?"
"Of course he does."
"Speaking broadly," murmured Hilary, "I see only one difficulty--
human nature."
Thyme rose. "I think it horrible to have a low opinion of human
nature."
"My dear," said Hilary, "don't you think perhaps that people who have
what is called a low opinion of human nature are really more tolerant
of it, more in love with it, in fact, than those who, looking to what
human nature might be, are bound to hate what human nature is."
The look which Thyme directed at her uncle's amiable, attractive
face, with its pointed beard, high forehead, and special little
smile, seemed to alarm Hilary.
"I don't want you to have an unnecessarily low opinion of me, my
dear. I'm not one of those people who tell you that everything's all
right because the rich have their troubles as well as the poor. A
certain modicum of decency and comfort is obviously necessary to man
before we can begin to do anything but pity him; but that doesn't
make it any easier to know how you're going to insure him that
modicum of decency and comfort, does it?"
"We've got to do it," said Thyme; "it won't wait any longer."
"My dear," said Hilary, "think of Mr. Purcey! What proportion of the
upper classes do you imagine is even conscious of that necessity?
We, who have got what I call the social conscience, rise from the
platform of Mr. Purcey; we're just a gang of a few thousands to Mr.
Purcey's tens of thousands, and how many even of us are prepared, or,
for the matter of that, fitted, to act on our consciousness? In
spite of your grandfather's ideas, I'm afraid we're all too much
divided into classes; man acts, and always has acted, in classes."
"Oh--classes!" answered Thyme--"that's the old superstition, uncle."
"Is it? I thought one's class, perhaps, was only oneself
exaggerated--not to be shaken off. For instance, what are you and I,
with our particular prejudices, going to do?"
Thyme gave him the cruel look of youth, which seemed to say: 'You are
my very good uncle, and a dear; but you are more than twice my age.
That, I think, is conclusive!'
"Has something been settled about Mrs. Hughs?" she asked abruptly.
"What does your father say this morning?"
Thyme picked up her portfolio of drawings, and moved towards the
door.
"Father's hopeless. He hasn't an idea beyond referring her to the
S.P.B."
She was gone; and Hilary, with a sigh, took his pen up, but he wrote
nothing down ....
Hilary and Stephen Dallison were grandsons of that Canon Dallison,
well known as friend, and sometime adviser, of a certain Victorian
novelist. The Canon, who came of an old Oxfordshire family, which
for three hundred years at least had served the Church or State, was
himself the author of two volumes of "Socratic Dialogues." He had
bequeathed to his son--a permanent official in the Foreign Office--if
not his literary talent, the tradition at all events of culture.
This tradition had in turn been handed on to Hilary and Stephen.
Educated at a public school and Cambridge, blessed with competent,
though not large, independent incomes, and brought up never to allude
to money if it could possibly be helped, the two young men had been
turned out of the mint with something of the same outward stamp on
them. Both were kindly, both fond of open-air pursuits, and neither
of them lazy. Both, too, were very civilised, with that bone-deep
decency, that dislike of violence, nowhere so prevalent as in the
upper classes of a country whose settled institutions are as old as
its roads, or the walls which insulate its parks. But as time went
on, the one great quality which heredity and education, environment
and means, had bred in both of them--self-consciousness--acted in
these two brothers very differently. To Stephen it was preservative,
keeping him, as it were, in ice throughout hot-weather seasons,
enabling him to know exactly when he was in danger of decomposition,
so that he might nip the process in the bud; it was with him a
healthy, perhaps slightly chemical, ingredient, binding his component
parts, causing them to work together safely, homogeneously. In
Hilary the effect seemed to have been otherwise; like some slow and
subtle poison, this great quality, self-consciousness, had soaked his
system through and through; permeated every cranny of his spirit, so
that to think a definite thought, or do a definite deed, was
obviously becoming difficult to him. It took in the main the form of
a sort of gentle desiccating humour.
"It's a remarkable thing," he had one day said to Stephen, "that by
the process of assimilating little bits of chopped-up cattle one
should be able to form the speculation of how remarkable a thing it
is."
Stephen had paused a second before answering--they were lunching off
roast beef in the Law Courts--he had then said:
"You're surely not going to eschew the higher mammals, like our
respected father-in-law?"
"On the contrary," said Hilary, "to chew them; but it is remarkable,
for all that; you missed my point."
It was clear that a man who could see anything remarkable in such a
thing was far gone, and Stephen had murmured:
"My dear old chap, you're getting too introspective."
Hilary, having given his brother the special retiring smile, which
seemed not only to say; "Don't let me bore you," but also, "Well,
perhaps you had better wait outside," the conversation closed.
That smile of Hilary's, which jibbed away from things, though
disconcerting and apt to put an end to intercourse, was natural
enough. A sensitive man, who had passed his life amongst cultivated
people in the making of books, guarded from real wants by modest, not
vulgar, affluence, had not reached the age of forty-two without
finding his delicacy sharpened to the point of fastidiousness. Even
his dog could see the sort of man he was. She knew that he would
take no liberties, either with her ears or with her tail. She knew
that he would never hold her mouth ajar, and watch her teeth, as some
men do; that when she was lying on her back he would gently rub her
chest without giving her the feeling that she was doing wrong, as
women will; and if she sat, as she was sitting now, with her eyes
fixed on his study fire, he would never, she knew, even from afar,
prevent her thinking of the nothing she loved to think on.
In his study, which smelt of a particular mild tobacco warranted to
suit the nerves of any literary man, there was a bust of Socrates,
which always seemed to have a strange attraction for its owner. He
had once described to a fellow-writer the impression produced on him
by that plaster face, so capaciously ugly, as though comprehending
the whole of human life, sharing all man's gluttony and lust, his
violence and rapacity, but sharing also his strivings toward love and
reason and serenity.
"He's telling us," said Hilary, "to drink deep, to dive down and live
with mermaids, to lie out on the hills under the sun, to sweat with
helots, to know all things and all men. No seat, he says, among the
Wise, unless we've been through it all before we climb! That's how
he strikes me--not too cheering for people of our sort!"
Under the shadow of this bust Hilary rested his forehead on his hand.
In front of him were three open books and a pile of manuscript, and
pushed to one side a little sheaf of pieces of green-white paper,
press-cuttings of his latest book.
The exact position occupied by his work in the life of such a man is
not too easy to define. He earned an income by it, but he was not
dependent on that income. As poet, critic, writer of essays, he had
made himself a certain name--not a great name, but enough to swear
by. Whether his fastidiousness could have stood the conditions of
literary existence without private means was now and then debated by
his friends; it could probably have done so better than was supposed,
for he sometimes startled those who set him down as a dilettante by a
horny way of retiring into his shell for the finish of a piece of
work.
Try as he would that morning to keep his thoughts concentrated on his
literary labour, they wandered to his conversation with his niece and
to the discussion on Mrs. Hughs; the family seamstress, in his wife's
studio the day before. Stephen had lingered behind Cecilia and Thyme
when they went away after dinner, to deliver a last counsel to his
brother at the garden gate.
"Never meddle between man and wife--you know what the lower classes
are!"
And across the dark garden he had looked back towards the house. One
room on the ground-floor alone was lighted. Through its open window
the head and shoulders of Mr. Stone could be seen close to a small
green reading-lamp. Stephen shook his head, murmuring:
"But, I say, our old friend, eh? 'In those places--in those
streets!' It's worse than simple crankiness--the poor old chap is
getting almost---"
"And, touching his forehead lightly with two fingers, he had hurried
off with the ever-springy step of one whose regularity habitually
controls his imagination.
Pausing a minute amongst the bushes, Hilary too had looked at the
lighted window which broke the dark front of his house, and his
little moonlight bulldog, peering round his legs, had gazed up also.
Mr. Stone was still standing, pen in hand, presumably deep in
thought. His silvered head and beard moved slightly to the efforts
of his brain. He came over to the window, and, evidently not seeing
his son-in-law, faced out into the night.
In that darkness were all the shapes and lights and shadows of a
London night in spring: the trees in dark bloom; the wan yellow of
the gas-lamps, pale emblems of the self-consciousness of towns; the
clustered shades of the tiny leaves, spilled, purple, on the surface
of the road, like bunches of black grapes squeezed down into the
earth by the feet of the passers-by. There, too, were shapes of men
and women hurrying home, and the great blocked shapes of the houses
where they lived. A halo hovered above the City--a high haze of
yellow light, dimming the stars. The black, slow figure of a
policeman moved noiselessly along the railings opposite.
>From then till eleven o'clock, when he would make himself some cocoa
on a little spirit-lamp, the writer of the "Book of Universal
Brotherhood" would alternate between his bent posture above his
manuscript and his blank consideration of the night....
With a jerk, Hilary came back to his reflections beneath the bust of
Socrates.
"Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets!"
There certainly was a virus in that notion. One must either take it
as a jest, like Stephen; or, what must one do? How far was it one's
business to identify oneself with other people, especially the
helpless--how far to preserve oneself intact--'integer vita'? Hilary
was no young person, like his niece or Martin, to whom everything
seemed simple; nor was he an old person like their grandfather, for
whom life had lost its complications.
And, very conscious of his natural disabilities for a decision on a
like, or indeed on any, subject except, perhaps, a point of literary
technique, he got up from his writing-table, and, taking his little
bulldog, went out. His intention was to visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound
Street, and see with his own eyes the state of things. But he had
another reason, too, for wishing to go there ....
CHAPTER IV
THE LITTLE MODEL
When in the preceding autumn Bianca began her picture called "The
Shadow," nobody was more surprised than Hilary that she asked him to
find her a model for the figure. Not knowing the nature of the
picture, nor having been for many years--perhaps never--admitted into
the workings of his wife's spirit, he said:
"Why don't you ask Thyme to sit for you?"
Blanca answered: "She's not the type at all--too matter-of-fact.
Besides, I don't want a lady; the figure's to be half draped."
Hilary smiled.
Blanca knew quite well that he was smiling at this distinction
between ladies and other women, and understood that he was smiling,
not so much at her, but at himself, for secretly agreeing with the
distinction she had made.
And suddenly she smiled too.
There was the whole history of their married life in those two
smiles. They meant so much: so many thousand hours of suppressed
irritation, so many baffled longings and earnest efforts to bring
their natures together. They were the supreme, quiet evidence of the
divergence of two lives--that slow divergence which had been far from
being wilful, and was the more hopeless in that it had been so
gradual and so gentle. They had never really had a quarrel, having
enlightened views of marriage; but they had smiled. They had smiled
so often through so many years that no two people in the world could
very well be further from each other. Their smiles had banned the
revelation even to themselves of the tragedy of their wedded state.
It is certain that neither could help those smiles, which were not
intended to wound, but came on their faces as naturally as moonlight
falls on water, out of their inimically constituted souls.
Hilary spent two afternoons among his artist friends, trying, by
means of the indications he had gathered, to find a model for "The
Shadow." He had found one at last. Her name, Barton, and address
had been given him by a painter of still life, called French.
"She's never sat to me," he said; "my sister discovered her in the
West Country somewhere. She's got a story of some sort. I don't
know what. She came up about three months ago, I think."
"She's not sitting to your sister now?" Hilary asked.
"No," said the painter of still life; "my sister's married and gone
out to India. I don't know whether she'd sit for the half-draped,
but I should think so. She'll have to, sooner or later; she may as
well begin, especially to a woman. There's a something about her
that's attractive--you might try her!" And with these words he
resumed the painting of still life which he had broken off to talk to
Hilary.
Hilary had written to this girl to come and see him. She had come
just before dinner the same day.
He found her standing in the middle of his study, not daring, as it
seemed, to go near the furniture, and as there was very little light,
he could hardly see her face. She was resting a foot, very patient,
very still, in an old brown skirt, an ill-shaped blouse, and a blue-
green tam-o'-shanter cap. Hilary turned up the light. He saw a
round little face with broad cheekbones, flower-blue eyes, short
lamp-black lashes, and slightly parted lips. It was difficult to
judge of her figure in those old clothes, but she was neither short
nor tall; her neck was white and well set on, her hair pale brown and
abundant. Hilary noted that her chin, though not receding, was too
soft and small; but what he noted chiefly was her look of patient
expectancy, as though beyond the present she were seeing something,
not necessarily pleasant, which had to come. If he had not known
from the painter of still life that she was from the country, he
would have thought her a town-bred girl, she looked so pale. Her
appearance, at all events, was not "too matter-of-fact." Her speech,
however, with its slight West-Country burr, was matter-of-fact
enough, concerned entirely with how long she would have to sit, and
the pay she was to get for it. In the middle of their conversation
she sank down on the floor, and Hilary was driven to restore her with
biscuits and liqueur, which in his haste he took for brandy. It
seemed she had not eaten since her breakfast the day before, which
had consisted of a cup of tea. In answer to his remonstrance, she
made this matter-of-fact remark:
"If you haven't money, you can't buy things.... There's no one I can
ask up here; I'm a stranger."
"Then you haven't been getting work?"
"No," the little model answered sullenly; " I don't want to sit as
most of them want me to till I'm obliged." The blood rushed up in
her face with startling vividness, then left it white again.
'Ah!' thought Hilary, 'she has had experience already.'
Both he and his wife were accessible to cases of distress, but the
nature of their charity was different. Hilary was constitutionally
unable to refuse his aid to anything that held out a hand for it.
Bianca (whose sociology was sounder), while affirming that charity
was wrong, since in a properly constituted State no one should need
help, referred her cases, like Stephen, to the "Society for the
Prevention of Begging," which took much time and many pains to
ascertain the worst.
But in this case what was of importance was that the poor girl should
have a meal, and after that to find out if she were living in a
decent house; and since she appeared not to be, to recommend her
somewhere better. And as in charity it is always well to kill two
birds with one expenditure of force, it was found that Mrs. Hughs,
the seamstress, had a single room to let unfurnished, and would be
more than glad of four shillings, or even three and six, a week for
it. Furniture was also found for her: a bed that creaked, a
washstand, table, and chest of drawers; a carpet, two chairs, and
certain things to cook with; some of those old photographs and prints
that hide in cupboards, and a peculiar little clock, which frequently
forgot the time of day. All these and some elementary articles of
dress were sent round in a little van, with three ferns whose time
had nearly come, and a piece of the plant called "honesty." Soon
after this she came to "sit." She was a very quiet and passive
little model, and was not required to pose half-draped, Bianca having
decided that, after all, "The Shadow" was better represented fully
clothed; for, though she discussed the nude, and looked on it with
freedom, when it came to painting unclothed people, she felt a sort
of physical aversion.
Hilary, who was curious, as a man naturally would be, about anyone
who had fainted from hunger at his feet, came every now and then to
see, and would sit watching this little half-starved girl with kindly
and screwed-up eyes. About his personality there was all the
evidence of that saying current among those who knew him: "Hilary
would walk a mile sooner than tread on an ant." The little model,
from the moment when he poured liqueur between her teeth, seemed to
feel he had a claim on her, for she reserved her small, matter-of-
fact confessions for his ears. She made them in the garden, coming
in or going out; or outside, and, now and then, inside his study,
like a child who comes and shows you a sore finger. Thus, quite
suddenly:
"I've four shillings left over this week, Mr. Dallison," or, "Old Mr.
Creed's gone to the hospital to-day, Mr. Dallison."
Her face soon became less bloodless than on that first evening, but
it was still pale, inclined to colour in wrong places on cold days,
with little blue veins about the temples and shadows under the eyes.
The lips were still always a trifle parted, and she still seemed to
be looking out for what was coming, like a little Madonna, or Venus,
in a Botticelli picture. This look of hers, coupled with the matter-
of-factness of her speech, gave its flavour to her personality....
On Christmas Day the picture was on view to Mr. Purcey, who had
chanced to "give his car a run," and to other connoisseurs. Bianca
had invited her model to be present at this function, intending to
get her work. But, slipping at once into a corner, the girl had
stood as far as possible behind a canvas. People, seeing her
standing there, and noting her likeness to the picture, looked at her
with curiosity, and passed on, murmuring that she was an interesting
type. They did not talk to her, either because they were afraid she
could not talk of the things they could talk of, or that they could
not talk of the things she could talk of, or because they were
anxious not to seem to patronize her. She talked to one, therefore.
This occasioned Hilary some distress. He kept coming up and smiling
at her, or making tentative remarks or jests, to which she would
reply, "Yes, Mr. Dallison," or "No, Mr. Dallison," as the case might
be.
Seeing him return from one of these little visits, an Art Critic
standing before the picture had smiled, and his round, clean-shaven,
sensual face had assumed a greenish tint in eyes and cheeks, as of
the fat in turtle soup.
The only two other people who had noticed her particularly were those
old acquaintances, Mr. Purcey and Mr. Stone. Mr. Purcey had thought,
'Rather a good-lookin' girl,' and his eyes strayed somewhat
continually in her direction. There was something piquant and, as it
were, unlawfully enticing to him in the fact that she was a real
artist's model.
Mr. Stone's way of noticing her had been different. He had
approached in his slightly inconvenient way, as though seeing but one
thing in the whole world.
"You are living by yourself?" he had said. "I shall come and see
you."
Made by the Art Critic or by Mr. Purcey, that somewhat strange remark
would have had one meaning; made by Mr. Stone it obviously had
another. Having finished what he had to say, the author of the book
of "Universal Brotherhood" had bowed and turned to go. Perceiving
that he saw before him the door and nothing else, everybody made way
for him at once. The remarks that usually arose behind his back
began to be heard--"Extraordinary old man!" "You know, he bathes in
the Serpentine all the year round?" "And he cooks his food himself,
and does his own room, they say; and all the rest of his time he
writes a book!" "A perfect crank!"
CHAPTER V
THE COMEDY BEGINS
The Art Critic who had smiled was--like all men--a subject for pity
rather than for blame. An Irishman of real ability, he had started
life with high ideals and a belief that he could live with them. He
had hoped to serve Art, to keep his service pure; but, having one day
let his acid temperament out of hand to revel in an orgy of personal
retaliation, he had since never known when she would slip her chain
and come home smothered in mire. Moreover, he no longer chastised
her when she came. His ideals had left him, one by one; he now lived
alone, immune from dignity and shame, soothing himself with whisky.
A man of rancour, meet for pity, and, in his cups, contented.
He had lunched freely before coming to Blanca's Christmas function,
but by four o'clock, the gases which had made him feel the world a
pleasant place had nearly all evaporated, and he was suffering from a
wish to drink again. Or it may have been that this girl, with her
soft look, gave him the feeling that she ought to have belonged to
him; and as she did not, he felt, perhaps, a natural irritation that
she belonged, or might belong, to somebody else. Or, again, it was
possibly his natural male distaste for the works of women painters
which induced an awkward frame of mind.
Two days later in a daily paper over no signature, appeared this
little paragraph: "We learn that 'The Shadow,' painted by Bianca
Stone, who is not generally known to be the wife of the writer, Mr.
Hilary Dallison, will soon be exhibited at the Bencox Gallery. This
very 'fin-de-siecle' creation, with its unpleasant subject,
representing a woman (presumably of the streets) standing beneath a
gas-lamp, is a somewhat anaemic piece of painting. If Mr. Dallison,
who finds the type an interesting one, embodies her in one of his
very charming poems, we trust the result will be less bloodless."
The little piece of green-white paper containing this information was
handed to Hilary by his wife at breakfast. The blood mounted slowly
in his cheeks. Bianca's eyes fastened themselves on that flush.
Whether or no--as philosophers say--little things are all big with
the past, of whose chain they are the latest links, they frequently
produce what apparently are great results.
The marital relations of Hilary and his wife, which till then had
been those of, at all events, formal conjugality, changed from that
moment. After ten o'clock at night their lives became as separate as
though they lived in different houses. And this change came about
without expostulations, reproach, or explanation, just by the turning
of a key; and even this was the merest symbol, employed once only, to
save the ungracefulness of words. Such a hint was quite enough for a
man like Hilary, whose delicacy, sense of the ridiculous, and
peculiar faculty of starting back and retiring into himself, put the
need of anything further out of the question. Both must have felt,
too, that there was nothing that could be explained. An anonymous
double entendre was not precisely evidence on which to found a
rupture of the marital tie. The trouble was so much deeper than
that--the throbbing of a woman's wounded self-esteem, of the feeling
that she was no longer loved, which had long cried out for revenge.
One morning in the middle of the week after this incident the
innocent author of it presented herself in Hilary's study, and,
standing in her peculiar patient attitude, made her little
statements. As usual, they were very little ones; as usual, she
seemed helpless, and suggested a child with a sore finger. She had
no other work; she owed the week's rent; she did not know what would
happen to her; Mrs. Dallison did not want her any more; she could not
tell what she had done! The picture was finished, she knew, but Mrs.
Dallison had said she was going to paint her again in another
picture....
Hilary did not reply.
"....That old gentleman, Mr.--Mr. Stone, had been to see her. He
wanted her to come and copy out his book for two hours a day, from
four to six, at a shilling an hour. Ought she to come, please? He
said his book would take him years."
Before answering her Hilary stood for a full minute staring at the
fire. The little model stole a look at him. He suddenly turned and
faced her. His glance was evidently disconcerting to the girl. It
was, indeed, a critical and dubious look, such as he might have bent
on a folio of doubtful origin.
'Don't you think," he said at last, "that it would be much better for
you to go back into the country?"
The little model shook her head vehemently.
"Oh no!"
"Well, but why not? This is a most unsatisfactory sort of life."
The girl stole another look at him, then said sullenly:
"I can't go back there."
"What is it? Aren't your people nice to you?"
She grew red.
"No; and I don't want to go"; then, evidently seeing from Hilary's
face that his delicacy forbade his questioning her further, she
brightened up, and murmured: "The old gentleman said it would make me
independent."
"Well," replied Hilary, with a shrug, "you'd better take his offer."
She kept turning her face back as she went down the path, as though
to show her gratitude. And presently, looking up from his
manuscript, he saw her face still at the railings, peering through a
lilac bush. Suddenly she skipped, like a child let out of school.
Hilary got up, perturbed. The sight of that skipping was like the
rays of a lantern turned on the dark street of another human being's
life. It revealed, as in a flash, the loneliness of this child,
without money and without friends, in the midst of this great town.
The months of January, February, March passed, and the little model
came daily to copy the "Book of Universal Brotherhood."
Mr. Stone's room, for which he insisted on paying rent, was never
entered by a servant. It was on the ground-floor, and anyone passing
the door between the hours of four and six could hear him dictating
slowly, pausing now and then to spell a word. In these two hours it
appeared to be his custom to read out, for fair copying, the labours
of the other seven.
At five o'clock there was invariably a sound of plates and cups, and
out of it the little model's voice would rise, matter-of-fact, soft,
monotoned, making little statements; and in turn Mr. Stone's, also
making statements which clearly lacked cohesion with those of his
young friend. On one occasion, the door being open, Hilary heard
distinctly the following conversation:
The LITTLE MODEL: "Mr. Creed says he was a butler. He's got an ugly
nose." (A pause.)
Mr. STONE: "In those days men were absorbed in thinking of their
individualities. Their occupations seemed to them important---"
The LITTLE MODEL: "Mr. Creed says his savings were all swallowed up
by illness."
Mr. STONE: "---it was not so."
The LITTLE MODEL: "Mr. Creed says he was always brought up to go to
church."
Mr. STONE (suddenly): "There has been no church worth going to since
A. D. 700."
The LITTLE MODEL: "But he doesn't go."
And with a flying glance through the just open door Hilary saw her
holding bread-and-butter with inky fingers, her lips a little parted,
expecting the next bite, and her eyes fixed curiously on Mr. Stone,
whose transparent hand held a teacup, and whose eyes were immovably
fixed on distance.
It was one day in April that Mr. Stone, heralded by the scent of
Harris tweed and baked potatoes which habitually encircled him,
appeared at five o'clock in Hilary's study doorway.
"She has not come," he said.
Hilary laid down his pen. It was the first real Spring day.
"Will you come for a walk with me, sir, instead?" he asked.
"Yes," said Mr. Stone.
They walked out into Kensington Gardens, Hilary with his head rather
bent towards the ground, and Mr. Stone, with eyes fixed on his far
thoughts, slightly poking forward his silver beard.
In their favourite firmaments the stars of crocuses and daffodils
were shining. Almost every tree had its pigeon cooing, every bush
its blackbird in full song. And on the paths were babies in
perambulators. These were their happy hunting-grounds, and here they
came each day to watch from a safe distance the little dirty girls
sitting on the grass nursing little dirty boys, to listen to the
ceaseless chatter of these common urchins, and learn to deal with the
great problem of the lowest classes. And babies sat in their
perambulators, thinking and sucking india-rubber tubes. Dogs went
before them, and nursemaids followed after.
The spirit of colour was flying in the distant trees, swathing them
with brownish-purple haze; the sky was saffroned by dying sunlight.
It was such a day as brings a longing to the heart, like that which
the moon brings to the hearts of children.
Mr. Stone and Hilary sat down in the Broad Walk.
'Elm-trees!" said Mr. Stone. "It is not known when they assumed
their present shape. They have one universal soul. It is the same
with man." He ceased, and Hilary looked round uneasily. They were
alone on the bench.
Mr. Stone's voice rose again. "Their form and balance is their
single soul; they have preserved it from century to century. This is
all they live for. In those days"--his voice sank; he had plainly
forgotten that he was not alone--"when men had no universal
conceptions, they would have done well to look at the trees. Instead
of fostering a number of little souls on the pabulum of varying
theories of future life, they should have been concerned to improve
their present shapes, and thus to dignify man's single soul"
"Elms were always considered dangerous trees, I believe," said
Hilary.
Mr. Stone turned, and, seeing his son-in-law beside him, asked:
"You spoke to me, I think?"
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Stone said wistfully:
"Shall we walk?"
They rose from the bench and walked on....
The explanation of the little model's absence was thus stated by
herself to Hilary: "I had an appointment."
"More work?"
"A friend of Mr. French."
"Yes--who?"
"Mr. Lennard. He's a sculptor; he's got a studio in Chelsea. He
wants me to pose to him."
"Ah!"
She stole a glance at Hilary, and hung her head.
Hilary turned to the window. "You know what posing to a sculptor
means, of course?"
The little model's voice sounded behind him, matter-of-fact as ever:
"He said I was just the figure he was looking for."
Hilary continued to stare through the window. "I thought you didn't
mean to begin standing for the nude."
"I don't want to stay poor always."
Hilary turned round at the strange tone of these unexpected words.
The girl was in a streak of sunlight; her pale cheeks flushed; her
pale, half-opened lips red; her eyes, in their setting of short black
lashes, wide and mutinous; her young round bosom heaving as if she
had been running.
"I don't want to go on copying books all my life."
"Oh, very well."
"Mr. Dallison! I didn't mean that--I didn't really! I want to do
what you tell me to do--I do!"
Hilary stood contemplating her with the dubious, critical look, as
though asking: "What is there behind you? Are you really a genuine
edition, or what?" which had so disconcerted her before. At last he
said: "You must do just as you like. I never advise anybody."
"But you don't want me to--I know you don't. Of course, if you don't
want me to, then it'll be a pleasure not to!"
Hilary smiled.
"Don't you like copying for Mr. Stone?"
The little model made a face. "I like Mr. Stone--he's such a funny
old gentleman."
"That is the general opinion," answered Hilary. "But Mr. Stone, you
know, thinks that we are funny."
The little model smiled faintly, too; the streak of sunlight had
slanted past her, and, standing there behind its glamour and million
floating specks of gold-dust, she looked for the moment like the
young Shade of Spring, watching with expectancy for what the year
would bring her.
With the words "I am ready," spoken from the doorway, Mr. Stone
interrupted further colloquy....
But though the girl's position in the household had, to all seeming,
become established, now and then some little incident--straws blowing
down the wind--showed feelings at work beneath the family's apparent
friendliness, beneath that tentative and almost apologetic manner
towards the poor or helpless, which marks out those who own what
Hilary had called the "social conscience." Only three days, indeed,
before he sat in his brown study, meditating beneath the bust of
Socrates, Cecilia, coming to lunch, had let fall this remark:
"Of course, I know nobody can read his handwriting; but I can't think
why father doesn't dictate to a typist, instead of to that little
girl. She could go twice the pace!"
Blanca's answer, deferred for a few seconds, was:
"Hilary perhaps knows."
"Do you dislike her coming here?" asked Hilary.
"Not particularly. Why?"
"I thought from your tone you did."
"I don't dislike her coming here for that purpose."
"Does she come for any other?"
Cecilia, dropping her quick glance to her fork, said just a little
hastily: "Father is extraordinary, of course."
But the next three days Hilary was out in the afternoon when the
little model came.
This, then, was the other reason, on the morning of the first of May,
which made him not averse to go and visit Mrs. Hughs in Hound Street,
Kensington.
CHAPTER VI
FIRST PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET
Hilary and his little bulldog entered Hound Street from its eastern
end. It was a grey street of three-storied houses, all in one style
of architecture. Nearly all their doors were open, and on the
doorsteps babes and children were enjoying Easter holidays. They sat
in apathy, varied by sudden little slaps and bursts of noise. Nearly
all were dirty; some had whole boots, some half boots, and two or
three had none. In the gutters more children were at play; their
shrill tongues and febrile movements gave Hilary the feeling that
their "caste" exacted of them a profession of this faith: "To-day we
live; to-morrow--if there be one--will be like to-day."
He had unconsciously chosen the very centre of the street to walk in,
and Miranda, who had never in her life demeaned herself to this
extent, ran at his heels, turning up her eyes, as though to say: 'One
thing I make a point of--no dog must speak to me!'
Fortunately, there were no dogs; but there were many cats, and these
cats were thin.
Through the upper windows of the houses Hilary had glimpses of women
in poor habiliments doing various kinds of work, but stopping now and
then to gaze into the street. He walked to the end, where a wall
stopped him, and, still in the centre of the road, he walked the
whole length back. The children stared at his tall figure with
indifference; they evidently felt that he was not of those who, like
themselves, had no to-morrow.
No. 1, Hound Street, abutting on the garden of a house of better
class, was distinctly the show building of the street. The door,
however, was not closed, and pulling the remnant of a bell, Hilary
walked in.
The first thing that he noticed was a smell; it was not precisely
bad, but it might have been better. It was a smell of walls and
washing, varied rather vaguely by red herrings. The second thing he
noticed was his moonlight bulldog, who stood on the doorstep eyeing a
tiny sandy cat. This very little cat, whose back was arched with
fury, he was obliged to chase away before his bulldog would come in.
The third thing he noticed was a lame woman of short stature,
standing in the doorway of a room. Her face, with big cheek-bones,
and wide-open, light grey, dark-lashed eyes, was broad and patient;
she rested her lame leg by holding to the handle of the door.
"I dunno if you'll find anyone upstairs. I'd go and ask, but my
leg's lame."
"So I see," said Hilary; "I'm sorry."
The woman sighed: "Been like that these five years"; and turned back
into her room.
"Is there nothing to be done for it?"
"Well, I did think so once," replied the woman, "but they say the
bone's diseased; I neglected it at the start."
"Oh dear!"
"We hadn't the time to give to it," the woman said defensively,
retiring into a room so full of china cups, photographs, coloured
prints, waxwork fruits, and other ornaments, that there seemed no
room for the enormous bed.
Wishing her good-morning, Hilary began to mount the stairs. On the
first floor he paused. Here, in the back room, the little model
lived.
He looked around him. The paper on the passage walls was of a dingy
orange colour, the blind of the window torn, and still pursuing him,
pervading everything, was the scent of walls and washing and red
herrings. There came on him a sickness, a sort of spiritual revolt.
To live here, to pass up these stairs, between these dingy, bilious
walls, on this dirty carpet, with this--ugh! every day; twice, four
times, six times, who knew how many times a day! And that sense, the
first to be attracted or revolted, the first to become fastidious
with the culture of the body, the last to be expelled from the temple
of the pure-spirit; that sense to whose refinement all breeding and
all education is devoted; that sense which, ever an inch at least in
front of man, is able to retard the development of nations, and
paralyse all social schemes--this Sense of Smell awakened within him
the centuries of his gentility, the ghosts of all those Dallisons
who, for three hundred years and more, had served Church or State.
It revived the souls of scents he was accustomed to, and with them,
subtly mingled, the whole live fabric of aestheticism, woven in fresh
air and laid in lavender. It roused the simple, non-extravagant
demand of perfect cleanliness. And though he knew that chemists
would have certified the composition of his blood to be the same as
that of the dwellers in this house, and that this smell, composed of
walls and washing and red herrings, was really rather healthy, he
stood frowning fixedly at the girl's door, and the memory of his
young niece's delicately wrinkled nose as she described the house
rose before him. He went on upstairs, followed by his moonlight
bulldog.
Hilary's tall thin figure appearing in the open doorway of the top-
floor front, his kind and worried face, and the pale agate eyes of
the little bulldog peeping through his legs, were witnessed by
nothing but a baby, who was sitting in a wooden box in the centre of
the room. This baby, who was very like a piece of putty to which
Nature had by some accident fitted two movable black eyes, was
clothed in a woman's knitted undervest, spreading beyond his feet and
hands, so that nothing but his head was visible. This vest divided
him from the wooden shavings on which he sat, and, since he had not
yet attained the art of rising to his feet, the box divided him from
contacts of all other kinds. As completely isolated from his kingdom
as a Czar of all the Russias, he was doing nothing. In this realm
there was a dingy bed, two chairs, and a washstand, with one lame
leg, supported by an aged footstool. Clothes and garments were
hanging on nails, pans lay about the hearth, a sewing-machine stood
on a bare deal table. Over the bed was hung an oleograph, from a
Christmas supplement, of the birth of Jesus, and above it a bayonet,
under which was printed in an illiterate hand on a rough scroll of
paper: "Gave three of em what for at Elandslaagte. S. Hughs." Some
photographs adorned the walls, and two drooping ferns stood on the
window-ledge. The room withal had a sort of desperate tidiness; in a
large cupboard, slightly open, could be seen stowed all that must not
see the light of day. The window of the baby's kingdom was tightly
closed; the scent was the scent of walls and washing and red
herrings, and--of other things.
Hilary looked at the baby, and the baby looked at him. The eyes of
that tiny scrap of grey humanity seemed saying:
'You are not my mother, I believe?'
He stooped down and touched its cheek. The baby blinked its black
eyes once.
'No,' it seemed, to say again, 'you are not my mother.'
A lump rose in Hilary's throat; he turned and went downstairs.
Pausing outside the little model's door, he knocked, and, receiving
no answer, turned the handle. The little square room was empty; it
was neat and clean enough, with a pink-flowered paper of
comparatively modern date. Through its open window could be seen a
pear-tree in full bloom. Hilary shut the door again with care,
ashamed of having opened it.
On the half-landing, staring up at him with black eyes like the
baby's, was a man of medium height and active build, whose short
face, with broad cheekbones, cropped dark hair, straight nose, and
little black moustache, was burnt a dark dun colour. He was dressed
in the uniform of those who sweep the streets--a loose blue blouse,
and trousers tucked into boots reaching half-way up his calves; he
held a peaked cap in his hand.
After some seconds of mutual admiration, Hilary said:
"Mr. Hughs, I believe?" Yes.
"I've been up to see your wife."
"Have you?"
"You know me, I suppose?"
"Yes, I know you."
"Unfortunately, there's only your baby at home."
Hughs motioned with his cap towards the little model's room. "I
thought perhaps you'd been to see her," he said. His black eyes
smouldered; there was more than class resentment in the expression of
his face.
Flushing slightly and giving him a keen look, Hilary passed down the
stairs without replying. But Miranda had not followed. She stood,
with one paw delicately held up above the topmost step.
'I don't know this man,' she seemed to say, 'and I don't like his
looks.'
Hughs grinned. "I never hurt a dumb animal," he said; "come on,
tykie!"
Stimulated by a word she had never thought to hear, Miranda descended
rapidly.
'He meant that for impudence,' thought Hilary as he walked away.
"Westminister, sir? Oh dear!"
A skinny trembling hand was offering him a greenish newspaper.
"Terrible cold wind for the time o' year!"
A very aged man in black-rimmed spectacles, with a distended nose and
long upper lip and chin, was tentatively fumbling out change for
sixpence.
"I seem to know your face," said Hilary.
"Oh dear, yes. You deals with this 'ere shop--the tobacco
department. I've often seen you when you've a-been agoin' in.
Sometimes you has the Pell Mell off o' this man here." He jerked his
head a trifle to the left, where a younger man was standing armed
with a sheaf of whiter papers. In that gesture were years of envy,
heart-burning, and sense of wrong. 'That's my paper,' it seemed to
say, 'by all the rights of man; and that low-class fellow sellin' it,
takin' away my profits!'
"I sells this 'ere Westminister. I reads it on Sundays--it's a
gentleman's paper, 'igh-class paper--notwithstandin' of its politics.
But, Lor', sir, with this 'ere man a-sellin' the Pell Mell"--lowering
his voice, he invited Hilary to confidence--"so many o' the gentry
takes that; an' there ain't too many o' the gentry about 'ere--I
mean, not o' the real gentry--that I can afford to 'ave 'em took away
from me."
Hilary, who had stopped to listen out of delicacy, had a flash of
recollection. "You live in Hound Street?"
The old man answered eagerly: "Oh dear! Yes, sir--No. 1, name of
Creed. You're the gentleman where the young person goes for to copy
of a book!"
"It's not my book she copies."
"Oh no; it's an old gentleman; I know 'im. He come an' see me once.
He come in one Sunday morning. 'Here's a pound o' tobacca for you!'
'e says. 'You was a butler,' 'e says. 'Butlers!' 'e says, 'there'll
be no butlers in fifty years.' An' out 'e goes. Not quite"--he put
a shaky hand up to his head--"not quite--oh dear!"
"Some people called Hughs live in your house, I think?"
"I rents my room off o' them. A lady was a-speakin' to me yesterday
about 'em; that's not your lady, I suppose, sir?"
His eyes seemed to apostrophise Hilary's hat, which was of soft felt:
'Yes, yes--I've seen your sort a-stayin' about in the best houses.
They has you down because of your learnin'; and quite the manners of
a gentleman you've got.'
"My wife's sister, I expect."
"Oh dear! She often has a paper off o' me. A real lady--not one o'
these"--again he invited Hilary to confidence--"you know what I mean,
sir--that buys their things a' ready-made at these 'ere large
establishments. Oh, I know her well."
"The old gentleman who visited you is her father."
"Is he? Oh dear!" The old butler was silent, evidently puzzled.
Hilary's eyebrows began to execute those intricate manoeuvres which
always indicated that he was about to tax his delicacy.
"How-how does Hughs treat the little girl who lives in the next room
to you?"
The old butler replied in a rather gloomy tone:
"She takes my advice, and don't 'ave nothin' to say to 'im. Dreadful
foreign-lookin' man 'e is. Wherever 'e was brought up I can't
think!"
"A soldier, wasn't he?"
"So he says. He's one o' these that works for the Vestry; an' then
'e'll go an' get upon the drink, an' when that sets 'im off, it seems
as if there wasn't no respect for nothing in 'im; he goes on against
the gentry, and the Church, and every sort of institution. I never
met no soldiers like him. Dreadful foreign--Welsh, they tell me."
"What do you think of the street you're living in?"
"I keeps myself to myself; low class o' street it is; dreadful low
class o' person there--no self-respect about 'em."
"Ah!" said Hilary.
"These little 'ouses, they get into the hands o' little men, and they
don't care so long as they makes their rent out o' them. They can't
help themselves--low class o' man like that; 'e's got to do the best
'e can for 'imself. They say there's thousands o' these 'ouses all
over London. There's some that's for pullin' of 'em down, but that's
talkin' rubbish; where are you goin' to get the money for to do it?
These 'ere little men, they can't afford not even to put a paper on
the walls, and the big ground landlords-you can't expect them to know
what's happenin' behind their backs. There's some ignorant fellers
like this Hughs talks a lot o' wild nonsense about the duty o' ground
landlords; but you can't expect the real gentry to look into these
sort o' things. They've got their estates down in the country. I've
lived with them, and of course I know."
The little bulldog, incommoded by the passers-by, now took the
opportunity of beating with her tail against the old butler's legs.
"Oh dear! what's this? He don't bite, do 'e? Good Sambo!"
Miranda sought her master's eye at once. 'You see what happens to
her if a lady loiters in the streets,' she seemed to say.
"It must be hard standing about here all day, after the life you've
led," said Hilary.
"I mustn't complain; it's been the salvation o' me."
"Do you get shelter?"
Again the old butler seemed to take him into confidence.
"Sometimes of a wet night they lets me stand up in the archway there;
they know I'm respectable. 'T wouldn't never do for that man"--he
nodded at his rival--"or any of them boys to get standin' there,
obstructin' of the traffic."
"I wanted to ask you, Mr. Creed, is there anything to be done for
Mrs. Hughs?"
The frail old body quivered with the vindictive force of his answer.
"Accordin' to what she says, if I'm a-to believe 'er, I'd have him up
before the magistrate, sure as my name's Creed, an' get a separation,
an' I wouldn't never live with 'im again: that's what she ought to
do. An' if he come to go for her after that, I'd have 'im in prison,
if 'e killed me first! I've no patience with a low class o' man like
that! He insulted of me this morning."
"Prison's a dreadful remedy," murmured Hilary.
The old butler answered stoutly: "There ain't but one way o' treatin'
them low fellers--ketch hold o' them until they holler!"
Hilary was about to reply when he found himself alone. At the edge
of the pavement some yards away, Creed, his face upraised to heaven,
was embracing with all his force the second edition of the
Westminster Gazette, which had been thrown him from a cart.
'Well,' thought Hilary, walking on, 'you know your own mind, anyway!'
And trotting by his side, with her jaw set very firm, his little
bulldog looked up above her eyes, and seemed to say: 'It was time we
left that man of action!'
CHAPTER VII
CECILIA'S SCATTERED THOUGHTS
In her morning room Mrs. Stephen Dallison sat at an old oak bureau
collecting her scattered thoughts. They lay about on pieces of
stamped notepaper, beginning "Dear Cecilia," or "Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace requests," or on bits of pasteboard headed by the names of
theatres, galleries, or concert-halls; or, again, on paper of not
quite so good a quality, commencing, "Dear Friend," and ending with a
single well-known name like "Wessex," so that no suspicion should
attach to the appeal contained between the two. She had before her
also sheets of her own writing-paper, headed "76, The Old Square,
Kensington," and two little books. One of these was bound in
marbleised paper, and on it written: "Please keep this book in
safety"; across the other, cased in the skin of some small animal
deceased, was inscribed the solitary word "Engagements."
Cecilia had on a Persian-green silk blouse with sleeves that would
have hidden her slim hands, but for silver buttons made in the
likeness of little roses at her wrists; on her brow was a faint
frown, as though she were wondering what her thoughts were all about.
She sat there every morning catching those thoughts, and placing them
in one or other of her little books. Only by thus working hard could
she keep herself, her husband, and daughter, in due touch with all
the different movements going on. And that the touch might be as due
as possible, she had a little headache nearly every day. For the
dread of letting slip one movement, or of being too much taken with
another, was very real to her; there were so many people who were
interesting, so many sympathies of hers and Stephen's which she
desired to cultivate, that it was a matter of the utmost import not
to cultivate any single one too much. Then, too, the duty of
remaining feminine with all this going forward taxed her
constitution. She sometimes thought enviously of the splendid
isolation now enjoyed by Blanca, of which some subtle instinct,
rather than definite knowledge, had informed her; but not often, for
she was a loyal little person, to whom Stephen and his comforts were
of the first moment. And though she worried somewhat because her
thoughts WOULD come by every post, she did not worry very much--
hardly more than the Persian kitten on her lap, who also sat for
hours trying to catch her tail, with a line between her eyes, and two
small hollows in her cheeks.
When she had at last decided what concerts she would be obliged to
miss, paid her subscription to the League for the Suppression of
Tinned Milk, and accepted an invitation to watch a man fall from a
balloon, she paused. Then, dipping her pen in ink, she wrote as
follows:
"Mrs. Stephen Dallison would be glad to have the blue dress ordered
by her yesterday sent home at once without alteration.--Messrs. Rose
and Thorn, High Street, Kensington."
Ringing the bell, she thought: 'It will be a job for Mrs. Hughs, poor
thing. I believe she'll do it quite as well as Rose and Thorn.'--
"Would you please ask Mrs. Hughs to come to me?--Oh, is that you,
Mrs. Hughs? Come in."
The seamstress, who had advanced into the middle of the room, stood
with her worn hands against her sides, and no sign of life but the
liquid patience in her large brown eyes. She was an enigmatic
figure. Her presence always roused a sort of irritation in Cecilia,
as if she had been suddenly confronted with what might possibly have
been herself if certain little accidents had omitted to occur. She
was so conscious that she ought to sympathise, so anxious to show
that there was no barrier between them, so eager to be all she ought
to be, that her voice almost purred.
"Are you Getting on with the curtains, Mrs. Hughs?"
"Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm."
"I shall have another job for you to-morrow--altering a dress. Can
you come?"
"Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm."
"Is the baby well?"
"Yes, m'm, thank you, m'm."
There was a silence.
'It's no good talking of her domestic matters,' thought Cecilia; 'not
that I don't care!' But the silence getting on her nerves, she said
quickly: "Is your husband behaving himself better?"
There was no answer; Cecilia saw a tear trickle slowly down the
woman's cheek.
'Oh dear, oh dear,' she thought; 'poor thing! I'm in for it!'
Mrs. Hughs' whispering voice began: "He's behaving himself dreadful,
m'm. I was going to speak to you. It's ever since that young girl"
--her face hardened--"come to live down in my room there; he seem to
--he seem to--just do nothing but neglect me."
Cecilia's heart gave the little pleasurable flutter which the heart
must feel at the love dramas of other people, however painful.
"You mean the little model?" she said.
The seamstress answered in an agitated voice: "I don't want to speak
against her, but she's put a spell on him, that's what she has; he
don't seem able to do nothing but talk of her, and hang about her
room. It was that troubling me when I saw you the other day. And
ever since yesterday midday, when Mr. Hilary came--he's been talking
that wild--and he pushed me--and--and---" Her lips ceased to form
articulate words, but, since it was not etiquette to cry before her
superiors, she used them to swallow down her tears, and something in
her lean throat moved up and down.
At the mention of Hilary's name the pleasurable sensation in Cecilia
had undergone a change. She felt curiosity, fear, offence.
"I don't quite understand you," she said.
The seamstress plaited at her frock. "Of course, I can't help the
way he talks, m'm. I'm sure I don't like to repeat the wicked things
he says about Mr. Hilary. It seems as if he were out of his mind
when he gets talkin' about that young girl."
The tone of those last three words was almost fierce.
Cecilia was on the point of saying: 'That will do, please; I want to
hear no more.' But her curiosity and queer subtle fear forced her
instead to repeat: "I don't understand. Do you mean he insinuates
that Mr. Hilary has anything to do with--with this girl, or what?"
And she thought: 'I'll stop that, at any rate.'
The seamstress's face was distorted by her efforts to control her
voice.
"I tell him he's wicked to say such things, m'm, and Mr. Hilary such
a kind gentleman. And what business is it of his, I say, that's got
a wife and children of his own? I've seen him in the street, I've
watched him hanging about Mrs. Hilary's house when I've been working
there waiting for that girl, and following her--home---" Again her
lips refused to do service, except in the swallowing of her tears.
Cecilia thought: 'I must tell Stephen at once. That man is
dangerous.' A spasm gripped her heart, usually so warm and snug;
vague feelings she had already entertained presented themselves now
with startling force; she seemed to see the face of sordid life
staring at the family of Dallison. Mrs. Hughs' voice, which did not
dare to break, resumed:
"I've said to him: 'Whatever are you thinking of? And after Mrs.
Hilary's been so kind to me! But he's like a madman when he's in
liquor, and he says he'll go to Mrs. Hilary---"
"Go to my sister? What about? The ruffian!"
At hearing her husband called a ruffian by another woman the shadow
of resentment passed across Mrs. Hughs' face, leaving it quivering
and red. The conversation had already made a strange difference in
the manner of these two women to each other. It was as though each
now knew exactly how much sympathy and confidence could be expected
of the other, as though life had suddenly sucked up the mist, and
shown them standing one on either side of a deep trench. In Mrs.
Hughs' eyes there was the look of those who have long discovered that
they must not answer back for fear of losing what little ground they
have to stand on; and Cecilia's eyes were cold and watchful. 'I
sympathise,' they seemed to say, 'I sympathise; but you must please
understand that you cannot expect sympathy if your affairs compromise
the members of my family.' Her, chief thought now was to be relieved
of the company of this woman, who had been betrayed into showing what
lay beneath her dumb, stubborn patience. It was not callousness, but
the natural result of being fluttered. Her heart was like a bird
agitated in its gilt-wire cage by the contemplation of a distant cat.
She did not, however, lose her sense of what was practical, but said
calmly: "Your husband was wounded in South Africa, you told me? It
looks as if he wasn't quite.... I think you should have a doctor!"
The seamstress's answer, slow and matter-of-fact, was worse than her
emotion.
"No, m'm, he isn't mad."
Crossing to the hearth-whose Persian-blue tiling had taken her so
long to find--Cecilia stood beneath a reproduction of Botticelli's
"Primavera," and looked doubtfully at Mrs. Hughs. The Persian
kitten, sleepy and disturbed on the bosom of her blouse, gazed up
into her face. 'Consider me,' it seemed to say; 'I am worth
consideration; I am of a piece with you, and everything round you.
We are both elegant and rather slender; we both love warmth and
kittens; we both dislike interference with our fur. You took a long
time to buy me, so as to get me perfect. You see that woman over
there! I sat on her lap this morning while she was sewing your
curtains. She has no right in here; she's not what she seems; she
can bite and scratch, I know; her lap is skinny; she drops water from
her eyes. She made me wet all down my back. Be careful what you're
doing, or she'll make you wet down yours!'
All that was like the little Persian kitten within Cecilia--cosiness
and love of pretty things, attachment to her own abode with its high-
art lining, love for her mate and her own kitten, Thyme, dread of
disturbance--all made her long to push this woman from the room; this
woman with the skimpy figure, and eyes that, for all their patience,
had in them something virago-like; this woman who carried about with
her an atmosphere of sordid grief, of squalid menaces, and scandal.
She longed all the more because it could well be seen from the
seamstress's helpless attitude that she too would have liked an easy
life. To dwell on things like this was to feel more than thirty-
eight!
Cecilia had no pocket, Providence having removed it now for some time
past, but from her little bag she drew forth the two essentials of
gentility. Taking her nose, which she feared was shining, gently
within one, she fumbled in the other. And again she looked
doubtfully at Mrs. Hughs. Her heart said: 'Give the poor woman half
a sovereign; it might comfort her!' But her brain said: 'I owe her
four-and-six; after what she's just been saying about her husband and
that girl and Hilary, it mayn't be safe to give her more.' She held
out two half-crowns, and had an inspiration: "I shall mention to my
sister what you've said; you can tell your husband that!"
No sooner had she said this, however, than she saw, from a little
smile devoid of merriment and quickly extinguished, that Mrs. Hughs
did not believe she would do anything of the kind; from which she
concluded that the seamstress was convinced of Hilary's interest in
the little model. She said hastily:
"You can go now, Mrs. Hughs."
Mrs. Hughs went, making no noise or sign of any sort.
Cecilia returned to her scattered thoughts. They lay there still,
with a gleam of sun from the low window smearing their importance;
she felt somehow that it did not now matter very much whether she and
Stephen, in the interests of science, saw that man fall from his
balloon, or, in the interests of art, heard Herr von Kraaffe sing his
Polish songs; she experienced, too, almost a revulsion in favour of
tinned milk. After meditatively tearing up her note to Messrs. Rose
and Thorn, she lowered the bureau lid and left the room.
Mounting the stairs, whose old oak banisters on either side were a
real joy, she felt she was stupid to let vague, sordid rumours,
which, after all, affected her but indirectly, disturb her morning's
work. And entering Stephen's dressing-room she stood looking at his
boots.
Inside each one of them was a wooden soul; none had any creases, none
had any holes. The moment they wore out, their wooden souls were
taken from them and their bodies given to the poor, whilst--in
accordance with that theory, to hear a course of lectures on which a
scattered thought was even now inviting her--the wooden souls
migrated instantly to other leathern bodies.
Looking at that polished row of boots, Cecilia felt lonely and
unsatisfied. Stephen worked in the Law Courts, Thyme worked at Art;
both were doing something definite. She alone, it seemed, had to
wait at home, and order dinner, answer letters, shop, pay calls, and
do a dozen things that failed to stop her thoughts from dwelling on
that woman's tale. She was not often conscious of the nature of her
life, so like the lives of many hundred women in this London, which
she said she could not stand, but which she stood very well. As a
rule, with practical good sense, she kept her doubting eyes fixed
friendlily on every little phase in turn, enjoying well enough
fitting the Chinese puzzle of her scattered thoughts, setting out on
each small adventure with a certain cautious zest, and taking Stephen
with her as far as he allowed. This last year or so, now that Thyme
was a grown girl, she had felt at once a loss of purpose and a gain
of liberty. She hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry. It freed
her for the tasting of more things, more people, and more Stephen;
but it left a little void in her heart, a little soreness round it.
What would Thyme think if she heard this story about her uncle? The
thought started a whole train of doubts that had of late beset her.
Was her little daughter going to turn out like herself? If not, why
not? Stephen joked about his daughter's skirts, her hockey, her
friendship with young men. He joked about the way Thyme refused to
let him joke about her art or about her interest in "the people."
His joking was a source of irritation to Cecilia. For, by woman's
instinct rather than by any reasoning process, she was conscious of a
disconcerting change. Amongst the people she knew, young men were
not now attracted by girls as they had been in her young days. There
was a kind of cool and friendly matter-of-factness in the way they
treated them, a sort of almost scientific playfulness. And Cecilia
felt uneasy as to how far this was to go. She seemed left behind.
If young people were really becoming serious, if youths no longer
cared about the colour of Thyme's eyes, or dress, or hair, what would
there be left to care for--that is, up to the point of definite
relationship? Not that she wanted her daughter to be married. It
would be time enough to think of that when she was twenty-five. But
her own experiences had been so different. She had spent so many
youthful hours in wondering about men, had seen so many men cast
furtive looks at her; and now there did not seem in men or girls
anything left worth the other's while to wonder or look furtive
about. She was not of a philosophic turn of mind, and had attached
no deep meaning to Stephen's jest--"If young people will reveal their
ankles, they'll soon have no ankles to reveal."
To Cecilia the extinction of the race seemed threatened; in reality
her species of the race alone was vanishing, which to her, of course,
was very much the same disaster. With her eyes on Stephen's boots
she thought: 'How shall I prevent what I've heard from coming to
Bianca's ears? I know how she would take it! How shall I prevent
Thyme's hearing? I'm sure I don't know what the effect would be on
her! I must speak to Stephen. He's so fond of Hilary.'
And, turning away from Stephen's boots, she mused: 'Of course it's
nonsense. Hilary's much too--too nice, too fastidious, to be more
than just interested; but he's so kind he might easily put himself in
a false position. And--it's ugly nonsense! B. can be so
disagreeable; even now she's not--on terms with him!' And suddenly
the thought of Mr. Purcey leaped into her mind--Mr. Purcey, who, as
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace had declared, was not even conscious that
there was a problem of the poor. To think of him seemed somehow at
that moment comforting, like rolling oneself in a blanket against a
draught. Passing into her room, she opened her wardrobe door.
'Bother the woman!' she thought. 'I do want that gentian dress got
ready, but now I simply can't give it to her to do.'
CHAPTER VIII
THE SINGLE MIND OF MR. STONE
Since in the flutter of her spirit caused by the words of Mrs. Hughs,
Cecilia felt she must do something, she decided to change her dress.
The furniture of the pretty room she shared with Stephen had not been
hastily assembled. Conscious, even fifteen years ago, when they
moved into this house, of the grave Philistinism of the upper
classes, she and Stephen had ever kept their duty to aestheticism
green; and, in the matter of their bed, had lain for two years on two
little white affairs, comfortable, but purely temporary, that they
might give themselves a chance. The chance had come at last--a bed
in real keeping with the period they had settled on, and going for
twelve pounds. They had not let it go, and now slept in it--not
quite so comfortable, perhaps, but comfortable enough, and conscious
of duty done.
For fifteen years Cecilia had been furnishing her house; the process
approached completion. The only things remaining on her mind--apart,
that is, from Thyme's development and the condition of the people--
were: item, a copper lantern that would allow some light to pass its
framework; item, an old oak washstand not going back to Cromwell's
time. And now this third anxiety had come!
She was rather touching, as she stood before the wardrobe glass
divested of her bodice, with dimples of exertion in her thin white
arms while she hooked her skirt behind, and her greenish eyes
troubled, so anxious to do their best for everyone, and save risk of
any sort. Having put on a bramble-coloured frock, which laced across
her breast with silver lattice-work, and a hat (without feathers, so
as to encourage birds) fastened to her head with pins (bought to aid
a novel school of metal-work), she went to see what sort of day it
was.
The window looked out at the back over some dreary streets, where the
wind was flinging light drifts of smoke athwart the sunlight. They
had chosen this room, not indeed for its view over the condition of
the people, but because of the sky effects at sunset, which were
extremely fine. For the first time, perhaps, Cecilia was conscious
that a sample of the class she was so interested in was exposed to
view beneath her nose. 'The Hughs live somewhere there,' she
thought. 'After all I think B. ought to know about that man. She
might speak to father, and get him to give up having the girl to copy
for him--the whole thing's so worrying.'
In pursuance of this thought, she lunched hastily, and went out,
making her way to Hilary's. With every step she became more
uncertain. The fear of meddling too much, of not meddling enough, of
seeming meddlesome; timidity at touching anything so awkward;
distrust, even ignorance, of her sister's character, which was like,
yet so very unlike, her own; a real itch to get the matter settled,
so that nothing whatever should come of it--all this she felt. She
hurried, dawdled, finished the adventure almost at a run, then told
the servant not to announce her. The vision of Bianca's eyes, while
she listened to this tale, was suddenly too much for Cecilia. She
decided to pay a visit to her father first.
Mr. Stone was writing, attired in his working dress--a thick brown
woollen gown, revealing his thin neck above the line of a blue shirt,
and tightly gathered round the waist with tasselled cord; the lower
portions of grey trousers were visible above woollen-slippered feet.
His hair straggled over his thin long ears. The window, wide open,
admitted an east wind; there was no fire. Cecilia shivered.
"Come in quickly," said Mr. Stone. Turning to a big high desk of
stained deal which occupied the middle of one wall, he began
methodically to place the inkstand, a heavy paper-knife, a book, and
stones of several sizes, on his guttering sheets of manuscript.
Cecilia looked about her; she had not been inside her father's room
for several months. There was nothing in it but that desk, a camp
bed in the far corner (with blankets, but no sheets), a folding
washstand, and a narrow bookcase, the books in which Cecilia
unconsciously told off on the fingers of her memory. They never
varied. On the top shelf the Bible and the works of Plautus and
Diderot; on the second from the top the plays of Shakespeare in a
blue edition; on the third from the bottom Don Quixote, in four
volumes, covered with brown paper; a green Milton; the "Comedies of
Aristophanes"; a leather book, partially burned, comparing the
philosophy of Epicurus with the philosophy of Spinoza; and in a
yellow binding Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." On the second from
the bottom was lighter literature: "The Iliad"; a "Life of Francis of
Assisi"; Speke's "Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"; the
"Pickwick Papers"; "Mr. Midshipman Easy"; The Verses of Theocritus,
in a very old translation; Renan's "Life of Christ"; and the
"Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini." The bottom shelf of all was
full of books on natural science.
The walls were whitewashed, and, as Cecilia knew, came off on anybody
who leaned against them. The floor was stained, and had no carpet.
There was a little gas cooking-stove, with cooking things ranged on
it; a small bare table; and one large cupboard. No draperies, no
pictures, no ornaments of any kind; but by the window an ancient
golden leather chair. Cecilia could never bear to sit in that oasis;
its colour in this wilderness was too precious to her spirit.
"It's an east wind, father; aren't you terribly cold without a fire?"
Mr. Stone came from his writing-desk, and stood so that light might
fall on a sheet of paper in his hand. Cecilia noted the scent that
went about with him of peat and baked potatoes. He spoke:
"Listen to this: 'In the condition of society, dignified in those
days with the name of civilisation, the only source of hope was the
persistence of the quality called courage. Amongst a thousand nerve-
destroying habits, amongst the dramshops, patent medicines, the
undigested chaos of inventions and discoveries, while hundreds were
prating in their pulpits of things believed in by a negligible
fraction of the population, and thousands writing down today what
nobody would want to read in two days' time; while men shut animals
in cages, and made bears jig to please their children, and all were
striving one against the other; while, in a word, like gnats above a
stagnant pool on a summer's evening, man danced up and down without
the faintest notion why--in this condition of affairs the quality of
courage was alive. It was the only fire within that gloomy valley.'"
He stopped, though evidently anxious to go on, because he had read
the last word on that sheet of paper. He moved towards the writing-
desk. Cecilia said hastily:
"Do you mind if I shut the window, father?"
Mr. Stone made a movement of his head, and Cecilia saw that he held a
second sheet of paper in his hand. She rose, and, going towards him,
said:
"I want to talk to you, Dad!" Taking up the cord of his dressing-
gown, she pulled it by its tassel.
"Don't!" said Mr. Stone; "it secures my trousers."
Cecilia dropped the cord. 'Father is really terrible!' she thought.
Mr. Stone, lifting the second sheet of paper, began again:
"'The reason, however, was not far to seek---"
Cecilia said desperately:
"It's about that girl who comes to copy for you."
Mr. Stone lowered the sheet of paper, and stood, slightly curved from
head to foot; his ears moved as though he were about to lay them
back; his blue eyes, with little white spots of light alongside the
tiny black pupils, stared at his daughter.
Cecilia thought: 'He's listening now.'
She made haste. "Must you have her here? Can't you do without her?"
"Without whom?" said Mr. Stone.
"Without the girl who comes to copy for you."
"Why?"
"For this very good reason---"
Mr. Stone dropped his eyes, and Cecilia saw that he had moved the
sheet of paper up as far as his waist.
"Does she copy better than any other girl could?" she asked hastily.
"No," said Mr. Stone.
"Then, Father, I do wish, to please me, you'd get someone else. I
know what I'm talking about, and I---" Cecilia stopped; her father's
lips and eyes were moving; he was obviously reading to himself.
'I've no patience with him,' she thought; 'he thinks of nothing but
his wretched book.'
Aware of his daughter's silence, Mr. Stone let the sheet of paper
sink, and waited patiently again.
"What do you want, my dear?" he said.
"Oh, Father, do listen just a minute!"
"Yes, Yes."
"It's about that girl who comes to copy for you. Is there any reason
why she should come instead of any other girl?"
"Yes," said Mr. Stone.
"What reason?"
"Because she has no friends."
So awkward a reply was not expected by Cecilia; she looked at the
floor, forced to search within her soul. Silence lasted several
seconds; then Mr. Stone's voice rose above a whisper:
"'The reason was not far to seek. Man, differentiated from the other
apes by his desire to know, was from the first obliged to steel
himself against the penalties of knowledge. Like animals subjected
to the rigours of an Arctic climate, and putting forth more fur with
each reduction in the temperature, man's hide of courage thickened
automatically to resist the spear-thrusts dealt him by his own
insatiate curiosity. In those days of which we speak, when
undigested knowledge, in a great invading horde, had swarmed all his
defences, man, suffering from a foul dyspepsia, with a nervous system
in the latest stages of exhaustion, and a reeling brain, survived by
reason of his power to go on making courage. Little heroic as (in
the then general state of petty competition) his deeds appeared to
be, there never had yet been a time when man in bulk was more
courageous, for there never had yet been a time when he had more need
to be. Signs were not wanting that this desperate state of things
had caught the eyes of the community. A little sect---'" Mr. Stone
stopped; his eyes had again tumbled over the bottom edge; he moved
hurriedly towards the desk. Just as his hand removed a stone and
took up a third sheet, Cecilia cried out:
"Father!"
Mr. Stone stopped, and turned towards her. His daughter saw that he
had gone quite pink; her annoyance vanished.
"Father! About that girl---"
Mr. Stone seemed to reflect. "Yes, yes," he said.
"I don't think Bianca likes her coming here."
Mr. Stone passed his hand across his brow.
"Forgive me for reading to you, my dear," he said; "it's a great
relief to me at times."
Cecilia went close to him, and refrained with difficulty from taking
up the tasselled cord.
"Of course, dear," she said: "I quite understand that."
Mr. Stone looked full in her face, and before a gaze which seemed to
go through her and see things the other side, Cecilia dropped her
eyes.
"It is strange," he said, "how you came to be my daughter!"
To Cecilia, too, this had often seemed a problem.
"There is a great deal in atavism," said Mr. Stone, "that we know
nothing of at present."
Cecilia cried with heat, "I do wish you would attend a minute,
Father; it's really an important matter," and she turned towards the
window, tears being very near her eyes.
The voice of Mr. Stone said humbly: "I will try, my dear."
But Cecilia thought: 'I must give him a good lesson. He really is
too self-absorbed'; and she did not move, conveying by the posture of
her shoulders how gravely she was vexed.
She could see nursemaids wheeling babies towards the Gardens, and
noted their faces gazing, not at the babies, but, uppishly, at other
nursemaids, or, with a sort of cautious longing, at men who passed.
How selfish they looked! She felt a little glow of satisfaction that
she was making this thin and bent old man behind her conscious of his
egoism.
'He will know better another time,' she thought. Suddenly she heard
a whistling, squeaking sound--it was Mr. Stone whispering the third
page of his manuscript:
"'---animated by some admirable sentiments, but whose doctrines--
riddled by the fact that life is but the change of form to form--were
too constricted for the evils they designed to remedy; this little
sect, who had as yet to learn the meaning of universal love, were
making the most strenuous efforts, in advance of the community at
large, to understand themselves. The necessary, movement which they
voiced--reaction against the high-tide of the fratricidal system then
prevailing--was young, and had the freshness and honesty of
youth....'"
Without a word Cecilia turned round and hurried to the door. She saw
her father drop the sheet of paper; she saw his face, all pink and
silver, stooping after it; and remorse visited her anger.
In the corridor outside she was arrested by a noise. The uncertain
light of London halls fell there; on close inspection the sufferer
was seen to be Miranda, who, unable to decide whether she wanted to
be in the garden or the house, was seated beneath the hatrack
snuffling to herself. On seeing Cecilia she came out.
"What do you want, you little beast?"
Peering at her over the tops of her eyes, Miranda vaguely lifted a
white foot. 'Why ask me that?' she seemed to say. 'How am I to
know? Are we not all like this?'
Her conduct, coming at that moment, over-tried Cecilia's nerves. She
threw open Hilary's study-door, saying sharply: "Go in and find your
master!"
Miranda did not move, but Hilary came out instead. He had been
correcting proofs to catch the post, and wore the look of a man
abstracted, faintly contemptuous of other forms of life.
Cecilia, once more saved from the necessity of approaching her
sister, the mistress of the house, so fugitive, haunting, and unseen,
yet so much the centre of this situation, said:
"Can I speak to you a minute, Hilary?"
They went into his study, and Miranda came creeping in behind.
To Cecilia her brother-in-law always seemed an amiable and more or
less pathetic figure. In his literary preoccupations he allowed
people to impose on him. He looked unsubstantial beside the bust of
Socrates, which moved Cecilia strangely--it was so very massive and
so very ugly! She decided not to beat about the bush.
"I've been hearing some odd things from Mrs. Hughs about that little
model, Hilary."
Hilary's smile faded from his eyes, but remained clinging to his
lips.
"Indeed!"
Cecilia went on nervously: "Mrs. Hughs says it's because of her that
Hughs behaves so badly. I don't want to say anything against the
girl, but she seems--she seems to have---"
"Yes?" said Hilary.
"To have cast a spell on Hughs, as the woman puts it."
"On Hughs!" repeated Hilary.
Cecilia found her eyes resting on the bust of Socrates, and hastily
proceeded:
"She says he follows her about, and comes down here to lie in wait
for her. It's a most strange business altogether. You went to see
them, didn't you?"
Hilary nodded.
"I've been speaking to Father," Cecilia murmured; "but he's hopeless-
I, couldn't get him to pay the least attention."
Hilary seemed thinking deeply.
"I wanted him," she went on, "to get some other girl instead to come
and copy for him."
"Why?"
Under the seeming impossibility of ever getting any farther, without
saying what she had come to say, Cecilia blurted out:
"Mrs. Hughs says that Hughs has threatened you."
Hilary's face became ironical.
"Really!" he said. "That's good of him! What for?"
The frightful indelicacy of her situation at this moment, the feeling
of unfairness that she should be placed in it, almost overwhelmed
Cecilia. "Goodness knows I don't want to meddle. I never meddle in
anything-it's horrible!"
Hilary took her hand.
"My dear Cis," he said, "of course! But we'd better have this out!"
Grateful for the pressure of his hand, she gave it a convulsive
squeeze.
"It's so sordid, Hilary!"
"Sordid! H'm! Let's get it over, then."
Cecilia had grown crimson. "Do you want me to tell you everything?"
"Certainly."
"Well, Hughs evidently thinks you're interested in the girl. You
can't keep anything from servants and people who work about your
house; they always think the worst of everything--and, of course,
they know that you and B. don't--aren't---"
Hilary nodded.
"Mrs. Hughs actually said the man meant to go to B.!"
Again the vision of her sister seemed to float into the room, and she
went on desperately: "And, Hilary, I can see Mrs. Hughs really thinks
you are interested. Of course, she wants to, for if you were, it
would mean that a man like her husband could have no chance."
Astonished at this flash of cynical inspiration, and ashamed of such
plain speaking, she checked herself. Hilary had turned away.
Cecilia touched his arm. "Hilary, dear," she said, "isn't there any
chance of you and B---"
Hilary's lips twitched. "I should say not."
Cecilia looked sadly at the floor. Not since Stephen was bad with
pleurisy had she felt so worried. The sight of Hilary's face brought
back her doubts with all their force. It might, of course, be only
anger at the man's impudence, but it might be--she hardly liked to
frame her thought--a more personal feeling.
"Don't you think," she said, "that, anyway, she had better not come
here again?"
Hilary paced the room.
"It's her only safe and certain piece of work; it keeps her
independent. It's much more satisfactory than this sitting. I can't
have any hand in taking it away from her."
Cecilia had never seen him moved like this. Was it possible that he
was not incorrigibly gentle, but had in him some of that animality
which she, in a sense, admired? This uncertainty terribly increased
the difficulties of the situation.
"But, Hilary," she said at last, "are you satisfied about the girl--I
mean, are you satisfied that she really is worth helping?"
"I don't understand."
"I mean," murmured Cecilia, "that we don't know anything about her
past." And, seeing from the movement of his eyebrows that she was
touching on what had evidently been a doubt with him, she went on
with great courage: "Where are her friends and relations? I mean,
she may have had a--adventures."
Hilary withdrew into himself.
"You can hardly expect me," he said, "to go into that with her."
His reply made Cecilia feel ridiculous.
"Well," she said in a hard little voice, "if this is what comes of
helping the poor, I don't see the use of it."
The outburst evoked no reply from Hilary; she felt more tremulous
than ever. The whole thing was so confused, so unnatural. What with
the dark, malignant Hughs and that haunting vision of Bianca, the
matter seemed almost Italian. That a man of Hughs' class might be
affected by the passion of love had somehow never come into her head.
She thought of the back streets she had looked out on from her
bedroom window. Could anything like passion spring up in those
dismal alleys? The people who lived there, poor downtrodden things,
had enough to do to keep themselves alive. She knew all about them;
they were in the air; their condition was deplorable! Could a person
whose condition was deplorable find time or strength for any sort of
lurid exhibition such as this? It was incredible.
She became aware that Hilary was speaking.
"I daresay the man is dangerous!"
Hearing her fears confirmed, and in accordance with the secret vein
of hardness which kept her living, amid all her sympathies and
hesitations, Cecilia felt suddenly that she had gone as far as it was
in her to go.
"I shall have no more to do with them," she said; "I've tried my best
for Mrs. Hughs. I know quite as good a needlewoman, who'll be only
too glad to come instead. Any other girl will do as well to copy
father's book. If you take my advice, Hilary, you'll give up trying
to help them too."
Hilary's smile puzzled and annoyed her. If she had known, this was
the smile that stood between him and her sister.
"You may be right," he said, and shrugged his shoulders:
"Very well," said Cecilia, "I've done all I can. I must go now.
Good-bye."
During her progress to the door she gave one look behind. Hilary was
standing by the bust of Socrates. Her heart smote her to leave him
thus embarrassed. But again the vision of Bianca--fugitive in her
own house, and with something tragic in her mocking immobility--came
to her, and she hastened away.
A voice said: "How are you, Mrs. Dallison? Your sister at home?"
Cecilia saw before her Mr. Purcey, rising and falling a little with
the oscillation of his A.i. Damyer.
A sense as of having just left a house visited by sickness or
misfortune made Cecilia murmur:
"I'm afraid she's not."
"Bad luck!" said Mr. Purcey. His face fell as far as so red and
square a face could fall. "I was hoping perhaps I might be allowed
to take them for a run. She's wanting exercise." Mr. Purcey laid
his hand on the flank of his palpitating car. "Know these A.i.
Damyers, Mrs. Dallison? Best value you can get, simply rippin'
little cars. Wish you'd try her."
The A.i. Damyer, diffusing an aroma of the finest petrol, leaped and
trembled, as though conscious of her master's praise. Cecilia looked
at her.
"Yes," she said, "she's very sweet.
'Now do!" said Mr. Purcey. "Let me give you a run--Just to please
me, I mean. I'm sure you'll like her."
A little compunction, a little curiosity, a sudden revolt against all
the discomfiture and sordid doubts she had been suffering from, made
Cecilia glance softly at Mr. Purcey's figure; almost before she knew
it, she was seated in the A.i. Damyer. It trembled, emitted two
small sounds, one large scent, and glided forward. Mr. Purcey said:
"That's rippin' of you!"
A postman, dog, and baker's cart, all hurrying at top speed, seemed
to stand still; Cecilia felt the wind beating her cheeks. She gave a
little laugh.
"You must just take me home, please."
Mr. Purcey touched the chauffeur's elbow.
"Round the park," he said. "Let her have it."
The A.i. Damyer uttered a tiny shriek. Cecilia, leaning back in her
padded corner, glanced askance at Mr. Purcey leaning back in his; an
unholy, astonished little smile played on her lips.
'What am I doing?' it seemed to say. 'The way he got me here--
really! And now I am here I'm just going to enjoy it!'
There were no Hughs, no little model--all that sordid life had
vanished; there was nothing but the wind beating her cheeks and the
A.i. Damyer leaping under her.
Mr. Purcey said: "It just makes all the difference to me; keeps my
nerves in order."
"Oh," Cecilia murmured, "have you got nerves."
Mr. Purcey smiled. When he smiled his cheeks formed two hard red
blocks, his trim moustache stood out, and many little wrinkles ran
from his light eyes.
"Chock full of them," he said; "least thing upsets me. Can't bear to
see a hungry-lookin' child, or anything."
A strange feeling of admiration for this man had come upon Cecilia.
Why could not she, and Thyme, and Hilary, and Stephen, and all the
people they knew and mixed with, be like him, so sound and healthy,
so unravaged by disturbing sympathies, so innocent of "social
conscience," so content?
As though jealous of these thoughts about her master, the A.i.
Damyer stopped of her own accord.
"Hallo," said Mr. Purcey, "hallo, I say! Don't you get out; she'll
be all right directly."
"Oh," said Cecilia, "thanks; but I must go in here, anyhow; I think
I'll say good-bye. Thank you so much. I have enjoyed it."
>From the threshold of a shop she looked back. Mr. Purcey, on foot,
was leaning forward from the waist, staring at his A.i. Damyer with
profound concentration.
CHAPTER IX
HILARY GIVES CHASE
The ethics of a man like Hilary were not those of the million pure
bred Purceys of this life, founded on a sense of property in this
world and the next; nor were they precisely the morals and religion
of the aristocracy, who, though aestheticised in parts, quietly used,
in bulk, their fortified position to graft on Mr. Purcey's ethics the
principle of 'You be damned!' In the eyes of the majority he was
probably an immoral and irreligious man; but in fact his morals and
religion were those of his special section of society--the cultivated
classes, "the professors, the artistic pigs, advanced people, and all
that sort of cuckoo," as Mr. Purcey called them--a section of society
supplemented by persons, placed beyond the realms of want, who
speculated in ideas.
Had he been required to make confession of his creed he would
probably have framed it in some such way as this: "I disbelieve in
all Church dogmas, and do not go to church; I have no definite ideas
about a future state, and do not want to have; but in a private way I
try to identify myself as much as possible with what I see about me,
feeling that if I could ever really be at one with the world I live
in I should be happy. I think it foolish not to trust my senses and
my reason; as for what my senses and my reason will not tell me, I
assume that all is as it had to be, for if one could get to know the
why of everything in one would be the Universe. I do not believe
that chastity is a virtue in itself, but only so far as it ministers
to the health and happiness of the community. I do not believe that
marriage confers the rights of ownership, and I loathe all public
wrangling on such matters; but I am temperamentally averse to the
harming of my neighbours, if in reason it can be avoided. As to
manners, I think that to repeat a bit of scandal, and circulate
backbiting stories, are worse offences than the actions that gave
rise to them. If I mentally condemn a person, I feel guilty of moral
lapse. I hate self-assertion; I am ashamed of self-advertisement. I
dislike loudness of any kind. Probably I have too much tendency to
negation of all sorts. Small-talk bores me to extinction, but I will
discuss a point of ethics or psychology half the night. To make
capital out of a person's weakness is repugnant to me. I want to be
a decent man, but--I really can't take myself too seriously."
Though he had preserved his politeness towards Cecilia, he was in
truth angry, and grew angrier every minute. He was angry with her,
himself, and the man Hughs; and suffered from this anger as only they
can who are not accustomed to the rough-and-tumble of things.
Such a retiring man as Hilary was seldom given the opportunity for an
obvious display of chivalry. The tenor of his life removed him from
those situations. Such chivalry as he displayed was of a negative
order. And confronted suddenly with the conduct of Hughs, who, it
seemed, knocked his wife about, and dogged the footsteps of a
helpless girl, he took it seriously to heart.
When the little model came walking up the garden on her usual visit,
he fancied her face looked scared. Quieting the growling of Miranda,
who from the first had stubbornly refused to know this girl, he sat
down with a book to wait for her to go away. After sitting an hour
or more, turning over pages, and knowing little of their sense, he
saw a man peer over his garden gate. He was there for half a minute,
then lounged across the road, and stood hidden by some railings.
'So?' thought Hilary. 'Shall I go out and warn the fellow to clear
off, or shall I wait to see what happens when she goes away?'
He determined on the latter course. Presently she came out, walking
with her peculiar gait, youthful and pretty, but too matter-of-fact,
and yet, as it were, too purposeless to be a lady's. She looked back
at Hilary's window, and turned uphill.
Hilary took his hat and stick and waited. In half a minute Hughs
came out from under cover of the railings and followed. Then Hilary,
too, set forth.
There is left in every man something of the primeval love of
stalking. The delicate Hilary, in cooler blood, would have revolted
at the notion of dogging people's footsteps. He now experienced the
holy pleasures of the chase. Certain that Hughs was really following
the girl, he had but to keep him in sight and remain unseen. This
was not hard for a man given to mountain-climbing, almost the only
sport left to one who thought it immoral to hurt anybody but himself.
Taking advantage of shop-windows, omnibuses, passers-by, and other
bits of cover, he prosecuted the chase up the steepy heights of
Campden Hill. But soon a nearly fatal check occurred; for, chancing
to take his eyes off Hughs, he saw the little model returning on her
tracks. Ready enough in physical emergencies, Hilary sprang into a
passing omnibus. He saw her stopping before the window of a picture-
shop. From the expression of her face and figure, she evidently had
no idea that she was being followed, but stood with a sort of slack-
lipped wonder, lost in admiration of a well-known print. Hilary had
often wondered who could possibly admire that picture--he now knew.
It was obvious that the girl's aesthetic sense was deeply touched.
While this was passing through his mind, he caught sight of Hughs
lurking outside a public-house. The dark man's face was sullen and
dejected, and looked as if he suffered. Hilary felt a sort of pity
for him.
The omnibus leaped forward, and he sat down smartly almost on a
lady's lap. This was the lap of Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, who
greeted him with a warm, quiet smile, and made a little room.
"Your sister-in-law has just been to see me, Mr. Dallison. She's
such a dear-so interested in everything. I tried to get her to come
on to my meeting with me."
Raising his hat, Hilary frowned. For once his delicacy was at fault.
He said:
"Ah, yes! Excuse me!" and got out.
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace looked after him, and then glanced round the
omnibus. His conduct was very like the conduct of a man who had got
in to keep an assignation with a lady, and found that lady sitting
next his aunt. She was unable to see a soul who seemed to foster
this view, and sat thinking that he was "rather attractive."
Suddenly her dark busy eyes lighted on the figure of the little model
strolling along again.
'Oh!' she thought. 'Ah! Yes, really! How very interesting!'
Hilary, to avoid meeting the girl point-blank, had turned up a by-
street, and, finding a convenient corner, waited. He was puzzled.
If this man were persecuting her with his attentions, why had he not
gone across when she was standing at the picture-shop?
She passed across the opening of the by-street, still walking in the
slack way of one who takes the pleasures of the streets. She passed
from view; Hilary strained his eyes to see if Hughs were following.
He waited several minutes. The man did not appear. The chase was
over! And suddenly it flashed across him that Hughs had merely
dogged her to see that she had no assignation with anybody. They had
both been playing the same game! He flushed up in that shady little
street, in which he was the only person to be seen. Cecilia was
right! It was a sordid business. A man more in touch with facts
than Hilary would have had some mental pigeonhole into which to put
an incident like this; but, being by profession concerned mainly with
ideas and thoughts, he did not quite know where he was. The habit of
his mind precluded him from thinking very definitely on any subject
except his literary work--precluded him especially in a matter of
this sort, so inextricably entwined with that delicate, dim question,
the impact of class on class.
Pondering deeply, he ascended the leafy lane that leads between high
railings from Notting Hill to Kensington.
It was so far from traffic that every tree on either side was loud
with the Spring songs of birds; the scent of running sap came forth
shyly as the sun sank low. Strange peace, strange feeling of old
Mother Earth up there above the town; wild tunes, and the quiet sight
of clouds. Man in this lane might rest his troubled thoughts, and
for a while trust the goodness of the Scheme that gave him birth, the
beauty of each day, that laughs or broods itself into night. Some
budding lilacs exhaled a scent of lemons; a sandy cat on the coping
of a garden wall was basking in the setting sun.
In the centre of the lane a row of elm-trees displayed their gnarled,
knotted roots. Human beings were seated there, whose matted hair
clung round their tired faces. Their gaunt limbs were clothed in
rags; each had a stick, and some sort of dirty bundle tied to it.
They were asleep. On a bench beyond, two toothless old women sat,
moving their eyes from side to side, and a crimson-faced woman was
snoring. Under the next tree a Cockney youth and his girl were
sitting side by side-pale young things, with loose mouths, and hollow
cheeks, and restless eyes. Their arms were enlaced; they were
silent. A little farther on two young men in working clothes were
looking straight before them, with desperately tired faces. They,
too, were silent.
On the last bench of all Hilary came on the little model, seated
slackly by herself.
CHAPTER X
THE TROUSSEAU
This the first time these two had each other at large, was clearly
not a comfortable event for either of them. The girl blushed, and
hastily got off her seat. Hilary, who raised his hat and frowned,
sat down on it.
"Don't get up," he said; "I want to talk to you."
The little model obediently resumed her seat. A silence followed.
She had on the old brown skirt and knitted jersey, the old blue-green
tam-o'-shanter cap, and there were marks of weariness beneath her
eyes.
At last Hilary remarked: "How are you getting on?"
The little model looked at her feet.
"Pretty well, thank you, Mr. Dallison."
"I came to see you yesterday."
She slid a look at him which might have meant nothing or meant much,
so perfect its shy stolidity.
"I was out," she said, "sitting to Miss Boyle."
"So you have some work?"
"It's finished now."
"Then you're only getting the two shillings a day from Mr. Stone?"
She nodded.
"H'm!"
The unexpected fervour of this grunt seemed to animate the little
model.
"Three and sixpence for my rent, and breakfast costs threepence
nearly--only bread-and-butter--that's five and two; and washing's
always at least tenpence--that's six; and little things last week was
a shilling--even when I don't take buses--seven; that leaves five
shillings for my dinners. Mr. Stone always gives me tea. It's my
clothes worries me." She tucked her feet farther beneath the seat,
and Hilary refrained from looking down. "My hat is awful, and I do
want some---" She looked Hilary in the face for the first time. "I
do wish I was rich."
"I don't wonder."
The little model gritted her teeth, and, twisting at her dirty
gloves, said: "Mr. Dallison, d'you know the first thing I'd buy if I
was rich?"
"No."
"I'd buy everything new on me from top to toe, and I wouldn't ever
wear any of these old things again."
Hilary got up: "Come with me now, and buy everything new from top to
toe."
"Oh!"
Hilary had already perceived that he had made an awkward, even
dangerous, proposal; short, however, of giving her money, the idea of
which offended his sense of delicacy, there was no way out of it. He
said brusquely: "Come along!"
The little model rose obediently. Hilary noticed that her boots were
split, and this--as though he had seen someone strike a child--so
moved his indignation that he felt no more qualms, but rather a sort
of pleasant glow, such as will come to the most studious man when he
levels a blow at the conventions.
He looked down at his companion--her eyes were lowered; he could not
tell at all what she was thinking of.
"This is what I was going to speak to you about," he said: "I don't
like that house you're in; I think you ought to be somewhere else.
What do you say?"
"Yes, Mr. Dallison."
"You'd better make a change, I think; you could find another room,
couldn't you?"
The little model answered as before: "Yes, Mr. Dallison."
"I'm afraid that Hughs is-a dangerous sort of fellow."
"He's a funny man."
"Does he annoy you?"
Her expression baffled Hilary; there seemed a sort of slow enjoyment
in it. She looked up knowingly.
"I don't mind him--he won't hurt me. Mr. Dallison, do you think blue
or green?"
Hilary answered shortly: "Bluey-green."
She clasped her hands, changed her feet with a hop, and went on
walking as before.
"Listen to me," said Hilary; "has Mrs. Hughs been talking to you
about her husband?"
The little model smiled again.
"She goes on," she said.
Hilary bit his lips.
"Mr. Dallison, please--about my hat?"
"What about your hat?"
"Would you like me to get a large one or a small one?"
"For God's sake," answered Hilary, "a small one--no feathers."
"Oh!"
"Can you attend to me a minute? Have either Hughs or Mrs. Hughs
spoken to you about--coming to my house, about--me?"
The little model's face remained impassive, but by the movement of
her fingers Hilary saw that she was attending now.
"I don't care what they say."
Hilary looked away; an angry flush slowly mounted in his face.
With surprising suddenness the little model said:
"Of course, if I was a lady, I might mind!"
"Don't talk like that!" said Hilary; "every woman is a lady."
The stolidity of the girl's face, more mocking far than any smile,
warned him of the cheapness of this verbiage.
"If I was a lady," she repeated simply, "I shouldn't be livin' there,
should I?"
"No," said Hilary; "and you had better not go on living there,
anyway."
The little model making no answer, Hilary did not quite know what to
say. It was becoming apparent to him that she viewed the situation
with a very different outlook from himself, and that he did not
understand that outlook.
He felt thoroughly at sea, conscious that this girl's life contained
a thousand things he did not know, a thousand points of view he did
not share.
Their two figures attracted some attention in the crowded street, for
Hilary-tall and slight, with his thin, bearded face and soft felt
hat--was what is known as "a distinguished-looking man"; and the
little model, though not "distinguished-looking" in her old brown
skirt and tam-o'shanter cap, had the sort of face which made men and
even women turn to look at her. To men she was a little bit of
strangely interesting, not too usual, flesh and blood; to women, she
was that which made men turn to look at her. Yet now and again there
would rise in some passer-by a feeling more impersonal, as though the
God of Pity had shaken wings overhead, and dropped a tiny feather.
So walking, and exciting vague interest, they reached the first of
the hundred doors of Messrs. Rose and Thorn.
Hilary had determined on this end door, for, as the adventure grew
warmer, he was more alive to its dangers. To take this child into
the very shop frequented by his wife and friends seemed a little mad;
but that same reason which caused them to frequent it--the fact that
there was no other shop of the sort half so handy--was the reason
which caused Hilary to go there now. He had acted on impulse; he
knew that if he let his impulse cool he would not act at all. The
bold course was the wise one; this was why he chose the end door
round the corner. Standing aside for her to go in first, he noticed
the girl's brightened eyes and cheeks; she had never looked so
pretty. He glanced hastily round; the department was barren for
their purposes, filled entirely with pyjamas. He felt a touch on his
arm. The little model, rather pink, was looking up at him.
"Mr. Dallison, am I to get more than one set of--underthings?"
"Three-three," muttered Hilary; and suddenly he saw that they were on
the threshold of that sanctuary. "Buy them," he said, "and bring me
the bill."
He waited close beside a man with a pink face, a moustache, and an
almost perfect figure, who was standing very still, dressed from head
to foot in blue-and-white stripes. He seemed the apotheosis of what
a man should be, his face composed in a deathless simper: "Long, long
have been the struggles of man, but civilization has produced me at
last. Further than this it cannot go. Nothing shall make me
continue my line. In me the end is reached. See my back: 'The
Amateur. This perfect style, 8s. 11d. Great reduction.'"
He would not talk to Hilary, and the latter was compelled to watch
the shopmen. It was but half an hour to closing time; the youths
were moving languidly, bickering a little, in the absence of their
customers--like flies on a pane unable to get out into the sun. Two
of them came and asked him what they might serve him with; they were
so refined and pleasant that Hilary was on the point of buying what
he did not want. The reappearance of the little model saved him.
"It's thirty shillings; five and eleven was the cheapest, and
stockings, and I bought some sta---"
Hilary produced the money hastily.
"This is a very dear shop," she said.
When she had paid the bill, and Hilary had taken from her a large
brown-paper parcel, they journeyed on together. He had armoured his
face now in a slightly startled quizzicality, as though, himself
detached, he were watching the adventure from a distance.
On the central velvet seat of the boot and shoe department, a lady,
with an egret in her hat, was stretching out a slim silk-stockinged
foot, waiting for a boot. She looked with negligent amusement at
this common little girl and her singular companion. This look of
hers seemed to affect the women serving, for none came near the
little model. Hilary saw them eyeing her boots, and, suddenly
forgetting his role of looker-on, he became very angry. Taking out
his watch, he went up to the eldest woman.
"If somebody," he said, "does not attend this young lady within a
minute, I shall make a personal complaint to Mr. Thorn."
The hand of the watch, however, had not completed its round before a
woman was at the little model's side. Hilary saw her taking off her
boot, and by a sudden impulse he placed himself between her and the
lady. In doing this, he so far forgot his delicacy as to fix his
eyes on the little model's foot. The sense of physical discomfort
which first attacked him became a sort of aching in his heart. That
brown, dingy stocking was darned till no stocking, only darning, and
one toe and two little white bits of foot were seen, where the
threads refused to hold together any longer.
The little model wagged the toe uneasily--she had hoped, no doubt,
that it would not protrude, then concealed it with her skirt. Hilary
moved hastily away; when he looked again, it was not at her, but at
the lady.
Her face had changed; it was no longer amused and negligent, but
stamped with an expression of offence. 'Intolerable,' it seemed to
say, 'to bring a girl like that into a shop like this! I shall never
come here again!' The expression was but the outward sign of that
inner physical discomfort Hilary himself had felt when he first saw
the little model's stocking. This naturally did not serve to lessen
his anger, especially as he saw her animus mechanically reproduced on
the faces of the serving women.
He went back to the little model, and sat down by her side.
"Does it fit? You'd better walk in it and see."
The little model walked.
"It squeezes me," she said.
"Try another, then," said Hilary.
The lady rose, stood for a second with her eyebrows raised and her
nostrils slightly distended, then went away, and left a peculiarly
pleasant scent of violets behind.
The second pair of boots not "squeezing" her, the little model was
soon ready to go down. She had all her trousseau now, except the
dress--selected and, indeed, paid for, but which, as she told Hilary,
she was coming back to try on tomorrow, when--when---. She had
obviously meant to say when she was all new underneath. She was
laden with one large and two small parcels, and in her eyes there was
a holy look.
Outside the shop she gazed up in his face.
"Well, you are happy now?" asked Hilary.
Between the short black lashes were seen two very bright, wet shining
eyes; her parted lips began to quiver.
"Good-night, then," he said abruptly, and walked away.
But looking round, he saw her still standing there, half buried in
parcels, gazing after him. Raising his hat, he turned into the High
Street towards home....
The old man, known to that low class of fellow with whom he was now
condemned to associate as "Westminister," was taking a whiff or two
out of his old clay pipe, and trying to forget his feet. He saw
Hilary coming, and carefully extended a copy of the last edition.
"Good-evenin', sir! Quite seasonable to-day for the time of year!
Ho, yes! 'Westminister!'"
His eyes followed Hilary's retreat. He thought:
"Oh dear! He's a-given me an 'arf-a-crown. He does look well--I
like to see 'im look as well as that--quite young! Oh dear!"
The sun-that smoky, faring ball, which in its time had seen so many
last editions of the Westminster Gazette--was dropping down to pass
the night in Shepherd's Bush. It made the old butler's eyelids blink
when he turned to see if the coin really was a half-crown, or too
good to be true.
And all the spires and house-roofs, and the spaces up above and
underneath them, glittered and swam, and men and horses looked as if
they had been powdered with golden dust.
CHAPTER XI
PEAR BLOSSOM
Weighed down by her three parcels, the little model pursued her way
to Hound Street. At the door of No. 1 the son of the lame woman, a
tall weedy youth with a white face, was resting his legs alternately,
and smoking a cigarette. Closing one eye, he addressed her thus:
"'Allo, miss! Kerry your parcels for you?"
The little model gave him a look. 'Mind your own business!' it said;
but there was that in the flicker of her eyelashes which more than
nullified this snub.
Entering her room, she deposited the parcels on her bed, and untied
the strings with quick, pink fingers. When she had freed the
garments from wrappings and spread them out, she knelt down, and
began to touch them, putting her nose down once or twice to sniff the
linen and feel its texture. There were little frills attached here
and there, and to these she paid particular attention, ruffling their
edges with the palms of her hands, while the holy look came back to
her face. Rising at length, she locked the door, drew down the
blind, undressed from head to foot, and put on the new garments.
Letting her hair down, she turned herself luxuriously round and round
before the too-small looking-glass. There was utter satisfaction in
each gesture of that whole operation, as if her spirit, long starved,
were having a good meal. In this rapt contemplation of herself, all
childish vanity and expectancy, and all that wonderful quality found
in simple unspiritual natures of delighting in the present moment,
were perfectly displayed. So, motionless, with her hair loose on her
neck, she was like one of those half-hours of Spring that have lost
their restlessness and are content just to be.
Presently, however, as though suddenly remembering that her happiness
was not utterly complete, she went to a drawer, took out a packet of
pear-drops, and put one in her mouth.
The sun, near to setting, had found its way through a hole in the
blind, and touched her neck. She turned as though she had received a
kiss, and, raising a corner of the blind, peered out. The pear-tree,
which, to the annoyance of its proprietor, was placed so close to the
back court of this low-class house as almost to seem to belong to it,
was bathed in slanting sunlight. No tree in all the world could have
looked more fair than it did just then in its garb of gilded bloom.
With her hand up to her bare neck, and her cheeks indrawn from
sucking the sweet, the little model fixed her eyes on the tree. Her
expression did not change; she showed no signs of admiration. Her
gaze passed on to the back windows of the house that really owned the
pear-tree, spying out whether anyone could see her--hoping, perhaps,
someone would see her while she was feeling so nice and new. Then,
dropping the blind, she went back to the glass and began to pin her
hair up. When this was done she stood for a long minute looking at
her old brown skirt and blouse, hesitating to defile her new-found
purity. At last she put them on and drew up the blind. The sunlight
had passed off the pear-tree; its bloom was now white, and almost as
still as snow. The little model put another sweet into her mouth,
and producing from her pocket an ancient leather purse, counted out
her money. Evidently discovering that it was no more than she
expected, she sighed, and rummaged out of a top drawer an old
illustrated magazine.
She sat down on the bed, and, turning the leaves rapidly till she
reached a certain page, rested the paper in her lap. Her eyes were
fixed on a photograph in the left-hand corner-one of those effigies
of writers that appear occasionally in the public press. Under it
were printed the words: "Mr. Hilary Dallison." And suddenly she
heaved a sigh.
The room grew darker; the wind, getting up as the sun went down, blew
a few dropped petals of the pear-tree against the window-pane.
CHAPTER XII
SHIPS IN SAIL
In due accord with the old butler's comment on his looks, Hilary had
felt so young that, instead of going home, he mounted an omnibus, and
went down to his club--the "Pen and Ink," so called because the man
who founded it could not think at the moment of any other words.
This literary person had left the club soon after its initiation,
having conceived for it a sudden dislike. It had indeed a certain
reputation for bad cooking, and all its members complained bitterly
at times that you never could go in without meeting someone you knew.
It stood in Dover Street. Unlike other clubs, it was mainly used to
talk in, and had special arrangements for the safety of umbrellas and
such books as had not yet vanished from the library; not, of course,
owing to any peculative tendency among its members, but because,
after interchanging their ideas, those members would depart, in a
long row, each grasping some material object in his hand. Its.
maroon-coloured curtains, too, were never drawn, because, in the heat
of their discussions, the members were always drawing them. On the
whole, those members did not like each other much; wondering a
little, one by one, why the others wrote; and when the printed
reasons were detailed to them, reading them with irritation. If
really compelled to hazard an opinion about each other's merits, they
used to say that, no doubt "So-and-so" was "very good," but they had
never read him! For it had early been established as the principle
underlying membership not to read the writings of another man, unless
you could be certain he was dead, lest you might have to tell him to
his face that you disliked his work. For they were very jealous of
the purity of their literary consciences. Exception was made,
however, in the case of those who lived by written criticism, the
opinions of such persons being read by all, with a varying smile, and
a certain cerebral excitement. Now and then, however, some member,
violating every sense of decency, would take a violent liking for
another member's books. This he would express in words, to the
discomfort of his fellows, who, with a sudden chilly feeling in the
stomach, would wonder why it was not their books that he was
praising.
Almost every year, and generally in March, certain aspirations would
pass into the club; members would ask each other why there was no
Academy of British Letters; why there was no concerted movement to
limit the production of other authors' books; why there was no prize
given for the best work of the year. For a little time it almost
seemed as if their individualism were in danger; but, the windows
having been opened wider than usual some morning, the aspirations
would pass out, and all would feel secretly as a man feels when he
has swallowed the mosquito that has been worrying him all night--
relieved, but just a little bit embarrassed. Socially sympathetic in
their dealings with each other--they were mostly quite nice fellows--
each kept a little fame-machine, on which he might be seen sitting
every morning about the time the papers and his correspondence came,
wondering if his fame were going up.
Hilary stayed in the club till half-past nine; then, avoiding a
discussion which was just setting in, he took his own umbrella, and
bent his steps towards home.
It was the moment of suspense in Piccadilly; the tide had flowed up
to the theatres, and had not yet begun to ebb. The tranquil trees,
still feathery, draped their branches along the farther bank of that
broad river, resting from their watch over the tragi-comedies played
on its surface by men, their small companions. The gentle sighs
which distilled from their plume-like boughs seemed utterances of the
softest wisdom. Not far beyond their trunks it was all dark velvet,
into which separate shapes, adventuring, were lost, as wild birds
vanishing in space, or the souls of men received into their Mother's
heart.
Hilary walked, hearing no sighs of wisdom, noting no smooth darkness,
wrapped in thought. The mere fact of having given pleasure was
enough to produce a warm sensation in a man so naturally kind. But,
as with all self-conscious, self-distrustful, natures, that sensation
had not lasted. He was left with a feeling of emptiness and
disillusionment, as of having given himself a good mark without
reason.
While walking, he was a target for the eyes of many women, who passed
him rapidly, like ships in sail. The special fastidious shyness of
his face attracted those accustomed to another kind of face. And
though he did not precisely look at them, they in turn inspired in
him the compassionate, morbid curiosity which persons who live
desperate lives necessarily inspire in the leisured, speculative
mind. One of them deliberately approached him from a side-street.
Though taller and fuller, with heightened colour, frizzy hair, and a
hat with feathers; she was the image of the little model--the same
shape of face, broad cheek-bones, mouth a little open; the same
flower-coloured eyes and short black lashes, all coarsened and
accentuated as Art coarsens and accentuates the lines of life.
Looking boldly into Hilary's startled face, she laughed. Hilary
winced and walked on quickly.
He reached home at half-past ten. The lamp was burning in Mr.
Stone's room, and his window was, as usual, open; that which was not
usual, however, was a light in Hilary's own bedroom. He went gently
up. Through the door-ajar-he saw, to his surprise, the figure of his
wife. She was reclining in a chair, her elbows on its arms, the tips
of her fingers pressed together. Her face, with its dark hair, vivid
colouring, and sharp lines, was touched with shadows, her head turned
as though towards somebody beside her; her neck gleamed white. So--
motionless, dimly seen--she was like a woman sitting alongside her
own life, scrutinising, criticising, watching it live, taking no part
in it. Hilary wondered whether to go in or slip away from his
strange visitor.
"Ah! it's you," she said.
Hilary approached her. For all her mocking of her own charms, this
wife of his was strangely graceful. After nineteen years in which to
learn every line of her face and body, every secret of her nature,
she still eluded him; that elusiveness, which had begun by being such
a charm, had got on his nerves, and extinguished the flame it had
once lighted. He had so often tried to see, and never seen, the
essence of her soul. Why was she made like this? Why was she for
ever mocking herself, himself, and every other thing? Why was she so
hard to her own life, so bitter a foe to her own happiness? Leonardo
da Vinci might have painted her, less sensual and cruel than his
women, more restless and disharmonic, but physically, spiritually
enticing, and, by her refusals to surrender either to her spirit or
her senses, baffling her own enticements.
"I don't know why I came," she said.
Hilary found no better answer than: "I am sorry I was out to dinner."
"Has the wind gone round? My room is cold."
"Yes, north-east. Stay here."
Her hand touched his; that warm and restless clasp was agitating.
"It's good of you to ask me; but we'd better not begin what we can't
keep up."
"Stay here," said Hilary again, kneeling down beside her chair.
And suddenly he began to kiss her face and neck. He felt her
answering kisses; for a moment they were clasped together in a fierce
embrace. Then, as though by mutual consent, their arms relaxed;
their eyes grew furtive, like the eyes of children who have egged
each other on to steal; and on their lips appeared the faintest of
faint smiles. It was as though those lips were saying: "Yes, but we
are not quite animals!"
Hilary got up and sat down on his bed. Blanca stayed in the chair,
looking straight before her, utterly inert, her head thrown back, her
white throat gleaming, on her lips and in her eyes that flickering
smile. Not a word more, nor a look, passed between them.
Then rising, without noise, she passed behind him and went out.
Hilary had a feeling in his mouth as though he had been chewing
ashes. And a phrase--as phrases sometimes fill the spirit of a man
without rhyme or reason--kept forming on his lips: "The house of
harmony!"
Presently he went to her door, and stood there listening. He could
hear no sound whatever. If she had been crying if she had been
laughing--it would have been better than this silence. He put his
hands up to his ears and ran down-stairs.
CHAPTER XIII
SOUND IN THE NIGHT
He passed his study door, and halted at Mr. Stone's; the thought of
the old man, so steady and absorbed in the face of all external
things, refreshed him.
Still in his brown woollen gown, Mr. Stone was sitting with his eyes
fixed on something in the corner, whence a little perfumed steam was
rising.
"Shut the door," he said; "I am making cocoa; will you have a cup?"
"Am I disturbing you?" asked Hilary.
Mr. Stone looked at him steadily before answering:
"If I work after cocoa, I find it clogs the liver."
"Then, if you'll let me, sir, I'll stay a little."
"It is boiling," said Mr. Stone. He took the saucepan off the flame,
and, distending his frail cheeks, blew. Then, while the steam
mingled with his frosty beard, he brought two cups from a cupboard,
filled one of them, and looked at Hilary.
"I should like you," he said, "to hear three or four pages I have
just completed; you may perhaps be able to suggest a word or two."
He placed the saucepan back on the stove, and grasped the cup he had
filled.
"I will drink my cocoa, and read them to you."
Going to the desk, he stood, blowing at the cup.
Hilary turned up the collar of his coat against the night wind which
was visiting the room, and glanced at the empty cup, for he was
rather hungry. He heard a curious sound: Mr. Stone was blowing his
own tongue. In his haste to read, he had drunk too soon and deeply
of the cocoa.
"I have burnt my mouth," he said.
Hilary moved hastily towards him: "Badly? Try cold milk, sir."
Mr. Stone lifted the cup.
"There is none," he said, and drank again.
'What would I not give,' thought Hilary, 'to have his singleness of
heart!'
There was the sharp sound of a cup set down. Then, out of a rustling
of papers, a sort of droning rose:
"'The Proletariat--with a cynicism natural to those who really are in
want, and even amongst their leaders only veiled when these attained
a certain position in the public eye--desired indeed the wealth and
leisure of their richer neighbours, but in their long night of
struggle with existence they had only found the energy to formulate
their pressing needs from day to day. They were a heaving, surging
sea of creatures, slowly, without consciousness or real guidance,
rising in long tidal movements to set the limits of the shore a
little farther back, and cast afresh the form of social life; and on
its pea-green bosom '" Mr. Stone paused. "She has copied it wrong,"
he said; "the word is 'seagreen.' 'And on its sea-green bosom sailed
a fleet of silver cockle-shells, wafted by the breath of those not in
themselves driven by the wind of need. The voyage of these silver
cockle-shells, all heading across each other's bows, was, in fact,
the advanced movement of that time. In the stern of each of these
little craft, blowing at the sails, was seated a by-product of the
accepted system. These by-products we should now examine.
Mr. Stone paused, and looked into his cup. There were some grounds
in it. He drank them, and went on:
"'The fratricidal principle of the survival of the fittest, which in
those days was England's moral teaching, had made the country one
huge butcher's shop. Amongst the carcasses of countless victims
there had fattened and grown purple many butchers, physically
strengthened by the smell of blood and sawdust. These had begotten
many children. Following out the laws of Nature providing against
surfeit, a proportion of these children were born with a feeling of
distaste for blood and sawdust; many of them, compelled for the
purpose of making money to follow in their fathers' practices, did so
unwillingly; some, thanks to their fathers' butchery, were in a
position to abstain from practising; but whether in practice or at
leisure, distaste for the scent of blood and sawdust was the common
feature that distinguished them. Qualities hitherto but little
known, and generally despised--not, as we shall see, without some
reason--were developed in them. Self-consciousness, aestheticism, a
dislike for waste, a hatred of injustice; these--or some one of
these, when coupled with that desire natural to men throughout all
ages to accomplish something--constituted the motive forces which
enabled them to work their bellows. In practical affairs those who
were under the necessity of labouring were driven, under the then
machinery of social life, to the humaner and less exacting kinds of
butchery, such as the Arts, Education, the practice of Religions and
Medicine, and the paid representation of their fellow-creatures.
Those not so driven occupied themselves in observing and complaining
of the existing state of thing. Each year saw more of their silver
cockleshells putting out from port, and the cheeks of those who blew
the sails more violently distended. Looking back on that pretty
voyage, we see the reason why those ships were doomed never to move,
but, seated on the sea-green bosom of that sea, to heave up and down,
heading across each other's bows in the self-same place for ever.
That reason, in few words, was this: "The man who blew should have
been in the sea, not on the ship.'"
The droning ceased. Hilary saw that Mr. Stone was staring fixedly at
his sheet of paper, as though the merits of this last sentence were
surprising him. The droning instantly began again: "'In social
effort, as in the physical processes of Nature, there had ever been a
single fertilising agent--the mysterious and wonderful attraction
known as Love. To this--that merging of one being in another--had
been due all the progressive variance of form, known by man under the
name of Life. It was this merger, this mysterious, unconscious Love,
which was lacking to the windy efforts of those who tried to sail
that fleet. They were full of reason, conscience, horror, full of
impatience, contempt, revolt; but they did not love the masses of
their fellow-men. They could not fling themselves into the sea.
Their hearts were glowing; but the wind which made them glow was not
the salt and universal zephyr: it was the desert wind of scorn. As
with the flowering of the aloe-tree--so long awaited, so strange and
swift when once it comes--man had yet to wait for his delirious
impulse to Universal Brotherhood, and the forgetfulness of Self.'"
Mr. Stone had finished, and stood gazing at his visitor with eyes
that clearly saw beyond him. Hilary could not meet those eyes; he
kept his own fixed on the empty cocoa cup. It was not, in fact,
usual for those who heard Mr. Stone read his manuscript to look him
in the face. He stood thus absorbed so long that Hilary rose at
last, and glanced into the saucepan. There was no cocoa in it. Mr.
Stone had only made enough for one. He had meant it for his visitor,
but self-forgetfulness had supervened.
"You know what happens to the aloe, sir, when it has flowered?"
asked Hilary with malice.
Mr. Stone moved, but did not answer.
"It dies," said Hilary.
"No," said Mr. Stone; "it is at peace."
"When is self at peace, sir? The individual is surely as immortal as
the universal. That is the eternal comedy of life."
"What is?" said Mr. Stone.
"The fight or game between the two."
Mr. Stone stood a moment looking wistfully at his son-in-law. He
laid down the sheet of manuscript. "It is time for me to do my
exercises." So saying, he undid the tasselled cord tied round the
middle of his gown.
Hilary hastened to the door. From that point of vantage he looked
back.
Divested of his gown and turned towards the window, Mr. Stone was
already rising on his toes, his arms were extended, his palms pressed
hard together in the attitude of prayer, his trousers slowly slipping
down.
"One, two, three, four, five!" There was a sudden sound of breath
escaping....
In the corridor upstairs, flooded with moonlight from a window at the
end, Hilary stood listening again. The only sound that came to him
was the light snoring of Miranda, who slept in the bathroom, not
caring to lie too near to anyone. He went to his room, and for a
long time sat buried in thought; then, opening the side window, he
leaned out. On the trees of the next garden, and the sloping roofs
of stables and outhouses, the moonlight had come down like a flight
of milk-white pigeons; with outspread wings, vibrating faintly as
though yet in motion, they covered everything. Nothing stirred. A
clock was striking two. Past that flight of milk-white pigeons were
black walls as yet unvisited. Then, in the stillness, Hilary seemed
to hear, deep and very faint, the sound as of some monster breathing,
or the far beating of muffed drums. From every side of the pale
sleeping town it seemed to come, under the moon's cold glamour. It
rose, and fell, and rose, with a weird, creepy rhythm, like a
groaning of the hopeless and hungry. A hansom cab rattled down the
High Street; Hilary strained his ears after the failing clatter of
hoofs and bell. They died; there was silence. Creeping nearer,
drumming, throbbing, he heard again the beating of that vast heart.
It grew and grew. His own heart began thumping. Then, emerging from
that sinister dumb groan, he distinguished a crunching sound, and
knew that it was no muttering echo of men's struggles, but only the
waggons journeying to Covent Garden Market.
CHAPTER XIV
A WALK ABROAD
Thyme Dallison, in the midst of her busy life, found leisure to
record her recollections and ideas in the pages of old school
notebooks. She had no definite purpose in so doing, nor did she
desire the solace of luxuriating in her private feelings--this she
would have scorned as out of date and silly. It was done from the
fulness of youthful energy, and from the desire to express oneself
that was "in the air." It was everywhere, that desire: among her
fellow-students, among her young men friends, in her mother's
drawing-room, and her aunt's studio. Like sentiment and marriage to
the Victorian miss, so was this duty to express herself to Thyme;
and, going hand-in-hand with it, the duty to have a good and jolly
youth. She never read again the thoughts which she recorded, she
took no care to lock them up, knowing that her liberty, development,
and pleasure were sacred things which no one would dream of touching
--she kept them stuffed down in a drawer among her handkerchiefs and
ties and blouses, together with the indelible fragment of a pencil.
This journal, naive and slipshod, recorded without order the current
impression of things on her mind.
In the early morning of the 4th of May she sat, night-gowned, on the
foot of her white bed, with chestnut hair all fluffy about her neck,
eyes bright and cheeks still rosy with sleep, scribbling away and
rubbing one bare foot against the other in the ecstasy of self-
expression. Now and then, in the middle of a sentence, she would
stop and look out of the window, or stretch herself deliciously, as
though life were too full of joy for her to finish anything.
"I went into grandfather's room yesterday, and stayed while he was
dictating to the little model. I do think grandfather's so splendid.
Martin says an enthusiast is worse than useless; people, he says,
can't afford to dabble in ideas or dreams. He calls grandfather's
idea paleolithic. I hate him to be laughed at. Martin's so
cocksure. I don't think he'd find many men of eighty who'd bathe in
the Serpentine all the year round, and do his own room, cook his own
food, and live on about ninety pounds a year out of his pension of
three hundred, and give all the rest away. Martin says that's
unsound, and the 'Book of Universal Brotherhood' rot. I don't care
if it is; it's fine to go on writing it as he does all day. Martin
admits that. That's the worst of him: he's so cool, you can't score
him off; he seems to be always criticising you; it makes me wild....
That little model is a hopeless duffer. I could have taken it all
down in half the time. She kept stopping and looking up with that
mouth of hers half open, as if she had all day before her.
Grandfather's so absorbed he doesn't notice; he likes to read the
thing over and over, to hear how the words sound. That girl would be
no good at any sort of work, except 'sitting,' I suppose. Aunt B.
used to say she sat well. There's something queer about her face; it
reminds me a little of that Botticelli Madonna in the National
Gallery, the full-face one; not so much in the shape as in the
expression--almost stupid, and yet as if things were going to happen
to her. Her hands and arms are pretty, and her feet are smaller than
mine. She's two years older than me. I asked her why she went in
for being a model, which is beastly work. She said she was glad to
get anything! I asked her why she didn't go into a shop or into
service. She didn't answer at once, and then said she hadn't had any
recommendations--didn't know where to try; then, all of a sudden, she
grew quite sulky, and said she didn't want to...."
Thyme paused to pencil in a sketch of the little model's profile....
"She had on a really pretty frock, quite simple and well made--it
must have cost three or four pounds. She can't be so very badly off,
or somebody gave it her...."
And again Thyme paused.
"She looked ever so much prettier in it than she used to in her old
brown skirt, I thought .... Uncle Hilary came to dinner last night.
We talked of social questions; we always discuss things when he
comes. I can't help liking Uncle Hilary; he has such kind eyes, and
he's so gentle that you never lose your temper with him. Martin
calls him weak and unsatisfactory because he's not in touch with
life. I should say it was more as if he couldn't bear to force
anyone to do anything; he seems to see both sides of every question,
and he's not good at making up his mind, of course. He's rather like
Hamlet might have been, only nobody seems to know now what Hamlet was
really like. I told him what I thought about the lower classes. One
can talk to him. I hate father's way of making feeble little jokes,
as if nothing were serious. I said I didn't think it was any use to
dabble; we ought to go to the root of everything. I said that money
and class distinctions are two bogeys we have got to lay. Martin
says, when it comes to real dealing with social questions and the
poor, all the people we know are amateurs. He says that we have got
to shake ourselves free of all the old sentimental notions, and just
work at putting everything to the test of Health. Father calls
Martin a 'Sanitist';, and Uncle Hilary says that if you wash people
by law they'll all be as dirty again tomorrow...."
Thyme paused again. A blackbird in the garden of the Square was
uttering a long, low, chuckling trill. She ran to the window and
peeped out. The bird was on a plane-tree, and, with throat uplifted,
was letting through his yellow beak that delicious piece of self-
expression. All things he seemed to praise--the sky, the sun, the
trees, the dewy grass, himself:
'You darling!' thought Thyme. With a shudder of delight she dropped
her notebook back into the drawer, flung off her nightgown, and flew
into her bath.
That same morning she slipped out quietly at ten o'clock. Her
Saturdays were free of classes, but she had to run the gauntlet of
her mother's liking for her company and her father's wish for her to
go with him to Richmond and play golf.
For on Saturdays Stephen almost always left the precincts of the
Courts before three o'clock. Then, if he could induce his wife or
daughter to accompany him, he liked to get a round or two in
preparation for Sunday, when he always started off at half-past ten
and played all day. If Cecilia and Thyme failed him, he would go to
his club, and keep himself in touch with every kind of social
movement by reading the reviews.
Thyme walked along with her head up and a wrinkle in her brow, as
though she were absorbed in serious reflection; if admiring glances
were flung at her, she did not seem aware of them. Passing not far
from Hilary's, she entered the Broad Walk, and crossed it to the
farther end.
On a railing, stretching out his long legs and observing the passers-
by, sat her cousin, Martin Stone. He got down as she came up.
"Late again," he said. "Come on!"
"Where are we going first?" Thyme asked.
"The Notting Hill district's all we can do to-day if we're to go
again to Mrs. Hughs'. I must be down at the hospital this
afternoon."
Thyme frowned. "I do envy you living by yourself, Martin. It's
silly having to live at home."
Martin did not answer, but one nostril of his long nose was seen to
curve, and Thyme acquiesced in this without remark. They walked for
some minutes between tall houses, looking about them calmly. Then
Martin said: "All Purceys round here."
Thyme nodded. Again there was silence; but in these pauses there was
no embarrassment, no consciousness apparently that it was silence,
and their eyes--those young, impatient, interested eyes--were for
ever busy observing.
"Boundary line. We shall be in a patch directly."
"Black?" asked Thyme.
"Dark blue--black farther on."
They were passing down a long, grey, curving road, whose narrow
houses, hopelessly unpainted, showed marks of grinding poverty. The
Spring wind was ruffling straw and little bits of paper in the
gutters; under the bright sunlight a bleak and bitter struggle seemed
raging. Thyme said:
"This street gives me a hollow feeling."
Martin nodded. " Worse than the real article. There's half a mile
of this. Here it's all grim fighting. Farther on they've given it
up."
And still they went on up the curving street, with its few pinched
shops and its unending narrow grimness.
At the corner of a by-street Martin said: "We'll go down here."
Thyme stood still, wrinkling her nose. Martin eyed her.
"Don't funk!"
"I'm not funking, Martin, only I can't stand the smells."
"You'll have to get used to them."
"Yes, I know; but--but I forgot my eucalyptus."
The young man took out a handkerchief which had not yet been
unfolded.
"Here, take mine."
"They do make me feel so--it's a shame to take yours," and she took
the handkerchief.
"That's all right," said Martin. "Come on!"
The houses of this narrow street, inside and out, seemed full of
women. Many of them had babies in their arms; they were working or
looking out of windows or gossiping on doorsteps. And all stopped to
stare as the young couple passed. Thyme stole a look at her
companion. His long stride had not varied; there was the usual pale,
observant, sarcastic expression on his face. Clenching the
handkerchief in readiness, and trying to imitate his callous air, she
looked at a group of five women on the nearest doorstep.
Three were seated and two were standing. One of these, a young woman
with a round, open face, was clearly very soon to have a child; the
other, with a short, dark face and iron-grey, straggling hair, was
smoking a clay pipe. Of the three seated, one, quite young, had a
face as grey white as a dirty sheet, and a blackened eye; the second,
with her ragged dress disarranged, was nursing a baby; the third, in
the centre, on the top step, with red arms akimbo, her face scored
with drink, was shouting friendly obscenities to a neighbour in the
window opposite. In Thyme's heart rose the passionate feeling, 'How
disgusting! how disgusting!' and since she did not dare to give
expression to it, she bit her lips and turned her head from them,
resenting, with all a young girl's horror, that her sex had given her
away. The women stared at her, and in those faces, according to
their different temperaments, could be seen first the same vague,
hard interest that had been Thyme's when she first looked at them,
then the same secret hostility and criticism, as though they too felt
that by this young girl's untouched modesty, by her gushed cheeks and
unsoiled clothes, their sex had given them away. With contemptuous
movements of their lips and bodies, on that doorstep they proclaimed
their emphatic belief in the virtue and reality of their own
existences and in the vice and unreality of her intruding presence.
"Give the doll to Bill; 'e'd make 'er work for once, the---" In a
burst of laughter the epithet was lost.
Martin's lips curled.
"Purple just here," he said.
Thyme's cheeks were crimson.
At the end of the little street he stopped before a shop.
"Come on," he said, "you'll see the sort of place where they buy
their grub."
In the doorway were standing a thin brown spaniel, a small fair woman
with a high, bald forehead, from which the hair was gleaned into
curlpapers, and a little girl with some affection of the skin.
Nodding coolly, Martin motioned them aside. The shop was ten feet
square; its counters, running parallel to two of the walls, were
covered with plates of cake, sausages, old ham-bones, peppermint
sweets, and household soap; there was also bread, margarine, suet in
bowls, sugar, bloaters--many bloaters--Captain's biscuits, and other
things besides. Two or three dead rabbits hung against the wall.
All was uncovered, so that what flies there were sat feeding
socialistically. Behind the counter a girl of seventeen was serving
a thin-faced woman with portions of a cheese which she was holding
down with her strong, dirty hand, while she sawed it with a knife.
On the counter, next the cheese, sat a quiet-looking cat.
They all glanced round at the two young people, who stood and waited.
"Finish what you're at," said Martin, "then give me three pennyworth
of bull's-eyes."
The girl, with a violent effort, finished severing the cheese. The
thin-faced woman took it, and, coughing above it, went away. The
girl, who could not take her eyes off Thyme, now served them with
three pennyworth of bull's-eyes, which she took out with her fingers,
for they had stuck. Putting them in a screw of newspaper, she handed
them to Martin. The young man, who had been observing negligently,
touched Thyme's elbow. She, who had stood with eyes cast down, now
turned. They went out, Martin handing the bull's-eyes to the little
girl with an affection of the skin.
The street now ended in a wide road formed of little low houses.
"Black," said Martin, "here; all down this road-casual labour,
criminals, loafers, drunkards, consumps. Look at the faces!"
Thyme raised her eyes obediently. In this main thoroughfare it was
not as in the by-street, and only dull or sullen glances, or none at
all, were bent on her. Some of the houses had ragged plants on the
window-sills; in one window a canary was singing. Then, at a bend,
they came into a blacker reach of human river. Here were
outbuildings, houses with broken windows, houses with windows boarded
up, fried-fish shops, low public-houses, houses without doors. There
were more men here than women, and those men were wheeling barrows
full of rags and bottles, or not even full of rags and bottles; or
they were standing by the public-houses gossiping or quarrelling in
groups of three or four; or very slowly walking in the gutters, or on
the pavements, as though trying to remember if they were alive. Then
suddenly some young man with gaunt violence in his face would pass,
pushing his barrow desperately, striding fiercely by. And every now
and then, from a fried-fish or hardware shop, would come out a man in
a dirty apron to take the sun and contemplate the scene, not finding
in it, seemingly, anything that in any way depressed his spirit.
Amongst the constant, crawling, shifting stream of passengers were
seen women carrying food wrapped up in newspaper, or with bundles
beneath their shawls. The faces of these women were generally either
very red and coarse or of a sort of bluish-white; they wore the
expression of such as know themselves to be existing in the way that
Providence has arranged they should exist. No surprise, revolt,
dismay, or shame was ever to be seen on those faces; in place of
these emotions a drab and brutish acquiescence or mechanical coarse
jocularity. To pass like this about their business was their
occupation each morning of the year; it was needful to accept it.
Not having any hope of ever, being different, not being able to
imagine any other life, they were not so wasteful of their strength
as to attempt either to hope or to imagine. Here and there, too,
very slowly passed old men and women, crawling along, like winter
bees who, in some strange and evil moment, had forgotten to die in
the sunlight of their toil, and, too old to be of use, had been
chivied forth from their hive to perish slowly in the cold twilight
of their days.
Down the centre of the street Thyme saw a brewer's dray creeping its
way due south under the sun. Three horses drew it, with braided
tails and beribboned manes, the brass glittering on their harness.
High up, like a god, sat the drayman, his little slits of eyes above
huge red cheeks fixed immovably on his horses' crests. Behind him,
with slow, unceasing crunch, the dray rolled, piled up with
hogsheads, whereon the drayman's mate lay sleeping. Like the
slumbrous image of some mighty unrelenting Power, it passed, proud
that its monstrous bulk contained all the joy and blessing those
shadows on the pavement had ever known.
The two young people emerged on to the high road running east and
west.
"Cross here," said Martin, "and cut down into Kensington. Nothing
more of interest now till we get to Hound Street. Purceys and
Purceys all round about this part."
Thyme shook herself.
"O Martin, let's go down a road where there's some air. I feel so
dirty." She put her hand up to her chest.
"There's one here," said Martin.
They turned to the left into a road that had many trees. Now that
she could breathe and look about her, Thyme once more held her head
erect and began to swing her arms.
"Martin, something must be done!"
The young doctor did not reply; his face still wore its pale,
sarcastic, observant look. He gave her arm a squeeze with a half-
contemptuous smile.
CHAPTER XV
SECOND PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET
Arriving in Hound Street, Martin Stone and his companion went
straight up to Mrs. Hughs' front room. They found her doing the
week's washing, and hanging out before a scanty fire part of the
little that the week had been suffered to soil. Her arms were bare,
her face and eyes red; the steam of soapsuds had congealed on them.
Attached to the bolster by a towel, under his father's bayonet and
the oleograph depicting the Nativity, sat the baby. In the air there
was the scent of him, of walls, and washing, and red herrings. The
two young people took their seat on the window-sill.
"May we open the window, Mrs. Hughs?" said Thyme. "Or will it hurt
the baby?"
"No, miss."
"What's the matter with your wrists?" asked Martin.
The seamstress, muffing her arms with the garment she was dipping in
soapy water, did not answer.
"Don't do that. Let me have a look."
Mrs. Hughs held out her arms; the wrists were swollen and
discoloured.
"The brute!" cried Thyme.
The young doctor muttered: "Done last night. Got any arnica?"
"No, Sir."
"Of course not." He laid a sixpence on the sill. "Get some and rub
it in. Mind you don't break the skin."
Thyme suddenly burst out: "Why don't you leave him, Mrs. Hughs? Why
do you live with a brute like that?"
Martin frowned.
"Any particular row," he said, "or only just the ordinary?"
Mrs. Hughs turned her face to the scanty fire. Her shoulders heaved
spasmodically.
Thus passed three minutes, then she again began rubbing the soapy
garment.
"If you don't mind, I'll smoke," said Martin. "What's your baby's
name? Bill? Here, Bill!" He placed his little finger in the baby's
hand. "Feeding him yourself?"
"Yes, sir."
"What's his number?"
"I've lost three, sir; there's only his brother Stanley now."
"One a year?"
"No, Sir. I missed two years in the war, of course."
"Hughs wounded out there?"
"Yes, sir--in the head."
"Ah! And fever?"
"Yes, Sir."
Martin tapped his pipe against his forehead. "Least drop of liquor
goes to it, I suppose?"
Mrs. Hughs paused in the dipping of a cloth; her tear-stained face
expressed resentment, as though she had detected an attempt to find
excuses for her husband.
"He didn't ought to treat me as he does," she said.
All three now stood round the bed, over which the baby presided with
solemn gaze.
Thyme said: "I wouldn't care what he did, Mrs. Hughs; I wouldn't stay
another day if I were you. It's your duty as a woman."
To hear her duty as a woman Mrs. Hughs turned; slow vindictiveness
gathered on her thin face.
"Yes, miss?" she said. "I don't know what to do.
"Take the children and go. What's the good of waiting? We'll give
you money if you haven't got enough."
But Mrs. Hughs did not answer.
"Well?" said Martin, blowing out a cloud of smoke.
Thyme burst out again: "Just go, the very minute your little boy
comes back from school. Hughs 'll never find you. It 'll serve him
right. No woman ought to put up with what you have; it's simply
weakness, Mrs. Hughs."
As though that word had forced its way into her very heart and set
the blood free suddenly, Mrs. Hughs' face turned the colour of
tomatoes. She poured forth words:
"And leave him to that young girl--and leave him to his wickedness!
After I've been his wife eight years and borne him five! after I've
done what I have for him! I never want no better husband than what
he used to be, till she came with her pale face and her prinky
manners, and--and her mouth that you can tell she's bad by. Let her
keep to her profession--sitting naked's what she's fit for--coming
here to decent folk---" And holding out her wrists to Thyme, who had
shrunk back, she cried: "He's never struck me before. I got these
all because of her new clothes!"
Hearing his mother speak with such strange passion, the baby howled.
Mrs. Hughs stopped, and took him up. Pressing him close to her thin
bosom, she looked above his little dingy head at the two young
people.
"I got my wrists like this last night, wrestling with him. He swore
he'd go and leave me, but I held him, I did. And don't you ever
think that I'll let him go to that young girl--not if he kills me
first!"
With those words the passion in her face died down. She was again a
meek, mute woman.
During this outbreak, Thyme, shrinking, stood by the doorway with
lowered eyes. She now looked up at Martin, clearly asking him to
come away. The latter had kept his gaze fixed on Mrs. Hughs, smoking
silently. He took his pipe out of his mouth, and pointed with it at
the baby.
"This gentleman," he said, "can't stand too much of that."
In silence all three bent their eyes on the baby. His little fists,
and nose, and forehead, even his little naked, crinkled feet, were
thrust with all his feeble strength against his mother's bosom, as
though he were striving to creep into some hole away from life.
There was a sort of dumb despair in that tiny pushing of his way back
to the place whence he had come. His head, covered with dingy down,
quivered with his effort to escape. He had been alive so little;
that little had sufficed. Martin put his pipe back into his mouth.
"This won't do, you know," he said. "He can't stand it. And look
here! If you stop feeding him, I wouldn't give that for him
tomorrow!" He held up the circle of his thumb and finger. "You're
the best judge of what sort of chance you've got of going on in your
present state of mind!" Then, motioning to Thyme, he went down the
stairs.
CHAPTER XVI
BENEATH THE ELMS
Spring was in the hearts of men, and their tall companions, trees.
Their troubles, the stiflings of each other's growth, and all such
things, seemed of little moment. Spring had them by the throat. It
turned old men round, and made them stare at women younger than
themselves. It made young men and women walking side by side touch
each other, and every bird on the branches tune his pipe. Flying
sunlight speckled the fluttered leaves, and gushed the cheeks of
crippled boys who limped into the Gardens, till their pale Cockney
faces shone with a strange glow.
In the Broad Walk, beneath those dangerous trees, the elms, people
sat and took the sun--cheek by jowl, generals and nursemaids, parsons
and the unemployed. Above, in that Spring wind, the elm-tree boughs
were swaying, rustling, creaking ever so gently, carrying on the
innumerable talk of trees--their sapient, wordless conversation over
the affairs of men. It was pleasant, too, to see and hear the myriad
movement of the million little separate leaves, each shaped
differently, flighting never twice alike, yet all obedient to the
single spirit of their tree.
Thyme and Martin were sitting on a seat beneath the largest of all
the elms. Their manner lacked the unconcern and dignity of the
moment, when, two hours before, they had started forth on their
discovery from the other end of the Broad Walk. Martin spoke:
"It's given you the hump! First sight of blood, and you're like all
the rest of them!"
"I'm not, Martin. How perfectly beastly of you!"
"Oh yes, you are. There's plenty of aestheticism about you and your
people--plenty of good intentions--but not an ounce of real
business!"
"Don't abuse my people; they're just as kind as you!"
"Oh, they're kind enough, and they can see what's wrong. It's not
that which stops them. But your dad's a regular official. He's got
so much sense of what he ought not to do that he never does anything;
Just as Hilary's got so much consciousness of what he ought to do
that be never does anything. You went to that woman's this morning
with your ideas of helping her all cut and dried, and now that you
find the facts aren't what you thought, you're stumped!"
"One can't believe anything they say. That's what I hate. I thought
Hughs simply knocked her about. I didn't know it was her jealousy--"
"Of course you didn't. Do you imagine those people give anything
away to our sort unless they're forced? They know better."
"Well, I hate the whole thing--it's all so sordid!"
"O Lord!"
"Well, it is! I don't feel that I want to help a woman who can say
and feel such horrid things, or the girl, or any of them."
"Who cares what they say or feel? that's not the point. It's simply
a case of common sense: Your people put that girl there, and they
must get her to clear out again sharp. It's just a question of
what's healthy."
"Well, I know it's not healthy for me to have anything to do with,
and I won't! I don't believe you can help people unless they want to
be helped."
Martin whistled.
"You're rather a brute, I think," said Thyme.
"A brute, not rather a brute. That's all the difference."
"For the worse!"
"I don't think so, Thyme!"
There was no answer.
"Look at me."
Very slowly Thyme turned her eyes.
"Well?"
"Are you one of us, or are you not?"
"Of course I am."
"You're not!"
"I am."
"Well, don't let's fight about it. Give me your hand."
He dropped his hand on hers. Her face had flushed rose colour.
Suddenly she freed herself. "Here's Uncle Hilary!"
It was indeed Hilary, with Miranda, trotting in advance. His hands
were crossed behind him, his face bent towards the ground. The two
young people on the bench sat looking at him.
"Buried in self-contemplation," murmured Martin; "that's the way he
always walks. I shall tell him about this!"
The colour of Thyme's face deepened from rose to crimson.
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Well--those new---" She could not bring out that word "clothes."
It would have given her thoughts away.
Hilary seemed making for their seat, but Miranda, aware of Martin,
stopped. "A man of action!" she appeared to say. "The one who pulls
my ears." And turning, as though unconscious, she endeavoured to
lead Hilary away. Her master, however, had already seen his niece.
He came and sat down on the bench beside her.
"We wanted you!" said Martin, eyeing him slowly, as a young dog will
eye another of a different age and breed. "Thyme and I have been to
see the Hughs in Hound Street. Things are blowing up for a mess.
You, or whoever put the girl there, ought to get her away again as
quick as possible."
Hilary seemed at once to withdraw into himself.
"Well," he said, "let us hear all about it."
"The woman's jealous of her: that's all the trouble!"
"Oh!" said Hilary; "that's all the trouble?"
Thyme murmured: "I don't see a bit why Uncle Hilary should bother.
If they will be so horrid--I didn't think the poor were like that.
I didn't think they had it in them. I'm sure the girl isn't worth
it, or the woman either!"
"I didn't say they were," growled Martin. "It's a question of what's
healthy."
Hilary looked from one of his young companions to the other.
"I see," he said. "I thought perhaps the matter was more delicate."
Martin's lip curled.'
"Ah, your precious delicacy! What's the good of that? What did it
ever do? It's the curse that you're all suffering from. Why don't
you act? You could think about it afterwards."
A flush came into Hilary's sallow cheeks.
"Do you never think before you act, Martin?"
Martin got up and stood looking down on Hilary.
"Look here!" he said; "I don't go in for your subtleties. I use my
eyes and nose. I can see that the woman will never be able to go on
feeding the baby in the neurotic state she's in. It's a matter of
health for both of them."
"Is everything a matter of health with you?"
"It is. Take any subject that you like. Take the poor themselves-
what's wanted? Health. Nothing on earth but health! The
discoveries and inventions of the last century have knocked the floor
out of the old order; we've got to put a new one in, and we're going
to put it in, too--the floor of health. The crowd doesn't yet see
what it wants, but they're looking for it, and when we show it them
they'll catch on fast enough."
"But who are 'you'?" murmured Hilary.
"Who are we? I'll tell you one thing. While all the reformers are
pecking at each other we shall quietly come along and swallow up the
lot. We've simply grasped this elementary fact, that theories are no
basis for reform. We go on the evidence of our eyes and noses; what
we see and smell is wrong we correct by practical and scientific
means."
"Will you apply that to human nature?"
"It's human nature to want health."
"I wonder! It doesn't look much like it at present."
"Take the case of this woman."
"Yes," said Hilary, "take her case. You can't make this too clear to
me, Martin."
"She's no use--poor sort altogether. The man's no use. A man who's
been wounded in the head, and isn't a teetotaller, is done for. The
girl's no use--regular pleasure-loving type!"
Thyme flushed crimson, and, seeing that flood of colour in his
niece's face, Hilary bit his lips.
"The only things worth considering are the children. There's this
baby-well, as I said, the important thing is that the mother should
be able to look after it properly. Get hold of that, and let the
other facts go hang."
"Forgive me, but my difficulty is to isolate this question of the
baby's health from all the other circumstances of the case."
Martin grinned.
"And you'll make that an excuse, I'm certain, for doing nothing."
Thyme slipped her hand into Hilary's.
"You are a brute, Martin," she-murmured.
The young man turned on her a look that said: 'It's no use calling me
a brute; I'm proud of being one. Besides, you know you don't dislike
it.'
"It's better to be a brute than an amateur," he said.
Thyme, pressing close to Hilary, as though he needed her protection,
cried out:
"Martin, you really are a Goth!"
Hilary was still smiling, but his face quivered.
"Not at all," he said. "Martin's powers of diagnosis do him credit."
And, raising his hat, he walked away.
The two young people, both on their feet now, looked after him.
Martin's face was a queer study of contemptuous compunction; Thyme's
was startled, softened, almost tearful.
"It won't do him any harm," muttered the young man. "It'll shake him
up."
Thyme flashed a vicious look at him.
"I hate you sometimes," she said. "You're so coarse-grained--your
skin's just like leather."
Martin's hand descended on her wrist.
"And yours," he said, "is tissue-paper. You're all the same, you
amateurs."
"I'd rather be an amateur than a--than a bounder!"
Martin made a queer movement of his jaw, then smiled. That smile
seemed to madden Thyme. She wrenched her wrist away and darted after
Hilary.
Martin impassively looked after her. Taking out his pipe, he filled
it with tobacco, slowly pressing the golden threads down into the
bowl with his little finger.
CHAPTER XVII
TWO BROTHERS
If has been said that Stephen Dallison, when unable to get his golf
on Saturdays, went to his club, and read reviews. The two forms of
exercise, in fact, were very similar: in playing golf you went round
and round; in reading reviews you did the same, for in course of time
you were assured of coming to articles that, nullified articles
already read. In both forms of sport the balance was preserved which
keeps a man both sound and young.
And to be both sound and young was to Stephen an everyday necessity.
He was essentially a Cambridge man, springy and undemonstrative, with
just that air of taking a continual pinch of really perfect snuff.
Underneath this manner he was a good worker, a good husband, a good
father, and nothing could be urged against him except his regularity
and the fact that he was never in the wrong. Where he worked, and
indeed in other places, many men were like him. In one respect he
resembled them, perhaps, too much--he disliked leaving the ground
unless he knew precisely where he was coming down again.
He and Cecilia had "got on" from the first. They had both desired to
have one child--no more; they had both desired to keep up with the
times--no more; they now both considered Hilary's position awkward--
no more; and when Cecilia, in the special Jacobean bed, and taking
care to let him have his sleep out first, had told him of this matter
of the Hughs, they had both turned it over very carefully, lying on
their backs, and speaking in grave tones. Stephen was of opinion
that poor old Hilary must look out what he was doing. Beyond this he
did not go, keeping even from his wife the more unpleasant of what
seemed to him the possibilities.
Then, in the words she had used to Hilary, Cecilia spoke:
"It's so sordid, Stephen."
He looked at her, and almost with one accord they both said:
"But it's all nonsense!"
These speeches, so simultaneous, stimulated them to a robuster view.
What was this affair, if real, but the sort of episode that they read
of in their papers? What was it, if true, but a duplicate of some
bit of fiction or drama which they daily saw described by that word
"sordid"? Cecilia, indeed, had used this word instinctively. It had
come into her mind at once. The whole affair disturbed her ideals of
virtue and good taste--that particular mental atmosphere
mysteriously, inevitably woven round the soul by the conditions of
special breeding and special life. If, then, this affair were real
it was sordid, and if it were sordid it was repellent to suppose that
her family could be mixed up in it; but her people were mixed up in
it, therefore it must be--nonsense!
So the matter rested until Thyme came back from her visit to her
grandfather, and told them of the little model's new and pretty
clothes. When she detailed this news they were all sitting at
dinner, over the ordering of which Cecilia's loyalty had been taxed
till her little headache came, so that there might be nothing too
conventional to over-nourish Stephen or so essentially aesthetic as
not to nourish him at all. The man servant being in the room, they
neither of them raised their eyes. But when he was gone to fetch the
bird, each found the other looking furtively across the table. By
some queer misfortune the word "sordid" had leaped into their minds
again. Who had given her those clothes? But feeling that it was
sordid to pursue this thought, they looked away, and, eating hastily,
began pursuing it. Being man and woman, they naturally took a
different line of chase, Cecilia hunting in one grove and Stephen in
another.
Thus ran Stephen's pack of meditations:
'If old Hilary has been giving her money and clothes and that sort of
thing, he's either a greater duffer than I took him for, or there's
something in it. B.'s got herself to thank, but that won't help to
keep Hughs quiet. He wants money, I expect. Oh, damn!'
Cecilia's pack ran other ways:
'I know the girl can't have bought those things out of her proper
earnings. I believe she's a really bad lot. I don't like to think
it, but it must be so. Hilary can't have been so stupid after what I
said to him. If she really is bad, it simplifies things very much;
but Hilary is just the sort of man who will never believe it. Oh
dear!'
It was, to be quite fair, immensely difficult for Stephen and his
wife--or any of their class and circle--in spite of genuinely good
intentions, to really feel the existence of their "shadows," except
in so far as they saw them on the pavements. They knew that these
people lived, because they saw them, but they did not feel it--with
such extraordinary care had the web of social life been spun. They
were, and were bound to be, as utterly divorced from understanding
of, or faith in, all that shadowy life, as those "shadows" in their
by-streets were from knowledge or belief that gentlefolk really
existed except in so far as they had money from them.
Stephen and Cecilia, and their thousands, knew these "shadows" as
"the people," knew them as slums, as districts, as sweated
industries, of different sorts of workers, knew them in the capacity
of persons performing odd jobs for them; but as human beings
possessing the same faculties and passions with themselves, they did
not, could not, know them. The reason, the long reason, extending
back through generations, was so plain, so very simple, that it was
never mentioned--in their heart of hearts, where there was no room
for cant, they knew it to be just a little matter of the senses.
They knew that, whatever they might say, whatever money they might
give, or time devote, their hearts could never open, unless--unless
they closed their ears, and eyes, and noses. This little fact, more
potent than all the teaching of philosophers, than every Act of
Parliament, and all the sermons ever preached, reigned paramount,
supreme. It divided class from class, man from his shadow--as the
Great Underlying Law had set dark apart from light.
On this little fact, too gross to mention, they and their kind had in
secret built and built, till it was not too much to say that laws,
worship, trade, and every art were based on it, if not in theory,
then in fact. For it must not be thought that those eyes were dull
or that nose plain--no, no, those eyes could put two and two
together; that nose, of myriad fancy, could imagine countless things
unsmelled which must lie behind a state of life not quite its own.
It could create, as from the scent of an old slipper dogs create
their masters.
So Stephen and Cecilia sat, and their butler brought in the bird. It
was a nice one, nourished down in Surrey, and as he cut it into
portions the butler's soul turned sick within him--not because he
wanted some himself, or was a vegetarian, or for any sort of
principle, but because he was by natural gifts an engineer, and
deadly tired of cutting up and handing birds to other people and
watching while they ate them. Without a glimmer of expression on his
face he put the portions down before the persons who, having paid him
to do so, could not tell his thoughts.
That same night, after working at a Report on the present Laws of
Bankruptcy, which he was then drawing up, Stephen entered the joint
apartment with excessive caution, having first made all his
dispositions, and, stealing to the bed, slipped into it. He lay
there, offering himself congratulations that he had not awakened
Cecilia, and Cecilia, who was wide awake, knew by his unwonted
carefulness that he had come to some conclusion which he did not wish
to impart to her. Devoured, therefore, by disquiet, she lay
sleepless till the clock struck two.
The conclusion to which Stephen had come was this: Having twice gone
through the facts--Hilary's corporeal separation from Bianca
(communicated to him by Cecilia), cause unknowable; Hilary's interest
in the little model, cause unknown; her known poverty; her employment
by Mr. Stone; her tenancy of Mrs. Hughs' room; the latter's outburst
to Cecilia; Hughs' threat; and, finally, the girl's pretty clothes--
he had summed it up as just a common "plant," to which his brother's
possibly innocent, but in any case imprudent, conduct had laid him
open. It was a man's affair. He resolutely tried to look on the
whole thing as unworthy of attention, to feel that nothing would
occur. He failed dismally, for three reasons. First, his inherent
love of regularity, of having everything in proper order; secondly,
his ingrained mistrust of and aversion from Bianca; thirdly, his
unavowed conviction, for all his wish to be sympathetic to them, that
the lower classes always wanted something out of you. It was a
question of how much they would want, and whether it were wise to
give them anything. He decided that it would not be wise at all.
What then? Impossible to say. It worried him. He had a natural
horror of any sort of scandal, and he was very fond of Hilary. If
only he knew the attitude Bianca would take up! He could not even
guess it.
Thus, on that Saturday afternoon, the 4th of May, he felt for once
such a positive aversion from the reading of reviews, as men will
feel from their usual occupations when their nerves have been
disturbed. He stayed late at Chambers, and came straight home
outside an omnibus.
The tide of life was flowing in the town. The streets were awash
with wave on wave of humanity, sucked into a thousand crossing
currents. Here men and women were streaming out from the meeting of
a religious congress, there streaming in at the gates of some social
function; like bright water confined within long shelves of rock and
dyed with myriad scales of shifting colour, they thronged Rotten Row,
and along the closed shop-fronts were woven into an inextricable
network of little human runlets. And everywhere amongst this sea of
men and women could be seen their shadows, meandering like streaks of
grey slime stirred up from the lower depths by some huge, never-
ceasing finger. The innumerable roar of that human sea climbed out
above the roofs and trees, and somewhere in illimitable space
blended, and slowly reached the meeting-point of sound and silence--
that Heart where Life, leaving its little forms and barriers, clasps
Death, and from that clasp springs forth new-formed, within new
barriers.
Above this crowd of his fellow-creatures, Stephen drove, and the same
Spring wind which had made the elm-trees talk, whispered to him, and
tried to tell him of the million flowers it had fertilised, the
million leaves uncurled, the million ripples it had awakened on the
sea, of the million flying shadows flung by it across the Downs, and
how into men's hearts its scent had driven a million longings and
sweet pains.
It was but moderately successful, for Stephen, like all men of
culture and neat habits, took Nature only at those moments when he
had gone out to take her, and of her wild heart he had a secret fear.
On his own doorstep he encountered Hilary coming out.
"I ran across Thyme and Martin in the Gardens," the latter said.
"Thyme brought me back to lunch, and here I've been ever since."
"Did she bring our young Sanitist in too?" asked Stephen dubiously.
"No," said Hilary.
"Good! That young man gets on my nerves." Taking his elder brother
by the arm, he added: "Will you come in again, old boy, or shall we
go for a stroll?"
"A stroll," said Hilary.
Though different enough, perhaps because they were so different,
these two brothers had the real affection for each other which
depends on something deeper and more elementary than a similarity of
sentiments, and is permanent because unconnected with the reasoning
powers.
It depended on the countless times they had kissed and wrestled as
tiny boys, slept in small beds alongside, refused-to "tell" about
each other, and even now and then taken up the burden of each other's
peccadilloes. They might get irritated or tired of being in each
other's company, but it would have been impossible for either to have
been disloyal to the other in any circumstances, because of that
traditional loyalty which went back to their cribs.
Preceded by Miranda, they walked along the flower walk towards the
Park, talking of indifferent things, though in his heart each knew
well enough what was in the other's.
Stephen broke through the hedge.
"Cis has been telling me," he said, "that this man Hughs is making
trouble of some sort."
Hilary nodded.
Stephen glanced a little anxiously at his brother's face; it struck
him as looking different, neither so gentle nor so impersonal as
usual.
"He's a ruffian, isn't he?"
"I can't tell you," Hilary answered. "Probably not."
"He must be, old chap," murmured Stephen. Then, with a friendly
pressure of his brother's arm, he added: "Look here, old boy, can I
be of any use?"
"In what?" asked Hilary.
Stephen took a hasty mental view of his position; he had been in
danger of letting Hilary see that he suspected him. Frowning
slightly, and with some colour in his clean-shaven face, he said:
"Of course, there's nothing in it."
"In what?" said Hilary again.
"In what this ruffian says."
"No," said Hilary, "there's nothing in it, though what there may be
if people give me credit for what there isn't, is another thing."
Stephen digested this remark, which hurt him. He saw that his
suspicions had been fathomed, and this injured his opinion of his own
diplomacy.
"You mustn't lose your head, old man," he said at last.
They were crossing the bridge over the Serpentine. On the bright
waters, below, young clerks were sculling their inamoratas up and
down; the ripples set free by their oars gleamed beneath the sun, and
ducks swam lazily along the banks. Hilary leaned over.
"Look here, Stephen, I take an interest in this child--she's a
helpless sort of little creature, and she seems to have put herself
under my protection. I can't help that. But that's all. Do you
understand?"
This speech produced a queer turmoil in Stephen, as though his
brother had accused him of a petty view of things. Feeling that he
must justify himself somehow, he began:
"Oh, of course I understand, old boy! But don't think, anyway, that
I should care a damn--I mean as far as I'm concerned--even if you had
gone as far as ever you liked, considering what you have to put up
with. What I'm thinking of is the general situation."
By this clear statement of his point of view Stephen felt he had put
things back on a broad basis, and recovered his position as a man of
liberal thought. He too leaned over, looking at the ducks. There
was a silence. Then Hilary said:
"If Bianca won't get that child into some fresh place, I shall."
Stephen looked at his brother in surprise, amounting almost to
dismay; he had spoken with such unwonted resolution.
"My dear old chap," he said, "I wouldn't go to B. Women are so
funny."
Hilary smiled. Stephen took this for a sign of restored
impersonality.
"I'll tell you exactly how the thing appeals to me. It'll be much
better for you to chuck it altogether. Let Cis see to it!"
Hilary's eyes became bright with angry humour.
"Many thanks," he said, "but this is entirely our affair."
Stephen answered hastily:
"That's exactly what makes it difficult for you to look at it all
round. That fellow Hughs could make himself quite nasty. I wouldn't
give him any sort of chance. I mean to say--giving the girl clothes
and that kind of thing---"
"I see," said Hilary.
"You know, old man," Stephen went on hastily, "I don't think you'll
get Bianca to look at things in your light. If you were on--on
terms, of course it would be different. I mean the girl, you know,
is rather attractive in her way."
Hilary roused himself from contemplation of the ducks, and they moved
on towards the Powder Magazine. Stephen carefully abstained from
looking at his brother; the respect he had for Hilary--result,
perhaps, of the latter's seniority, perhaps of the feeling that
Hilary knew more of him than he of Hilary--was beginning to assert
itself in a way he did not like. With every word, too, of this talk,
the ground, instead of growing firmer, felt less and less secure.
Hilary spoke:
"You mistrust my powers of action?"
"No, no," said Stephen. "I don't want you to act at all."
Hilary laughed. Hearing that rather bitter laugh, Stephen felt a
little ache about his heart.
"Come, old boy," he said, "we can trust each other, anyway."
Hilary gave his brother's arm a squeeze.
Moved by that pressure, Stephen spoke:
"I hate you to be worried over such a rotten business."
The whizz of a motor-car rapidly approaching them became a sort of
roar, and out of it a voice shouted: "How are you?" A hand was seen
to rise in salute. It was Mr. Purcey driving his A.i. Damyer back to
Wimbledon. Before him in the sunlight a little shadow fled; behind
him the reek of petrol seemed to darken the road.
"There's a symbol for you," muttered Hilary.
"How do you mean?" said Stephen dryly. The word "symbol" was
distasteful to him.
"The machine in the middle moving on its business; shadows like you
and me skipping in front; oil and used-up stuff dropping behind.
Society-body, beak, and bones."
Stephen took time to answer. "That's rather far-fetched," he said.
"You mean these Hughs and people are the droppings?"
"Quite so," was Hilary's sardonic answer. "There's the body of that
fellow and his car between our sort and them--and no getting over it,
Stevie."
"Well, who wants to? If you're thinking of our old friend's
Fraternity, I'm not taking any." And Stephen suddenly added: "Look
here, I believe this affair is all 'a plant.'"
"You see that Powder Magazine?" said Hilary. "Well, this business
that you call a 'plant' is more like that. I don't want to alarm
you, but I think you as well as our young friend Martin, are inclined
to underrate the emotional capacity of human nature."
Disquietude broke up the customary mask on Stephen's face: "I don't
understand," he stammered.
"Well, we're none of us machines, not even amateurs like me--not even
under-dogs like Hughs. I fancy you may find a certain warmth, not to
say violence, about this business. I tell you frankly that I don't
live in married celibacy quite with impunity. I can't answer for
anything, in fact. You had better stand clear, Stephen--that's all."
Stephen marked his thin hands quivering, and this alarmed him as
nothing else had done.
They walked on beside the water. Stephen spoke quietly, looking at
the ground. "How can I stand clear, old man, if you are going to get
into a mess? That's impossible."
He saw at once that this shot, which indeed was from his heart, had
gone right home to Hilary's. He sought within him how to deepen the
impression.
"You mean a lot to us," he said. "Cis and Thyme would feel it
awfully if you and B.---" He stopped.
Hilary was looking at him; that faintly smiling glance, searching him
through and through, suddenly made Stephen feel inferior. He had
been detected trying to extract capital from the effect of his little
piece of brotherly love. He was irritated at his brother's insight.
"I have no right to give advice, I suppose," he said; "but in my
opinion you should drop it--drop it dead. The girl is not worth your
looking after. Turn her over to that Society--Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace's thing whatever it's called."
At a sound as of mirth Stephen, who was not accustomed to hear his
brother laugh, looked round.
"Martin," said Hilary, "also wants the case to be treated on strictly
hygienic grounds."
Nettled by this, Stephen answered:
"Don't confound me with our young Sanitist, please; I simply think
there are probably a hundred things you don't know about the girl
which ought to be cleared up."
"And then?"
"Then," said Stephen, "they could--er--deal with her accordingly."
Hilary shrank so palpably at this remark that he added rather
hastily:
"You call that cold-blooded, I suppose; but I think, you know, old
chap, that you're too sensitive."
Hilary stopped rather abruptly.
"If you don't mind, Stevie," he said, "we'll part here. I want to
think it over." So saying, he turned back, and sat down on a seat
that faced the sun.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PERFECT DOG
Hilary sat long in the sun, watching the pale bright waters and many
well-bred ducks circling about the shrubs, searching with their
round, bright eyes for worms. Between the bench where he was sitting
and the spiked iron railings people passed continually--men, women,
children of all kinds. Every now and then a duck would stop and cast
her knowing glance at these creatures, as though comparing the
condition of their forms and plumage with her own. 'If I had had the
breeding of you,' she seemed to say, 'I could have made a better fist
of it than that. A worse-looking lot of ducks, take you all round.
I never wish to see!' And with a quick but heavy movement of her
shoulders, she would turn away and join her fellows.
Hilary, however, got small distraction from the ducks. The situation
gradually developing was something of a dilemma to a man better
acquainted with ideas than facts, with the trimming of words than
with the shaping of events. He turned a queer, perplexed, almost
quizzical eye on it. Stephen had irritated him profoundly. He had
such a way of pettifying things! Yet, in truth, the affair would
seem ridiculous enough to an ordinary observer. What would a man of
sound common sense, like Mr. Purcey, think of it? Why not, as
Stephen had suggested, drop it? Here, however, Hilary approached the
marshy ground of feeling.
To give up befriending a helpless girl the moment he found himself
personally menaced was exceedingly distasteful. But would she be
friendless? Were there not, in Stephen's words, a hundred things he
did not know about her? Had she not other resources? Had she not a
story? But here, too, he was hampered by his delicacy: one did not
pry into the private lives of others!
The matter, too, was hopelessly complicated by the domestic troubles
of the Hughs family. No conscientious man--and whatever Hilary
lacked, no one ever accused him of a lack of conscience--could put
aside that aspect of the case.
Wandering among these reflections were his thoughts about Bianca.
She was his wife. However he might feel towards her now, whatever
their relations, he must not put her in a false position. Far from
wishing to hurt her, he desired to preserve her, and everyone, from
trouble and annoyance. He had told Stephen that his interest in the
girl was purely protective. But since the night when, leaning out
into the moonlight, he heard the waggons coming in to Covent Garden
Market, a strange feeling had possessed him--the sensation of a man
who lies, with a touch of fever on him, listening to the thrum of
distant music--sensuous, not unpleasurable.
Those who saw him sitting there so quietly, with his face resting on
his hand, imagined, no doubt, that he was wrestling with some deep,
abstract proposition, some great thought to be given to mankind; for
there was that about Hilary which forced everyone to connect him
instantly with the humaner arts.
The sun began to leave the long pale waters.
A nursemaid and two children came and sat down beside him. Then it
was that, underneath his seat, Miranda found what she had been
looking for all her life. It had no smell, made no movement, was
pale-grey in colour, like herself. It had no hair that she could
find; its tail was like her own; it took no liberties, was silent,
had no passions, committed her to nothing. Standing a few inches
from its head, closer than she had ever been of her free will to any
dog, she smelt its smellessness with a long, delicious snuffling,
wrinkling up the skin on her forehead, and through her upturned eyes
her little moonlight soul looked forth. 'How unlike you are,' she
seemed to say, 'to all the other dogs I know! I would love to live
with you. Shall I ever find a dog like you again? "The latest-
sterilised cloth--see white label underneath: 4s. 3d.!"' Suddenly
she slithered out her slender grey-pink tongue and licked its nose.
The creature moved a little way and stopped. Miranda saw that it had
wheels. She lay down close to it, for she knew it was the perfect
dog.
Hilary watched the little moonlight lady lying vigilant,
affectionate, beside this perfect dog, who could not hurt her. She
panted slightly, and her tongue showed between her lips.
Presently behind his seat he saw another idyll. A thin white spaniel
had come running up. She lay down in the grass quite close, and
three other dogs who followed, sat and looked at her. A poor, dirty
little thing she was, who seemed as if she had not seen a home for
days. Her tongue lolled out, she panted piteously, and had no
collar. Every now and then she turned her eyes, but though they were
so tired and desperate, there was a gleam in them. 'For all its
thirst and hunger and exhaustion, this is life!' they seemed to say.
The three dogs, panting too, and watching till it should be her
pleasure to begin to run again, seemed with their moist, loving eyes
to echo: 'This is life!'
Because of this idyll, people near were moving on.
And suddenly the thin white spaniel rose, and, like a little harried
ghost, slipped on amongst the trees, and the three dogs followed her.
CHAPTER XIX
BIANCA
In her studio that afternoon Blanca stood before her picture of the
little model--the figure with parted pale-red lips and haunting,
pale-blue eyes, gazing out of shadow into lamplight.
She was frowning, as though resentful of a piece of work which had
the power to kill her other pictures. What force had moved her to
paint like that? What had she felt while the girl was standing
before her, still as some pale flower placed in a cup of water? Not
love--there was no love in the presentment of that twilight figure;
not hate--there was no hate in the painting of her dim appeal. Yet
in the picture of this shadow girl, between the gloom and glimmer,
was visible a spirit, driving the artist on to create that which had
the power to haunt the mind.
Blanca turned away and went up to a portrait of her husband, painted
ten years before. She looked from one picture to the other, with
eyes as hard and stabbing as the points of daggers.
In the more poignant relationships of human life there is a point
beyond which men and women do not quite truthfully analyse their
feelings--they feel too much. It was Blanca's fortune, too, to be
endowed to excess with that quality which, of all others, most
obscures the real significance of human issues. Her pride had kept
her back from Hilary, till she had felt herself a failure. Her pride
had so revolted at that failure that she had led the way to utter
estrangement. Her pride had forced her to the attitude of one who
says "Live your own life; I should be ashamed to let you see that I
care what happens between us." Her pride had concealed from her the
fact that beneath her veil of mocking liberality there was an
essential woman tenacious of her dues, avid of affection and esteem.
Her pride prevented the world from guessing that there was anything
amiss. Her pride even prevented Hilary from really knowing what had
spoiled his married life--this ungovernable itch to be appreciated,
governed by ungovernable pride. Hundreds of times he had been
baffled by the hedge round that disharmonic nature. With each
failure something had shrivelled in him, till the very roots of his
affection had dried up. She had worn out a man who, to judge from
his actions and appearance, was naturally long-suffering to a fault.
Beneath all manner of kindness and consideration for each other--for
their good taste, at all events, had never given way--this tragedy of
a woman, who wanted to be loved, slowly killing the power of loving
her in the man, had gone on year after year. It had ceased to be
tragedy, as far as Hilary was concerned; the nerve of his love for
her was quite dead, slowly frozen out of him. It was still active
tragedy with Bianca, the nerve of whose jealous desire for his
appreciation was not dead. Her instinct, too, ironically informed
her that, had he been a man with some brutality, a man who had set
himself to ride and master her, instead of one too delicate, he might
have trampled down the hedge. This gave her a secret grudge against
him, a feeling that it was not she who was to blame.
Pride was Bianca's fate, her flavour, and her charm. Like a shadowy
hill-side behind glamorous bars of waning sunlight, she was enveloped
in smiling pride--mysterious; one thinks, even to herself. This
pride of hers took part even in her many generous impulses, kind
actions which she did rather secretly and scoffed at herself for
doing. She scoffed at herself continually, even for putting on
dresses of colours which Hilary was fond of. She would not admit her
longing to attract him.
Standing between those two pictures, pressing her mahl-stick against
her bosom, she suggested somewhat the image of an Italian saint
forcing the dagger of martyrdom into her heart.
That other person, who had once brought the thought of Italy into
Cecilia's mind--the man Hughs--had been for the last eight hours or
so walking the streets, placing in a cart the refuses of Life; nor
had he at all suggested the aspect of one tortured by the passions of
love and hate: For the first two hours he had led the horse without
expression of any sort on his dark face, his neat soldier's figure
garbed in the costume which had made "Westminister" describe him as a
"dreadful foreign-lookin' man." Now and then he had spoken to the
horse; save for those speeches, of no great importance, he had been
silent. For the next two hours, following the cart, he had used a
shovel, and still his square, short face, with little black moustache
and still blacker eyes, had given no sign of conflict in his breast.
So he had passed the day. Apart from the fact, indeed, that men of
any kind are not too given to expose private passions to public gaze,
the circumstances of a life devoted from the age of twenty onwards to
the service of his country, first as a soldier, now in the more
defensive part of Vestry scavenger, had given him a kind of gravity.
Life had cloaked him with passivity--the normal look of men whose
bread and cheese depends on their not caring much for anything. Had
Hughs allowed his inclinations play, or sought to express himself, he
could hardly have been a private soldier; still less, on his
retirement from that office with an honourable wound, would he have
been selected out of many others as a Vestry scavenger. For such an
occupation as the lifting from the streets of the refuses of Life--a
calling greatly sought after, and, indeed, one of the few open to a
man who had served his country--charm of manner, individuality, or
the engaging quality of self-expression, were perhaps out of place.
He had never been trained in the voicing of his thoughts, and, ever
since he had been wounded, felt at times a kind of desperate
looseness in his head. It was not, therefore, remarkable that he
should be liable to misconstruction, more especially by those who had
nothing in common with him, except that somewhat negligible factor,
common humanity. The Dallisons had misconstrued him as much as, but
no more than, he had misconstrued them when, as "Westminister" had
informed Hilary, he "went on against the gentry." He was, in fact, a
ragged screen, a broken vessel, that let light through its holes.
A glass or two of beer, the fumes of which his wounded head no longer
dominated, and he at once became "dreadful foreign." Unfortunately,
it was his custom, on finishing his work, to call at the "Green
Glory." On this particular afternoon the glass had become three, and
in sallying forth he had felt a confused sense of duty urging him to
visit the house where this girl for whom he had conceived his strange
infatuation "carried on her games." The "no-tale-bearing" tradition
of a soldier fought hard with this sense of duty; his feelings were
mixed when he rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Dallison. Habit,
however, masked his face, and he stood before her at "attention," his
black eyes lowered, clutching his peaked cap.
Blanca noted curiously the scar on the left side of his cropped black
head.
Whatever Hughs had to say was not said easily.
"I've come," he began at last in a dogged voice, "to let you know. I
never wanted to come into this house. I never wanted to see no one."
Blanca could see his lips and eyelids quivering in a way strangely
out of keeping with his general stolidity.
"My wife has told you tales of me, I suppose. She's told you I knock
her about, I daresay. I don't care what she tells you or any o' the
people that she works for. But this I'll say: I never touched her
but she touched me first. Look here! that's marks of hers!" and,
drawing up his sleeve he showed a scratch on his sinewy tattooed
forearm. "I've not come here about her; that's no business of
anyone's."
Bianca turned towards her pictures. "Well?" she said, "but what
have you come about, please? You see I'm busy."
Hughs' face changed. Its stolidity vanished, the eyes became as
quick, passionate, and leaping as a dark torrent. He was more
violently alive than she had ever seen a man. Had it been a woman
she would have felt--as Cecilia had felt with Mrs. Hughs--the
indecency, the impudence of this exhibition; but from that male
violence the feminine in her derived a certain satisfaction. So in
Spring, when all seems lowering and grey, the hedges and trees
suddenly flare out against the purple clouds, their twigs all in
flame. The next moment that white glare is gone, the clouds are no
longer purple, fiery light no longer quivers and leaps along the
hedgerows. The passion in Hughs' face was gone as soon. Bianca felt
a sense of disappointment, as though she could have wished her life
held a little more of that. He stole a glance at her out of his dark
eyes, which, when narrowed, had a velvety look, like the body of a
wild bee, then jerked his thumb at the picture of the little model.
"It's about her I come to speak."
Blanca faced him frigidly.
"I have not the slightest wish to hear."
Hughs looked round, as though to find something that would help him
to proceed; his eyes lighted on Hilary's portrait.
"Ah! I'd put the two together if I was you," he said.
Blanca walked past him to the door.
"Either you or I must leave the room."
The man's face was neither sullen now nor passionate, but simply
miserable.
"Look here, lady," he said, "don't take it hard o' me coming here.
I'm not out to do you a harm. I've got a wife of my own, and Gawd
knows I've enough to put up with from her about this girl. I'll be
going in the water one of these days. It's him giving her them
clothes that set me coming here."
Blanca opened the door. "Please go," she said.
"I'll go quiet enough," he muttered, and, hanging his head, walked
out.
Having seen him through the side door out into the street, Blanca
went back to where she had been standing before he came. She found
some difficulty in swallowing; for once there was no armour on her
face. She stood there a long time without moving, then put the
pictures back into their places and went down the little passage to
the house. Listening outside her father's door, she turned the
handle quietly and went in.
Mr. Stone, holding some sheets of paper out before him, was dictating
to the little model, who was writing laboriously with her face close
above her arm. She stopped at Blanca's entrance. Mr. Stone did not
stop, but, holding up his other hand, said:
"I will take you through the last three pages again. Follow!"
Blanca sat down at the window.
Her father's voice, so thin and slow, with each syllable disjointed
from the other, rose like monotony itself.
"'There were tra-cea-able indeed, in those days, certain rudi-men-
tary at-tempts to f-u-s-e the classes....'"
It went on unwavering, neither rising high nor falling low, as though
the reader knew he had yet far to go, like a runner that brings great
news across mountains, plains, and rivers.
To Blanca that thin voice might have been the customary sighing of
the wind, her attention was so fast fixed on the girl, who sat
following the words down the pages with her pen's point.
Mr. Stone paused.
"Have you got the word 'insane'?" he asked.
The little model raised her face. "Yes, Mr. Stone."
"Strike it out."
With his eyes fixed on the trees he stood breathing audibly. The
little model moved her fingers, freeing them from cramp. Blanca's
curious, smiling scrutiny never left her, as though trying to fix an
indelible image on her mind. There was something terrifying in that
stare, cruel to herself, cruel to the girl.
"The precise word," said Mr. Stone, "eludes me. Leave a blank.
Follow!... 'Neither that sweet fraternal interest of man in man, nor
a curiosity in phenomena merely as phenomena....'" His voice pursued
its tenuous path through spaces, frozen by the calm eternal presence
of his beloved idea, which, like a golden moon, far and cold,
presided glamorously above the thin track of words. And still the
girl's pen-point traced his utterance across the pages: Mr. Stone
paused again, and looking at his daughter as though surprised to see
her sitting there, asked:
"Do you wish to speak to me, my dear?"
Blanca shook her head.
"Follow!" said Mr. Stone.
But the little model's glance had stolen round to meet the scrutiny
fixed on her.
A look passed across her face which seemed to say: 'What have I done
to you, that you should stare at me like this?'
Furtive and fascinated, her eyes remained fixed on Bianca, while her
hand moved, mechanically ticking the paragraphs. That silent duel of
eyes went on--the woman's fixed, cruel, smiling; the girl's
uncertain, resentful. Neither of them heard a word that Mr. Stone
was reading. They treated it as, from the beginning, Life has
treated Philosophy--and to the end will treat it.
Mr. Stone paused again, seeming to weigh his last sentences.
"That, I think," he murmured to himself, "is true." And suddenly he
addressed his daughter. "Do you agree with me, my dear?"
He was evidently waiting with anxiety for her answer, and the little
silver hairs that straggled on his lean throat beneath his beard were
clearly visible.
"Yes, Father, I agree."
"Ah!" said Mr. Stone, "I am glad that you confirm me. I was anxious.
Follow!"
Bianca rose. Burning spots of colour had settled in her cheeks. She
went towards the door, and the little model pursued her figure with a
long look, cringing, mutinous, and wistful.
CHAPTER XX
THE HUSBAND AND THE WIFE
It was past six o'clock when Hilary at length reached home, preceded
a little by Miranda, who almost felt within her the desire to eat.
The lilac bushes, not yet in flower, were giving forth spicy
fragrance. The sun still netted their top boughs, as with golden
silk, and a blackbird, seated on a low branch of the acacia-tree, was
summoning the evening. Mr. Stone, accompanied by the little model,
dressed in her new clothes, was coming down the path. They were
evidently going for a walk, for Mr. Stone wore his hat, old and soft
and black, with a strong green tinge, and carried a paper parcel,
which leaked crumbs of bread at every step.
The girl grew very red. She held her head down, as though afraid of
Hilary's inspection of her new clothes. At the gate she suddenly
looked up. His face said: 'Yes, you look very nice!' And into her
eyes a look leaped such as one may see in dogs' eyes lifted in
adoration to their masters' faces. Manifestly disconcerted, Hilary
turned to Mr. Stone. The old man was standing very still; a thought
had evidently struck him. "I have not, I think," he said, "given
enough consideration to the question whether force is absolutely, or
only relatively, evil. If I saw a man ill-treat a cat, should I be
justified in striking him?"
Accustomed to such divagations, Hilary answered: "I don't know
whether you would be justifed, but I believe that you would strike
him."
"I am not sure," said Mr. Stone. "We are going to feed the birds."
The little model took the paper bag. "It's all dropping out," she
said. From across the road she turned her head....'Won't you come,
too?' she seemed to say.
But Hilary passed rather hastily into the garden and shut the gate
behind him. He sat in his study, with Miranda near him, for fully an
hour, without doing anything whatever, sunk in a strange, half-
pleasurable torpor. At this hour he should have been working at his
book; and the fact that his idleness did not trouble him might well
have given him uneasiness. Many thoughts passed through his mind,
imaginings of things he had thought left behind forever--sensations
and longings which to the normal eye of middle age are but dried
forms hung in the museum of memory. They started up at the whip of
the still-living youth, the lost wildness at the heart of every man.
Like the reviving flame of half-spent fires, longing for discovery
leaped and flickered in Hilary--to find out once again what things
were like before he went down the hill of age.
No trivial ghost was beckoning him; it was the ghost, with unseen
face and rosy finger, which comes to men when youth has gone.
Miranda, hearing him so silent, rose. At this hour it was her
master's habit to scratch paper. She, who seldom scratched anything,
because it was not delicate, felt dimly that this was what he should
be doing. She held up a slim foot and touched his knee. Receiving
no discouragement, she delicately sprang into his lap, and,
forgetting for once her modesty, placed her arms on his chest, and
licked his face all over.
It was while receiving this embrace that Hilary saw Mr. Stone and the
little model returning across the garden. The old man was walking
very rapidly, holding out the fragment of a broken stick. He was
extremely pink.
Hilary went to meet them.
"What's the matter, sir?" he said.
"I cut him over the legs," said Mr. Stone. "I do not regret it"; and
he walked on to his room.
Hilary turned to the little model.
"It was a little dog. The man kicked it, and Mr. Stone hit him. He
broke his stick. There were several men; they threatened us." She
looked up at Hilary. "I-I was frightened. Oh! Mr. Dallison, isn't
he funny?"
"All heroes are funny," murmured Hilary.
"He wanted to hit them again, after his stick was broken. Then a
policeman came, and they all ran away."
"That was quite as it should be," said Hilary. "And what did you
do?"
Perceiving that she had not as yet made much effect, the little model
cast down her eyes.
"I shouldn't have been frightened if you had been there!"
"Heavens!" muttered Hilary. "Mr. Stone is far more valiant than I."
"I don't think he is," she replied stubbornly, and again looked up at
him.
"Well, good-night!" said Hilary hastily. "You must run off...."
That same evening, driving with his wife back from a long, dull
dinner, Hilary began:
"I've something to say to you."
An ironic "Yes?" came from the other corner of the cab.
"There is some trouble with the little model."
"Really!"
"This man Hughs has become infatuated with her. He has even said, I
believe, that he was coming to see you."
"What about?"
"Me."
"And what is he going to say about you?"
"I don't know; some vulgar gossip--nothing true."
There was a silence, and in the darkness Hilary moistened his dry
lips.
Bianca spoke: "May I ask how you knew of this?"
"Cecilia told me."
A curious noise, like a little strangled laugh, fell on Hilary's
ears.
"I am very sorry," he muttered.
Presently Bianca said:
"It was good of you to tell me, considering that we go our own ways.
What made you?"
"I thought it right."
"And--of course, the man might have come to me!"
"That you need not have said."
"One does not always say what one ought."
"I have made the child a present of some clothes which she badly
needed. So far as I know, that's all I've done!"
"Of course!"
This wonderful "of course" acted on Hilary like a tonic. He said
dryly:
"What do you wish me to do?"
"I?" No gust of the east wind, making the young leaves curl and
shiver, the gas jets flare and die down in their lamps, could so have
nipped the flower of amity. Through Hilary's mind flashed Stephen's
almost imploring words: "Oh, I wouldn't go to her! Women are so
funny!"
He looked round. A blue gauze scarf was wrapped over his wife's dark
head. There, in her corner, as far away from him as she could get,
she was smiling. For a moment Hilary had the sensation of being
stiffed by fold on fold of that blue gauze scarf, as if he were
doomed to drive for ever, suffocated, by the side of this woman who
had killed his love for her.
"You will do what you like, of course," she said suddenly.
A desire to laugh seized Hilary. "What do you wish me to do?" "You
will do what you like, of course!" Could civilised restraint and
tolerance go further?
"B." he said, with an effort, "the wife is jealous. We put the girl
into that house--we ought to get her out."
Blanca's reply came slowly.
"From the first," she said, "the girl has been your property; do what
you like with her. I shall not meddle."
"I am not in the habit of regarding people as my property."
"No need to tell me that--I have known you twenty years."
Doors sometimes slam in the minds of the mildest and most restrained
of men.
"Oh, very well! I have told you; you can see Hughs when he comes--or
not, as you like."
"I have seen him."
Hilary smiled.
"Well, was his story very terrible?"
"He told me no story."
"How was that?"
Blanca suddenly sat forward, and threw back the blue scarf, as though
she, too, were stifling. In her flushed face her eyes were bright as
stars; her lips quivered.
"Is it likely," she said, "that I should listen? That's enough,
please, of these people."
Hilary bowed. The cab, bearing them fast home, turned into the last
short cut. This narrow street was full of men and women circling
round barrows and lighted booths. The sound of coarse talk and
laughter floated out into air thick with the reek of paraffin and the
scent of frying fish. In every couple of those men and women Hilary
seemed to see the Hughs, that other married couple, going home to
wedded happiness above the little model's head. The cab turned out
of the gay alley.
"Enough, please, of these people!"
That same night, past one o'clock, he was roused from sleep by
hearing bolts drawn back. He got up, hastened to the window, and
looked out. At first he could distinguish nothing. The moonless
night; like a dark bird, had nested in the garden; the sighing of the
lilac bushes was the only sound. Then, dimly, just below him, on the
steps of the front door, he saw a figure standing.
"Who is that?" he called.
The figure did not move.
"Who are you?" said Hilary again.
The figure raised its face, and by the gleam of his white beard
Hilary knew that it was Mr. Stone.
"What is it, sir?" he said. "Can I do anything?"
"No," answered Mr. Stone. "I am listening to the wind. It has
visited everyone to-night." And lifting his hand, he pointed out
into the darkness.
CHAPTER XXI
A DAY OF REST
Cecilia's house in the Old Square was steeped from roof to basement
in the peculiar atmosphere brought by Sunday to houses whose inmates
have no need of religion or of rest.
Neither she nor Stephen had been to church since Thyme was
christened; they did not expect to go again till she was married, and
they felt that even to go on these occasions was against their
principles; but for the sake of other people's feelings they had made
the sacrifice, and they meant to make it once more, when the time
came. Each Sunday, therefore, everything tried to happen exactly as
it happened on every other day, with indifferent success. This was
because, for all Cecilia's resolutions, a joint of beef and Yorkshire
pudding would appear on the luncheon-table, notwithstanding the fact
that Mr. Stone--who came when he remembered that it was Sunday--did
not devour the higher mammals. Every week, when it appeared,
Cecilia, who for some reason carved on Sundays, regarded it with a
frown. Next week she would really discontinue it; but when next week
came, there it was, with its complexion that reminded her so
uncomfortably of cabmen. And she would partake of it with unexpected
heartiness. Something very old and deep, some horrible whole-hearted
appetite, derived, no doubt, from Mr. Justice Carfax, rose at that
hour precisely every week to master her. Having given Thyme the
second helping which she invariably took, Cecilia, who detested
carving, would look over the fearful joint at a piece of glass
procured by her in Venice, and at the daffodils standing upright in
it, apparently without support. Had it not been for this joint of
beef, which had made itself smelt all the morning, and would make
itself felt all the afternoon, it need never have come into her mind
at all that it was Sunday--and she would cut herself another slice.
To have told Cecilia that there was still a strain of the Puritan in
her would have been to occasion her some uneasiness, and provoked a
strenuous denial; yet her way of observing Sunday furnished
indubitable evidence of this singular fact. She did more that day
than any other. For, in the morning she invariably "cleared off" her
correspondence; at lunch she carved the beef; after lunch she cleared
off the novel or book on social questions she was reading; went to a
concert, clearing off a call on the way back; and on first Sundays--a
great bore--stayed at home to clear off the friends who came to visit
her. In the evening she went to some play or other, produced by
Societies for the benefit of persons compelled, like her, to keep a
Sunday with which they felt no sympathy.
On this particular "first Sunday," having made the circuit of her
drawing-room, which extended the whole breadth of her house, and
through long, low windows cut into leaded panes, looked out both back
and front, she took up Mr. Balladyce's latest book. She sat, with
her paper-knife pressed against the tiny hollow in her flushed cheek,
and pretty little bits of lace and real old jewellery nestling close
to her. And while she turned the pages of Mr. Balladyce's book Thyme
sat opposite in a bright blue frock, and turned the pages of Darwin's
work on earthworms.
Regarding her "little daughter," who was so much more solid than
herself, Cecilia's face wore a very sweet, faintly surprised
expression.
'My kitten is a bonny thing,' it seemed to say. 'It is queer that I
should have a thing so large.'
Outside in the Square Gardens a shower, the sunlight, and blossoms,
were entangled. It was the time of year when all the world had
kittens; young things were everywhere--soft, sweet, uncouth. Cecilia
felt this in her heart. It brought depth into her bright, quick
eyes. What a secret satisfaction it was that she had once so far
committed herself as to have borne a child! What a queer vague
feeling she sometimes experienced in the Spring--almost amounting to
a desire to bear another! So one may mark the warm eye of a staid
mare, following with her gaze the first strayings of her foal. 'I
must get used to it,' she seems to say. 'I certainly do miss the
little creature, though I used to threaten her with my hoofs, to show
I couldn't be bullied by anything of that age. And there she goes!
Ah, well!'
Remembering suddenly, however, that she was sitting there to clear
off Mr. Balladyce, because it was so necessary to keep up with what
he wrote, Cecilia dropped her gaze to the page before her; and
instantly, by uncomfortable chance, not the choice pastures of Mr.
Balladyce appeared, where women might browse at leisure, but a vision
of the little model. She had not thought of her for quite an hour;
she had tired herself out with thinking-not, indeed, of her, but of
all that hinged on her, ever since Stephen had spoken of his talk
with Hilary. Things Hilary had said seemed to Cecilia's delicate.
and rather timid soul so ominous, so unlike himself. Was there
really going to be complete disruption between him and Bianca--worse,
an ugly scandal? She, who knew her sister better, perhaps, than
anyone, remembered from schoolroom days Bianca's moody violence when
anything had occurred to wound her--remembered, too, the long fits of
brooding that followed. This affair, which she had tried to persuade
herself was exaggerated, loomed up larger than ever. It was not an
isolated squib; it was a lighted match held to a train of gunpowder.
This girl of the people, coming from who knew where, destined for who
knew what--this young, not very beautiful, not even clever child,
with nothing but a sort of queer haunting naivete' to give her charm
--might even be a finger used by Fate! Cecilia sat very still before
that sudden vision of the girl. There was no staid mare to guard
that foal with the dark devotion of her eye. There was no wise
whinnying to answer back those tiny whinnies; no long look round to
watch the little creature nodding to sleep on its thin trembling legs
in the hot sunlight; no ears to prick up and hoofs to stamp at the
approach of other living things. These thoughts passed through
Cecilia's mind and were gone, being too far and pale to stay.
Turning the page which she had not been reading, she heaved a sigh.
Thyme sighed also.
"These worms are fearfully interesting," she said. "Is anybody
coming in this afternoon?"
"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was going to bring a young man in, a Signor
Pozzi-Egregio Pozzi, or some such name. She says he is the coming
pianist." Cecilia's face was spiced with faint amusement. Some
strain of her breeding (the Carfax strain, no doubt) still heard such
names and greeted such proclivities with an inclination to derision.
Thyme snatched up her book. "Well," she said, "I shall be in the
attic. If anyone interesting comes you might send up to me."
She stood, luxuriously stretching, and turning slowly round in a
streak of sunlight so as to bathe her body in it. Then, with a long
soft yawn, she flung up her chin till the sun streamed on her face.
Her eyelashes rested on cheeks already faintly browned; her lips were
parted; little shivers of delight ran down her; her chestnut hair
glowed, burnished by the kisses of the sun.
'Ah!' Cecilia thought, 'if that other girl were like this, now, I
could understand well enough!'
"Oh, Lord!" said Thyme, "there they are!" She flew towards the door.
"My dear," murmured Cecilia, "if you must go, do please tell Father."
A minute later Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace came in, followed by a young
man with an interesting, pale face and a crop of dusky hair.
Let us consider for a minute the not infrequent case of a youth
cursed with an Italian mother and a father of the name of Potts, who
had baptised him William. Had he emanated from the lower classes, he
might with impunity have ground an organ under the name of Bill; but
springing from the bourgeoisie, and playing Chopin at the age of
four, his friends had been confronted with a problem of no mean
difficulty. Heaven, on the threshold of his career, had intervened
to solve it. Hovering, as it were, with one leg raised before the
gladiatorial arena of musical London, where all were waiting to turn
their thumbs down on the figure of the native Potts, he had received
a letter from his mother's birthplace. It was inscribed: "Egregio
Signor Pozzi." He was saved. By the simple inversion of the first
two words, the substitution of z's for t's, without so fortunately
making any difference in the sound, and the retention of that i, all
London knew him now to be the rising pianist.
He was a quiet, well-mannered youth, invaluable just then to Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace, a woman never happy unless slightly leading a
genius in strings.
Cecilia, while engaging them to right and left in her half-
sympathetic, faintly mocking way--as if doubting whether they really
wanted to see her or she them--heard a word of fear.
"Mr. Purcey."
'Oh Heaven!' she thought.
Mr. Purcey, whose A.i. Damyer could be heard outside, advanced in his
direct and simple way.
"I thought I'd give my car a run," he said. "How's your sister?"
And seeing Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, he added: "How do you do? We
met the other day."
"We did," said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose little eyes were
sparkling. "We talked about the poor, do you remember?"
Mr. Purcey, a sensitive man if you could get through his skin, gave
her a shrewd look. 'I don't quite cotton to this woman,' he seemed
saying; 'there's a laugh about her I don't like.'
"Ah! yes--you were tellin' me about them."
"Oh, Mr. Purcey, but you had heard of them, you remember!"
Mr. Purcey made a movement of his face which caused it to seem all
jaw. It was a sort of unconscious declaration of a somewhat
formidable character. So one may see bulldogs, those amiable
animals, suddenly disclose their tenacity.
"It's rather a blue subject," he said bluntly.
Something in Cecilia fluttered at those words. It was like the
saying of a healthy man looking at a box of pills which he did not
mean to open. Why could not she and Stephen keep that lid on, too?
And at this moment, to her deep astonishment, Stephen entered. She
had sent for him, it is true, but had never expected he would come.
His entrance, indeed, requires explanation.
Feeling, as he said, a little "off colour," Stephen had not gone to
Richmond to play golf. He had spent the day instead in the company
of his pipe and those ancient coins, of which he had the best
collection of any man he had ever met. His thoughts had wandered
from them, more than he thought proper, to Hilary and that girl. He
had felt from the beginning that he was so much more the man to deal
with an affair like this than poor old Hilary. When, therefore,
Thyme put her head into his study and said, "Father, Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace!" he had first thought, 'That busybody!' and then,
'I wonder--perhaps I'd better go and see if I can get anything out of
her.'
In considering Stephen's attitude towards a woman so firmly embedded
in the various social movements of the day, it must be remembered
that he represented that large class of men who, unhappily too
cultivated to put aside, like Mr. Purcey, all blue subjects, or deny
the need for movements to make them less blue, still could not move,
for fear of being out of order. He was also temperamentally
distrustful of anything too feminine; and Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace
was undoubtedly extremely feminine. Her merit, in his eyes,
consisted of her attachment to Societies. So long as mankind worked
through Societies, Stephen, who knew the power of rules and minute
books, did not despair of too little progress being made. He sat
down beside her, and turned the conversation on her chief work--"the
Maids in Peril."
Searching his face with those eyes so like little black bees sipping
honey from all the flowers that grew, Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace said:
"Why don't you get your wife to take an interest in our work?"
To Stephen this question was naturally both unexpected and annoying,
one's wife being the last person he wished to interest in other
people's movements. He kept his head.
"Ah well!" he said, "we haven't all got a talent for that sort of
thing."
The voice of Mr. Purcey travelled suddenly across the room.
"Do tell me! How do you go to work to worm things out of them?"
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, prone to laughter, bubbled.
"Oh, that is such a delicious expression, Mr. Purcey! I almost think
we ought to use it in our Report. Thank you!"
Mr. Purcey bowed. "Not at all!" he said.
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace turned again to Stephen.
"We have our trained inquirers. That is the advantage of Societies
such as ours; so that we don't personally have the unpleasantness.
Some cases do baffle everybody. It's such very delicate work."
"You sometimes find you let in a rotter?" said Mr. Purcey, "or, I
should say, a rotter lets you in! Ha, ha!"
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's eyes flew deliciously down his figure.
"Not often," she said; and turning rather markedly once more to
Stephen: "Have you any special case that you are interested in, Mr.
Dallison?"
Stephen consulted Cecilia with one of those masculine half-glances so
discreet that Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace intercepted it without looking
up. She found it rather harder to catch Cecilia's reply, but she
caught it before Stephen did. It was, 'You'd better wait, perhaps,'
conveyed by a tiny raising of the left eyebrow and a slight movement
to the right of the lower lip. Putting two and two together, she
felt within her bones that they were thinking of the little model.
And she remembered the interesting moment in the omnibus when that
attractive-looking man had got out so hastily.
There was no danger whatever from Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace feeling
anything. The circle in which she moved did not now talk scandal,
or, indeed, allude to matters of that sort without deep sympathy;
and in the second place she was really far too good a fellow, with
far too dear a love of life, to interfere with anybody else's love of
it. At the same time it was interesting.
"That little model, now," she said, "what about her?"
"Is that the girl I saw?" broke in Mr. Purcey, with his accustomed
shrewdness.
Stephen gave him the look with which he was accustomed to curdle the
blood of persons who gave evidence before Commissions.
'This fellow is impossible,' he thought.
The little black bees flying below Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark
hair, done in the Early Italian fashion, tranquilly sucked honey from
Stephen's face.
"She seemed to me," she answered, "such a very likely type."
"Ah!" murmured Stephen, "there would be, I suppose, a danger---" And
he looked angrily at Cecilia.
Without ceasing to converse with Mr. Purcey and Signor Egregio Pozzi,
she moved her left eye upwards. Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace understood
this to mean: 'Be frank, and guarded!' Stephen, however, interpreted
it otherwise. To him it signified: 'What the deuce do you look at me
for?' And he felt justly hurt. He therefore said abruptly:
"What would you do in a case like that?"
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, sliding her face sideways, with a really
charming little smile, asked softly:
"In a case like what?"
And her little eyes fled to Thyme, who had slipped into the room, and
was whispering to her mother.
Cecilia rose.
"You know my daughter," she said. "Will you excuse me just a minute?
I'm so very sorry." She glided towards the door, and threw a flying
look back. It was one of those social moments precious to those who
are escaping them.
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was smiling, Stephen frowning at his boots;
Mr. Purcey stared admiringly at Thyme, and Thyme, sitting very
upright, was calmly regarding the unfortunate Egregio Pozzi, who
apparently could not bring himself to speak.
When Cecilia found herself outside, she stood still a moment to
compose her nerves. Thyme had told her that Hilary was in the
dining-room, and wanted specially to see her.
As in most women of her class and bringing-up, Cecilia's qualities of
reticence and subtlety, the delicate treading of her spirit, were
seen to advantage in a situation such as this. Unlike Stephen, who
had shown at once that he had something on his mind, she received
Hilary with that exact shade of friendly, intimate, yet cool
affection long established by her as the proper manner towards her
husband's brother. It was not quite sisterly, but it was very nearly
so. It seemed to say: 'We understand each other as far as it is
right and fitting that we should; we even sympathise with the
difficulties we have each of us experienced in marrying the other's
sister or brother, as the case may be. We know the worst. And we
like to see each other, too, because there are bars between us, which
make it almost piquant.'
Giving him her soft little hand, she began at once to talk of things
farthest from her heart. She saw that she was deceiving Hilary, and
this feather in the cap of her subtlety gave her pleasure. But her
nerves fluttered at once when he said: "I want to speak to you, Cis.
You know that Stephen and I had a talk yesterday, I suppose?"
Cecilia nodded.
"I have spoken to B.!"
"Oh!" Cecilia murmured. She longed to ask what Bianca had said, but
did not dare, for Hilary had his armour on, the retired, ironical
look he always wore when any subject was broached for which he was
too sensitive.
She waited.
"The whole thing is distasteful to me," he said; "but I must do
something for this child. I can't leave her completely in the
lurch."
Cecilia had an inspiration.
"Hilary," she said softly, "Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace is in the
drawing-room. She was just speaking of the girl to Stephen. Won't
you come in, and arrange with her quietly?"
Hilary looked at his sister-in-law for a moment without speaking,
then said:
"I draw the line there. No, thank you. I'll see this through
myself."
Cecilia fluttered out:
"Oh, but, Hilary, what do you mean?"
"I am going to put an end to it."
It needed all Cecilia's subtlety to hide her consternation. End to
what? Did he mean that he and B. were going to separate?
"I won't have all this vulgar gossip about the poor girl. I shall go
and find another room for her."
Cecilia sighed with relief.
"Would you-would you like me to come too, Hilary?"
"It's very good of you," said Hilary dryly. "My actions appear to
rouse suspicions."
Cecilia blushed.
"Oh, that's absurd! Still, no one could think anything if I come
with you. Hilary, have you thought that if she continues coming to
Father---"
"I shall tell her that she mustn't!"
Cecilia's heart gave two thumps, the first with pleasure, the second
with sympathy.
"It will be horrid for you," she said. "You hate doing anything of
that sort."
Hilary nodded.
"But I'm afraid it's the only way," went on Cecilia, rather hastily.
"And, of course, it will be no good saying anything to Father; one
must simply let him suppose that she has got tired of it."
Again Hilary nodded.
"He will think it very funny,", murmured Cecilia pensively. "Oh, and
have you thought that taking her away from where she is will only
make those people talk the more?"
Hilary shrugged his shoulders.
"It may make that man furious," Cecilia added.
"It will."
"Oh, but then, of course, if you don't see her afterwards, they will
have no--no excuse at all."
"I shall not see her afterwards," said Hilary, "if I can avoid it."
Cecilia looked at him.
"It's very sweet of you, Hilary."
"What is sweet?" asked Hilary stonily.
"Why, to take all this trouble. Is it really necessary for you to do
anything?" But looking in his face, she went on hastily: "Yes, yes,
it's best. Let's go at once. Oh, those people in the drawing-room!
Do wait ten minutes."
A little later, running up to put her hat on, she wondered why it was
that Hilary always made her want to comfort him. Stephen never
affected her like this.
Having little or no notion where to go, they walked in the direction
of Bayswater. To place the Park between Hound Street and the little
model was the first essential. On arriving at the other side of the
Broad Walk, they made instinctively away from every sight of green.
In a long, grey street of dismally respectable appearance they found
what they were looking for, a bed-sitting room furnished, advertised
on a card in the window. The door was opened by the landlady, a tall
woman of narrow build, with a West-Country accent, and a rather
hungry sweetness running through her hardness. They stood talking
with her in a passage, whose oilcloth of variegated pattern emitted a
faint odour. The staircase could be seen climbing steeply up past
walls covered with a shining paper cut by narrow red lines into small
yellow squares. An almanack, of so floral a design that nobody would
surely want to steal it, hung on the wall; below it was an umbrella
stand without umbrellas. The dim little passage led past two grimly
closed doors painted rusty red to two half-open doors with dull glass
in their panels. Outside, in the street from which they had mounted
by stone steps, a shower of sleet had begun to fall. Hilary shut the
door, but the cold spirit of that shower had already slipped into the
bleak, narrow house.
"This is the apartment, m'm," said the landlady, opening the first of
the rusty-coloured doors. The room, which had a paper of blue roses
on a yellow ground, was separated from another room by double doors.
"I let the rooms together sometimes, but just now that room's taken--
a young gentleman in the City; that's why I'm able to let this
cheap."
Cecilia looked at Hilary. "I hardly think---"
The landlady quickly turned the handles of the doors, showing that
they would not open.
"I keep the key," she said. "There's a bolt on both sides."
Reassured, Cecilia walked round the room as far as this was possible,
for it was practically all furniture. There was the same little
wrinkle across her nose as across Thyme's nose when she spoke of
Hound Street. Suddenly she caught sight of Hilary. He was standing
with his back against the door. On his face was a strange and bitter
look, such as a man might have on seeing the face of Ugliness
herself, feeling that she was not only without him, but within--a
universal spirit; the look of a man who had thought that he was
chivalrous, and found that he was not; of a leader about to give an
order that he would not himself have executed.
Seeing that look, Cecilia said with some haste:
"It's all very nice and clean; it will do very well, I think. Seven
shillings a week, I believe you said. We will take it for a
fortnight, at all events."
The first glimmer of a smile appeared on the landlady's grim face,
with its hungry eyes, sweetened by patience.
"When would she be coming in?" she asked.
"When do you think, Hilary?"
"I don't know," muttered Hilary." The sooner the better--if it must
be. To-morrow, or the day after."
And with one look at the bed, covered by a piece of cheap red-and-
yellow tasselled tapestry, he went out into the street. The shower
was over, but the house faced north, and no sun was shining on it.
CHAPTER XXII
HILARY PUTS AN END TO IT
Like flies caught among the impalpable and smoky threads of cobwebs,
so men struggle in the webs of their own natures, giving here a
start, there a pitiful small jerking, long sustained, and failing
into stillness. Enmeshed they were born, enmeshed they die, fighting
according to their strength to the end; to fight in the hope of
freedom, their joy; to die, not knowing they are beaten, their
reward. Nothing, too, is more to be remarked than the manner in
which Life devises for each man the particular dilemmas most suited
to his nature; that which to the man of gross, decided, or fanatic
turn of mind appears a simple sum, to the man of delicate and
speculative temper seems to have no answer.
So it was with Hilary in that special web wherein his spirit
struggled, sunrise unto sunset, and by moonlight afterward.
Inclination, and the circumstances of a life which had never forced
him to grips with either men or women, had detached him from the
necessity for giving or taking orders. He had almost lost the
faculty. Life had been a picture with blurred outlines melting into
a softly shaded whole. Not for years had anything seemed to him
quite a case for "Yes" or "No." It had been his creed, his delight,
his business, too, to try and put himself in everybody's place, so
that now there were but few places where he did not, speculatively
speaking, feel at home.
Putting himself into the little model's place gave him but small
delight. Making due allowance for the sentiment men naturally import
into their appreciation of the lives of women, his conception of her
place was doubtless not so very wrong.
Here was a child, barely twenty years of age, country bred, neither a
lady nor quite a working-girl, without a home or relatives, according
to her own account--at all events, without those who were disposed to
help her--without apparently any sort of friend; helpless by nature,
and whose profession required a more than common wariness--this girl
he was proposing to set quite adrift again by cutting through the
single slender rope which tethered her. It was like digging up a
little rose-tree planted with one's own hands in some poor shelter,
just when it had taken root, and setting it where the full winds
would beat against it. To do so brusque and, as it seemed to Hilary,
so inhumane a thing was foreign to his nature. There was also the
little matter of that touch of fever--the distant music he had been
hearing since the waggons came in to Covent Garden.
With a feeling that was almost misery, therefore, he waited for her
on Monday afternoon, walking to and fro in his study, where all the
walls were white, and all the woodwork coloured like the leaf of a
cigar; where the books were that colour too, in Hilary's special
deerskin binding; where there were no flowers nor any sunlight coming
through the windows, but plenty of sheets of paper--a room which
youth seemed to have left for ever, the room of middle age!
He called her in with the intention of at once saying what he had to
say, and getting it over in the fewest words. But he had not
reckoned fully either with his own nature or with woman's instinct.
Nor had he allowed--being, for all his learning, perhaps because of
it, singularly unable to gauge the effects of simple actions--for the
proprietary relations he had established in the girl's mind by giving
her those clothes.
As a dog whose master has it in his mind to go away from him, stands
gazing up with tragic inquiry in his eyes, scenting to his soul that
coming cruelty--as a dog thus soon to be bereaved, so stood the
little model.
By the pose of every limb, and a fixed gaze bright as if tears were
behind it, and by a sort of trembling, she seemed to say: 'I know why
you have sent for me.'
When Hilary saw her stand like that he felt as a man might when told
to flog his fellow-creature. To gain time he asked her what she did
with herself all day. The little model evidently tried to tell
herself that her foreboding had been needless.
Now that the mornings were nice--she said with some animation--she
got up much earlier, and did her needlework first thing; she then
"did out" the room. There were mouse-holes in her room, and she had
bought a trap. She had caught a mouse last night. She hadn't liked
to kill it; she had put it in a tin box, and let it go when she went
out. Quick to see that Hilary was interested in this, as well he
might be, she told him that she could not bear to see cats hungry or
lost dogs, especially lost dogs, and she described to him one that
she had seen. She had not liked to tell a policeman; they stared so
hard. Those words were of strange omen, and Hilary turned his head
away. The little model, perceiving that she had made an effect of
some sort, tried to deepen it. She had heard they did all sorts of
things to people--but, seeing at once from Hilary's face that she was
not improving her effect, she broke off suddenly, and hastily began
to tell him of her breakfast, of how comfortable she was now she had
got her clothes; how she liked her room; how old Mr. Creed was very
funny, never taking any notice of her when he met her in the morning.
Then followed a minute account of where she had been trying to get
work; of an engagement promised; Mr. Lennard, too, still wanted her
to pose to him. At this she gashed a look at Hilary, then cast down
her eyes. She could get plenty of work if she began that way. But
she hadn't, because he had told her not, and, of course, she didn't
want to; she liked coming to Mr. Stone so much. And she got on very
well, and she liked London, and she liked the shops. She mentioned
neither Hughs nor Mrs. Hughs. In all this rigmarole, told with such
obvious purpose, stolidity was strangely mingled with almost cunning
quickness to see the effect made; but the dog-like devotion was never
quite out of her eyes when they were fixed on Hilary.
This look got through the weakest places in what little armour Nature
had bestowed on him. It touched one of the least conceited and most
amiable of men profoundly. He felt it an honour that anything so
young as this should regard him in that way. He had always tried to
keep out of his mind that which might have given him the key to her
special feeling for himself--those words of the painter of still
life: "She's got a story of some sort." But it flashed across him
suddenly like an inspiration: If her story were the simplest of all
stories--the direct, rather brutal, love affair of a village boy and
girl--would not she, naturally given to surrender, be forced this
time to the very antithesis of that young animal amour which had
brought on her such, sharp consequences?
But, wherever her devotion came from, it seemed to Hilary the
grossest violation of the feelings of a gentleman to treat it
ungratefully. Yet it was as if for the purpose of saying, "You are a
nuisance to me, or worse!" that he had asked her to his study. Her
presence had hitherto chiefly roused in him the half-amused, half-
tender feelings of one who strokes a foal or calf, watching its soft
uncouthness; now, about to say good-bye to her, there was the
question of whether that was the only feeling.
Miranda, stealing out between her master and his visitor, growled.
The little model, who was stroking a china ash-tray with her
ungloved, inky fingers, muttered, with a smile, half pathetic, half
cynical: "She doesn't like me! She knows I don't belong here. She
hates me to come. She's jealous!"
Hilary said abruptly:
"Tell me! Have you made any friends since you've been in London?"
The girl flashed a look at him that said:
'Could I make you jealous?'
Then, as though guilty of afar too daring thought, drooped her head,
and answered:
"No."
"Not one?"
The little model repeated almost passionately: "No. I don't want any
friends; I only want to be let alone."
Hilary began speaking rapidly.
"But these Hughs have not left you alone. I told you, I thought you
ought to move; I've taken another room for you quite away from them.
Leave your furniture with a week's rent, and take your trunk quietly
away to-morrow in a cab without saying a word to anyone. This is the
new address, and here's the money for your expenses. They're
dangerous for you, those people."
The little model muttered desperately: "But I don't care what they
do!"
Hilary went on: "Listen! You mustn't come here again, or the man
will trace you. We will take care you have what's necessary till you
can get other work."
The little model looked up at him without a word. Now that the thin
link which bound her to some sort of household gods had snapped, all
the patience and submission bred in her by village life, by the hard
facts of her story, and by these last months in London, served her
well enough. She made no fuss. Hilary saw a tear roll down her
cheek.
He turned his head away, and said: "Don't cry, my child!"
Quite obediently the little model swallowed the tear. A thought
seemed to strike her:
"But I could see you, Mr. Dallison, couldn't I, sometimes?"
Seeing from his face that this was not in the programme, she stood
silent again, looking up at him.
It was a little difficult for Hilary to say: "I can't see you because
my wife is jealous!" It was cruel to tell her: "I don't want to see
you! "besides, it was not true.
"You'll soon be making friends," he said at last, "and you can always
write to me"; and with a queer smile he added: "You're only just
beginning life; you mustn't take these things to heart; you'll find
plenty of people better able to advise and help you than ever I shall
be!"
The little model answered this by seizing his hand with both of hers.
She dropped it again at once, as if guilty of presumption, and stood
with her head bent. Hilary, looking down on the little hat which, by
his special wish, contained no feathers, felt a lump rise in his
throat.
"It's funny," he said; "I don't know your Christian name."
"Ivy," muttered the little model.
"Ivy! Well, I'll write to you. But you must promise me to do
exactly as I said."
The girl looked up; her face was almost ugly--like a child's in whom
a storm of feeling is repressed.
"Promise!" repeated Hilary.
With a bitter droop of her lower lip, she nodded, and suddenly put
her hand to her heart. That action, of which she was clearly
unconscious, so naively, so almost automatically was it done, nearly
put an end to Hilary's determination.
"Now you must go," he said.
The little model choked, grew very red, and then quite white.
"Aren't I even to say good-bye to Mr. Stone?"
Hilary shook his head.
"He'll miss me," she said desperately. "He will. I know he will!"
"So shall I," said Hilary. "We can't help that."
The little model drew herself up to her full height; her breast
heaved beneath the clothes which had made her Hilary's. She was very
like "The Shadow" at that moment, as though whatever Hilary might do
there she would be--a little ghost, the spirit of the helpless
submerged world, for ever haunting with its dumb appeal the minds of
men.
"Give me your hand," said Hilary.
The little model put out her not too white, small hand. It was soft,
clinging: and as hot as fire.
"Good-bye, my dear, and bless you!"
The little model gave him a look with who-knows-what of reproach in
it, and, faithful to her training, went submissively away.
Hilary did not look after her, but, standing by the lofty mantelpiece
above the ashes of the fire, rested his forehead on his arm. Not
even a fly's buzzing broke the stillness. There was sound for all
that-not of distant music, but of blood beating in his ears and
temples.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE "BOOK OF UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD"
It is fitting that a few words should be said about the writer of the
"Book of Universal Brotherhood."
Sylvanus Stone, having graduated very highly at the London
University, had been appointed at an early age lecturer to more than
one Public Institution. He had soon received the professorial robes
due to a man of his profound learning in the natural sciences, and
from that time till he was seventy his life had flowed on in one
continual round of lectures, addresses, disquisitions, and arguments
on the subjects in which he was a specialist. At the age of seventy,
long after his wife's death and the marriages of his three children,
he had for some time been living by himself, when a very serious
illness--the result of liberties taken with an iron constitution by a
single mind--prostrated him.
During the long convalescence following this illness the power of
contemplation, which the Professor had up to then given to natural
science, began to fix itself on life at large. But the mind which
had made of natural science an idea, a passion, was not content with
vague reflections on life. Slowly, subtly, with irresistible
centrifugal force--with a force which perhaps it would not have
acquired but for that illness--the idea, the passion of Universal
Brotherhood had sucked into itself all his errant wonderings on the
riddle of existence. The single mind of this old man, divorced by
illness from his previous existence, pensioned and permanently
shelved, began to worship a new star, that with every week and month
and year grew brighter, till all other stars had lost their glimmer
and died out.
At the age of seventy-four he had begun his book. Under the spell of
his subject and of advancing age, his extreme inattention to passing
matters became rapidly accentuated. His figure had become almost too
publicly conspicuous before Bianca, finding him one day seated on the
roof of his lonely little top-story flat, the better to contemplate
his darling Universe, had inveigled him home with her, and installed
him in a room in her own house. After the first day or two he had
not noticed any change to speak of.
His habits in his new home were soon formed, and once formed, they
varied not at all; for he admitted into his life nothing which took
him from the writing of his book.
On the afternoon following Hilary's dismissal of the little model,
being disappointed of his amanuensis, Mr. Stone had waited for an
hour, reading his pages over and over to himself. He had then done
his exercises. At the usual time for tea he had sat down, and, with
his cup and brown bread-and-butter alternately at his lips, had
looked long and fixedly at the place where the girl was wont to sit.
Having finished, he left the room and went about the house. He found
no one but Miranda, who, seated in the passage leading to the studio,
was trying to keep one eye on the absence of her master and the other
on the absence of her mistress. She joined Mr. Stone, maintaining a
respect-compelling interval behind him when he went before, and
before him when he went behind. When they had finished hunting, Mr.
Stone went down to the garden gate. Here Bianca found him presently
motionless, without a hat, in the full sun, craning his white head in
the direction from which he knew the little model habitually came.
The mistress of the house was herself returning from her annual visit
to the Royal Academy, where she still went, as dogs, from some
perverted sense, will go and sniff round other dogs to whom they have
long taken a dislike. A loose-hanging veil depended from her
mushroom-shaped and coloured hat. Her eyes were brightened by her
visit.
Mr. Stone soon seemed to take in who she was, and stood regarding her
a minute without speaking. His attitude towards his daughters was
rather like that of an old drake towards two swans whom he has
inadvertently begotten--there was inquiry in it, disapproval,
admiration, and faint surprise.
"Why has she not come?" he said.
Bianca winced behind her veil. "Have you asked Hilary?"
"I cannot find him," answered Mr. Stone. Something about his patient
stooping figure and white head, on which the sunlight was falling,
made Bianca slip her hand through his arm.
"Come in, Dad. I'll do your copying."
Mr. Stone looked at her intently, and shook his head.
"It would be against my principles; I cannot take an unpaid service.
But if you would come, my dear, I should like to read to you. It is
stimulating."
At that request Bianca's eyes grew dim. Pressing Mr. Stone's shaggy
arm against her breast, she moved with him towards the house.
"I think I may have written something that will interest you," Mr.
Stone said, as they went along.
"I am sure you have," Bianca murmured.
"It is universal," said Mr. Stone; "it concerns birth. Sit at the
table. I will begin, as usual, where I left off yesterday."
Bianca took the little model's seat, resting her chin on her hand, as
motionless as any of the statues she had just been viewing.
It almost seemed as if Mr. Stone were feeling nervous. He twice
arranged his papers; cleared his throat; then, lifting a sheet
suddenly, took three steps, turned his back on her, and began to
read.
"'In that slow, incessant change of form to form, called Life, men,
made spasmodic by perpetual action, had seized on a certain moment,
no more intrinsically notable than any other moment, and had called
it Birth. This habit of honouring one single instant of the
universal process to the disadvantage of all the other instants had
done more, perhaps, than anything to obfuscate the crystal clearness
of the fundamental flux. As well might such as watch the process of
the green, unfolding earth, emerging from the brumous arms of winter,
isolate a single day and call it Spring. In the tides of rhythm by
which the change of form to form was governed'"--Mr. Stone's voice,
which had till then been but a thin, husky murmur, gradually grew
louder and louder, as though he were addressing a great concourse--
"'the golden universal haze in which men should have flown like
bright wing-beats round the sun gave place to the parasitic halo
which every man derived from the glorifying of his own nativity. To
this primary mistake could be traced his intensely personal
philosophy. Slowly but surely there had dried up in his heart the
wish to be his brother.'"
He stopped reading suddenly.
"I see him coming in," he said.
The next minute the door opened, and Hilary entered.
"She has not come," said Mr. Stone; and Bianca murmured:
"We miss her!"
"Her eyes," said Mr. Stone, "have a peculiar look; they help me to
see into the future. I have noticed the same look in the eyes of
female dogs."
With a little laugh, Bianca murmured again:
"That is good!"
"There is one virtue in dogs," said Hilary, "which human beings lack-
they are incapable of mockery."
But Bianca's lips, parted, indrawn, seemed saying: 'You ask too much!
I no longer attract you. Am I to sympathise in the attraction this
common little girl has for you?'
Mr. Stone's gaze was fixed intently on the wall.
"The dog," he said, "has lost much of its primordial character."
And, moving to his desk, he took up his quill pen.
Hilary and Bianca made no sound, nor did they look at one another;
and in this silence, so much more full of meaning than any talk, the
scratching of the quill went on. Mr. Stone put it down at last, and,
seeing two persons in the room, read:
"'Looking back at those days when the doctrine of evolution had
reached its pinnacle, one sees how the human mind, by its habit of
continual crystallisations, had destroyed all the meaning of the
process. Witness, for example, that sterile phenomenon, the pagoda
of 'caste'! Like this Chinese building, so was Society then formed.
Men were living there in layers, as divided from each other, class
from class---'" He took up the quill, and again began to write.
"You understand, I suppose," said Hilary in a low voice, "that she
has been told not to come?"
Bianca moved her shoulders.
With a most unwonted look of anger, he added:
"Is it within the scope of your generosity to credit me with the
desire to meet your wishes?"
Bianca's answer was a laugh so strangely hard, so cruelly bitter,
that Hilary involuntarily turned, as though to retrieve the sound
before it reached the old man's ears.
Mr. Stone had laid down his pen. "I shall write no more to-day," he
said; "I have lost my feeling--I am not myself." He spoke in a voice
unlike his own.
Very tired and worn his old figure looked; as some lean horse, whose
sun has set, stands with drooped head, the hollows in his neck
showing under his straggling mane. And suddenly, evidently quite
oblivious that he had any audience, he spoke:
"O Great Universe, I am an old man of a faint spirit, with no
singleness of purpose. Help me to write on--help me to write a book
such as the world has never seen!"
A dead silence followed that strange prayer; then Bianca, with tears
rolling down her face, got up and rushed out of the room.
Mr. Stone came to himself. His mute, white face had suddenly grown
scared and pink. He looked at Hilary.
"I fear that I forgot myself. Have I said anything peculiar?"
Not feeling certain of his voice, Hilary shook his head, and he, too,
moved towards the door.
CHAPTER XXIV
SHADOWLAND
"Each of us has a shadow in those places--in those streets."
That saying of Mr. Stone's, which--like so many of his sayings--had
travelled forth to beat the air, might have seemed, even "in those
days," not altogether without meaning to anyone who looked into the
room of Mr. Joshua Creed in Hound Street.
This aged butler lay in bed waiting for the inevitable striking of a
small alarum clock placed in the very centre of his mantelpiece.
Flanking that round and ruthless arbiter, which drove him day by day
to stand up on feet whose time had come to rest, were the effigies of
his past triumphs. On the one hand, in a papier-mache frame,
slightly tinged with smuts, stood a portrait of the "Honorable
Bateson," in the uniform of his Yeomanry. Creed's former master's
face wore that dare-devil look with which he had been wont to say:
"D---n it, Creed! lend me a pound. I've got no money!" On the other
hand, in a green frame which had once been plush, and covered by a
glass with a crack in the left-hand corner, was a portrait of the
Dowager Countess of Glengower, as this former mistress of his
appeared, conceived by the local photographer, laying the foundation-
stone of the local almshouse. During the wreck of Creed's career,
which, following on a lengthy illness, had preceded his salvation by
the Westminster Gazette, these two household gods had lain at the
bottom of an old tin trunk, in the possession of the keeper of a
lodging-house, waiting to be bailed out. The "Honorable Bateson" was
now dead, nor had he paid as yet the pounds he had borrowed. Lady
Glengower, too, was in heaven, remembering that she had forgotten all
her servants in her will. He who had served them was still alive,
and his first thought, when he had secured his post on the
"Westminister," was to save enough to rescue them from a
dishonourable confinement. It had taken him six months. He had found
them keeping company with three pairs of woollen drawers; an old but
respectable black tail-coat; a plaid cravat; a Bible; four socks, two
of which had toes and two of which had heels; some darning-cotton and
a needle; a pair of elastic-sided boots; a comb and a sprig of white
heather, wrapped up with a little piece of shaving-soap and two pipe-
cleaners in a bit of the Globe newspaper; also two collars, whose
lofty points, separated by gaps of quite two inches, had been wont to
reach their master's gills; the small alarum clock aforesaid; and a
tiepin formed in the likeness of Queen Victoria at the date of her
first Jubilee. How many times had he not gone in thought over those
stores of treasure while he was parted from them! How many times
since they had come back to him had he not pondered with a slow but
deathless anger on the absence of a certain shirt, which he could
have sworn had been amongst them.
But now he lay in bed waiting to hear the clock go off, with his old
bristly chin beneath the bedclothes, and his old discoloured nose
above. He was thinking the thoughts which usually came into his mind
about this hour--that Mrs. Hughs ought not to scrape the butter off
his bread for breakfast in the way she did; that she ought to take
that sixpence off his rent; that the man who brought his late
editions in the cart ought to be earlier, letting 'that man' get his
Pell Mells off before him, when he himself would be having the one
chance of his day; that, sooner than pay the ninepence which the
bootmaker had proposed to charge for resoling him, he would wait
until the summer came 'low class o' feller' as he was, he'd be glad
enough to sole him then for sixpence
And the high-souled critic, finding these reflections sordid, would
have thought otherwise, perhaps, had he been standing on those feet
(now twitching all by themselves beneath the bedclothes) up to eleven
o'clock the night before, because there were still twelve numbers of
the late edition that nobody would buy. No one knew more surely than
Joshua Creed himself that, if he suffered himself to entertain any
large and lofty views of life, he would infallibly find himself in
that building to keep out of which he was in the habit of addressing
to God his only prayer to speak of. Fortunately, from a boy up,
together with a lengthy, oblong, square-jawed face, he had been given
by Nature a single-minded view of life. In fact, the mysterious,
stout tenacity of a soul born in the neighbourhood of Newmarket could
not have been done justice to had he constitutionally seen--any more
than Mr. Stone himself--two things at a time. The one thing he had
seen, for the five years that he had now stood outside Messrs. Rose
and Thorn's, was the workhouse; and, as he was not going there so
long as he was living, he attended carefully to all little matters of
expense in this somewhat sordid way.
While attending thus, he heard a scream. Having by temperament
considerable caution, but little fear, he waited till he heard
another, and then got out of bed. Taking the poker in his hand, and
putting on his spectacles, he hurried to the door. Many a time and
oft in old days had he risen in this fashion to defend the plate of
the "Honorable Bateson" and the Dowager Countess of Glengower from
the periodical attacks of his imagination. He stood with his ancient
nightgown flapping round his still more ancient legs, slightly
shivering; then, pulling the door open, he looked forth. On the
stairs just above him Mrs. Hughs, clasping her baby with one arm, was
holding the other out at full length between herself and Hughs. He
heard the latter say: "You've drove me to it; I'll do a swing for
you!" Mrs. Hughs' thin body brushed past into his room; blood was
dripping from her wrist. Creed saw that Hughs had his bayonet in his
hand. With all his might he called out: "Ye ought to be ashamed of
yourself!" raising the poker to a position of defence. At this
moment--more really dangerous than any he had ever known--it was
remarkable that he instinctively opposed to it his most ordinary
turns of speech. It was as though the extravagance of this un-
English violence had roused in him the full measure of a native
moderation. The sight of the naked steel deeply disgusted him; he
uttered a long sentence. What did Hughs call this--disgracin' of the
house at this time in the mornin'? Where was he brought up? Call
'imself a soldier, attackin' of old men and women in this way? He
ought to be ashamed!
While these words were issuing between the yellow stumps of teeth in
that withered mouth, Hughs stood silent, the back of his arm covering
his eyes. Voices and a heavy tread were heard. Distinguishing in
that tread the advancing footsteps of the Law, Creed said: "You
attack me if you dare!"
Hughs dropped his arm. His short, dark face had a desperate look, as
of a caged rat; his eyes were everywhere at once.
"All right, daddy," he said; "I won't hurt you. She's drove my head
all wrong again. Catch hold o' this; I can't trust myself." He held
out the bayonet.
"Westminister" took it gingerly in his shaking hand.
"To use a thing like that!" he said. "An' call yourself an
Englishman! I'll ketch me death standin' here, I will."
Hughs made no answer leaning against the wall. The old butler
regarded him severely. He did not take a wide or philosophic view of
him, as a tortured human being, driven by the whips of passion in his
dark blood; a creature whose moral nature was the warped, stunted
tree his life had made it; a poor devil half destroyed by drink and
by his wound. The old butler took a more single-minded and old-
fashioned line. 'Ketch 'old of 'im!' he thought. 'With these low
fellers there's nothin' else to be done. Ketch 'old of 'im until he
squeals.'
Nodding his ancient head, he said:
"Here's an orficer. I shan't speak for yer; you deserves all you'll
get, and more."
Later, dressed in an old Newmarket coat, given him by some client,
and walking towards the police-station alongside Mrs. Hughs, he was
particularly silent, presenting a front of some austerity, as became
a man mixed up in a low class of incident like this. And the
seamstress, very thin and scared, with her wounded wrist slung in a
muffler of her husband's, and carrying the baby on her other arm,
because the morning's incident had upset the little thing, slipped
along beside him, glancing now and then into his face.
Only once did he speak, and to himself:
"I don't know what they'll say to me down at the orffice, when I go
again-missin' my day like this! Oh dear, what a misfortune! What
put it into him to go on like that?"
At this, which was far from being intended as encouragement, the
waters of speech broke up and flowed from Mrs. Hughs. She had only
told Hughs how that young girl had gone, and left a week's rent, with
a bit of writing to say she wasn't coming back; it wasn't her fault
that she was gone--that ought never to have come there at all, a
creature that knew no better than to come between husband and wife.
She couldn't tell no more than he could where that young girl had
gone!
The tears, stealing forth, chased each other down the seamstress's
thin cheeks. Her face had now but little likeness to the face with
which she had stood confronting Hughs when she informed him of the
little model's flight. None of the triumph which had leaped out of
her bruised heart, none of the strident malice with which her voice,
whether she would or no, strove to avenge her wounded sense of
property; none of that unconscious abnegation, so very near to
heroism, with which she had rushed and caught up her baby from
beneath the bayonet, when, goaded by her malice and triumph, Hughs
had rushed to seize that weapon. None of all that, but, instead, a
pitiable terror of the ordeal before her--a pitiful, mute, quivering
distress, that this man, against whom, two hours before, she had felt
such a store of bitter rancour, whose almost murderous assault she
had so narrowly escaped, should now be in this plight.
The sight of her emotion penetrated through his spectacles to
something lying deep in the old butler.
"Don't you take on," he said; "I'll stand by yer. He shan't treat
yer with impuniness."
To his uncomplicated nature the affair was still one of tit for tat.
Mrs. Hughs became mute again. Her torn heart yearned to cancel the
penalty that would fall on all of them, to deliver Hughs from the
common enemy--the Law; but a queer feeling of pride and bewilderment,
and a knowledge, that, to demand an eye for an eye was expected of
all self-respecting persons, kept her silent.
Thus, then, they reached the great consoler, the grey resolver of all
human tangles, haven of men and angels, the police court. It was
situated in a back street. Like trails of ooze, when the tide,
neither ebb nor flow, is leaving and making for some estuary, trails
of human beings were moving to and from it. The faces of these
shuffling "shadows" wore a look as though masked with some hard but
threadbare stuff-the look of those whom Life has squeezed into a last
resort. Within the porches lay a stagnant marsh of suppliants,
through whose centre trickled to and fro that stream of ooze. An old
policeman, too, like some grey lighthouse, marked the entrance to the
port of refuge. Close to that lighthouse the old butler edged his
way. The love of regularity, and of an established order of affairs,
born in him and fostered by a life passed in the service of the
"Honorable Bateson" and the other gentry, made him cling
instinctively to the only person in this crowd whom he could tell for
certain to be on the side of law and order. Something in his oblong
face and lank, scanty hair parted precisely in the middle, something
in that high collar supporting his lean gills, not subservient
exactly, but as it were suggesting that he was in league against all
this low-class of fellow, made the policeman say to him:
"What's your business, daddy?"
"Oh!" the old butler answered. "This poor woman. I'm a witness to
her battery."
The policeman cast his not unkindly look over the figure of the
seamstress. "You stand here," he said; " I'll pass you in directly."
And soon by his offices the two were passed into the port of refuge.
They sat down side by side on the edge of a long, hard, wooden bench;
Creed fixing his eyes, whose colour had run into a brownish rim round
their centres, on the magistrate, as in old days sun-worshippers
would sit blinking devoutly at the sun; and Mrs. Hughs fixing her
eyes on her lap, while tears of agony trickled down her face. On her
unwounded arm the baby slept. In front of them, and unregarded,
filed one by one those shadows who had drunk the day before too
deeply of the waters of forgetfulness. To-day, instead, they were to
drink the water of remembrance, poured out for them with no uncertain
hand. And somewhere very far away, it may have been that Justice sat
with her ironic smile watching men judge their shadows. She had
watched them so long about that business. With her elementary idea
that hares and tortoises should not be made to start from the same
mark she had a little given up expecting to be asked to come and lend
a hand; they had gone so far beyond her. Perhaps she knew, too, that
men no longer punished, but now only reformed, their erring brothers,
and this made her heart as light as the hearts of those who had been
in the prisons where they were no longer punished.
The old butler, however, was not thinking of her; he had thoughts of
a simpler order in his mind. He was reflecting that he had once
valeted the nephew of the late Lord Justice Hawthorn, and in the
midst of this low-class business the reminiscence brought him
refreshment. Over and over to himself he conned these words: "I
interpylated in between them, and I says, 'You ought to be ashamed of
yourself; call yourself an Englishman, I says, attackin' of old men
and women with cold steel, I says!'" And suddenly he saw that Hughs
was in the dock.
The dark man stood with his hands pressed to his sides, as though at
attention on parade. A pale profile, broken by a line of black
moustache, was all "Westminister" could see of that impassive face,
whose eyes, fixed on the magistrate, alone betrayed the fires within.
The violent trembling of the seamstress roused in Joshua Creed a
certain irritation, and seeing the baby open his black eyes, he
nudged her, whispering: "Ye've woke the baby!"
Responding to words, which alone perhaps could have moved her at such
a moment, Mrs. Hughs rocked this dumb spectator of the drama. Again
the old butler nudged her.
"They want yer in the box," he said.
Mrs. Hughs rose, and took her place.
He who wished to read the hearts of this husband and wife who stood
at right angles, to have their wounds healed by Law, would have
needed to have watched the hundred thousand hours of their wedded
life, known and heard the million thoughts and words which had passed
in the dim spaces of their world, to have been cognisant of the
million reasons why they neither of them felt that they could have
done other than they had done. Reading their hearts by the light of
knowledge such as this, he would not have been surprised that,
brought into this place of remedy, they seemed to enter into a sudden
league. A look passed between them. It was not friendly, it had no
appeal; but it sufficed. There seemed to be expressed in it the
knowledge bred by immemorial experience and immemorial time: This law
before which we stand was not made by us! As dogs, when they hear
the crack of a far whip, will shrink, and in their whole bearing show
wary quietude, so Hughs and Mrs. Hughs, confronted by the
questionings of Law, made only such answers as could be dragged from
them. In a voice hardly above a whisper Mrs. Hughs told her tale.
They had fallen out. What about? She did not know. Had he attacked
her? He had had it in his hand. What then? She had slipped, and
hurt her wrist against the point. At this statement Hughs turned his
eyes on her, and seemed to say: "You drove me to it; I've got to
suffer, for all your trying to get me out of what I've done. I gave
you one, and I don't want your help. But I'm glad you stick to me
against this Law!" Then, lowering his eyes, he stood motionless
during her breathless little outburst. He was her husband; she had
borne him five; he had been wounded in the war. She had never wanted
him brought here.
No mention of the little model....
The old butler dwelt on this reticence of Mrs. Hughs, when, two hours
afterwards, in pursuance of his instinctive reliance on the gentry,
he called on Hilary.
The latter, surrounded by books and papers--for, since his dismissal
of the girl, he had worked with great activity--was partaking of
lunch, served to him in his study on a tray.
"There's an old gentleman to see you, sir; he says you know him; his
name is Creed."
"Show him in," said Hilary.
Appearing suddenly from behind the servant in the doorway, the old
butler came in at a stealthy amble; he looked round, and, seeing a
chair, placed his hat beneath it, then advanced, with nose and
spectacles upturned, to Hilary. Catching sight of the tray, he
stopped, checked in an evident desire to communicate his soul.
"Oh dear," he said, "I'm intrudin' on your luncheon. I can wait;
I'll go and sit in the passage."
Hilary, however, shook his hand, faded now to skin and bone, and
motioned him to a chair.
He sat down on the edge of it, and again said:
"I'm intrudin' on yer."
"Not at all. Is there anything I can do?"
Creed took off his spectacles, wiped them to help himself to see more
clearly what he had to say, and put them on again.
"It's a-concerning of these domestic matters," he said. "I come up
to tell yer, knowing as you're interested in this family."
"Well," said Hilary. "What has happened?"
"It's along of the young girl's having left them, as you may know."
"Ah!"
"It's brought things to a crisax," explained Creed.
"Indeed, how's that?"
The old butler related the facts of the assault. "I took 'is bayonet
away from him," he ended; "he didn't frighten me."
"Is he out of his mind?" asked Hilary.
"I've no conscience of it," replied Creed. "His wife, she's gone the
wrong way to work with him, in my opinion, but that's particular to
women. She's a-goaded of him respecting a certain party. I don't
say but what that young girl's no better than what she ought to be;
look at her profession, and her a country girl, too! She must be
what she oughtn't to. But he ain't the sort o' man you can treat
like that. You can't get thorns from figs; you can't expect it from
the lower orders. They only give him a month, considerin' of him
bein' wounded in the war. It'd been more if they'd a-known he was a-
hankerin' after that young girl--a married man like him; don't ye
think so, sir?"
Hilary's face had assumed its retired expression. 'I cannot go into
that with you,' it seemed to say.
Quick to see the change, Creed rose. "But I'm intrudin' on your
dinner," he said--"your luncheon, I should say. The woman goes on
irritatin' of him, but he must expect of that, she bein' his wife.
But what a misfortune! He'll be back again in no time, and what'll
happen then? It won't improve him, shut up in one of them low
prisons!" Then, raising his old face to Hilary: "Oh dear! It's like
awalkin' on a black night, when ye can't see your 'and before yer."
Hilary was unable to find a suitable answer to this simile.
The impression made on him by the old butler's recital was queerly
twofold; his more fastidious side felt distinct relief that he had
severed connection with an episode capable of developments so sordid
and conspicuous. But all the side of him--and Hilary was a
complicated product--which felt compassion for the helpless, his
suppressed chivalry, in fact, had also received its fillip. The old
butler's references to the girl showed clearly how the hands of all
men and women were against her. She was that pariah, a young girl
without property or friends, spiritually soft, physically alluring.
To recompense "Westminister" for the loss of his day's work, to make
a dubious statement that nights were never so black as they appeared
to be, was all that he could venture to do. Creed hesitated in the
doorway.
"Oh dear," he said, "there's a-one thing that the woman was a-saying
that I've forgot to tell you. It's a-concernin' of what this 'ere
man was boastin' in his rage. 'Let them,' he says, 'as is responsive
for the movin' of her look out,' he says; 'I ain't done with them!'
That's conspiracy, I should think!"
Smiling away this diagnosis of Hughs' words, Hilary shook the old
man's withered hand, and closed the door. Sitting down again at his
writing-table, he buried himself almost angrily in his work. But the
queer, half-pleasurable, fevered feeling, which had been his, since
the night he walked down Piccadilly, and met the image of the little
model, was unfavourable to the austere process of his thoughts.
CHAPTER XXV
MR. STONE IN WAITING
That same afternoon, ,while Mr. Stone was writing, he heard a
voice saying:
"Dad, stop writing just a minute, and talk to me."
Recognition came into his eyes. It was his younger daughter.
"My dear," he said, "are you unwell?"
Keeping his hand, fragile and veined and chill, under her own warm
grasp, Bianca answered: "Lonely."
Mr. Stone looked straight before him.
"Loneliness," he said, "is man's chief fault"; and seeing his pen
lying on the desk, he tried to lift his hand. Bianca held it down.
At that hot clasp something seemed to stir in Mr. Stone. His cheeks
grew pink.
"Kiss me, Dad."
Mr. Stone hesitated. Then his lips resolutely touched her eye. "It
is wet," he said. He seemed for a moment struggling to grasp the
meaning of moisture in connection with the human eye. Soon his face
again became serene. "The heart," he said, "is a dark well; its
depth unknown. I have lived eighty years. I am still drawing
water."
"Draw a little for me, Dad."
This time Mr. Stone looked at his daughter anxiously, and suddenly
spoke, as if afraid that if he waited he might forget.
"You are unhappy!"
Bianca put her face down to his tweed sleeve. "How nice your coat
smells!" she murmured.
"You are unhappy," repeated Mr. Stone.
Bianca dropped his hand, and moved away.
Mr. Stone followed her. "Why?" he said. Then, grasping his brow,
he added: "If it would do you any good, my dear, to hear a page or
two, I could read to you."
Bianca shook her head.
"No; talk to me!"
Mr. Stone answered simply: "I have forgotten."
"You talk to that little girl," murmured Bianca.
Mr. Stone seemed to lose himself in reverie.
"If that is true," he said, following out his thoughts, "it must be
due to the sex instinct not yet quite extinct. It is stated that the
blackcock will dance before his females to a great age, though I have
never seen it."
"If you dance before her," said Bianca, with her face averted, "can't
you even talk to me?"
"I do not dance, my dear," said Mr. Stone; " I will do my best to
talk to you."
There was a silence, and he began to pace the room. Bianca, by the
empty fireplace, watched a shower of rain driving past the open
window.
"This is the time of year," said Mr. Stone suddenly; "when lambs leap
off the ground with all four legs at a time." He paused as though
for an answer; then, out of the silence, his voice rose again--it
sounded different: "There is nothing in Nature more symptomatic of
that principle which should underlie all life. Live in the future;
regret nothing; leap! A lamb which has left earth with all four legs
at once is the symbol of true life. That she must come down again is
but an inevitable accident. 'In those days men were living on their
pasts. They leaped with one, or, at the most, two legs at a time;
they never left the ground, or in leaving, they wished to know the
reason why. It was this paralysis'"--Mr. Stone did not pause, but,
finding himself close beside his desk, took up his pen--"'it was this
paralysis of the leaping nerve which undermined their progress.
Instead of millions of leaping lambs, ignorant of why they leaped,
they were a flock of sheep lifting up one leg and asking whether it
was or was not worth their while to lift another.'"
The words were followed by a silence, broken only by the scratching
of the quill with which Mr. Stone was writing.
Having finished, he again began to pace the room, and coming suddenly
on his daughter, stopped short. Touching her shoulder timidly, he
said: "I was talking to you, I think, my dear; where were we?"
Bianca rubbed her cheek against his hand.
"In the air, I think."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Stone, "I remember. You must not let me wander
from the point again."
"No, dear."
"Lambs," said Mr. Stone, "remind me at times of that young girl who
comes to copy for me. I make her skip to promote her circulation
before tea. I myself do this exercise." Leaning against the wall,
with his feet twelve inches from it, he rose slowly on his toes. "Do
you know that exercise? It is excellent for the calves of the legs,
and for the lumbar regions." So saying, Mr. Stone left the wall, and
began again to pace the room; the whitewash had also left the wall,
and clung in a large square patch on his shaggy coat. "I have seen
sheep in Spring," he said, "actually imitate their lambs in rising
from the ground with all four legs at once." He stood still. A
thought had evidently struck him.
"If Life is not all Spring, it is of no value whatsoever; better to
die, and to begin again. Life is a tree putting on a new green gown;
it is a young moon rising--no, that is not so, we do not see the
young moon rising--it is a young moon setting, never younger than
when we are about to die--"
Bianca cried out sharply: "Don't, Father! Don't talk like that; it's
so untrue! Life is all autumn, it seems to me!"
Mr. Stone's eyes grew very blue.
"That is a foul heresy," he stammered; "I cannot listen to it. Life
is the cuckoo's song; it is a hill-side bursting into leaf; it is the
wind; I feel it in me every day!"
He was trembling like a leaf in the wind he spoke of, and Bianca
moved hastily towards him, holding out her arms. Suddenly his lips
began to move; she heard him mutter: "I have lost force; I will boil
some milk. I must be ready when she comes." And at those words her
heart felt like a lump of ice.
Always that girl! And without again attracting his attention she
went away. As she passed out through the garden she saw him at the
window holding a cup of milk, from which the steam was rising.
CHAPTER XXVI
THIRD PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET
Like water, human character will find its level; and Nature, with her
way of fitting men to their environment, had made young Martin Stone
what Stephen called a "Sanitist." There had been nothing else for
her to do with him.
This young man had come into the social scheme at a moment when the
conception of existence as a present life corrected by a life to
come, was tottering; and the conception of the world as an upper-
class preserve somewhat seriously disturbed.
Losing his father and mother at an early age, and brought up till he
was fourteen by Mr. Stone, he had formed the habit of thinking for
himself. This had rendered him unpopular, and added force to the
essential single-heartedness transmitted to him through his
grandfather. A particular aversion to the sights and scenes of
suffering, which had caused him as a child to object to killing
flies, and to watching rabbits caught in traps, had been regulated by
his training as a doctor. His fleshly horror of pain and ugliness
was now disciplined, his spiritual dislike of them forced into a
philosophy. The peculiar chaos surrounding all young men who live in
large towns and think at all, had made him gradually reject all
abstract speculation; but a certain fire of aspiration coming, we may
suppose, through Mr. Stone, had nevertheless impelled him to embrace
something with all his might. He had therefore embraced health. And
living, as he did, in the Euston Road, to be in touch with things, he
had every need of the health which he embraced.
Late in the afternoon of the day when Hughs had committed his
assault, having three hours of respite from his hospital, Martin
dipped his face and head into cold water, rubbed them with a
corrugated towel, put on a hard bowler hat, took a thick stick in his
hand, and went by Underground to Kensington.
With his usual cool, high-handed air he entered his aunt's house, and
asked for Thyme. Faithful to his definite, if somewhat crude theory,
that Stephen and Cecilia and all their sort were amateurs, he never
inquired for them, though not unfrequently he would, while waiting,
stroll into Cecilia's drawing-room, and let his sarcastic glance
sweep over the pretty things she had collected, or, lounging in some
luxurious chair, cross his long legs, and fix his eyes on the
ceiling.
Thyme soon came down. She wore a blouse of some blue stuff bought by
Cecilia for the relief of people in the Balkan States, a skirt of
purplish tweed woven by Irish gentlewomen in distress, and held in
her hand an open envelope addressed in Cecilia's writing to Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace.
"Hallo!" she said.
Martin answered by a look that took her in from head to foot.
"Get on a hat! I haven't got much time. That blue thing's new."
"It's pure flax. Mother bought it."
"It's rather decent. Hurry up!"
Thyme raised her chin; that lazy movement showed her round, creamy
neck in all its beauty.
"I feel rather slack," she said; "besides, I must get back to dinner,
Martin."
"Dinner!"
Thyme turned quickly to the door. "Oh, well, I'll come," and ran
upstairs.
When they had purchased a postal order for ten shillings, placed it
in the envelope addressed to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, and passed the
hundred doors of Messrs. Rose and Thorn, Martin said: "I'm going to
see what that precious amateur has done about the baby. If he hasn't
moved the girl, I expect to find things in a pretty mess."
Thyme's face changed at once.
"Just remember," she said, "that I don't want to go there. I don't
see the good, when there's such a tremendous lot waiting to be done."
"Every other case, except the one in hand!"
"It's not my case. You're so disgustingly unfair, Martin. I don't
like those people."
"Oh, you amateur!"
Thyme flushed crimson. "Look here!" she said, speaking with dignity,
"I don't care what you call me, but I won't have you call Uncle
Hilary an amateur."
"What is he, then?"
"I like him."
"That's conclusive."
"Yes, it is."
Martin did not reply, looking sideways at Thyme with his queer,
protective smile. They were passing through a street superior to
Hound Street in its pretensions to be called a slum.
"Look here!" he said suddenly; "a man like Hilary's interest in all
this sort of thing is simply sentimental. It's on his nerves. He
takes philanthropy just as he'd take sulphonal for sleeplessness."
Thyme looked shrewdly up at him.
"Well," she said, "it's just as much on your nerves. You see it from
the point of view of health; he sees it from the point of view of
sentiment, that's all."
"Oh! you think so?"
"You just treat all these people as if they were in hospital."
The young man's nostrils quivered. "Well, and how should they be
treated?"
"How would you like to be looked at as a 'case'?" muttered Thyme.
Martin moved his hand in a slow half-circle.
"These houses and these people," he said, "are in the way--in the way
of you and me, and everyone."
Thyme's eyes followed that slow, sweeping movement of her cousin's
hand. It seemed to fascinate her.
"Yes, of course; I know," she murmured. "Something must be done!"
And she reared her head up, looking from side to side, as if to show
him that she, too, could sweep away things. Very straight, and
solid, fair, and fresh, she looked just then.
Thus, in the hypnotic silence of high thoughts, the two young
"Sanitists" arrived in Hound Street.
In the doorway of No. 1 the son of the lame woman, Mrs. Budgen--the
thin, white youth as tall as Martin, but not so broad-stood, smoking
a dubious-looking cigarette. He turned his lack-lustre, jeering gaze
on the visitors.
"Who d'you want?" he said. "If it's the girl, she's gone away, and
left no address."
"I want Mrs. Hughs," said Martin.
The young man coughed. "Right-o! You'll find her; but for him,
apply Wormwood Scrubs."
"Prison! What for?"
"Stickin' her through the wrist with his bayonet;" and the young man
let a long, luxurious fume of smoke trickle through his nose.
"How horrible!" said Thyme.
Martin regarded the young man, unmoved. "That stuff' you're
smoking's rank," he said. "Have some of mine; I'll show you how to
make them. It'll save you one and three per pound of baccy, and
won't rot your lungs."
Taking out his pouch, he rolled a cigarette. The white young man
bent his dull wink on Thyme, who, wrinkling her nose, was pretending
to be far away.
Mounting the narrow stairs that smelt of walls and washing and red
herrings, Thyme spoke: "Now, you see, it wasn't so simple as you
thought. I don't want to go up; I don't want to see her. I shall
wait for you here." She took her stand in the open doorway of the
little model's empty room. Martin ascended to the second floor.
There, in the front room, Mrs. Hughs was seen standing with the baby
in her arms beside the bed. She had a frightened and uncertain air.
After examining her wrist, and pronouncing it a scratch, Martin
looked long at the baby. The little creature's toes were stiffened
against its mother's waist, its eyes closed, its tiny fingers crisped
against her breast. While Mrs. Hughs poured forth her tale, Martin
stood with his eyes still fixed on the baby. It could not be
gathered from his face what he was thinking, but now and then he
moved his jaw, as though he were suffering from toothache. In truth,
by the look of Mrs. Hughs and her baby, his recipe did not seem to
have achieved conspicuous success. He turned away at last from the
trembling, nerveless figure of the seamstress, and went to the
window. Two pale hyacinth plants stood on the inner edge; their
perfume penetrated through the other savours of the room--and very
strange they looked, those twin, starved children of the light and
air.
"These are new," he said.
"Yes, sir," murmured Mrs. Hughs. "I brought them upstairs. I didn't
like to see the poor things left to die."
>From the bitter accent of these words Martin understood that they had
been the little model's.
"Put them outside," he said; "they'll never live in here. They want
watering, too. Where are your saucers?"
Mrs. Hughs laid the baby down, and, going to the cupboard where all
the household gods were kept, brought out two old, dirty saucers.
Martin raised the plants, and as he held them, from one close, yellow
petal there rose up a tiny caterpillar. It reared a green,
transparent body, feeling its way to a new resting-place. The little
writhing shape seemed, like the wonder and the mystery of life, to
mock the young doctor, who watched it with eyebrows raised, having no
hand at liberty to remove it from the plant.
"She came from the country. There's plenty of men there for her!"
Martin put the plants down, and turned round to the seamstress.
"Look here!" he said, "it's no good crying over spilt milk. What
you've got to do is to set to and get some work."
"Yes, sir."
"Don't say it in that sort of way," said Martin; "you must rise to
the occasion."
"Yes, sir."
"You want a tonic. Take this half-crown, and get in a dozen pints of
stout, and drink one every day."
And again Mrs. Hughs said, "Yes, sir."
"And about that baby."
Motionless, where it had been placed against the footrail of the bed,
the baby sat with its black eyes closed. The small grey face was
curled down on the bundle of its garments.
"It's a silent gentleman," Martin muttered.
"It never was a one to cry," said Mrs. Hughs.
"That's lucky, anyway. When did you feed it last?"
Mrs. Hughs did not reply at first. "About half-past six last
evening, sir."
"What?"
"It slept all night; but to-day, of course, I've been all torn to
pieces; my milk's gone. I've tried it with the bottle, but it
wouldn't take it."
Martin bent down to the baby's face, and put his finger on its chin;
bending lower yet, he raised the eyelid of the tiny eye....
"It's dead," he said.
At the word "dead" Mrs. Hughs, stooping behind him, snatched the baby
to her throat. With its drooping head close to her she, she clutched
and rocked it without sound. Full five minutes this desperate mute
struggle with eternal silence lasted--the feeling, and warming, and
breathing on the little limbs. Then, sitting down, bent almost
double over her baby, she moaned. That single sound was followed by
utter silence. The tread of footsteps on the creaking stairs broke
it. Martin, rising from his crouching posture by the bed, went
towards the door.
His grandfather was standing there, with Thyme behind him.
"She has left her room," said Mr. Stone. "Where has she gone?"
Martin, understanding that he meant the little model, put his finger
to his lips, and, pointing to Mrs. Hughs, whispered:
"This woman's baby has just died."
Mr. Stone's face underwent the queer discoloration which marked the
sudden summoning of his far thoughts. He stepped past Martin, and
went up to Mrs. Hughs.
He stood there a long time gazing at the baby, and at the dark head
bending over it with such despair. At last he spoke:
"Poor woman! He is at peace."
Mrs. Hughs looked up, and, seeing that old face, with its hollows and
thin silver hair, she spoke:
"He's dead, sir."
Mr. Stone put out his veined and fragile hand, and touched the baby's
toes. "He is flying; he is everywhere; he is close to the sun--
Little brother!" And turning on his heel, he went out.
Thyme followed him as he walked on tiptoe down stairs which seemed to
creak the louder for his caution. Tears were rolling down her
cheeks.
Martin sat on, with the mother and her baby, in the close, still
room, where, like strange visiting spirits, came stealing whiffs of
the perfume of hyacinths.
CHAPTER XXVII
STEPHEN'S PRIVATE LIFE
Mr. Stone and Thyme, going out, again passed the tall, white young
man. He had thrown away the hand-made cigarette, finding that it had
not enough saltpetre to make it draw, and was smoking one more suited
to the action of his lungs. He directed towards them the same lack-
lustre, jeering stare.
Unconscious, seemingly, of where he went, Mr. Stone walked with his
eyes fixed on space. His head jerked now and then, as a dried flower
will shiver in a draught.
Scared at these movements, Thyme took his arm. The touch of that
soft young arm squeezing his own brought speech back to Mr. Stone.
"In those places...." he said, "in those streets! ...I shall not see
the flowering of the aloe--I shall not see the living peace! 'As
with dogs, each couched over his proper bone, so men were living
then!'" Thyme, watching him askance, pressed still closer to his
side, as though to try and warm him back to every day.
'Oh!' went her guttered thoughts. 'I do wish grandfather would say
something one could understand. I wish he would lose that dreadful
stare.'
Mr. Stone spoke in answer to his granddaughter's thoughts.
"I have seen a vision of fraternity. A barren hillside in the sun,
and on it a man of stone talking to the wind. I have heard an owl
hooting in the daytime; a cuckoo singing in the night."
"Grandfather, grandfather!"
To that appeal Mr. Stone responded: "Yes, what is it?"
But Thyme, thus challenged, knew not what to say, having spoken out
of terror.
"If the poor baby had lived," she stammered out, "it would have grown
up.... It's all for the best, isn't it?"
"Everything is for the best," said Mr. Stone. "'In those days men,
possessed by thoughts of individual life, made moan at death,
careless of the great truth that the world was one unending song.'"
Thyme thought: 'I have never seen him as bad as this!' She drew him
on more quickly. With deep relief she saw her father, latchkey in
hand, turning into the Old Square.
Stephen, who was still walking with his springy step, though he had
come on foot the whole way from the Temple, hailed them with his hat.
It was tall and black, and very shiny, neither quite oval nor
positively round, and had a little curly brim. In this and his black
coat, cut so as to show the front of him and cover the behind, he
looked his best. The costume suited his long, rather narrow face,
corrugated by two short parallel lines slanting downwards from his
eyes and nostrils on either cheek; suited his neat, thin figure and
the close-lipped corners of his mouth. His permanent appointment in
the world of Law had ousted from his life (together with all
uncertainty of income) the need for putting on a wig and taking his
moustache off; but he still preferred to go clean-shaved.
"Where have you two sprung from?" he inquired, admitting them into
the hall.
Mr. Stone gave him no answer, but passed into the drawing-room, and
sat down on the verge of the first chair he came across, leaning
forward with his hands between his knees.
Stephen, after one dry glance at him, turned to his daughter.
"My child," he said softly, "what have you brought the old boy here
for? If there happens to be anything of the high mammalian order for
dinner, your mother will have a fit."
Thyme answered: "Don't chaff, Father!"
Stephen, who was very fond of her, saw that for some reason she was
not herself. He examined her with unwonted gravity. Thyme turned
away from him. He heard, to his alarm, a little gulping sound.
"My dear!" he said.
Conscious of her sentimental weakness, Thyme made a violent effort.
"I've seen a baby dead," she cried in a quick, hard voice; and,
without another word, she ran upstairs.
In Stephen there was a horror of emotion amounting almost to disease.
It would have been difficult to say when he had last shown emotion;
perhaps not since Thyme was born, and even then not to anyone except
himself, having first locked the door, and then walked up and down,
with his teeth almost meeting in the mouthpiece of his favourite
pipe. He was unaccustomed, too, to witness this weakness on the part
of other people. His looks and speech unconsciously discouraged it,
so that if Cecilia had been at all that way inclined, she must long
ago have been healed. Fortunately, she never had been, having too
much distrust of her own feelings to give way to them completely.
And Thyme, that healthy product of them both, at once younger for her
age, and older, than they had ever been, with her incapacity for
nonsense, her love for open air and facts--that fresh, rising plant,
so elastic and so sane--she had never given them a single moment of
uneasiness.
Stephen, close to his hat-rack, felt soreness in his heart. Such
blows as Fortune had dealt, and meant to deal him, he had borne, and
he could bear, so long as there was nothing in his own manner, or in
that of others, to show him they were blows.
Hurriedly depositing his hat, he ran to Cecilia. He still preserved
the habit of knocking on her door before he entered, though she had
never, so far, answered, "Don't come in!" because she knew his knock.
The custom gave, in fact, the measure of his idealism. What he
feared, or what he thought he feared, after nineteen years of
unchecked entrance, could never have been ascertained; but there it
was, that flower of something formal and precise, of something
reticent, within his soul.
This time, for once, he did not knock, and found Cecilia hooking up
her tea-gown and looking very sweet. She glanced at him with mild
surprise.
"What's this, Cis," he said, "about a baby dead? Thyme's quite upset
about it; and your dad's in the drawing-room!"
With the quick instinct that was woven into all her gentle treading,
Cecilia's thoughts flew--she could not have told why--first to the
little model, then to Mrs. Hughs.
"Dead?" she said. "Oh, poor woman!"
"What woman?" Stephen asked.
"It must be Mrs. Hughs."
The thought passed darkly through Stephen's mind: 'Those people
again! What now?' He did not express it, being neither brutal nor
lacking in good taste.
A short silence followed, then Cecilia said suddenly: "Did you say
that father was in the drawing-room? There's fillet of beef,
Stephen!"
Stephen turned away. "Go and see Thyme!" he said.
Outside Thyme's door Cecilia paused, and, hearing no sound, tapped
gently. Her knock not being answered, she slipped in. On the bed of
that white room, with her face pressed into the pillow, her little
daughter lay. Cecilia stood aghast. Thyme's whole body was
quivering with suppressed sobs.
"My darling!" said Cecilia, "what is it?"
Thyme's answer was inarticulate.
Cecilia sat down on the bed and waited, drawing her fingers through
the girl's hair, which had fallen loose; and while she sat there she
experienced all that sore, strange feeling--as of being skinned--
which comes to one who watches the emotion of someone near and dear
without knowing the exact cause.
'This is dreadful,' she thought. 'What am I to do?'
To see one's child cry was bad enough, but to see her cry when that
child's whole creed of honour and conduct for years past had
precluded this relief as unfeminine, was worse than disconcerting.
Thyme raised herself on her elbow, turning her face carefully away.
"I don't know what's the matter with me," she said, choking. "It's
--it's purely physical"
"Yes, darling," murmured Cecilia; "I know."
"Oh, Mother!" said Thyme suddenly, "it looked so tiny."
"Yes, yes, my sweet."
Thyme faced round; there was a sort of passion in her darkened eyes,
rimmed pink with grief, and in all her gushed, wet face.
"Why should it have been choked out like that? It's--it's so
brutal!"
Cecilia slid an arm round her.
"I'm so distressed you saw it, dear," she said.
"And grandfather was so--" A long sobbing quiver choked her
utterance.
"Yes, yes," said Cecilia; "I'm sure he was."
Clasping her hands together in her lap, Thyme muttered: "He called
him 'Little brother.'"
A tear trickled down Cecilia's cheek, and dropped on her daughter's
wrist. Feeling that it was not her own tear, Thyme started up.
"It's weak and ridiculous," she said. "I won't!"
Oh, go away, Mother, please. I'm only making you feel bad, too.
You'd better go and see to grandfather."
Cecilia saw that she would cry no more, and since it was the sight of
tears which had so disturbed her, she gave the girl a little
hesitating stroke, and went away. Outside she thought: 'How
dreadfully unlucky and pathetic; and there's father in the drawing-
room!' Then she hurried down to Mr. Stone.
He was sitting where he had first placed himself, motionless. It
struck her suddenly how frail and white he looked. In the shadowy
light of her drawing-room, he was almost like a spirit sitting there
in his grey tweed--silvery from head to foot. Her conscience smote
her. It is written of the very old that they shall pass, by virtue
of their long travel, out of the country of the understanding of the
young, till the natural affections are blurred by creeping mists such
as steal across the moors when the sun is going down.
Cecilia's heart ached with a little ache for all the times she had
thought: 'If father were only not quite so---'; for all the times she
had shunned asking him to come to them, because he was so---; for all
the silences she and Stephen had maintained after he had spoken; for
all the little smiles she had smiled. She longed to go and kiss his
brow, and make him feel that she was aching. But she did not dare;
he seemed so far away; it would be ridiculous.
Coming down the room, and putting her slim foot on the fender with a
noise, so that if possible he might both see and hear her, she turned
her anxious face towards him, and said: "Father!"
Mr. Stone looked up, and seeing somebody who seemed to be his elder
daughter, answered "Yes, my dear?"
"Are you sure you're feeling quite the thing? Thyme said she thought
seeing that poor baby had upset you."
Mr. Stone felt his body with his hand.
"I am not conscious of any pain," he said.
"Then you'll stay to dinner, dear, won't you?"
Mr. Stone's brow contracted as though he were trying to recall his
past.
"I have had no tea," he said. Then, with a sudden, anxious look at
his daughter: "The little girl has not come to me. I miss her.
Where is she?"
The ache within Cecilia became more poignant.
"It is now two days," said Mr. Stone, "and she has left her room in
that house--in that street."
Cecilia, at her wits' end, answered: "Do you really miss her,
Father?"
"Yes," said Mr. Stone. "She is like--" His eyes wandered round the
room as though seeking something which would help him to express
himself. They fixed themselves on the far wall. Cecilia, following
their gaze, saw a little solitary patch of sunlight dancing and
trembling there. It had escaped the screen of trees and houses, and,
creeping through some chink, had quivered in. "She is like that,"
said Mr. Stone, pointing with his finger. "It is gone!" His finger
dropped; he uttered a deep sigh.
'How dreadful this is!' Cecilia thought. 'I never expected him to
feel it, and yet I can do nothing!' Hastily she asked: "Would it do
if you had Thyme to copy for you? I'm sure she'd love to come."
"She is my grand-daughter," Mr. Stone said simply. "It would not be
the same."
Cecilia could think of nothing now to say but: "Would you like to
wash your hands, dear?"
"Yes," said Mr. Stone.
"Then will you go up to Stephen's dressing-room for hot water, or
will you wash them in the lavatory?"
"In the lavatory," said Mr. Stone. "I shall be freer there."
When he had gone Cecilia thought: 'Oh dear, how shall I get through
the evening? Poor darling, he is so single-minded!'
At the sounding of the dinner-gong they all assembled--Thyme from her
bedroom with cheeks and eyes still pink, Stephen with veiled inquiry
in his glance, Mr. Stone from freedom in the lavatory--and sat down,
screened, but so very little, from each other by sprays of white
lilac. Looking round her table, Cecilia felt rather like one
watching a dew-belled cobweb, most delicate of all things in the
world, menaced by the tongue of a browsing cow.
Both soup and fish had been achieved, however, before a word was
spoken. It was Stephen who, after taking a mouthful of dry sherry,
broke the silence.
"How are you getting on with your book, sir?"
Cecilia heard that question with something like dismay. It was so
bald; for, however inconvenient Mr. Stone's absorption in his
manuscript might be, her delicacy told her how precious beyond life
itself that book was to him. To her relief, however, her father was
eating spinach.
"You must be getting near the end, I should think," proceeded
Stephen.
Cecilia spoke hastily: "Isn't this white lilac lovely, Dad?"
Mr. Stone looked up.
"It is not white; it is really pink. The test is simple." He paused
with his eyes fixed on the lilac.
'Ah!' thought Cecilia, 'now, if I can only keep him on natural
science he used to be so interesting.'
"All flowers are one!" said Mr. Stone. His voice had changed.
'Oh!' thought Cecilia, 'he is gone!'
"They have but a single soul. In those days men divided, and
subdivided them, oblivious of the one pale spirit which underlay
those seemingly separate forms."
Cecilia's glance passed swiftly from the manservant to Stephen.
She saw one of her husband's eyes rise visibly. Stephen did so hate
one thing to be confounded with another.
"Oh, come, sir," she heard him say; "you don't surely tell us that
dandelions and roses have the same pale spirit!"
Mr. Stone looked at him wistfully.
"Did I say that?" he said. "I had no wish to be dogmatic."
"Not at all, sir, not at all," murmured Stephen.
Thyme, leaning over to her mother, whispered "Oh, Mother, don't let
grandfather be queer; I can't bear it to-night!"
Cecilia, at her wits' end, said hurriedly:
"Dad, will you tell us what sort of character you think that little
girl who comes to you has?"
Mr. Stone paused in the act of drinking water; his attention had
evidently been riveted; he did not, however, speak. And Cecilia,
seeing that the butler, out of the perversity which she found so
conspicuous in her servants, was about to hand him beef, made a
desperate movement with her lips. "No, Charles, not there, not
there!"
The butler, tightening his lips, passed on. Mr. Stone spoke:
"I had not considered that. She is rather of a Celtic than an Anglo-
Saxon type; the cheekbones are prominent; the jaw is not massive; the
head is broad--if I can remember I will measure it; the eyes are of a
peculiar blue, resembling chicory flowers; the mouth---, Mr. Stone
paused.
Cecilia thought: 'What a lucky find! Now perhaps he will go on all
right!'
"I do not know," Mr. Stone resumed, speaking in a far-off voice,
"whether she would be virtuous."
Cecilia heard Stephen drinking sherry; Thyme, too, was drinking
something; she herself drank nothing, but, pink and quiet, for she
was a well-bred woman, said:
"You have no new potatoes, dear. Charles, give Mr. Stone some new
potatoes."
By the almost vindictive expression on Stephen's face she saw,
however, that her failure had decided him to resume command of the
situation. "Talking of brotherhood, sir," he said dryly, "would you
go so far as to say that a new potato is the brother of a bean?"
Mr. Stone, on whose plate these two vegetables reposed, looked almost
painfully confused.
"I do not perceive," he stammered, "any difference between them."
"It's true," said Stephen; "the same pale spirit can be extracted
from them both."
Mr. Stone looked up at him.
"You laugh at me," he said. "I cannot help it; but you must not
laugh at life--that is blasphemy."
Before the piercing wistfulness of that sudden gaze Stephen was
abashed. Cecilia saw him bite his lower lip.
"We're talking too much," he said; "we really must let your father
eat!" And the rest of the dinner was achieved in silence.
When Mr. Stone, refusing to be accompanied, had taken his departure,
and Thyme had gone to bed, Stephen withdrew to his study. This room,
which had a different air from any other portion of the house, was
sacred to his private life. Here, in specially designed
compartments, he kept his golf clubs, pipes, and papers. Nothing was
touched by anyone except himself, and twice a week by one particular
housemaid. Here was no bust of Socrates, no books in deerskin
bindings, but a bookcase filled with treatises on law, Blue Books,
reviews, and the novels of Sir Walter Scott; two black oak cabinets
stood side by side against the wall filled with small drawers. When
these cabinets were opened and the drawers drawn forward there
emerged a scent of metal polish. If the green-baize covers of the
drawers were lifted, there were seen coins, carefully arranged with
labels--as one may see plants growing in rows, each with its little
name tied on. To these tidy rows of shining metal discs Stephen
turned in moments when his spirit was fatigued. To add to them,
touch them, read their names, gave him the sweet, secret feeling
which comes to a man who rubs one hand against the other. Like a
dram-drinker, Stephen drank--in little doses--of the feeling these
coins gave him. They were his creative work, his history of the
world. To them he gave that side of him which refused to find its
full expression in summarising law, playing golf, or reading the
reviews; that side of a man which aches, he knows not wherefore, to
construct something ere he die. From Rameses to George IV. the coins
lay within those drawers--links of the long unbroken chain of
authority.
Putting on an old black velvet jacket laid out for him across a
chair, and lighting the pipe that he could never bring himself to
smoke in his formal dinner clothes, he went to the right-hand
cabinet, and opened it. He stood with a smile, taking up coins one
by one. In this particular drawer they were of the best Byzantine
dynasty, very rare. He did not see that Cecilia had stolen in, and
was silently regarding him. Her eyes seemed doubting at that moment
whether or no she loved him who stood there touching that other
mistress of his thoughts--that other mistress with whom he spent so
many evening hours. The little green-baize cover fell. Cecilia said
suddenly:
"Stephen, I feel as if I must tell Father where that girl is!"
Stephen turned.
"My dear child," he answered in his special voice, which, like
champagne, seemed to have been dried by artifice, "you don't want to
reopen the whole thing?"
"But I can see he really is upset about it; he's looking so awfully
white and thin."
"He ought to give up that bathing in the Serpentine. At his age it's
monstrous. And surely any other girl will do just as well?"
"He seems to set store by reading to her specially."
Stephen shrugged his shoulders. It had happened to him on one
occasion to be present when Mr. Stone was declaiming some pages of
his manuscript. He had never forgotten the discomfort of the
experience. "That crazy stuff," as he had called it to Cecilia
afterwards, had remained on his mind, heavy and damp, like a cold
linseed poultice. His wife's father was a crank, and perhaps even a
little more than a crank, a wee bit "touched"--that she couldn't
help, poor girl; but any allusion to his cranky produce gave Stephen
pain. Nor had he forgotten his experience at dinner.
"He seems to have grown fond of her," murmured Cecilia.
"But it's absurd at his time of life!"
"Perhaps that makes him feel it more; people do miss things when they
are old!"
Stephen slid the drawer back into its socket. There was dry decision
in that gesture.
"Look here! Let's exercise a little common sense; it's been
sacrificed to sentiment all through this wretched business. One
wants to be kind, of course; but one's got to draw the line."
"Ah!" said Cecilia; "where?"
"The thing," went on Stephen, "has been a mistake from first to last.
It's all very well up to a certain point, but after that it becomes
destructive of all comfort. It doesn't do to let these people come
into personal contact with you. There are the proper channels for
that sort of thing."
Cecilia's eyes were lowered, as though she did not dare to let him
see her thoughts.
"It seems so horrid," she said; "and father is not like other
people."
"He is not," said Stephen dryly; "we had a pretty good instance of
that this evening. But Hilary and your sister are. There's
something most distasteful to me, too, about Thyme's going about
slumming. You see what she's been let in for this afternoon. The
notion of that baby being killed through the man's treatment of his
wife, and that, no doubt, arising from the girl's leaving them, is
most repulsive!"
To these words Cecilia answered with a sound almost like a gasp.
"I hadn't thought of that. Then we're responsible; it was we who
advised Hilary to make her change her lodging."
Stephen stared; he regretted sincerely that his legal habit of mind
had made him put the case so clearly.
"I can't imagine," he said, almost violently, "what possesses
everybody! We--responsible! Good gracious! Because we gave Hilary
some sound advice! What next?"
Cecilia turned to the empty hearth.
"Thyme has been telling me about that poor little thing. It seems so
dreadful, and I can't get rid of the feeling that we're--we're all
mixed up with it!"
"Mixed up with what?"
"I don't know; it's just a feeling like--like being haunted."
Stephen took her quietly by the arm.
"My dear old girl," he said, "I'd no idea that you were run down like
this. To-morrow's Thursday, and I can get away at three. We'll
motor down to Richmond, and have a round or two!"
Cecilia quivered; for a moment it seemed that she was about to burst
out crying. Stephen stroked her shoulder steadily. Cecilia must
have felt his dread; she struggled loyally with her emotion.
"That will be very jolly," she said at last.
Stephen drew a deep breath.
"And don't you worry, dear," he said, "about your dad; he'll have
forgotten the whole thing in a day or two; he's far too wrapped up in
his book. Now trot along to bed; I'll be up directly."
Before going out Cecilia looked back at him. How wonderful was that
look, which Stephen did not--perhaps intentionally--see. Mocking,
almost hating, and yet thanking him for having refused to let her be
emotional and yield herself up for once to what she felt, showing him
too how clearly she saw through his own masculine refusal to be made
to feel, and how she half-admired it--all this was in that look, and
more. Then she went out.
Stephen glanced quickly at the door, and, pursing up his lips,
frowned. He threw the window open, and inhaled the night air.
'If I don't look out,' he thought, 'I shall be having her mixed up
with this. I was an ass ever to have spoken to old Hilary. I ought
to have ignored the matter altogether. It's a lesson not to meddle
with people in those places. I hope to God she'll be herself
tomorrow!'
Outside, under the soft black foliage of the Square, beneath the slim
sickle of the moon, two cats were hunting after happiness; their
savage cries of passion rang in the blossom-scented air like a cry of
dark humanity in the jungle of dim streets. Stephen, with a shiver
of disgust, for his nerves were on edge, shut the window with a slam.
CHAPTER XXVIII
HILARY HEARS THE CUCKOO SING
It was not left to Cecilia alone to remark how very white Mr. Stone
looked in these days.
The wild force which every year visits the world, driving with its
soft violence snowy clouds and their dark shadows, breaking through
all crusts and sheaths, covering the earth in a fierce embrace; the
wild force which turns form to form, and with its million leapings,
swift as the flight of swallows and the arrow-darts of the rain,
hurries everything on to sweet mingling--this great, wild force of
universal life, so-called the Spring, had come to Mr. Stone, like new
wine to some old bottle. And Hilary, to whom it had come, too,
watching him every morning setting forth with a rough towel across
his arm, wondered whether the old man would not this time leave his
spirit swimming in the chill waters of the Serpentine--so near that
spirit seemed to breaking through its fragile shell.
Four days had gone by since the interview at which he had sent away
the little model, and life in his household--that quiet backwater
choked with lilies--seemed to have resumed the tranquillity enjoyed
before this intrusion of rude life. The paper whiteness of Mr. Stone
was the only patent evidence that anything disturbing had occurred--
that and certain feelings about which the strictest silence was
preserved.
On the morning of the fifth day, seeing the old man stumble on the
level flagstones of the garden, Hilary finished dressing hastily, and
followed. He overtook him walking forward feebly beneath the
candelabra of flowering chestnut-trees, with a hail-shower striking
white on his high shoulders; and, placing himself alongside, without
greeting--for forms were all one to Mr. Stone--he said:
"Surely you don't mean to bathe during a hail storm, sir! Make an
exception this once. You're not looking quite yourself."
Mr. Stone shook his head; then, evidently following out a thought
which Hilary had interrupted, he remarked:
"The sentiment that men call honour is of doubtful value. I have not
as yet succeeded in relating it to universal brotherhood."
"How is that, sir?"
"In so far," said Mr. Stone, "as it consists in fidelity to
principle, one might assume it worthy of conjunction. The difficulty
arises when we consider the nature of the principle .... There is a
family of young thrushes in the garden. If one of them finds a worm,
I notice that his devotion to that principle of self-preservation
which prevails in all low forms of life forbids his sharing it with
any of the other little thrushes."
Mr. Stone had fixed his eyes on distance.
"So it is, I fear," he said, "with 'honour.' In those days men
looked on women as thrushes look on worms."
He paused, evidently searching for a word; and Hilary, with a faint
smile, said:
"And how did women look on men, sir?"
Mr. Stone observed him with surprise. "I did not perceive that it
was you," he said. "I have to avoid brain action before bathing."
They had crossed the road dividing the Gardens from the Park, and,
seeing that Mr. Stone had already seen the water where he was about
to bathe, and would now see nothing else, Hilary stopped beside a
little lonely birch-tree. This wild, small, graceful visitor, who
had long bathed in winter, was already draping her bare limbs in a
scarf of green. Hilary leaned against her cool, pearly body. Below
were the chilly waters, now grey, now starch-blue, and the pale forms
of fifteen or twenty bathers. While he stood shivering in the frozen
wind, the sun, bursting through the hail-cloud, burned his cheeks and
hands. And suddenly he heard, clear, but far off, the sound which,
of all others, stirs the hearts of men: "Cuckoo, cuckoo!"
Four times over came the unexpected call. Whence had that ill-
advised, indelicate grey bird flown into this great haunt of men and
shadows? Why had it come with its arrowy flight and mocking cry to
pierce the heart and set it aching? There were trees enough outside
the town, cloud-swept hollows, tangled brakes of furze just coming
into bloom, where it could preside over the process of Spring. What
solemn freak was this which made it come and sing to one who had no
longer any business with the Spring?
With a real spasm in his heart Hilary turned away from that distant
bird, and went down to the water's edge. Mr. Stone was swimming,
slower than man had ever swum before. His silver head and lean arms
alone were visible, parting the water feebly; suddenly he
disappeared. He was but a dozen yards from the shore; and Hilary,
alarmed at not seeing him reappear, ran in. The water was not deep.
Mr. Stone, seated at the bottom, was doing all he could to rise.
Hilary took him by his bathing-dress, raised him to the surface, and
supported him towards the land. By the time they reached the shore
he could just stand on his legs. With the assistance of a policeman,
Hilary enveloped him in garments and got him to a cab. He had
regained some of his vitality, but did not seem aware of what had
happened.
"I was not in as long as usual," he mused, as they passed out into
the high road.
"Oh, I think so, sir."
Mr. Stone looked troubled.
"It is odd," he said. "I do not recollect leaving the water."
He did not speak again till he was being assisted from the cab.
"I wish to recompense the man. I have half a crown indoors."
"I will get it, sir," said Hilary.
Mr. Stone, who shivered violently now that he was on his feet, turned
his face up to the cabman.
"Nothing is nobler than the horse," he said; "take care of him."
The cabman removed his hat. "I will, sir," he answered.
Walking by himself, but closely watched by Hilary, Mr. Stone reached
his room. He groped about him as though not distinguishing objects
too well through the crystal clearness of the fundamental flux.
"If I might advise you," said Hilary, "I would get back into bed for
a few minutes. You seem a little chilly."
Mr. Stone, who was indeed shaking so that he could hardly stand,
allowed Hilary to assist him into bed and tuck the blankets round
him.
"I must be at work by ten o'clock," he said.
Hilary, who was also shivering, hastened to Bianca's room. She was
just coming down, and exclaimed at seeing him all wet. When he had
told her of the episode she touched his shoulder.
"What about you?"
"A hot bath and drink will set me right. You'd better go to him."
He turned towards the bathroom, where Miranda stood, lifting a white
foot. Compressing her lips, Bianca ran downstairs. Startled by his
tale, she would have taken his wet body in her arms; if the ghosts of
innumerable moments had not stood between. So this moment passed
too, and itself became a ghost.
Mr. Stone, greatly to his disgust, had not succeeded in resuming work
at ten o'clock. Failing simply because he could not stand on his
legs, he had announced his intention of waiting until half-past
three, when he should get up, in preparation for the coming of the
little girl. Having refused to see a doctor, or have his temperature
taken, it was impossible to tell precisely what degree of fever he
was in. In his cheeks, just visible over the blankets, there was
more colour than there should have been; and his eyes, fixed on the
ceiling, shone with suspicious brilliancy. To the dismay of Bianca--
who sat as far out of sight as possible, lest he should see her, and
fancy that she was doing him a service--he pursued his thoughts
aloud:
"Words--words--they have taken away brotherhood!" Bianca shuddered,
listening to that uncanny sound. "'In those days of words they
called it death--pale death--mors pallida. They saw that word like a
gigantic granite block suspended over them, and slowly coming down.
Some, turning up their faces at the sight, trembled painfully,
awaiting their obliteration. Others, unable, while they still lived,
to face the thought of nothingness, inflated by some spiritual wind,
and thinking always of their individual forms, called out unceasingly
that those selves of theirs would and must survive this word--that in
some fashion, which no man could understand, each self-conscious
entity reaccumulated after distribution. Drunk with this thought,
these, too, passed away. Some waited for it with grim, dry eyes,
remarking that the process was molecular, and thus they also met
their so-called death.'"
His voice ceased, and in place of it rose the sound of his tongue
moistening his palate. Bianca, from behind, placed a glass of
barley-water to his lips. He drank it with a slow, clucking noise;
then, seeing that a hand held the glass, said: "Is that you? Are you
ready for me? Follow. 'In those days no one leaped up to meet pale
riding Death; no one saw in her face that she was brotherhood
incarnate; no one with a heart as light as gossamer kissed her feet,
and, smiling, passed into the Universe.'" His voice died away, and
when next he spoke it was in a quick, husky whisper: "I must--I must
--I must---" There was silence; then he added: "Give me my trousers."
Bianca placed them by his bed. The sight seemed to reassure him. He
was once more silent.
For more than an hour after this he was so absolutely still that
Bianca rose continually to look at him. Each time, his eyes, wide
open, were fixed on a little dark mark across the ceiling; his face
had a look of the most singular determination, as though his spirit
were slowly, relentlessly, regaining mastery over his fevered body.
He spoke suddenly:
"Who is there?"
"Bianca."
"Help me out of bed!"
The flush had left his face, the brilliance had faded from his eyes;
he looked just like a ghost. With a sort of terror Bianca helped him
out of bed. This weird display of mute white will-power was
unearthly.
When he was dressed in his woollen gown and seated before the fire,
she gave him a cup of strong beef-tea, with brandy. He swallowed it
with great avidity.
"I should like some more of that," he said, and fell asleep.
While he was asleep Cecilia came, and the two sisters watched his
slumber, and, watching it, felt nearer to each other than they had
for many years. Before she went away Cecilia whispered
"B. if he seems to want that little girl while he's like this, don't
you think she ought to come?"
Bianca answered: "I don't know where she is."
"I do."
"Ah!" said Bianca; "of course!" And she turned her head away.
Disconcerted by that sarcastic little speech, Cecilia was silent;
then, summoning all her courage, she said:
"Here's the address, B. I've written it down for you;" and, with
puckers of anxiety in her face, she left the room.
Bianca sat on in the old golden chair, watching the deep hollows
beneath the sleeper's temples, the puffs of breath stirring the
silver round his mouth. Her ears burned crimson. Carried out of
herself by the sight of that old form, dearer to her than she had
thought, fighting its great battle for the sake of its idea, her
spirit grew all tremulous and soft within her. With eagerness she
embraced the thought of self-effacement. It did not seem to matter
whether she were first with Hilary. Her spirit should so manifest
its capacity for sacrifice that she would be first with him through
sheer nobility. At this moment she could almost have taken that
common little girl into her arms and kissed her. So would all
disquiet end! Some harmonious messenger had fluttered to her for a
second--the gold-winged bird of peace. In this sensuous exaltation
her nerves vibrated like the strings of a violin.
When Mr. Stone woke it was past three o'clock and Bianca at once
handed him another cup of strong beef-tea.
He swallowed it, and said: "What is this?"
"Beef-tea."
Mr. Stone looked at the empty cup.
"I must not drink it. The cow and the sheep are on the same plane as
man."
"But how do you feel, dear?"
"I feel," said Mr. Stone, "able to dictate what I have already
written--not more. Has she come?"
"Not yet; but I will go and find her if you like."
Mr. Stone looked at his daughter wistfully.
"That will be taking up your time," he said.
Bianca answered: "My time is of no consequence."
Mr. Stone stretched his hands out to the fire.
"I will not consent," he said, evidently to himself, "to be a drag on
anyone. If that has come, then I must go!"
Bianca, placing herself beside him on her knees, pressed her hot
cheek against his temple.
"But it has not come, Dad."
"I hope not," said Mr. Stone. "I wish to end my book first."
The sudden grim coherence of his last two sayings terrified Bianca
more than all his feverish, utterances.
"I rely on your sitting quite still," she said, "while I go and find
her." And with a feeling in her heart as though two hands had seized
and were pulling it asunder, she went out.
Some half-hour later Hilary slipped quietly in, and stood watching at
the door. Mr. Stone, seated on the very verge of his armchair, with
his hands on its arms, was slowly rising to his feet, and slowly
falling back again, not once, but many times, practising a standing
posture. As Hilary came into his line of sight, he said:
"I have succeeded twice."
"I am very glad," said Hilary. "Won't you rest now, sir?"
"It is my knees," said Mr. Stone. "She has gone to find her."
Hilary heard those words with bewilderment, and, sitting down on the
other chair, waited.
"I have fancied," said Mr. Stone, looking at him wistfully, "that
when we pass away from life we may become the wind. Is that your
opinion?"
"It is a new thought to me," said Hilary.
"It is not tenable," said Mr. Stone. "But it is restful. The wind
is everywhere and nowhere, and nothing can be hidden from it. When I
have missed that little girl, I have tried, in a sense, to become the
wind; but I have found it difficult."
His eyes left Hilary's face, whose mournful smile he had not noticed,
and fixed themselves on the bright fire. "'In those days,"' he said,
"'men's relation to the eternal airs was the relation of a billion
little separate draughts blowing against the south-west wind. They
did not wish to merge themselves in that soft, moon-uttered sigh, but
blew in its face through crevices, and cracks, and keyholes, and were
borne away on the pellucid journey, whistling out their protests.'"
He again tried to stand, evidently wishing to get to his desk to
record this thought, but, failing, looked painfully at Hilary. He
seemed about to ask for something, but checked himself.
"If I practise hard," he murmured, " I shall master it."
Hilary rose and brought him paper and a pencil. In bending, he saw
that Mr. Stone's eyes were dim with moisture. This sight affected
him so that he was glad to turn away and fetch a book to form a
writing-pad.
When Mr. Stone had finished, he sat back in his chair with closed
eyes. A supreme silence reigned in the bare room above those two men
of different generations and of such strange dissimilarity of
character. Hilary broke that silence.
"I heard the cuckoo sing to-day," he said, almost in a whisper, lest
Mr. Stone should be asleep.
"The cuckoo," replied Mr. Stone, "has no sense of brotherhood."
"I forgive him-for his song," murmured Hilary.
"His song," said Mr. Stone, "is alluring; it excites the sexual
instinct."
Then to himself he added:
"She has not come, as yet!"
Even as he spoke there was heard by Hilary a faint tapping on the
door. He rose and opened it. The little model stood outside.
CHAPTER XXIX
RETURN OF THE LITTLE MODEL
That same afternoon in High Street, Kensington, "Westminister," with
his coat-collar raised against the inclement wind, his old hat
spotted with rain, was drawing at a clay pipe and fixing his iron-
rimmed gaze on those who passed him by. It had been a day when
singularly few as yet had bought from him his faintly green-tinged
journal, and the low class of fellow who sold the other evening
prints had especially exasperated him. His single mind, always torn
to some extent between an ingrained loyalty to his employers and
those politics of his which differed from his paper's, had vented
itself twice since coming on his stand; once in these words to the
seller of "Pell Mells": "I stupulated with you not to come beyond the
lamp-post. Don't you never speak to me again--a-crowdin' of me off
my stand"; and once to the younger vendors of the less expensive
journals, thus: "Oh, you boys! I'll make you regret of it--
a-snappin' up my customers under my very nose! Wait until ye're
old!" To which the boys had answered: "All right, daddy; don't you
have a fit. You'll be a deader soon enough without that, y'know!"
It was now his time for tea, but "Pell Mell" having gone to partake
of this refreshment, he waited on, hoping against hope to get a
customer or two of that low fellow's. And while in black insulation
he stood there a timid voice said at his elbow
"Mr. Creed!"
The aged butler turned, and saw the little model.
"Oh," he said dryly, "it's you, is it?" His mind, with its incessant
love of rank, knowing that she earned her living as a handmaid to
that disorderly establishment, the House of Art, had from the first
classed her as lower than a lady's-maid. Recent events had made him
think of her unkindly. Her new clothes, which he had not been
privileged to see before, while giving him a sense of Sunday,
deepened his moral doubts.
"And where are you living now?" he said in tones incorporating these
feelings.
"I'm not to tell you."
"Oh, very well. Keep yourself to yourself."
The little model's lower lip drooped more than ever. There were dark
marks beneath her eyes; her face was altogether rather pinched and
pitiful.
"Won't you tell me any news?" she said in her matter-of-fact voice.
The old butler gave a strange grunt.
"Ho!" he said. "The baby's dead, and buried to-morrer."
"Dead!" repeated the little model.
"I'm a-goin' to the funeral--Brompton Cemetery. Half-past nine I
leave the door. And that's a-beginnin' at the end. The man's in
prison, and the woman's gone a shadder of herself."
The little model rubbed her hands against her skirt.
"What did he go to prison for?"
"For assaultin' of her; I was witness to his battery."
"Why did he assault her?"
Creed looked at her, and, wagging his head, answered:
"That's best known to them as caused of it."
The little model's face went the colour of carnations.
"I can't help what he does," she said. "What should I want him for--
a man like that? It wouldn't be him I'd want!" The genuine contempt
in that sharp burst of anger impressed the aged butler.
"I'm not a-sayin' anything," he said; "it's all a-one to me. I never
mixes up with no other people's business. But it's very ill-
convenient. I don't get my proper breakfast. That poor woman--she's
half off her head. When the baby's buried I'll have to go and look
out for another room before he gets a-comin' out."
"I hope they'll keep him there," muttered the little model suddenly.
"They give him a month," said Creed.
"Only a month!"
The old butler looked at her. 'There's more stuff' in you,' he
seemed to say, 'than ever I had thought.'
'Because of his servin' of his country," he remarked aloud.
"I'm sorry about the poor little baby," said the little model in her
stolid voice.
"Westminister" shook his head. "I never suspected him of goin' to
live," he said.
The girl, biting the finger-tip of her white cotton glove, was
staring out at the traffic. Like a pale ray of light entering the
now dim cavern of the old man's mind, the thought came to Creed that
he did not quite understand her. He had in his time had occasion to
class many young persons, and the feeling that he did not quite know
her class of person was like the sensation a bat might have,
surprised by daylight.
Suddenly, without saying good-bye to him, she walked away.
'Well,' he thought, looking after her, 'your manners ain't improved
by where you're living, nor your appearance neither, for all your new
clothes.' And for some time he stood thinking of the stare in her
eyes and that abrupt departure.
Through the crystal clearness of the fundamental flux the mind could
see at that same moment Bianca leaving her front gate.
Her sensuous exaltation, her tremulous longing after harmony, had
passed away; in her heart, strangely mingled, were these two
thoughts: 'If only she were a lady!' and, 'I am glad she is not a
lady!'
Of all the dark and tortuous places of this life, the human heart is
the most dark and tortuous; and of all human hearts none are less
clear, more intricate than the hearts of all that class of people
among whom Bianca had her being. Pride was a simple quality when
joined with a simple view of life, based on the plain philosophy of
property; pride was no simple quality when the hundred paralysing
doubts and aspirations of a social conscience also hedged it round.
In thus going forth with the full intention of restoring the little
model to her position in the household, her pride fought against her
pride, and her woman's sense of ownership in the man whom she had
married wrestled with the acquired sentiments of freedom, liberality,
equality, good taste. With her spirit thus confused, and her mind so
at variance with itself, she was really acting on the simple instinct
of compassion.
She had run upstairs from Mr. Stone's room, and now walked fast, lest
that instinct, the most physical, perhaps, of all--awakened by sights
and sounds, and requiring constant nourishment--should lose its
force.
Rapidly, then, she made her way to the grey street in Bayswater where
Cecilia had told her that the girl now lived.
The tall, gaunt landlady admitted her.
"Have you a Miss Barton lodging here?" Bianca asked.
"Yes," said the landlady, "but I think she's out.
She looked into the little model's room.
"Yes," she said; "she's out; but if you'd like to leave a note you
could write in here. If you're looking for a model, she wants work,
I believe."
That modern faculty of pressing on an aching nerve was assuredly not
lacking to Bianca. To enter the girl's room was jabbing at the nerve
indeed.
She looked round her. The mental vacuity of that little room! There
was not one single thing--with the exception of a torn copy of Tit-
Bits--which suggested that a mind of any sort lived there. For all
that, perhaps because of that, it was neat enough.
"Yes," said the landlady, "she keeps her room tidy. Of course, she's
a country girl--comes from down my way." She said this with a dry
twist of her grim, but not unkindly, features. "If it weren't for
that," she went on, "I don't think I should care to let to one of her
profession."
Her hungry eyes, gazing at Bianca, had in them the aspirations of all
Nonconformity.
Bianca pencilled on her card:
"If you can come to my father to-day or tomorrow, please do."
"Will you give her this, please? It will be quite enough."
"I'll give it her," the landlady said; "she'll be glad of it, I
daresay. I see her sitting here. Girls like that, if they've got
nothing to do--see, she's been moping on her bed...."
The impress of a form was, indeed, clearly visible on the red and
yellow tasselled tapestry of the bed.
Bianca cast a look at it.
"Thank you," she said; "good day."
With the jabbed nerve aching badly she came slowly homewards.
Before the garden gate the little model herself was gazing at the
house, as if she had been there some time. Approaching from across
the road, Bianca had an admirable view of that young figure, now very
trim and neat, yet with something in its lines--more supple, perhaps,
but less refined--which proclaimed her not a lady; a something
fundamentally undisciplined or disciplined by the material facts of
life alone, rather than by a secret creed of voluntary rules. It
showed here and there in ways women alone could understand; above
all, in the way her eyes looked out on that house which she was
clearly longing to enter. Not 'Shall I go in?' was in that look, but
'Dare I go in?'
Suddenly she saw Bianca. The meeting of these two was very like the
ordinary meeting of a mistress and her maid. Bianca's face had no
expression, except the faint, distant curiosity which seems to say:
'You are a sealed book to me; I have always found you so. What you
really think and do I shall never know.'
The little model's face wore a half-caught-out, half-stolid look.
"Please go in," Bianca said; "my father will be glad to see you."
She held the garden gate open for the girl to pass through. Her
feeling at that moment was one of slight amusement at the futility of
her journey. Not even this small piece of generosity was permitted
her, it seemed.
"How are you getting on?"
The little model made an impulsive movement at such an unexpected
question. Checking it at once, she answered:
"Very well, thank you; that is, not very---"
"You will find my father tired to-day; he has caught a chill. Don't
let him read too much, please."
The little model seemed to try and nerve herself to make some
statement, but, failing, passed into the house.
Bianca did not follow, but stole back into the garden, where the sun
was still falling on a bed of wallflowers at the far end. She bent
down over these flowers till her veil touched them. Two wild bees
were busy there, buzzing with smoky wings, clutching with their
black, tiny legs at the orange petals, plunging their black, tiny
tongues far down into the honeyed centres. The flowers quivered
beneath the weight of their small dark bodies. Bianca's face
quivered too, bending close to them, nor making the slightest
difference to their hunt.
Hilary, who, it has been seen, lived in thoughts about events rather
than in events themselves, and to whom crude acts and words had
little meaning save in relation to what philosophy could make of
them, greeted with a startled movement the girl's appearance in the
corridor outside Mr. Stone's apartment. But the little model, who
mentally lived very much from hand to mouth, and had only the
philosophy of wants, acted differently. She knew that for the last
five days, like a spaniel dog shut away from where it feels it ought
to be, she had wanted to be where she was now standing; she knew
that, in her new room with its rust-red doors, she had bitten her
lips and fingers till blood came, and, as newly caged birds will
flutter, had beaten her wings against those walls with blue roses on
a yellow ground. She remembered how she had lain, brooding, on that
piece of red and yellow tapestry, twisting its tassels, staring
through half-closed eyes at nothing.
There was something different in her look at Hilary. It had lost
some of its childish devotion; it was bolder, as if she had lived and
felt, and brushed a good deal more down off her wings during those
few days.
"Mrs. Dallison told me to come," she said. "I thought I might. Mr.
Creed told me about him being in prison."
Hilary made way for her, and, following her into Mr. Stone's
presence, shut the door.
"The truant has returned," he said.
Hearing herself called so unjustly by that name, the little model
gushed deeply, and tried to speak. She stopped at the smile on
Hilary's face, and gazed from him to Mr. Stone and back again, the
victim of mingled feelings.
Mr. Stone was seen to have risen to his feet, and to be very slowly
moving towards his desk. He leaned both arms on his papers for
support, and, seeming to gather strength, began sorting out his
manuscript.
Through the open window the distant music of a barrel-organ came
drifting in. Faint, and much too slow, was the sound of the waltz it
played, but there was invitation, allurement, in that tune. The
little model turned towards it, and Hilary looked hard at her. The
girl and that sound together-there, quite plain, was the music he had
heard for many days, like a man lying with the touch of fever on him.
"Are you ready?" said Mr. Stone.
The little model dipped her pen in ink. Her eyes crept towards the
door, where Hilary was still standing with the same expression on his
face. He avoided her eyes, and went up to Mr. Stone.
"Must you read to-day, sir?"
Mr. Stone looked at him with anger.
"Why not?" he said.
"You are hardly strong enough."
Mr. Stone raised his manuscript.
"We are three days behind;" and very slowly he began dictating:
"'Bar-ba-rous ha-bits in those days, such as the custom known as War-
--'" His voice died away; it was apparent that his elbows, leaning
on the desk, alone prevented his collapse.
Hilary moved the chair, and, taking him beneath the arms, lowered him
gently into it.
Noticing that he was seated, Mr. Stone raised his manuscript and read
on: "'---were pursued regardless of fraternity. It was as though a
herd of horn-ed cattle driven through green pastures to that Gate,
where they must meet with certain dissolution, had set about to
prematurely gore and disembowel each other, out of a passionate
devotion to those individual shapes which they were so soon to lose.
So men--tribe against tribe, and country against country--glared
across the valleys with their ensanguined eyes; they could not see
the moonlit wings, or feel the embalming airs of brotherhood.'"
Slower and slower came his sentences, and as the last word died away
he was heard to be asleep, breathing through a tiny hole left beneath
the eave of his moustache. Hilary, who had waited for that moment,
gently put the manuscript on the desk, and beckoned to the girl. He
did not ask her to his study, but spoke to her in the hall.
"While Mr. Stone is like this he misses you. You will come, then, at
present, please, so long as Hughs is in prison. How do you like your
room?"
The little model answered simply: "Not very much."
"Why not?"
"It's lonely there. I shan't mind, now I'm coming here again."
"Only for the present," was all Hilary could find to say.
The little model's eyes were lowered.
"Mrs. Hughs' baby's to be buried to-morrow," she said suddenly.
"Where?"
"In Brompton Cemetery. Mr. Creed's going."
"What time is the funeral?"
The girl looked up stealthily.
"Mr. Creed's going to start at half-past nine."
"I should like to go myself," said Hilary.
A gleam of pleasure passing across her face was instantly obscured
behind the cloud of her stolidity. Then, as she saw Hilary move
nearer to the door, her lip began to droop.
"Well, good-bye," he said.
The little model flushed and quivered. 'You don't even look at me,'
she seemed to say; 'you haven't spoken kindly to me once.' And
suddenly she said in a hard voice:
"Now I shan't go to Mr. Lennard's any more."
"Oh, then you have been to him!"
Triumph at attracting his attention, fear of what she had admitted,
supplication, and a half-defiant shame--all this was in her face.
"Yes," she said.
Hilary did not speak.
"I didn't care any more when you told me I wasn't to come here."
Still Hilary did not speak.
"I haven't done anything wrong," she said, with tears in her voice.
"No, no," said Hilary; "of course not!"
The little model choked.
"It's my profession."
"Yes, yes," said Hilary; "it's all right."
"I don't care what he thinks; I won't go again so long as I can come
here."
Hilary touched her shoulder.
"Well, well," he said, and opened the front door.
The little model, tremulous, like' a flower kissed by the sun after
rain, went out with a light in her eyes.
The master of the house returned to Mr. Stone. Long he sat looking
at the old man's slumber. "A thinker meditating upon action!" So
might Hilary's figure, with its thin face resting on its hand, a
furrow between the brows, and that painful smile, have been entitled
in any catalogue of statues.
CHAPTER XXX
FUNERAL OF A BABY
Following out the instinct planted so deeply in human nature for
treating with the utmost care and at great expense when dead those,
who, when alive, have been served with careless parsimony, there
started from the door of No. 1 in Hound Street a funeral procession
of three four-wheeled cabs. The first bore the little coffin, on
which lay a great white wreath (gift of Cecilia and Thyme). The
second bore Mrs. Hughs, her son Stanley, and Joshua Creed. The third
bore Martin Stone. In the first cab Silence was presiding with the
scent of lilies over him who in his short life had made so little
noise, the small grey shadow which had crept so quietly into being,
and, taking his chance when he was not noticed, had crept so quietly
out again. Never had he felt so restful, so much at home, as in that
little common coffin, washed as he was to an unnatural whiteness, and
wrapped in his mother's only spare sheet. Away from all the strife
of men he was Journeying to a greater peace. His little aloe-plant
had flowered; and, between the open windows of the only carriage he
had ever been inside, the wind--which, who knows? he had perhaps
become--stirred the fronds of fern and the flowers of his funeral
wreath. Thus he was going from that world where all men were his
brothers.
>From the second cab the same wind was rigidly excluded, and there was
silence, broken by the aged butler's breathing. Dressed in his
Newmarket coat, he was recalling with a certain sense of luxury past,
journeys in four-wheeled cabs--occasions when, seated beside a box
corded and secured with sealing-wax, he had taken his master's plate
for safety to the bank; occasions when, under a roof piled up with
guns and boxes, he had sat holding the "Honorable Bateson's" dog;
occasions when, with some young person by his side, he had driven at
the tail of a baptismal, nuptial, or funeral cortege. These memories
of past grandeur came back to him with curious poignancy, and for
some reason the words kept rising in his mind: 'For richer or poorer,
for better or worser, in health and in sick places, till death do us
part.' But in the midst of the exaltation of these recollections the
old heart beneath his old red flannel chest-protector--that companion
of his exile--twittering faintly at short intervals, made him look at
the woman by his side. He longed to convey to her some little of the
satisfaction he felt in the fact that this was by no means the low
class of funeral it might have been. He doubted whether, with her
woman's mind, she was getting all the comfort she could out of three
four-wheeled cabs and a wreath of lilies. The seamstress's thin
face, with its pinched, passive look, was indeed thinner, quieter,
than ever. What she was thinking of he could not tell. There were
so many things she might be thinking of. She, too, no doubt, had
seen her grandeur, if but in the solitary drive away from the church
where, eight years ago, she and Hughs had listened to the words now
haunting Creed. Was she thinking of that; of her lost youth and
comeliness, and her man's dead love; of the long descent to
shadowland; of the other children she had buried; of Hughs in prison;
of the girl that had "put a spell on him"; or only of the last
precious tugs the tiny lips at rest in the first four-wheeled cab had
given at her breast? Or was she, with a nicer feeling for
proportion, reflecting that, had not people been so kind, she might
have had to walk behind a funeral provided by the parish?
The old butler could not tell, but he--whose one desire now, coupled
with the wish to die outside a workhouse, was to save enough to bury
his own body without the interference of other people--was inclined
to think she must be dwelling on the brighter side of things; and,
designing to encourage her, he said: "Wonderful improvement in these
'ere four-wheel cabs! Oh dear, yes! I remember of them when they
were the shadders of what they are at the present time of speakin'."
The seamstress answered in her quiet voice: "Very comfortable this
is. Sit still, Stanley!" Her little son, whose feet did not reach
the floor, was drumming his heels against the seat. He stopped and
looked at her, and the old butler addressed him.
"You'll a-remember of this occasion," he said, "when you gets older."
The little boy turned his black eyes from his mother to him who had
spoken last.
"It's a beautiful wreath," continued Creed. "I could smell of it all
the way up the stairs. There's been no expense spared; there's white
laylock in it--that's a class of flower that's very extravagant."
A train of thought having been roused too strong for his discretion,
he added: "I saw that young girl yesterday. She came interrogatin'
of me in the street."
On Mrs. Hughs' face, where till now expression had been buried, came
such a look as one may see on the face of an owl-hard, watchful,
cruel; harder, more cruel, for the softness of the big dark eyes.
"She'd show a better feeling," she said, "to keep a quiet tongue.
Sit still, Stanley!"
Once more the little boy stopped drumming his heels, and shifted his
stare from the old butler back to her who spoke. The cab, which had
seemed to hesitate and start, as though jibbing at something in the
road, resumed its ambling pace. Creed looked through the well-closed
window. There before him, so long that it seemed to have no end,
like a building in a nightmare, stretched that place where he did not
mean to end his days. He faced towards the horse again. The colour
had deepened in his nose. He spoke:
"If they'd a-give me my last edition earlier, 'stead of sending of it
down after that low-class feller's taken all my customers, that'd
make a difference to me o' two shillin's at the utmost in the week,
and all clear savin's." To these words, dark with hidden meaning, he
received no answer save the drumming of the small boy's heels; and,
reverting to the subject he had been distracted from, he murmured:
"She was a-wearin' of new clothes."
He was startled by the fierce tone of a voice he hardly knew. "I
don't want to hear about her; she's not for decent folk to talk of."
The old butler looked round askance. The seamstress was trembling
violently. Her fierceness at such a moment shocked him. "'Dust to
dust,'" he thought.
"Don't you be considerate of it," he said at last, summoning all his
knowledge of the world; "she'll come to her own place." And at the
sight of a slow tear trickling over her burning cheek, he added
hurriedly: "Think of your baby--I'll see yer through. Sit still,
little boy--sit still! Ye're disturbin' of your mother."
Once more the little boy stayed the drumming of his heels to look at
him who spoke; and the closed cab rolled on with its slow, jingling
sound.
In the third four-wheeled cab, where the windows again were wide
open, Martin Stone, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of
his coat, and his long legs crossed, sat staring at the roof, with a
sort of twisted scorn on his pale face.
Just inside the gate, through which had passed in their time so many
dead and living shadows, Hilary stood waiting. He could probably not
have explained why he had come to see this tiny shade committed to
the earth--in memory, perhaps, of those two minutes when the baby's
eyes had held parley with his own, or in the wish to pay a mute
respect to her on whom life had weighed so hard of late. For
whatever reason he had come, he was keeping quietly to one side. And
unobserved, he, too, had his watcher--the little model, sheltering
behind a tall grave.
Two men in rusty black bore the little coffin; then came the white-
robed chaplain; then Mrs. Hughs and her little son; close behind, his
head thrust forward with trembling movements from side to side, old
Creed; and, last of all, young Martin Stone. Hilary joined the young
doctor. So the five mourners walked.
Before a small dark hole in a corner of the cemetery they stopped.
On this forest of unflowered graves the sun was falling; the east
wind, with its faint reek, touched the old butler's plastered hair,
and brought moisture to the corners of his eyes, fixed with
absorption on the chaplain. Words and thoughts hunted in his mind.
'He's gettin' Christian burial. Who gives this woman away? I do.
Ashes to ashes. I never suspected him of livin'.' The conning of
the burial service, shortened to fit the passing of that tiny shade,
gave him pleasurable sensation; films came down on his eyes; he
listened like some old parrot on its perch, his head a little to one
side.
'Them as dies young,' he thought, 'goes straight to heaven. We
trusts in God--all mortal men; his godfathers and his godmothers in
his baptism. Well, so it is! I'm not afeared o' death!'
Seeing the little coffin tremble above the hole, he craned his head
still further forward. It sank; a smothered sobbing rose. The old
butler touched the arm in front of him with shaking fingers.
"Don't 'e," he whispered; "he's a-gone to glory."
But, hearing the dry rattle of the earth, he took out his own
handkerchief and put it to his nose.
'Yes, he's a-gone,' he thought; 'another little baby. Old men an'
maidens, young men an' little children; it's a-goin' on all the time.
Where 'e is now there'll be no marryin', no, nor givin' out in
marriage; till death do us part.'
The wind, sweeping across the filled-in hole, carried the rustle of
his husky breathing, the dry, smothered sobbing of the seamstress,
out across the shadows' graves, to those places, to those streets....
>From the baby's funeral Hilary and Martin walked away together, and
far behind them, across the road, the little model followed. For
some time neither spoke; then Hilary, stretching out his hand towards
a squalid alley, said:
"They haunt us and drag us down. A long, dark passage. Is there a
light at the far end, Martin?"
"Yes," said Martin gruffly.
"I don't see it."
Martin looked at him.
"Hamlet!"
Hilary did not reply.
The young man watched him sideways. "It's a disease to smile like
that!"
Hilary ceased to smile. "Cure me, then," he said, with sudden anger,
"you man of health!"
The young "Sanitist's" sallow cheeks flushed. "Atrophy of the nerve
of action," he muttered; "there's no cure for that!"
"Ah!" said Hilary: "All kinds of us want social progress in our
different ways. You, your grandfather, my brother, myself; there are
four types for you. Will you tell me any one of us is the right man
for the job? For instance, action's not natural to me."
"Any act," answered Martin, "is better than no act."
"And myopia is natural to you, Martin. Your prescription in this
case has not been too successful, has it?"
"I can't help it if people will be d---d fools."
"There you hit it. But answer me this question: Isn't a social
conscience, broadly speaking, the result of comfort and security?"
Martin shrugged his shoulders.
"And doesn't comfort also destroy the power of action?"
Again Martin shrugged.
"Then, if those who have the social conscience and can see what is
wrong have lost their power of action, how can you say there is any
light at the end of this dark passage?"
Martin took his pipe out, filled it, and pressed the filling with his
thumb.
"There is light," he said at last, "in spite of all invertebrates.
Good-bye! I've wasted enough time," and he abruptly strode away.
"And in spite of myopia?" muttered Hilary.
A few minutes later, coming out from Messrs. Rose and Thorn's, where
he had gone to buy tobacco, he came suddenly on the little model,
evidently waiting.
"I was at the funeral," she, said; and her face added plainly: 'I've
followed you.' Uninvited, she walked on at his side.
'This is not the same girl,' he thought, 'that I sent away five days
ago. She has lost something, gained something. I don't know her.'
There seemed such a stubborn purpose in her face and manner. It was
like the look in a dog's eyes that says: 'Master, you thought to shut
me up away from you; I know now what that is like. Do what you will,
I mean in future to be near you.'
This look, by its simplicity, frightened one to whom the primitive
was strange. Desiring to free himself of his companion, yet not
knowing how, Hilary sat down in Kensington Gardens on the first bench
they came to. The little model sat down beside him. The quiet siege
laid to him by this girl was quite uncanny. It was as though someone
were binding him with toy threads, swelling slowly into rope before
his eyes. In this fear of Hilary's there was at first much
irritation. His fastidiousness and sense of the ridiculous were
roused. What did this little creature with whom he had no thoughts
and no ideas in common, whose spirit and his could never hope to
meet, think that she could get from him? Was she trying to weave a
spell over him too, with her mute, stubborn adoration? Was she
trying to change his protective weakness for her to another sort of
weakness? He turned and looked; she dropped her eyes at once, and
sat still as a stone figure.
As in her spirit, so in her body, she was different; her limbs looked
freer, rounder; her breath seemed stirring her more deeply; like a
flower of early June she was opening before his very eyes. This,
though it gave him pleasure, also added to his fear. The strange
silence, in its utter naturalness--for what could he talk about with
her?--brought home to him more vividly than anything before, the
barriers of class. All he thought of was how not to be ridiculous!
She was inviting him in some strange, unconscious, subtle way to
treat her as a woman, as though in spirit she had linked her round
young arms about his neck, and through her half-closed lips were
whispering the eternal call of sex to sex. And he, a middle-aged and
cultivated man, conscious of everything, could not even speak for
fear of breaking through his shell of delicacy. He hardly breathed,
disturbed to his very depths by the young figure sitting by his side,
and by the dread of showing that disturbance.
Beside the cultivated plant the self-sown poppy rears itself; round
the stem of a smooth tree the honeysuckle twines; to a trim wall the
ivy clings.
In her new-found form and purpose this girl had gained a strange,
still power; she no longer felt it mattered whether he spoke or
looked at her; her instinct, piercing through his shell, was certain
of the throbbing of his pulses, the sweet poison in his blood.
The perception of this still power, more than all else, brought fear
to Hilary. He need not speak; she would not care! He need not even
look at her; she had but to sit there silent, motionless, with the
breath of youth coming through her parted lips, and the light of
youth stealing through her half-closed eyes.
And abruptly he got up and walked away.
CHAPTER XXXI
SWAN SONG
The new wine, if it does not break the old bottle, after fierce
effervescence seethes and bubbles quietly.
It was so in Mr. Stone's old bottle, hour by hour and day by day,
throughout the month. A pinker, robuster look came back to his
cheeks; his blue eyes, fixed on distance, had in them more light; his
knees regained their powers; he bathed, and, all unknown to him, for
he only saw the waters he cleaved with his ineffably slow stroke,
Hilary and Martin, on alternate weeks, and keeping at a proper
distance, for fear he should see them doing him a service, attended
at that function in case Mr. Stone should again remain too long
seated at the bottom of the Serpentine. Each morning after his cocoa
and porridge he could be heard sweeping out his room with
extraordinary vigour, and as ten o'clock came near anyone who
listened would remark a sound of air escaping, as he moved up and
down on his toes in preparation for the labours of the day. No
letters, of course, nor any newspapers disturbed the supreme and
perfect self-containment of this life devoted to Fraternity--no
letters, partly because he lacked a known address, partly because for
years he had not answered them; and with regard to newspapers, once a
month he went to a Public Library, and could be seen with the last
four numbers of two weekly reviews before him, making himself
acquainted with the habits of those days, and moving his lips as
though in prayer. At ten each morning anyone in the corridor outside
his room was startled by the whirr of an alarum clock; perfect
silence followed; then rose a sound of shuffling, whistling,
rustling, broken by sharply muttered words; soon from this turbid
lake of sound the articulate, thin fluting of an old man's voice
streamed forth. This, alternating with the squeak of a quill pen,
went on till the alarum clock once more went off. Then he who stood
outside could smell that Mr. Stone would shortly eat; if, stimulated
by that scent, he entered; he might see the author of the "Book of
Universal Brotherhood" with a baked potato in one hand and a cup of
hot milk in the other; on the table, too, the ruined forms of eggs,
tomatoes, oranges, bananas, figs, prunes, cheese, and honeycomb,
which had passed into other forms already, together with a loaf of
wholemeal bread. Mr. Stone would presently emerge in his cottage-
woven tweeds, and old hat of green-black felt; or, if wet, in a long
coat of yellow gaberdine, and sou'wester cap of the same material;
but always with a little osier fruit-bag in his hand. Thus equipped,
he walked down to Rose and Thorn's, entered, and to the first man he
saw handed the osier fruit-bag, some coins, and a little book
containing seven leaves, headed "Food: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,"
and so forth. He then stood looking through the pickles in some jar
or other at things beyond, with one hand held out, fingers upwards,
awaiting the return of his little osier fruit-bag. Feeling.
presently that it had been restored to him, he would turn and walk
out of the shop. Behind his back, on the face of the department, the
same protecting smile always rose. Long habit had perfected it. All
now felt that, though so very different from themselves, this aged
customer was dependent on them. By not one single farthing or one
pale slip of cheese would they have defrauded him for all the
treasures of the moon, and any new salesman who laughed at that old
client was promptly told to "shut his head."
Mr. Stone's frail form, bent somewhat to one side by the increased
gravamen of the osier bag, was now seen moving homewards. He arrived
perhaps ten minutes before the three o'clock alarum, and soon passing
through preliminary chaos, the articulate, thin fluting of his voice
streamed forth again, broken by the squeaking and spluttering of his
quill.
But towards four o'clock signs of cerebral excitement became visible;
his lips would cease to utter sounds, his pen to squeak. His face,
with a flushed forehead, would appear at the open window. As soon as
the little model came in sight--her eyes fixed, not on his window,
but on Hilary's--he turned his back, evidently waiting for her to
enter by the door. His first words were uttered in a tranquil voice:
"I have several pages. I have placed your chair. Are you ready?
Follow!"
Except for that strange tranquillity of voice and the disappearance
of the flush on his brow, there was no sign of the rejuvenescence
that she brought, of such refreshment as steals on the traveller who
sits down beneath a lime-tree toward the end of along day's journey;
no sign of the mysterious comfort distilled into his veins by the
sight of her moody young face, her young, soft limbs. So from some
stimulant men very near their end will draw energy, watching, as it
were, a shape beckoning them forward, till suddenly it disappears in
darkness.
In the quarter of an hour sacred to their tea and conversation he
never noticed that she was always listening for sounds beyond; it was
enough that in her presence he felt singleness of purpose strong
within him.
When she had gone, moving languidly, moodily away, her eyes darting
about for signs of Hilary, Mr. Stone would sit down rather suddenly
and fall asleep, to dream, perhaps, of Youth--Youth with its scent of
sap, its close beckonings; Youth with its hopes and fears; Youth that
hovers round us so long after it is dead! His spirit would smile
behind its covering--that thin china of his face; and, as dogs
hunting in their sleep work their feet, so he worked the fingers
resting on his woollen knees.
The seven o'clock alarum woke him to the preparation of the evening
meal. This eaten, he began once more to pace up and down, to pour
words out into the silence, and to drive his squeaking quill.
So was being written a book such as the world had never seen!
But the girl who came so moodily to bring him refreshment, and went
so moodily away, never in these days caught a glimpse of that which
she was seeking.
Since the morning when he had left her abruptly, Hilary had made a
point of being out in the afternoons and not returning till past six
o'clock. By this device he put off facing her and himself, for he
could no longer refuse to see that he had himself to face. In the
few minutes of utter silence when the girl sat beside him, magnetic,
quivering with awakening force, he had found that the male in him was
far from dead. It was no longer vague, sensuous feeling; it was
warm, definite desire. The more she was in his thoughts, the less
spiritual his feeling for this girl of the people had become.
In those days he seemed much changed to such as knew him well.
Instead of the delicate, detached, slightly humorous suavity which he
had accustomed people to expect from him, the dry kindliness which
seemed at once to check confidence and yet to say, 'If you choose to
tell me anything, I should never think of passing judgment on you,
whatever you have done'--instead of that rather abstracted, faintly
quizzical air, his manner had become absorbed and gloomy. He seemed
to jib away from his friends. His manner at the "Pen and Ink" was
wholly unsatisfying to men who liked to talk. He was known to be
writing a new book; they suspected him of having "got into a hat"--
this Victorian expression, found by Mr. Balladyce in some chronicle
of post-Thackerayan manners, and revived by him in his incomparable
way, as who should say, 'What delicious expressions those good
bourgeois had!' now flourished in second childhood.
In truth, Hilary's difficulty with his new book was merely the one of
not being able to work at it at all. Even the housemaid who "did"
his study noticed that day after day she was confronted by Chapter
XXIV., in spite of her employer's staying in, as usual, every
morning.
The change in his manner and face, which had grown strained and
harassed, had been noticed by Bianca, though she would have died
sooner than admit she had noticed anything about him. It was one of
those periods in the lives of households like an hour of a late
summer's day--brooding, electric, as yet quiescent, but charged with
the currents of coming storms.
Twice only in those weeks while Hughs was in prison did Hilary see
the girl. Once he met her when he was driving home; she blushed
crimson and her eyes lighted up. And one morning, too, he passed her
on the bench where they had sat together. She was staring straight
before her, the corners of her mouth drooping discontentedly. She
did not see him.
To a man like Hilary-for whom running after women had been about the
last occupation in the world, who had, in fact, always fought shy of
them and imagined that they would always fight shy of him--there was
an unusual enticement and dismay in the feeling that a young girl
really was pursuing him. It was at once too good, too unlikely, and
too embarrassing to be true. His sudden feeling for her was the
painful sensation of one who sees a ripe nectarine hanging within
reach. He dreamed continually of stretching out his hand, and so he
did not dare, or thought he did not dare, to pass that way. All this
did not favour the tenor of a studious, introspective life; it also
brought a sense of unreality which made him avoid his best friends.
This, partly, was why Stephen came to see him one Sunday, his other
reason for the visit being the calculation that Hughs would be
released on the following Wednesday.
'This girl,' he thought, 'is going to the house still, and Hilary
will let things drift till he can't stop them, and there'll be a real
mess.'
The fact of the man's having been in prison gave a sinister turn to
an affair regarded hitherto as merely sordid by Stephen's orderly and
careful mind.
Crossing the garden, he heard Mr. Stone's voice issuing through the
open window.
'Can't the old crank stop even on Sundays?' he thought.
He found Hilary in his study, reading a book on the civilisation of
the Maccabees, in preparation for a review. He gave Stephen but a
dubious welcome.
Stephen broke ground gently.
"We haven't seen you for an age. I hear our old friend at it. Is he
working double tides to finish his magnum opus? I thought he
observed the day of rest."
"He does as a rule," said Hilary.
"Well, he's got the girl there now dictating."
Hilary winced. Stephen continued with greater circumspection
"You couldn't get the old boy to finish by Wednesday, I suppose? He
must be quite near the end by now."
The notion of Mr. Stone's finishing his book by Wednesday procured a
pale smile from Hilary.
"Could you get your Law Courts," he said, "to settle up the affairs
of mankind for good and all by Wednesday?"
"By Jove! Is it as bad as that? I thought, at any rate, he must be
meaning to finish some day."
"When men are brothers," said Hilary, "he will finish."
Stephen whistled.
"Look here, dear boy!" he said, "that ruffian comes out on Wednesday.
The whole thing will begin over again."
Hilary rose and paced the room. "I refuse," he said, "to consider
Hughs a ruffian. What do we know about him, or any of them?"
"Precisely! What do we know of this girl?"
"I am not going to discuss that," Hilary said shortly.
For a moment the faces of the two brothers wore a hard, hostile look,
as though the deep difference between their characters had at last
got the better of their loyalty. They both seemed to recognise this,
for they turned their heads away.
"I just wanted to remind you," Stephen said, "though you know your
own business best, of course." And at Hilary's nod he thought:
'That's just exactly what he doesn't!'
He soon left, conscious of an unwonted awkwardness in his brother's
presence. Hilary watched him out through the wicket gate, then sat
down on the solitary garden bench.
Stephen's visit had merely awakened perverse desires in him.
Strong sunlight was falling on that little London garden, disclosing
its native shadowiness; streaks, and smudges such as Life smears over
the faces of those who live too consciously. Hilary, beneath the
acacia-tree not yet in bloom, marked an early butterfly flitting over
the geraniums blossoming round an old sundial. Blackbirds were
holding evensong; the late perfume of the lilac came stealing forth
into air faintly smeeched with chimney smoke. There was brightness,
but no glory, in that little garden; scent, but no strong air blown
across golden lakes of buttercups, from seas of springing clover, or
the wind-silver of young wheat; music, but no full choir of sound, no
hum. Like the face and figure of its master, so was this little
garden, whose sundial the sun seldom reached-refined, self-conscious,
introspective, obviously a creature of the town. At that moment,
however, Hilary was not looking quite himself; his face was flushed,
his eyes angry, almost as if he had been a man of action.
The voice of Mr. Stone was still audible, fitfully quavering out into
the air, and the old man himself could now and then be seen holding
up his manuscript, his profile clear-cut against the darkness of the
room. A sentence travelled out across the garden:
"'Amidst the tur-bu-lent dis-cov-eries of those days, which, like
cross-currented and multibillowed seas, lapped and hollowed every
rock '"
A motor-car dashing past drowned the rest, and when the voice rose
again it was evidently dictating another paragraph.
"'In those places, in those streets, the shadows swarmed, whispering
and droning like a hive of dying bees, who, their honey eaten, wander
through the winter day seeking flowers that are frozen and dead."'
A great bee which had been busy with the lilac began to circle,
booming, round his hair. Suddenly Hilary saw Mr. Stone raise both
his arms.
"'In huge congeries, crowded, devoid of light and air, they were
assembled, these bloodless imprints from forms of higher caste. They
lay, like the reflection of leaves which, fluttering free in the
sweet winds, let fall to the earth wan resemblances. Imponderous,
dark ghosts, wandering ones chained to the ground, they had no hope
of any Lovely City, nor knew whence they had come. Men cast them on
the pavements and marched on. They did not in Universal Brotherhood
clasp their shadows to sleep within their hearts--for the sun was not
then at noon, when no man has a shadow.'"
As those words of swan song died away he swayed and trembled, and
suddenly disappeared below the sight-line, as if he had sat down.
The little model took his place in the open window. She started at
seeing Hilary; then, motionless, stood gazing at him. Out of the
gloom of the opening her eyes were all pupil, two spots of the
surrounding darkness imprisoned in a face as pale as any flower.
Rigid as the girl herself, Hilary looked up at her.
A voice behind him said: "How are you? I thought I'd give my car a
run." Mr. Purcey was coming from the gate, his eyes fixed on the
window where the girl stood. "How is your wife?" he added.
The bathos of this visit roused an acid fury in Hilary. He surveyed
Mr. Purcey's figure from his cloth-topped boots to his tall hat, and
said: "Shall we go in and find her?"
As they went along Mr. Purcey said: "That's the young--the--er--model
I met in your wife's studio, isn't it? Pretty girl!"
Hilary compressed his lips.
"Now, what sort of living do those girls make?" pursued Mr. Purcey.
"I suppose they've most of them other resources. Eh, what?"
"They make the living God will let them, I suppose, as other people
do."
Mr. Purcey gave him a sharp look. It was almost as if Dallison had
meant to snub him.
"Oh, exactly! I should think this girl would have no difficulty."
And suddenly he saw a curious change come over "that writing fellow,"
as he always afterwards described Hilary. Instead of a mild,
pleasant-looking chap enough, he had become a regular cold devil.
"My wife appears to be out," Hilary said. "I also have an
engagement."
In his surprise and anger Mr. Purcey said with great simplicity,
"Sorry I'm 'de trop'!" and soon his car could be heard bearing him
away with some unnecessary noise.
CHAPTER XXXII
BEHIND BIANCA'S VEIL
But Bianca was not out. She had been a witness of Hilary's long look
at the little model. Coming from her studio through the glass
passage to the house, she could not, of course, see what he was
gazing at, but she knew as well as if the girl had stood before her
in the dark opening of the window. Hating herself for having seen,
she went to her room, and lay on her bed with her hands pressed to
her eyes. She was used to loneliness--that necessary lot of natures
such as hers; but the bitter isolation of this hour was such as to
drive even her lonely nature to despair.
She rose at last, and repaired the ravages made in her face and
dress, lest anyone should see that she was suffering. Then, first
making sure that Hilary had left the garden, she stole out.
She wandered towards Hyde Park. It was Whitsuntide, a time of fear
to the cultivated Londoner. The town seemed all arid jollity and
paper bags whirled on a dusty wind. People swarmed everywhere in
clothes which did not suit them; desultory, dead-tired creatures who,
in these few green hours of leisure out of the sandy eternity of
their toil, were not suffered to rest, but were whipped on by starved
instincts to hunt pleasures which they longed for too dreadfully to
overtake.
Bianca passed an old tramp asleep beneath a tree. His clothes had
clung to him so long and lovingly that they were falling off, but his
face was calm as though masked with the finest wax. Forgotten were
his sores and sorrows; he was in the blessed fields of sleep.
Bianca hastened away from the sight of such utter peace. She
wandered into a grove of trees which had almost eluded the notice of
the crowd. They were limes, guarding still within them their honey
bloom. Their branches of light, broad leaves, near heart-shaped,
were spread out like wide skirts. The tallest of these trees, a
beautiful, gay creature, stood tremulous, like a mistress waiting for
her tardy lover. What joy she seemed to promise, what delicate
enticement, with every veined quivering leaf! And suddenly the sun
caught hold of her, raised her up to him, kissed her all over; she
gave forth a sigh of happiness, as though her very spirit had
travelled through her lips up to her lover's heart.
A woman in a lilac frock came stealing through the trees towards
Bianca, and sitting down not far off, kept looking quickly round
under her sunshade.
Presently Bianca saw what she was looking for. A young man in black
coat and shining hat came swiftly up and touched her shoulder. Half
hidden by the foliage they sat, leaning forward, prodding gently at
the ground with stick and parasol; the stealthy murmur of their talk,
so soft and intimate that no word was audible, stole across the
grass; and secretly he touched her hand and arm. They were not of
the holiday crowd, and had evidently chosen out this vulgar afternoon
for a stolen meeting.
Bianca rose and hurried on amongst the trees. She left the Park. In
the streets many couples, not so careful to conceal their intimacy,
were parading arm-in-arm. The sight of them did not sting her like
the sight of those lovers in the Park; they were not of her own
order. But presently she saw a little boy and girl asleep on the
doorstep of a mansion, with their cheeks pressed close together and
their arms round each other, and again she hurried on. In the course
of that long wandering she passed the building which "Westminister"
was so anxious to avoid. In its gateway an old couple were just
about to separate, one to the men's, the other to the women's
quarters. Their toothless mouths were close together. "Well,
goodnight, Mother!" "Good-night, Father, good-night-take care o'
yourself!"
Once more Bianca hurried on.
It was past nine when she turned into the Old Square, and rang the
bell of her sister's house with the sheer physical desire to rest--
somewhere that was not her home.
At one end of the long, low drawing-room Stephen, in evening dress,
was reading aloud from a review. Cecilia was looking dubiously at
his sock, where she seemed to see a tiny speck of white that might be
Stephen. In the window at the far end Thyme and Martin were
exchanging speeches at short intervals; they made no move at Bianca's
entrance; and their faces said: "We have no use for that handshaking
nonsense!"
Receiving Cecilia's little, warm, doubting kiss and Stephen's polite,
dry handshake, Bianca motioned to him not to stop reading. He
resumed. Cecilia, too, resumed her scrutiny of Stephen's sock.
'Oh dear!' she thought. 'I know B.'s come here because she's
unhappy. Poor thing! Poor Hilary! It's that wretched business
again, I suppose.'
Skilled in every tone of Stephen's voice, she knew that Bianca's
entry had provoked the same train of thought in him; to her he seemed
reading out these words: 'I disapprove--I disapprove. She's Cis's
sister. But if it wasn't for old Hilary I wouldn't have the subject
in the house!'
Bianca, whose subtlety recorded every shade of feeling, could see
that she was not welcome. Leaning back with veil raised, she seemed
listening to Stephen's reading, but in fact she was quivering at the
sight of those two couples.
Couples, couples--for all but her! What crime had she committed?
Why was the china of her cup flawed so that no one could drink from
it? Why had she been made so that nobody could love her? This, the
most bitter of all thoughts, the most tragic of all questionings,
haunted her.
The article which Stephen read--explaining exactly how to deal with
people so that from one sort of human being they might become
another, and going on to prove that if, after this conversion, they
showed signs of a reversion, it would then be necessary to know the
reason why--fell dryly on ears listening to that eternal question:
Why is it with me as it is? It is not fair!--listening to the
constant murmuring of her pride: I am not wanted here or anywhere.
Better to efface myself!
>From their end of the room Thyme and Martin scarcely looked at her.
To them she was Aunt B., an amateur, the mockery of whose eyes
sometimes penetrated their youthful armour; they were besides too
interested in their conversation to perceive that she was suffering.
The skirmish of that conversation had lasted now for many days--ever
since the death of the Hughs' baby.
"Well," Martin was saying, "what are you going to do? It's no good
to base it on the baby; you must know your own mind all round. You
can't go rushing into real work on mere sentiment."
"You went to the funeral, Martin. It's bosh to say you didn't feel
it too!"
Martin deigned no answer to this insinuation.
"We've gone past the need for sentiment," he said: "it's exploded; so
is Justice, administered by an upper class with a patch over one eye
and a squint in the other. When you see a dying donkey in a field,
you don't want to refer the case to a society, as your dad would; you
don't want an essay of Hilary's, full of sympathy with everybody, on
'Walking in a field: with reflections on the end of donkeys'--you
want to put a bullet in the donkey."
"You're always down on Uncle Hilary," said Thyme.
"I don't mind Hilary himself; I object to his type."
"Well, he objects to yours," said Thyme.
"I'm not so sure of that," said Martin slowly; "he hasn't got
character enough."
Thyme raised her chin, and, looking at him through half-closed eyes,
said: " Well, I do think, of all the conceited persons I ever met
you're the worst."
Martin's nostril curled.
"Are you prepared," he said, "to put a bullet in the donkey, or are
you not?"
"I only see one donkey, and not a dying one!"
Martin stretched out his hand and gripped her arm below the elbow.
Retaining it luxuriously, he said: "Don't wander!"
Thyme tried to free her arm. "Let go!"
Martin was looking straight into her eyes. A flush had risen in his
cheeks.
Thyme, too, went the colour of the old-rose curtain behind which she
sat.
"Let go!"
"I won't! I'll make you know your mind. What do you mean to do?
Are you coming in a fit of sentiment, or do you mean business?"
Suddenly, half-hypnotised, the young girl ceased to struggle. Her
face had the strangest expression of submission and defiance--a sort
of pain, a sort of delight. So they sat full half a minute staring
at each other's eyes. Hearing a rustling sound, they looked, and saw
Bianca moving to the door. Cecilia, too, had risen.
"What is it, B.?"
Bianca, opening the door, went out. Cecilia followed swiftly, too
late to catch even a glimpse of her sister's face behind the veil...
In Mr. Stone's room the green lamp burned dimly, and he who worked by
it was sitting on the edge of his campbed, attired in his old brown
woollen gown and slippers.
And suddenly it seemed to him that he was not alone.
"I have finished for to-night," he said. "I am waiting for the moon
to rise. She is nearly full; I shall see her face from here."
A form sat down by him on the bed, and a voice said softly:
"Like a woman's."
Mr. Stone saw his younger daughter. "You have your hat on. Are you
going out, my dear?"
"I saw your light as I came in."
"The moon," said Mr. Stone, "is an arid desert. Love is unknown
there."
"How can you bear to look at her, then?" Bianca whispered.
Mr. Stone raised his finger. "She has risen."
The wan moon had slipped out into the darkness. Her light stole
across the garden and through the open window to the bed where they
were sitting.
"Where there is no love, Dad," Bianca said, "there can be no life,
can there?"
Mr. Stone's eyes seemed to drink the moonlight.
"That," he said, "is the great truth. The bed is shaking!"
With her arms pressed tight across her breast, Bianca was struggling
with violent, noiseless sobbing. That desperate struggle seemed to
be tearing her to death before his eyes, and Mr. Stone sat silent,
trembling. He knew not what to do. From his frosted heart years of
Universal Brotherhood had taken all knowledge of how to help his
daughter. He could only sit touching her tremulously with thin
fingers.
The form beside him, whose warmth he felt against his arm, grew
stiller, as though, in spite of its own loneliness, his helplessness
had made it feel that he, too; was lonely. It pressed a little
closer to him. The moonlight, gaining pale mastery over the
flickering lamp, filled the whole room.
Mr. Stone said: "I want her mother!"
The form beside him ceased to struggle.
Finding out an old, forgotten way, Mr. Stone's arm slid round that
quivering body.
"I do not know what to say to her," he muttered, and slowly he began
to rock himself.
"Motion," he said, "is soothing."
The moon passed on. The form beside him sat so still that Mr. Stone
ceased moving. His daughter was no longer sobbing. Suddenly her
lips seared his forehead.
Trembling from that desperate caress, he raised his fingers to the
spot and looked round.
She was gone.
CHAPTER XXXIII
HILARY DEALS WITH THE SITUATION
To understand the conduct of Hilary and Bianca at what "Westminister"
would have called this "crisax," not only their feelings as sentient
human beings, but their matrimonial philosophy, must be taken into
account. By education and environment they belonged to a section of
society which had "in those days" abandoned the more old-fashioned
views of marriage. Such as composed this section, finding themselves
in opposition, not only to the orthodox proprietary creed, but even
to their own legal rights, had been driven to an attitude of almost
blatant freedom. Like all folk in opposition, they were bound, as a
simple matter of principle, to disagree with those in power, to view
with a contemptuous resentment that majority which said, "I believe
the thing is mine, and mine it shall remain"--a majority which by
force of numbers made this creed the law. Unable legally to, be
other than the proprietors of wife or husband, as the case might be,
they were obliged, even in the most happy unions, to be very careful
not to become disgusted with their own position. Their legal status
was, as it were, a goad, spurring them on to show their horror of it.
They were like children sent to school with trousers that barely
reached their knees, aware that they could neither reduce their
stature to the proportions of their breeches nor make their breeches
grow. They were furnishing an instance of that immemorial "change of
form to form" to which Mr. Stone had given the name of Life. In a
past age thinkers and dreamers and "artistic pigs" rejecting the
forms they found, had given unconscious shape to this marriage law,
which, after they had become the wind, had formed itself out of their
exiled pictures and thoughts and dreams. And now this particular law
in turn was the dried rind, devoid of pips or speculation; and the
thinkers and dreamers and "artistic pigs" were again rejecting it,
and again themselves in exile.
This exiled faith, this honour amongst thieves, animated a little
conversation between Hilary and Bianca on the Tuesday following the
night when Mr. Stone sat on his bed to watch the rising moon.
Quietly Bianca said: "I think I shall be going away for a time."
"Wouldn't you rather that I went instead?" "You are wanted; I am
not."
That ice-cold, ice-clear remark contained the pith of the whole
matter; and Hilary said:
"You are not going at once?"
"At the end of the week, I think."
Noting his eyes fixed on her, she added:
"Yes; we're neither of us looking quite our best."
"I am sorry."
"I know you are."
This had been all. It had been sufficient to bring Hilary once more
face to face with the situation.
Its constituent elements remained the same; relative values had much
changed. The temptations of St. Anthony were becoming more poignant
every hour. He had no "principles" to pit against them: he had
merely the inveterate distaste for hurting anybody, and a feeling
that if he yielded to his inclination he would be faced ultimately
with a worse situation than ever. It was not possible for him to
look at the position as Mr. Purcey might have done, if his wife had
withdrawn from him and a girl had put herself in his way. Neither
hesitation because of the defenceless position of the girl, nor
hesitation because of his own future with her, would have troubled
Mr. Purcey. He--good man--in his straightforward way, would have
only thought about the present--not, indeed, intending to have a
future with a young person of that class. Consideration for a wife
who had withdrawn from the society of Mr. Purcey would also naturally
have been absent from the equation. That Hilary worried over all
these questions was the mark of his 'fin de sieclism.' And in the
meantime the facts demanded a decision.
He had not spoken to this girl since the day of the baby's funeral,
but in that long look from the garden he had in effect said: 'You are
drawing me to the only sort of union possible to us!' And she in
effect had answered: 'Do what you like with me!'
There were other facts, too, to be reckoned with. Hughs would be
released to-morrow; the little model would not stop her visits unless
forced to; Mr. Stone could not well do without her; Bianca had in
effect declared that she was being driven out of her own house. It
was this situation which Hilary, seated beneath the bust of Socrates,
turned over and over in his mind. Long and painful reflection
brought him back continually to the thought that he himself, and not
Bianca, had better go away. He was extremely bitter and contemptuous
towards himself that he had not done so long ago. He made use of the
names Martin had given him. "Hamlet," "Amateur," "Invertebrate."
They gave him, unfortunately, little comfort.
In the afternoon he received a visit. Mr. Stone came in with his
osier fruit-bag in his hand. He remained standing, and spoke at
once.
"Is my daughter happy?"
At this unexpected question Hilary walked over to the fireplace.
"No," he said at last; "I am afraid she is not."
"Why?"
Hilary was silent; then, facing the old man, he said:
"I think she will be glad, for certain reasons, if I go away for a
time."
"When are you going?" asked Mr. Stone.
"As soon as I can."
Mr. Stone's eyes, wistfully bright, seemed trying to see through
heavy fog.
"She came to me, I think," he said; "I seem to recollect her crying.
You are good to her?"
"I have tried to be," said Hilary.
Mr. Stone's face was discoloured by a flush. "You have no children,"
he said painfully; "do you live together?"
Hilary shook his head.
"You are estranged?" said Mr. Stone.
Hilary bowed. There was a long silence. Mr. Stone's eyes had
travelled to the window.
"Without love there cannot be life," he said at last; and fixing his
wistful gaze on Hilary, asked: "Does she love another?"
Again Hilary shook his head.
When Mr. Stone next spoke it was clearly to himself.
"I do not know why I am glad. Do you love another?"
At this question Hilary's eyebrows settled in a frown. "What do you
mean by love?" he said.
Mr. Stone did not reply; it was evident that he was reflecting
deeply. His lips began to move: "By love I mean the forgetfulness of
self. Unions are frequent in which only the sexual instincts, or the
remembrance of self, are roused---"
"That is true," muttered Hilary.
Mr. Stone looked up; painful traces of confusion showed in his face.
"We were discussing something."
"I was telling you," said Hilary, "that it would be better for your
daughter--if I go away for a time."
"Yes," said Mr. Stone; "you are estranged."
Hilary went back to his stand before the empty fireplace.
"There is one thing, sir," he said, "on my conscience to say before I
go, and I must leave it to you to decide. The little girl who comes
to you no longer lives where she used to live."
"In that street...." said Mr. Stone.
Hilary went on quickly. "She was obliged to leave because the
husband of the woman with whom she used to lodge became infatuated
with her. He has been in prison, and comes out tomorrow. If she
continues to come here he will, of course, be able to find her. I'm
afraid he will pursue her again. Have I made it clear to you?"
"No," said Mr. Stone.
"The man," resumed Hilary patiently, "is a poor, violent creature,
who has been wounded in the head; he is not quite responsible. He
may do the girl an injury."
"What injury?"
"He has stabbed his wife already."
"I will speak to him," said Mr. Stone.
Hilary smiled. "I am afraid that words will hardly meet the case.
She ought to disappear."
There was silence.
"My book!" said Mr. Stone.
It smote Hilary to see how white his face had become. 'It's better,'
he thought, 'to bring his will-power into play; she will never come
here, anyway, after I'm gone.'
But, unable to bear the tragedy in the old man's eyes, he touched him
on the arm.
"Perhaps she will take the risk, sir, if you ask her."
Mr. Stone did not answer, and, not knowing what more to say, Hilary
went back to the window. Miranda was slumbering lightly out there in
the speckled shade, where it was not too warm and not too cold, her
cheek resting on her paw and white teeth showing.
Mr. Stone's voice rose again. "You are right; I cannot ask her to
run a risk like that!"
"She is just coming up the garden," Hilary said huskily. "Shall I
tell her to come in?"
"Yes," said Mr. Stone.
Hilary beckoned.
The girl came in, carrying a tiny bunch of lilies of the valley; her
face fell at sight of Mr. Stone; she stood still, raising the lilies
to her breast. Nothing could have been more striking than the change
from her look of guttered expectancy to a sort of hard dismay. A
spot of red came into both her cheeks. She gazed from Mr. Stone to
Hilary and back again. Both were staring at her. No one spoke. The
little model's bosom began heaving as though she had been running;
she said faintly: "Look; I brought you this, Mr. Stone!" and held out
to him the bunch of lilies. But Mr. Stone made no sign. "Don't you
like them?"
Mr. Stone's eyes remained fastened on her face.
To Hilary this suspense was, evidently, most distressing. "Come,
will you tell her, sir," he said, "or shall I?"
Mr. Stone spoke.
"I shall try and write my book without you. You must not run this
risk. I cannot allow it."
The little model turned her eyes from side to side. "But I like to
copy out your book," she said.
"The man will injure you," said Mr. Stone.
The little model looked at Hilary.
"I don't care if he does; I'm not afraid of him. I can look after
myself; I'm used to it."
"I am going away," said Hilary quietly.
After a desperate look, that seemed to ask, 'Am I going, too?' the
little model stood as though frozen.
Wishing to end the painful scene, Hilary went up to Mr. Stone.
"Do you want to dictate to her this afternoon, sir?"
"No," said Mr. Stone.
"Nor to-morrow?"
"Will you come a little walk with me?"
Mr. Stone bowed.
Hilary turned to the little model. "It is goodbye, then," he said.
She did not take his hand. Her eyes, turned sideways, glinted; her
teeth were fastened on her lower lip. She dropped the lilies,
suddenly looked up at him, gulped, and slunk away. In passing she
had smeared the lilies with her foot.
Hilary picked up the fragments of the flowers, and dropped them into
the grate. The fragrance of the bruised blossoms remained clinging
to the air.
"Shall we get ready for our walk?" he said.
Mr. Stone moved feebly to the door, and very soon they were walking
silently towards the Gardens.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THYME'S ADVENTURE
This same afternoon Thyme, wheeling a bicycle and carrying a light
valise, was slipping into a back street out of the Old Square.
Putting her burden down at the pavement's edge, she blew a whistle.
A hansom-cab appeared, and a man in ragged clothes, who seemed to
spring out of the pavement, took hold of her valise. His lean,
unshaven face was full of wolfish misery.
"Get off with you!" the cabman said.
"Let him do it!" murmured Thyme.
The cab-runner hoisted up the trunk, then waited motionless beside
the cab.
Thyme handed him two coppers. He looked at them in silence, and went
away.
'Poor man,' she thought; 'that's one of the things we've got to do
away with!'
The cab now proceeded in the direction of the Park, Thyme following
on her bicycle, and trying to stare about her calmly.
'This,' she thought, 'is the end of the old life. I won't be
romantic, and imagine I'm doing anything special; I must take it all
as a matter of course.' She thought of Mr. Purcey's face--'that
person!'--if he could have seen her at this moment turning her back
on comfort. 'The moment I get there,' she mused, 'I shall let mother
know; she can come out to-morrow, and see for herself. I can't have
hysterics about my disappearance, and all that. They must get used
to the idea that I mean to be in touch with things. I can't be
stopped by what anybody thinks!'
An approaching motor-car brought a startled frown across her brow.
Was it 'that person'? But though it was not Mr. Purcey and his A.i.
Damyer, it was somebody so like him as made no difference. Thyme
uttered a little laugh.
In the Park a cool light danced and glittered on the trees and water,
and the same cool, dancing glitter seemed lighting the girl's eyes.
The cabman, unseen, took an admiring look at her. 'Nice little bit,
this!' it said.
'Grandfather bathes here,' thought Thyme. 'Poor darling! I pity
everyone that's old.'
The cab passed on under the shade of trees out into the road.
'I wonder if we have only one self in us,' thought Thyme.
'I sometimes feel that I have two--Uncle Hilary would understand what
I mean. The pavements are beginning to smell horrid already, and
it's only June to-morrow. Will mother feel my going very much? How
glorious if one didn't feel!'
The cab turned into a narrow street of little shops.
'It must be dreadful to have to serve in a small shop. What millions
of people there are in the world! Can anything be of any use?
Martin says what matters is to do one's job; but what is one's job?'
The cab emerged into a broad, quiet square.
'But I'm not going to think of anything,' thought Thyme; 'that's
fatal. Suppose father stops my allowance; I should have to earn my
living as a typist, or something of that sort; but he won't, when he
sees I mean it. Besides, mother wouldn't let him.'
The cab entered the Euston Road, and again the cabman's broad face
was turned towards Thyme with an inquiring stare.
'What a hateful road!' Thyme thought. 'What dull, ugly, common-
looking faces all the people seem to have in London! as if they
didn't care for anything but just to get through their day somehow.
I've only seen two really pretty faces!'
The cab stopped before a small tobacconist's on the south side of the
road.
'Have I got to live here?' thought Thyme.
Through the open door a narrow passage led to a narrow staircase
covered with oilcloth. She raised her bicycle and wheeled it in. A
Jewish-looking youth emerging from the shop accosted her.
"Your gentleman friend says you are to stay in your rooms, please,
until he comes."
His warm red-brown eyes dwelt on her lovingly. "Shall I take your
luggage up, miss?"
"Thank you; I can manage."
"It's the first floor," said the young man.
The little rooms which Thyme entered were stuffy, clean, and neat.
Putting her trunk down in her bedroom, which looked out on a bare
yard, she went into the sitting-room and threw the window up. Down
below the cabman and tobacconist were engaged in conversation. Thyme
caught the expression on their faces--a sort of leering curiosity.
'How disgusting and horrible men are!' she thought, moodily staring
at the traffic. All seemed so grim, so inextricable, and vast, out
there in the grey heat and hurry, as though some monstrous devil were
sporting with a monstrous ant-heap. The reek of petrol and of dung
rose to her nostrils. It was so terribly big and hopeless; it was so
ugly! 'I shall never do anything,' thought Thyme-'never--never! Why
doesn't Martin come?'
She went into her bedroom and opened her valise. With the scent of
lavender that came from it, there sprang up a vision of her white
bedroom at home, and the trees of the green garden and the blackbirds
on the grass.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs brought her back into the
sitting-room. Martin was standing in the doorway.
Thyme ran towards him, but stopped abruptly. "I've come, you see.
What made you choose this place?"
"I'm next door but two; and there's a girl here--one of us. She'll
show you the ropes."
"Is she a lady?"
Martin raised his shoulders. "She is what is called a lady," he
said; "but she's the right sort, all the same. Nothing will stop
her."
At this proclamation of supreme virtue, the look on Thyme's face was
very queer. 'You don't trust me,' it seemed to say, 'and you trust
that girl. You put me here for her to watch over me!...'
"I 'want to send this telegram," she said
Martin read the telegram. "You oughtn't to have funked telling your
mother what you meant to do."
Thyme crimsoned. "I'm not cold-blooded, like you."
"This is a big matter," said Martin. "I told you that you had no
business to come at all if you couldn't look it squarely in the
face."
"If you want me to stay you had better be more decent to me, Martin."
"It must be your own affair," said Martin.
Thyme stood at the window, biting her lips to keep the tears back
from her eyes. A very pleasant voice behind her said: "I do think
it's so splendid of you to come!"
A girl in grey was standing there--thin, delicate, rather plain, with
a nose ever so little to one side, lips faintly smiling, and large,
shining, greenish eyes.
"I am Mary Daunt. I live above you. Have you had some tea?"
In the gentle question of this girl with the faintly smiling lips and
shining eyes Thyme fancied that she detected mockery.
"Yes, thanks. I want to be shown what my work's to be, at once,
please."
The grey girl looked at Martin.
"Oh! Won't to-morrow do for all that sort of thing? I'm sure you
must be tired. Mr. Stone, do make her rest!"
Martin's glance seemed to say: 'Please leave your femininities!'
"If you mean business, your work will be the same as hers," he said;
"you're not qualified. All you can do will be visiting, noting the
state of the houses and the condition of the children."
The girl in grey said gently: "You see, we only deal with sanitation
and the children. It seems hard on the grown people and the old to
leave them out; but there's sure to be so much less money than we
want, so that it must all go towards the future."
There was a silence. The girl with the shining eyes added softly:
"1950!"
"1950!" repeated Martin. It seemed to be some formula of faith.
"I must send this telegram!" muttered Thyme.
Martin took it from her and went out.
Left alone in the little room, the two girls did not at first speak.
The girl in grey was watching Thyme half timidly, as if she could not
tell what to make of this young creature who looked so charming, and
kept shooting such distrustful glances.
"I think it's so awfully sweet of you to come," she said at last.
"I know what a good time you have at home; your cousin's often told
me. Don't you think he's splendid?"
To that question Thyme made no answer.
"Isn't this work horrid," she said--"prying into people's houses?"
The grey girl smiled. "It is rather awful sometimes. I've been at
it six months now. You get used to it. I've had all the worst
things said to me by now, I should think."
Thyme shuddered.
"You see," said the grey girl's faintly smiling lips, "you soon get
the feeling of having to go through with it. We all realise it's got
to be done, of course. Your cousin's one of the best of us; nothing
seems to put him out. He has such a nice sort of scornful kindness.
I'd rather work with him than anyone."
She looked past her new associate into that world outside, where the
sky seemed all wires and yellow heat-dust. She did not notice Thyme
appraising her from head to foot, with a stare hostile and jealous,
but pathetic, too, as though confessing that this girl was her
superior.
"I'm sure I can't do that work!" she said suddenly.
The grey girl smiled. "Oh, I thought that at first." Then, with an
admiring look: "But I do think it's rather a shame for you, you're so
pretty. Perhaps they'd put you on to tabulation work, though that's
awfully dull. We'll ask your cousin."
"No; I'll do the whole or nothing."
"Well," said the grey girl, "I've got one house left to-day. Would
you like to come and see the sort of thing?"
She took a small notebook from a side pocket in her skirt.
"I can't get on without a pocket. You must have something that you
can't leave behind. I left four little bags and two dozen
handkerchiefs in five weeks before I came back to pockets. It's
rather a horrid house, I'm afraid!"
"I shall be all right," said Thyme shortly.
In the shop doorway the young tobacconist was taking the evening air.
He greeted them with his polite but constitutionally leering smile.
"Good-evening, mith," he said; "nithe evening!"
"He's rather an awful little man," the grey girl said when they had
achieved the crossing of the street; "but he's got quite a nice sense
of humour."
"Ah!" said Thyme.
They had turned into a by-street, and stopped before a house which
had obviously seen better days. Its windows were cracked, its doors
unpainted, and down in the basement could be seen a pile of rags, an
evil-looking man seated by it, and a blazing fire. Thyme felt a
little gulping sensation. There was a putrid scent as of burning
refuse. She looked at her companion. The grey girl was consulting
her notebook, with a faint smile on her lips. And in Thyme's heart
rose a feeling almost of hatred for this girl, who was so business-
like in the presence of such sights and scents.
The door was opened by a young red-faced woman, who looked as if she
had been asleep.
The grey girl screwed up her shining eyes. "Oh, do you mind if we
come in a minute?" she said. "It would be so good of you. We're
making a report."
"There's nothing to report here," the young woman answered. But the
grey girl had slipped as gently past as though she had been the very
spirit of adventure.
"Of course, I see that, but just as a matter of form, you know."
"I've parted with most of my things," the young woman said
defensively, "since my husband died. It's a hard life."
"Yes, yes, but not worse than mine--always poking my nose into other
people's houses."
The young woman was silent, evidently surprised.
"The landlord ought to keep you in better repair," said the grey
girl. "He owns next door, too, doesn't he?"
The young woman nodded. "He's a bad landlord. All down the street
'ere it's the same. Can't get nothing done."
The grey girl had gone over to a dirty bassinette where a half-naked
child sprawled. An ugly little girl with fat red cheeks was sitting
on a stool beside it, close to an open locker wherein could be seen a
number of old meat bones.'
"Your chickabiddies?" said the grey girl. "Aren't they sweet?"
The young woman's face became illumined by a smile.
"They're healthy," she said.
"That's more than can be said for all the children in the house, I
expect," murmured the grey girl.
The young woman replied emphatically, as though voicing an old
grievance: "The three on the first floor's not so bad, but I don't
let 'em 'ave anything to do with that lot at the top."
Thyme saw her new friend's hand hover over the child's head like some
pale dove. In answer to that gesture, the mother nodded. "Just
that; you've got to clean 'em every time they go near them children
at the top."
The grey girl looked at Thyme. 'That's where we've got to go,
evidently,' she seemed to say.
"A dirty lot!" muttered the young woman.
"It's very hard on you."
"It is. I'm workin' at the laundry all day when I can get it. I
can't look after the children--they get everywhere."
"Very hard," murmured the grey girl. "I'll make a note of that."
Together with the little book, in which she was writing furiously,
she had pulled out her handkerchief, and the sight of this
handkerchief reposing on the floor gave Thyme a queer satisfaction,
such as comes when one remarks in superior people the absence of a
virtue existing in oneself.
"Well, we mustn't keep you, Mrs.--Mrs. ?"
"Cleary."
"Cleary. How old's this little one? Four? And the other? Two?
They are ducks. Good-bye!"
In the corridor outside the grey girl whispered: "I do like the way
we all pride ourselves on being better than someone else. I think
it's so hopeful and jolly. Shall we go up and see the abyss at the
top?"
CHAPTER XXXV
A YOUNG GIRL'S MIND
A young girl's mind is like a wood in Spring--now a rising mist of
bluebells and flakes of dappled sunlight; now a world of still, wan,
tender saplings, weeping they know not why. Through the curling
twigs of boughs just green, its wings fly towards the stars; but the
next moment they have drooped to mope beneath the damp bushes. It is
ever yearning for and trembling at the future; in its secret places
all the countless shapes of things that are to be are taking stealthy
counsel of how to grow up without letting their gown of mystery fall.
They rustle, whisper, shriek suddenly, and as suddenly fall into a
delicious silence. From the first hazel-bush to the last may-tree it
is an unending meeting-place of young solemn things eager to find out
what they are, eager to rush forth to greet the kisses of the wind
and sun, and for ever trembling back and hiding their faces. The
spirit of that wood seems to lie with her ear close to the ground, a
pale petal of a hand curved like a shell behind it, listening for the
whisper of her own life. There she lies, white and supple, with
dewy, wistful eyes, sighing: 'What is my meaning? Ah, I am
everything! Is there in all the world a thing so wonderful as I?...
Oh, I am nothing--my wings are heavy; I faint, I die!'
When Thyme, attended by the grey girl, emerged from the abyss at the
top, her cheeks were flushed and her hands clenched. She said
nothing. The grey girl, too, was silent, with a look such as a
spirit divested of its body by long bathing in the river of reality
might bend on one who has just come to dip her head. Thyme's quick
eyes saw that look, and her colour deepened. She saw, too, the
glance of the Jewish youth when Martin joined them in the doorway.
'Two girls now,' he seemed to say. 'He goes it, this young man!'
Supper was laid in her new friend's room--pressed beef, potato salad,
stewed prunes, and ginger ale. Martin and the grey girl talked.
Thyme ate in silence, but though her eyes seemed fastened on her
plate, she saw every glance that passed between them, heard every
word they said. Those glances were not remarkable, nor were those
words particularly important, but they were spoken in tones that
seemed important to Thyme. 'He never talks to me like that,' she
thought.
When supper was over they went out into the streets to walk, but at
the door the grey girl gave Thyme's arm a squeeze, her cheek a swift
kiss, and turned back up the stairs.
"Aren't you coming?" shouted Martin.
Her voice was heard answering from above: "No, not tonight."
With the back of her hand Thyme rubbed off the kiss. The two cousins
walked out amongst the traffic.
The evening was very warm and close; no breeze fanned the reeking
town. Speaking little, they wandered among endless darkening
streets, whence to return to the light and traffic of the Euston Road
seemed like coming back to Heaven. At last, close again to her new
home, Thyme said: "Why should one bother? It's all a horrible great
machine, trying to blot us out; people are like insects when you put
your thumb on them and smear them on a book. I hate--I loathe it!"
"They might as well be healthy insects while they last," answered
Martin.
Thyme faced round at him. "I shan't sleep tonight, Martin; get out
my bicycle for me."
Martin scrutinised her by the light of the street lamp. "All right,"
he said; "I'll come too."
There are, say moralists, roads that lead to Hell, but it was on a
road that leads to Hampstead that the two young cyclists set forth
towards eleven o'clock. The difference between the character of the
two destinations was soon apparent, for whereas man taken in bulk had
perhaps made Hell, Hampstead had obviously been made by the upper
classes. There were trees and gardens, and instead of dark canals of
sky banked by the roofs of houses and hazed with the yellow scum of
London lights, the heavens spread out in a wide trembling pool. From
that rampart of the town, the Spaniard's Road, two plains lay exposed
to left and right; the scent of may-tree blossom had stolen up the
hill; the rising moon clung to a fir-tree bough. Over the country
the far stars presided, and sleep's dark wings were spread above the
fields--silent, scarce breathing, lay the body of the land. But to
the south, where the town, that restless head, was lying, the stars
seemed to have fallen and were sown in the thousand furrows of its
great grey marsh, and from the dark miasma of those streets there
travelled up a rustle, a whisper, the far allurement of some
deathless dancer, dragging men to watch the swirl of her black,
spangled drapery, the gleam of her writhing limbs. Like the song of
the sea in a shell was the murmur of that witch of motion, clasping
to her the souls of men, drawing them down into a soul whom none had
ever known to rest.
Above the two young cousins, scudding along that ridge between the
country and the town, three thin white clouds trailed slowly towards
the west-like tired. seabirds drifting exhausted far out from land
on a sea blue to blackness with unfathomable depth.
For an hour those two rode silently into the country.
"Have we come far enough?" Martin said at last.
Thyme shook her head. A long, steep hill beyond a little sleeping
village had brought them to a standstill. Across the shadowy fields
a pale sheet of water gleamed out in moonlight. Thyme turned down
towards it.
"I'm hot," she said; "I want to bathe my face. Stay here. Don't
come with me."
She left her bicycle, and, passing through a gate, vanished among the
trees.
Martin stayed leaning against the gate. The village clock struck
one. The distant call of a hunting owl, "Qu-wheek, qu-wheek!"
sounded through the grave stillness of this last night of May. The
moon at her curve's summit floated at peace on the blue surface of
the sky, a great closed water-lily. And Martin saw through the trees
scimitar-shaped reeds clustering black along the pool's shore. All
about him the may-flowers were alight. It was such a night as makes
dreams real and turns reality to dreams.
'All moonlit nonsense!' thought the young man, for the night had
disturbed his heart.
But Thyme did not come back. He called to her, and in the death-like
silence following his shouts he could hear his own heart beat. He
passed in through the gate. She was nowhere to be seen. Why was she
playing him this trick?
He turned up from the water among the trees, where the incense of the
may-flowers hung heavy in the air.
'Never look for a thing!' he thought, and stopped to listen. It was
so breathless that the leaves of a low bough against his cheek did
not stir while he stood there. Presently he heard faint sounds, and
stole towards them. Under a beech-tree he almost stumbled over
Thyme, lying with her face pressed to the ground. The young doctor's
heart gave a sickening leap; he quickly knelt down beside her. The
girl's body, pressed close to the dry beech-mat, was being shaken by
long sobs. From head to foot it quivered; her hat had been torn off,
and the fragrance of her hair mingled with the fragrance of the
night. In Martin's heart something seemed to turn over and over, as
when a boy he had watched a rabbit caught in a snare. He touched
her. She sat up, and, dashing her hand across her eyes, cried: "Go
away! Oh, go away!"
He put his arm round her and waited. Five minutes passed. The air
was trembling with a sort of pale vibration, for the moonlight had
found a hole in the dark foliage and flooded on to the ground beside
them, whitening the black beech-husks. Some tiny bird, disturbed by
these unwonted visitors, began chirruping and fluttering, but was
soon still again. To Martin, so strangely close to this young
creature in the night, there came a sense of utter disturbance.
'Poor little thing!' he thought; 'be careful of her, comfort her!'
Hardness seemed so broken out of her, and the night so wonderful!
And there came into the young man's heart a throb of the knowledge--
very rare with him, for he was not, like Hilary, a philosophising
person--that she was as real as himself--suffering, hoping, feeling,
not his hopes and feelings, but her own. His fingers kept pressing
her shoulder through her thin blouse. And the touch of those fingers
was worth more than any words, as this night, all moonlit dreams, was
worth more than a thousand nights of sane reality.
Thyme twisted herself away from him at last. "I can't," she sobbed.
"I'm not what you thought me--I'm not made for it!"
A scornful little smile curled Martin's lip. So that was it! But
the smile soon died away. One did not hit what was already down
Thyme's voice wailed through the silence. "I thought I could--but I
want beautiful things. I can't bear it all so grey and horrible.
I'm not like that girl. I'm-an-amateur!"
'If I kissed her---' Martin thought.
She sank down again, burying her face in the dark beech-mat. The
moonlight had passed on. Her voice came faint and stiffed, as out of
the tomb of faith. "I'm no good. I never shall be. I'm as bad as
mother!"
But to Martin there was only the scent of her hair.
"No," murmured Thyme's voice, "I'm only fit for miserable Art.... I'm
only fit for--nothing!"
They were so close together on the dark beech mat that their bodies
touched, and a longing to clasp her in his arms came over him.
"I'm a selfish beast!" moaned the smothered voice. "I don't really
care for all these people--I only care because they're ugly for me to
see!"
Martin reached his hand out to her hair. If she had shrunk away he
would have seized her, but as though by instinct she let it rest
there. And at her sudden stillness, strange and touching, Martin's
quick passion left him. He slipped his arm round her and raised her
up, as if she had been a child, and for a long time sat listening
with a queer twisted smile to the moanings of her lost illusions.
The dawn found them still sitting there against the bole of the
beech-tree. Her lips were parted; the tears had dried on her
sleeping face, pillowed against his shoulder, while he still watched
her sideways with the ghost of that twisted smile.
And beyond the grey water, like some tired wanton, the moon in an
orange hood was stealing down to her rest between the trees.
CHAPTER XXXVI
STEPHEN SIGNS CHEQUES
Cecilia received the mystic document containing these words "Am quite
all right. Address, 598, Euston Road, three doors off Martin.
Letter follows explaining. Thyme," she had not even realised her
little daughter's departure. She went up to Thyme's room at once,
and opening all the drawers and cupboards, stared into them one by
one. The many things she saw there allayed the first pangs of her
disquiet.
'She has only taken one little trunk,' she thought, 'and left all her
evening frocks.'
This act of independence alarmed rather than surprised her, such had
been her sense of the unrest in the domestic atmosphere during the
last month. Since the evening when she had found Thyme in foods of
tears because of the Hughs' baby, her maternal eyes had not failed to
notice something new in the child's demeanour--a moodiness, an air
almost of conspiracy, together with an emphatic increase of youthful
sarcasm: Fearful of probing deep, she had sought no confidence, nor
had she divulged her doubts to Stephen.
Amongst the blouses a sheet of blue ruled paper, which had evidently
escaped from a notebook, caught her eye. Sentences were scrawled on
it in pencil. Cecilia read: "That poor little dead thing was so grey
and pinched, and I seemed to realise all of a sudden how awful it is
for them. I must--I must--I will do something!"
Cecilia dropped the sheet of paper; her hand was trembling. There
was no mystery in that departure now, and Stephen's words came into
her mind: "It's all very well up to a certain point, and nobody
sympathises with them more than I do; but after that it becomes
destructive of all comfort, and that does no good to anyone."
The sound sense of those words had made her feel queer when they were
spoken; they were even more sensible than she had thought. Did her
little daughter, so young and pretty, seriously mean to plunge into
the rescue work of dismal slums, to cut herself adrift from sweet
sounds and scents and colours, from music and art, from dancing,
flowers, and all that made life beautiful? The secret forces of
fastidiousness, an inborn dread of the fanatical, and all her real
ignorance of what such a life was like, rose in Cecilia with a force
which made her feel quite sick. Better that she herself should do
this thing than that her own child should be deprived of air and
light and all the just environment of her youth and beauty. 'She
must come back--she must listen to me!' she thought. 'We will begin
together; we will start a nice little creche of our own, or--perhaps
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace could find us some regular work on one of
her committees.'
Then suddenly she conceived a thought which made her blood run
positively cold. What if it were a matter of heredity? What if
Thyme had inherited her grandfather's single-mindedness? Martin was
giving proof of it. Things, she knew, often skipped a generation and
then set in again. Surely, surely, it could not have done that!
With longing, yet with dread, she waited for the sound of Stephen's
latchkey. It came at its appointed time.
Even in her agitation Cecilia did not forget to spare him, all she
could. She began by giving him a kiss, and then said casually:
"Thyme has got a whim into her head."
"What whim?"
"It's rather what you might expect," faltered Cecilia, "from her
going about so much with Martin."
Stephen's face assumed at once an air of dry derision; there was no
love lost between him and his young nephew-in-law.
"The Sanitist?" he said; "ah! Well?"
"She has gone off to do work-some place in the Euston Road. I've had
a telegram. Oh, and I found this, Stephen."
She held out to him half-heartedly the two bits of paper, one
pinkish-brown, the other blue. Stephen saw that she was trembling.
He took them from her, read them, and looked at her again. He had a
real affection for his wife, and the tradition of consideration for
other people's feelings was bred in him, so that at this moment, so
vitally disturbing, the first thing he did was to put his hand on her
shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze. But there was also in
Stephen a certain primitive virility, pickled, it is true, at
Cambridge, and in the Law Courts dried, but still preserving
something of its possessive and assertive quality, and the second
thing he did was to say, "No, I'm damned!"
In that little sentence lay the whole psychology of his attitude
towards this situation and all the difference between two classes of
the population. Mr. Purcey would undoubtedly have said: "Well, I'm
damned!" Stephen, by saying "No, I'm damned!" betrayed that before he
could be damned he had been obliged to wrestle and contend with
something, and Cecilia, who was always wrestling too, knew this
something to be that queer new thing, a Social Conscience, the dim
bogey stalking pale about the houses of those who, through the
accidents of leisure or of culture, had once left the door open to
the suspicion: Is it possible that there is a class of people besides
my own, or am I dreaming? Happy the millions, poor or rich, not yet
condemned to watch the wistful visiting or hear the husky mutter of
that ghost, happy in their homes, blessed by a less disquieting god.
Such were Cecilia's inner feelings.
Even now she did not quite plumb the depths of Stephen's; she felt
his struggle with the ghost; she felt and admired his victory. What
she did not, could not, perhaps, realise, was the precise nature of
the outrage inflicted on him by Thyme's action. With her--being a
woman--the matter was more practical; she did not grasp, had never
grasped, the architectural nature of Stephen's mind--how really hurt
he was by what did not seem to him in due and proper order.
He spoke: "Why on earth, if she felt like that, couldn't she have
gone to work in the ordinary way? She could have put herself in
connection with some proper charitable society--I should never have
objected to that. It's all that young Sanitary idiot!"
"I believe," Cecilia faltered, "that Martin's is a society. It's a
kind of medical Socialism, or something of that sort. He has
tremendous faith in it."
Stephen's lip curled.
"He may have as much faith as he likes," he said, with the restraint
that was one of his best qualities, "so long as he doesn't infect my
daughter with it."
Cecilia said suddenly: "Oh! what are we to do, Stephen? Shall I go
over there to-night?"
As one may see a shadow pass down on a cornfield, so came the cloud
on Stephen's face. It was as though he had not realised till then
the full extent of what this meant. For a minute he was silent.
"Better wait for her letter," he said at last. "He's her cousin,
after all, and Mrs. Grundy's dead--in the Euston Road, at all
events."
So, trying to spare each other all they could of anxiety, and careful
to abstain from any hint of trouble before the servants, they dined
and went to bed.
At that hour between the night and morning, when man's vitality is
lowest, and the tremors of his spirit, like birds of ill omen, fly
round and round him, beating their long plumes against his cheeks,
Stephen woke.
It was very still. A bar of pearly-grey dawn showed between the
filmy curtains, which stirred with a regular, faint movement, like
the puffing of a sleeper's lips. The tide of the wind, woven in Mr.
Stone's fancy of the souls of men, was at low ebb. Feebly it fanned
the houses and hovels where the myriad forms of men lay sleeping,
unconscious of its breath; so faint life's pulse, that men and
shadows seemed for that brief moment mingled in the town's sleep.
Over the million varied roofs, over the hundred million little
different shapes of men and things, the wind's quiet, visiting wand
had stilled all into the wonder state of nothingness, when life is
passing into death, death into new life, and self is at its feeblest.
And Stephen's self, feeling the magnetic currents of that ebb-tide
drawing it down into murmurous slumber, out beyond the sand-bars of
individuality and class, threw up its little hands and began to cry
for help. The purple sea of self-forgetfulness, under the dim,
impersonal sky, seemed to him so cold and terrible. It had no limit
that he could see, no rules but such as hung too far away, written in
the hieroglyphics of paling stars. He could feel no order in the
lift and lap of the wan waters round his limbs. Where would those
waters carry him? To what depth of still green silence? Was his own
little daughter to go down into this sea that knew no creed but that
of self-forgetfulness, that respected neither class nor person--this
sea where a few wandering streaks seemed all the evidence of the
precious differences between mankind? God forbid it
And, turning on his elbow, he looked at her who had given him this
daughter. In the mystery of his wife's sleeping face--the face of
her most near and dear to him--he tried hard not to see a likeness to
Mr. Stone. He fell back somewhat comforted with the thought: 'That
old chap has his one idea--his Universal Brotherhood. He's
absolutely absorbed in it. I don't see it in Cis's face a bit.
Quite the contrary.'
But suddenly a flash of clear, hard cynicism amounting to inspiration
utterly disturbed him: The old chap, indeed, was so wrapped up in
himself and his precious book as to be quite unconscious that anyone
else was alive. Could one be everybody's brother if one were blind
to their existence? But this freak of Thyme's was an actual try to
be everybody's sister. For that, he supposed, one must forget
oneself. Why, it was really even a worse case than that of Mr.
Stone! And to Stephen there was something awful in this thought.
The first small bird of morning, close to the open window, uttered a
feeble chirrup. Into Stephen's mind there leaped without reason
recollection of the morning after his first term at school, when,
awakened by the birds, he had started up and fished out from under
his pillow his catapult and the box of shot he had brought home and
taken to sleep with him. He seemed to see again those leaden shot
with their bluish sheen, and to feel them, round, and soft, and
heavy, rolling about his palm. He seemed to hear Hilary's surprised
voice saying: "Hallo, Stevie! you awake?"
No one had ever had a better brother than old Hilary. His only fault
was that he had always been too kind. It was his kindness that had
done for him, and made his married life a failure. He had never
asserted himself enough with that woman, his wife. Stephen turned
over on his other side. 'All this confounded business,' he thought,
'comes from over-sympathising. That's what's the matter with Thyme,
too.' Long he lay thus, while the light grew stronger, listening to
Cecilia's gentle breathing, disturbed to his very marrow by these
thoughts.
The first post brought no letter from Thyme, and the announcement
soon after, that Mr. Hilary had come to breakfast, was received by
both Stephen and Cecilia with a welcome such as the anxious give to
anything which shows promise of distracting them.
Stephen made haste down. Hilary, with a very grave and harassed
face, was in the dining-room. It was he, however, who, after one
look at Stephen, said:
"What's the matter, Stevie?"
Stephen took up the Standard. In spite of his self-control, his hand
shook a little.
"It's a ridiculous business," he said. "That precious young Sanitist
has so worked his confounded theories into Thyme that she has gone
off to the Euston Road to put them into practice, of all things!"
At the half-concerned amusement on Hilary's face his quick and rather
narrow eyes glinted.
"It's not exactly for you to laugh, Hilary," he said. "It's all of a
piece with your cursed sentimentality about those Hughs, and that
girl. I knew it would end in a mess."
Hilary answered this unjust and unexpected outburst by a look, and
Stephen, with the strange feeling of inferiority which would come to
him in Hilary's presence against his better judgment, lowered his own
glance.
"My dear boy," said Hilary, "if any bit of my character has crept
into Thyme, I'm truly sorry."
Stephen took his brother's hand and gave it a good grip; and, Cecilia
coming in, they all sat down.
Cecilia at once noted what Stephen in his preoccupation had not--that
Hilary had come to tell them something. But she did not like to ask
him what it was, though she knew that in the presence of their
trouble Hilary was too delicate to obtrude his own. She did not
like, either, to talk of her trouble in the presence of his. They
all talked, therefore, of indifferent things--what music they had
heard, what plays they had seen--eating but little, and drinking tea.
In the middle of a remark about the opera, Stephen, looking up, saw
Martin himself standing in the doorway. The young Sanitist looked
pale, dusty, and dishevelled. He advanced towards Cecilia, and said
with his usual cool determination:
"I've brought her back, Aunt Cis."
At that moment, fraught with such relief, such pure joy, such desire
to say a thousand things, Cecilia could only murmur: "Oh, Martin!"
Stephen, who had jumped up, asked: "Where is she?"
"Gone to her room."
"Then perhaps," said Stephen, regaining at once his dry composure,
"you will give us some explanation of this folly."
"She's no use to us at present."
"Indeed!"
"None."
"Then," said Stephen, "kindly understand that we have no use for you
in future, or any of your sort."
Martin looked round the table, resting his eyes on each in turn.
"You're right," he said. "Good-bye!"
Hilary and Cecilia had risen, too. There was silence. Stephen
crossed to the door.
"You seem to me," he said suddenly, in his driest voice, "with your
new manners and ideas, quite a pernicious youth."
Cecilia stretched her hands out towards Martin, and there was a faint
tinkling as of chains.
"You must know, dear," she said, "how anxious we've all been. Of
course, your uncle doesn't mean that."
The same scornful tenderness with which he was wont to look at Thyme
passed into Martin's face.
"All right, Aunt Cis," he said; "if Stephen doesn't mean it, he ought
to. To mean things is what matters." He stooped and kissed her
forehead. "Give that to Thyme for me," he said. "I shan't see her
for a bit."
"You'll never see her, sir," said Stephen dryly, "if I can help it!
The liquor of your Sanitism is too bright and effervescent."
Martin's smile broadened. "For old bottles," he said, and with
another slow look round went out.
Stephen's mouth assumed its driest twist. "Bumptious young devil!"
he said. "If that is the new young man, defend us!"
Over the cool dining-room, with its faint scent of pinks, of melon,
and of ham, came silence. Suddenly Cecilia glided from the room.
Her light footsteps were heard hurrying, now that she was not
visible, up to Thyme.
Hilary, too, had moved towards the door. In spite of his
preoccupation, Stephen could not help noticing how very worn his
brother looked.
"You look quite seedy, old boy," he said. "Will you have some
brandy?"
Hilary shook his head.
"Now that you've got Thyme back," he said, "I'd better let you know
my news. I'm going abroad to-morrow. I don't know whether I shall
come back again to live with B."
Stephen gave a low whistle; then, pressing Hilary's arm, he said:
"Anything you decide, old man, I'll always back you in, but--"
"I'm going alone."
In his relief Stephen violated the laws of reticence.
"Thank Heaven for that! I was afraid you were beginning to lose your
head about that girl"
"I'm not quite fool enough," said Hilary, "to imagine that such a
liaison would be anything but misery in the long-run. If I took the
child I should have to stick to her; but I'm not proud of leaving her
in the lurch, Stevie."
The tone of his voice was so bitter that Stephen seized his hand.
"My dear old man, you're too kind. Why, she's no hold on you--not
the smallest in the world!"
"Except the hold of this devotion I've roused in her, God knows how,
and her destitution."
"You let these people haunt you," said Stephen. "It's quite a
mistake--it really is."
"I had forgotten to mention that I am not an iceberg," muttered
Hilary.
Stephen looked into his face without speaking, then with the utmost
earnestness he said:
"However much you may be attracted, it's simply unthinkable for a man
like you to go outside his class."
"Class! Yes!" muttered Hilary: "Good-bye!"
And with a long grip of his brother's hand he went away.
Stephen turned to the window. For all the care and contrivance
bestowed on the view, far away to the left the back courts of an
alley could be seen; and as though some gadfly had planted in him its
small poisonous sting, he moved back from the sight at once.
'Confusion!' he thought. 'Are we never to get rid of these infernal
people?'
His eyes lighted on the melon. A single slice lay by itself on a
blue-green dish. Leaning over a plate, with a desperation quite
unlike himself, he took an enormous bite. Again and again he bit the
slice, then almost threw it from him, and dipped his fingers in a
bowl.
'Thank God!' he thought, 'that's over! What an escape!'
Whether he meant Hilary's escape or Thyme's was doubtful, but there
came on him a longing to rush up to his little daughter's room, and
hug her. He suppressed it, and sat down at the bureau; he was
suddenly experiencing a sensation such as he had sometimes felt on a
perfect day, or after physical danger, of too much benefit, of
something that he would like to return thanks for, yet knew not how.
His hand stole to the inner pocket of his black coat. It stole out
again; there was a cheque-book in it. Before his mind's eye,
starting up one after the other, he saw the names of the societies he
supported, or meant sometime, if he could afford it, to support. He
reached his hand out for a pen. The still, small noise of the nib
travelling across the cheques mingled with the buzzing of a single
fly.
These sounds Cecilia heard, when, from the open door, she saw the
thin back of her husband's neck, with its softly graduated hair, bent
forward above the bureau. She stole over to him, and pressed herself
against his arm.
Stephen, staying the progress of his pen, looked up at her. Their
eyes met, and, bending down, Cecilia put her cheek to his.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE FLOWERING OF THE ALOE
This same day, returning through Kensington Gardens, from his
preparations for departure, Hilary came suddenly on Bianca standing
by the shores of the Round Pond.
To the eyes of the frequenters of these Elysian fields, where so many
men and shadows daily steal recreation, to the eyes of all drinking
in those green gardens their honeyed draught of peace, this husband
and wife appeared merely a distinguished-looking couple, animated by
a leisured harmony. For the time was not yet when men were one, and
could tell by instinct what was passing in each other's hearts.
In truth, there were not too many people in London who, in their
situation, would have behaved with such seemliness--not too many so
civilised as they!
Estranged, and soon to part, they retained the manner of accord up to
the last. Not for them the matrimonial brawl, the solemn accusation
and recrimination, the pathetic protestations of proprietary rights.
For them no sacred view that at all costs they must make each other
miserable--not even the belief that they had the right to do so. No,
there was no relief for their sore hearts. They walked side by side,
treating each other's feelings with respect, as if there had been no
terrible heart-turnings throughout the eighteen years in which they
had first loved, then, through mysterious disharmony, drifted apart;
as if there were now between them no question of this girl.
Presently Hilary said:
"I've been into town and made my preparations; I'm starting tomorrow
for the mountains. There will be no necessity for you to leave your
father."
"Are you taking her?"
It was beautifully uttered, without a trace of bias or curiosity,
with an unforced accent, neither indifferent nor too interested--no
one could have told whether it was meant for generosity or malice.
Hilary took it for the former.
"Thank you," he said; "but that comedy is finished."
Close to the edge of the Round Pond a swanlike cutter was putting out
to sea; in the wake of this fair creature a tiny scooped-out bit of
wood, with three feathers for masts, bobbed and trembled; and the two
small ragged boys who owned that little galley were stretching bits
of branch out towards her over the bright waters.
Bianca looked, without seeing, at this proof of man's pride in his
own property. A thin gold chain hung round her neck; suddenly she
thrust it into the bosom of her dress. It had broken into two,
between her fingers.
They reached home without another word.
At the door of Hilary's study sat Miranda. The little person
answered his caress by a shiver of her sleek skin, then curled
herself down again on the spot she had already warmed.
"Aren't you coming in with me?" he said.
Miranda did not move.
The reason for her refusal was apparent when Hilary had entered.
Close to the long bookcase, behind the bust of Socrates, stood the
little model. Very still, as if fearing to betray itself by sound or
movement, was her figure in its blue-green frock, and a brimless
toque of brown straw, with two purplish roses squashed together into
a band of darker velvet. Beside those roses a tiny peacock's feather
had been slipped in--unholy little visitor, slanting backward,
trying, as it were, to draw all eyes, yet to escape notice. And,
wedged between the grim white bust and the dark bookcase, the girl
herself was like some unlawful spirit which had slid in there, and
stood trembling and vibrating, ready to be shuttered out.
Before this apparition Hilary recoiled towards the door, hesitated,
and returned.
"You should not have come here," he muttered, "after what we said to
you yesterday."
The little model answered quickly: "But I've seen Hughs, Mr.
Dallison. He's found out where I live. Oh, he does look dreadful;
he frightens me. I can't ever stay there now."
She had come a little out of her hiding-place, and stood fidgeting
her hands and looking down.
'She's not speaking the truth,' thought Hilary.
The little model gave him a furtive glance. "I did see him," she
said. "I must go right away now; it wouldn't be safe, would it?"
Again she gave him that swift look.
Hilary thought suddenly: 'She is using my own weapon against me. If
she has seen the man, he didn't frighten her. It serves me right!'
With a dry laugh, he turned his back.
There was a rustling round. The little model had moved out of her
retreat, and stood between him and the door. At this stealthy
action, Hilary felt once more the tremor which had come over him when
he sat beside her in the Broad Walk after the baby's funeral.
Outside in the garden a pigeon was pouring forth a continuous love.
song; Hilary heard nothing of it, conscious only of the figure of the
girl behind him-that young. figure which had twined itself about his
senses.
"Well, what is it you want?" he said at last.
The little model answered by another question.
'Are you really going away, Mr. Dallison?"
"I am."
She raised her hands to the level of her breast, as though she meant
to clasp them together; without doing so, however, she dropped them
to her sides. They were cased in very worn suede gloves, and in this
dire moment of embarrassment Hilary's eyes fastened themselves on
those slim hands moving against her skirt.
The little model tried at once to slip them away behind her.
Suddenly she said in her matter-of-fact voice: "I only wanted to ask
--Can't I come too?"
At this question, whose simplicity might have made an angel smile,
Hilary experienced a sensation as if his bones had been turned to
water. It was strange--delicious--as though he had been suddenly
offered all that he wanted of her, without all those things that he
did not want. He stood regarding her silently. Her cheeks and neck
were red; there was a red tinge, too, in her eyelids, deepening the
"chicory-flower" colour of her eyes. She began to speak, repeating a
lesson evidently learned by heart.
" I wouldn't be in your way. I wouldn't cost much. I could do
everything you wanted. I could learn typewriting. I needn't live
too near, or that; if you didn't want me, because of people talking;
I'm used to being alone. Oh, Mr. Dallison, I could do everything for
you. I wouldn't mind anything, and I'm not like some girls; I do
know what I'm talking about."
"Do you?"
The little model put her hands up, and, covering her face, said:
"If you'd try and see!"
Hilary's sensuous feeling almost vanished; a lump rose in his throat
instead.
"My child," he said, "you are too generous!"
The little model seemed to know instinctively that by touching his
spirit she had lost ground. Uncovering her face, she spoke
breathlessly, growing very pale:
"Oh no, I'm not. I want to be let come; I don't want to stay here.
I know I'll get into mischief if you don't take me--oh, I know I
will!"
"If I were to let you come with me," said Hilary, "what then? What
sort of companion should I be to you, or you to me? You know very
well. Only one sort. It's no use pretending, child, that we've any
interests in common."
The little model came closer.
"I know what I am," she said, "and I don't want to be anything else.
I can do what you tell me to, and I shan't ever complain. I'm not
worth any more!"
"You're worth more," muttered Hilary, "than I can ever give you, and
I'm worth more than you can ever give me."
The little model tried to answer, but her words would not pass her
throat; she threw her head back trying to free them, and stood,
swaying. Seeing her like this before him, white as a sheet, with her
eyes closed and her lips parted, as though about to faint, Hilary
seized her by the shoulders. At the touch of those soft shoulders,
his face became suffused with blood, his lips trembled. Suddenly her
eyes opened ever so little between their lids, and looked at him.
And the perception that she was not really going to faint, that it
was a little desperate wile of this child Delilah, made him wrench
away his hands. The moment she felt that grasp relax she sank down
and clasped his knees, pressing them to her bosom so that he could
not stir. Closer and closer she pressed them to her, till it seemed
as though she must be bruising her flesh. Her breath came in sobs;
her eyes were closed; her lips quivered upwards. In the clutch of
her clinging body there seemed suddenly the whole of woman's power of
self-abandonment. It was just that, which, at this moment, so
horribly painful to him, prevented Hilary from seizing her in his
arms just that queer seeming self-effacement, as though she were lost
to knowledge of what she did. It seemed too brutal, too like taking
advantage of a child.
>From calm is born the wind, the ripple from the still pool, self out
of nothingness--so all passes imperceptibly, no man knows how. The
little model's moment of self-oblivion passed, and into her wet eyes
her plain, twisting spirit suddenly writhed up again, for all the
world as if she had said: 'I won't let you go; I'll keep you--I'll
keep you.'
Hilary broke away from her, and she fell forward on her face.
"Get up, child," he said--"get up; for God's sake, don't lie there!"
She rose obediently, choking down her sobs, mopping her face with a
small, dirty handkerchief. Suddenly, taking a step towards him, she
clenched both her hands and struck them downwards.
"I'll go to the bad," she said---" I will--if you don't take me!"
And, her breast heaving, her hair all loose, she stared straight into
his face with her red-rimmed eyes. Hilary turned suddenly, took a
book up from the writing-table, and opened it. His face was again
suffused with blood; his hands and lips trembled; his eyes had a
queer fixed stare.
"Not now, not now," he muttered; "go away now. I'll come to you
to-morrow."
The little model gave him the look a dog gives you when it asks if
you are deceiving him. She made a sign on her breast, as a Catholic
might make the sign of his religion, drawing her fingers together,
and clutching at herself with them, then passed her little dirty
handkerchief once more over her eyes, and, turning round, went out.
Hilary remained standing where he was, reading the open book without
apprehending what it was.
There was a wistful sound, as of breath escaping hurriedly. Mr.
Stone was standing in the open doorway.
"She has been here," he said. "I saw her go away."
Hilary dropped the book; his nerves were utterly unstrung. Then,
pointing to a chair, he said: "Won't you sit down, sir?"
Mr. Stone came close up to his son-in-law.
"Is she in trouble?"
"Yes," murmured Hilary.
"She is too young to be in trouble. Did you tell her that?"
Hilary shook his head.
"Has the man hurt her?"
Again Hilary shook his head.
"What is her trouble, then?" said Mr. Stone. The closeness of this
catechism, the intent stare of the old man's eyes, were more than
Hilary could bear. He turned away.
"You ask me something that I cannot answer.
"Why?"
"It is a private matter."
With the blood still beating in his temples, his lips still
quivering, and the feeling of the girl's clasp round his knees, he
almost hated this old man who stood there putting such blind
questions.
Then suddenly in Mr. Stone's eyes he saw a startling change, as in
the face of a man who regains consciousness after days of vacancy.
His whole countenance had become alive with a sort of jealous
understanding. The warmth which the little model brought to his old
spirit had licked up the fog of his Idea, and made him see what was
going on before his eyes.
At that look Hilary braced himself against the wall.
A flush spread slowly over Mr. Stone's face. He spoke with rare
hesitation. In this sudden coming back to the world of men and
things he seemed astray.
"I am not going," he stammered, "to ask you any more. I could not
pry into a private matter. That would not be---" His voice failed;
he looked down.
Hilary bowed, touched to the quick by the return to life of this old
man, so long lost to facts, and by the delicacy in that old face.
"I will not intrude further on your trouble," said Mr. Stone,
"whatever it may be. I am sorry that you are unhappy, too."
Very slowly, and without again looking up at his son-in-law, he went
out.
Hilary remained standing where he had been left against the wall.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE HOME-COMING OF HUGHS
Hilary had evidently been right in thinking the little model was not
speaking the truth when she said she had seen Hughs, for it was not
until early on the following morning that three persons traversed the
long winding road leading from Wormwood Scrubs to Kensington. They
preserved silence, not because there was nothing in their hearts to
be expressed, but because there was too much; and they walked in the
giraffe-like formation peculiar to the lower classes--Hughs in front;
Mrs. Hughs to the left, a foot or two behind; and a yard behind her,
to the left again, her son Stanley. They made no sign of noticing
anyone in the road besides themselves, and no one in the road gave
sign of noticing that they were there; but in their three minds, so
differently fashioned, a verb was dumbly, and with varying emotion,
being conjugated:
"I've been in prison." "You've been in prison.' "He's been in
prison."
Beneath the seeming acquiescence of a man subject to domination from
his birth up, those four words covered in Hughs such a whirlpool of
surging sensation, such ferocity of bitterness, and madness, and
defiance, that no outpouring could have appreciably relieved its
course. The same four words summed up in Mrs. Hughs so strange a
mingling of fear, commiseration, loyalty, shame, and trembling
curiosity at the new factor which had come into the life of all this
little family walking giraffe-like back to Kensington that to have
gone beyond them would have been like plunging into a wintry river.
To their son the four words were as a legend of romance, conjuring up
no definite image, lighting merely the glow of wonder.
"Don't lag, Stanley. Keep up with your father."
The little boy took three steps at an increased pace, then fell
behind again. His black eyes seemed to answer: 'You say that because
you don't know what else to say.' And without alteration in their
giraffe-like formation, but again in silence, the three proceeded.
In the heart of the seamstress doubt and fear were being slowly knit
into dread of the first sound to pass her husband's lips. What would
he ask? How should she answer? Would he talk wild, or would he talk
sensible? Would he have forgotten that young girl, or had he nursed
and nourished his wicked fancy in the house of grief and silence?
Would he ask where the baby was? Would he speak a kind word to her?
But alongside her dread there was guttering within her the undying
resolution not to 'let him go from her, if it were ever so, to that
young girl'
"Don't lag, Stanley!"
At the reiteration of those words Hughs spoke.
"Let the boy alone! You'll be nagging at the baby next!"
Hoarse and grating, like sounds issuing from a damp vault, was this
first speech.
The seamstress's eyes brimmed over.
"I won't get the chance," she stammered out. "He's gone!"
Hughs' teeth gleamed like those of a dog at bay.
"Who's taken him? You let me know the name.
Tears rolled down the seamstress's cheeks; she could not answer. Her
little son's thin voice rose instead:
"Baby's dead. We buried him in the ground. I saw it. Mr. Creed
came in the cab with me."
White flecks appeared suddenly at the corners of Hughs' lips. He
wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and once more, giraffe-
like, the little family marched on....
"Westminister," in his threadbare summer jacket--for the day was
warm--had been standing for some little time in Mrs. Budgen's doorway
on the ground floor at Hound Street. Knowing that Hughs was to be
released that morning early, he had, with the circumspection and
foresight of his character, reasoned thus: 'I shan't lie easy in my
bed, I shan't hev no peace until I know that low feller's not a-goin'
to misdemean himself with me. It's no good to go a-puttin' of it
off. I don't want him comin' to my room attackin' of old men. I'll
be previous with him in the passage. The lame woman 'll let me. I
shan't trouble her. She'll be palliable between me and him, in case
he goes for to attack me. I ain't afraid of him.'
But, as the minutes of waiting went by, his old tongue, like that of
a dog expecting chastisement, appeared ever more frequently to
moisten his twisted, discoloured lips. 'This comes of mixin' up with
soldiers,' he thought, 'and a lowclass o' man like that. I ought to
ha' changed my lodgin's. He'll be askin' me where that young girl
is, I shouldn't wonder, an' him lost his character and his job, and
everything, and all because o' women!'
He watched the broad-faced woman, Mrs. Budgen, in whose grey eyes the
fighting light so fortunately never died, painfully doing out her
rooms, and propping herself against the chest of drawers whereon
clustered china cups and dogs as thick as toadstools on a bank.
"I've told my Charlie," she said, "to keep clear of Hughs a bit.
They comes out as prickly as hedgehogs. Pick a quarrel as soon as
look at you, they will."
'Oh dear,' thought Creed, 'she's full o' cold comfort.' But, careful
of his dignity, he answered, "I'm a-waitin' here to engage the
situation. You don't think he'll attack of me with definition at
this time in the mornin'?"
The lame woman shrugged her shoulders. "He'll have had a drop of
something," she said, "before he comes home. They gets a cold
feelin' in the stomach in them places, poor creatures!"
The old butler's heart quavered up into his mouth. He lifted his
shaking hand, and put it to his lips, as though to readjust himself.
"Oh yes," he said; "I ought to ha' given notice, and took my things
away; but there, poor woman, it seemed a-hittin' of her when she was
down. And I don't want to make no move. I ain't got no one else
that's interested in me. This woman's very good about mendin' of my
clothes. Oh dear, yes; she don't grudge a little thing like that!"
The lame woman hobbled from her post of rest, and began to make the
bed with the frown that always accompanied a task which strained the
contracted muscles of her leg. "If you don't help your neighbour,
your neighbour don't help you," she said sententiously.
Creed fixed his iron-rimmed gaze on her in silence. He was
considering perhaps how he stood with regard to Hughs in the light of
that remark.
"I attended of his baby's funeral," he said. "Oh dear, he's here
a'ready!"
The family of Hughs, indeed, stood in the doorway. The spiritual
process by which "Westminister" had gone through life was displayed
completely in the next few seconds. 'It's so important for me to
keep alive and well,' his eyes seemed saying. 'I know the class of
man you are, but now you're here it's not a bit o' use my bein'
frightened. I'm bound to get up-sides with you. Ho! yes; keep
yourself to yourself, and don't you let me hev any o' your nonsense,
'cause I won't stand it. Oh dear, no!'
Beads of perspiration stood thick on his patchily coloured forehead;
with lips stiffening, and intently staring eyes, he waited for what
the released prisoner would say.
Hughs, whose face had blanched in the prison to a sallow grey-white
hue, and whose black eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head,
slowly looked the old man up and down. At last he took his cap off,
showing his cropped hair.
"You got me that, daddy," he said, "but I don't bear you malice.
Come up and have a cup o' tea with us."
And, turning on his heel, he began to mount the stairs, followed by
his wife and child. Breathing hard, the old butler mounted too.
In the room on the second floor, where the baby no longer lived, a
haddock on the table was endeavouring to be fresh; round it were
slices of bread on plates, a piece of butter in a pie-dish, a teapot,
brown sugar in a basin, and, side by side a little jug of cold blue
milk and a half-empty bottle of red vinegar. Close to one plate a
bunch of stocks and gilly flowers reposed on the dirty tablecloth, as
though dropped and forgotten by the God of Love. Their faint perfume
stole through the other odours. The old butler fixed his eyes on it.
'The poor woman bought that,' he thought, 'hopin' for to remind him
of old days. She had them flowers on her weddin'-day, I shouldn't
wonder!" This poetical conception surprising him, he turned towards
the little boy, and said "This 'll be a memorial to you, as you gets
older." And without another word all sat down. They ate in silence,
and the old butler thought 'That 'addick ain't what it was; but a
beautiful cup o' tea. He don't eat nothing; he's more ameniable to
reason than I expected. There's no one won't be too pleased to see
him now!"
His eyes, travelling to the spot from which the bayonet had been
removed, rested on the print of the Nativity. "'Suffer little
children to come unto Me,'" he thought, "'and forbid them not."
He'll be glad to hear there was two carriages followed him home.'
And, taking his time, he cleared his throat in preparation for
speech. But before the singular muteness of this family sounds would
not come. Finishing his tea, he tremblingly arose. Things that he
might have said jostled in his mind. 'Very pleased to 'a seen you.
Hope you're in good health at the present time of speaking. Don't
let me intrude on you. We've all a-got to die some time or other!'
They remained unuttered. Making a vague movement of his skinny hand,
he walked feebly but quickly to the door. When he stood but half-way
within the room, he made his final effort.
"I'm not a-goin' to say nothing," he said; "that'd be superlative! I
wish you a good-morning."
Outside he waited a second, then grasped the banister.
'For all he sets so quiet, they've done him no good in that place,'
he thought. 'Them eyes of his!' And slowly he descended, full of a
sort of very deep surprise. 'I misjudged of him,' he was thinking;
'he never was nothing but a 'armless human being. We all has our
predijuices--I misjudged of him. They've broke his 'eart between
'em--that they have.'
The silence in the room continued after his departure. But when the
little boy had gone to school, Hughs rose and lay down on the bed.
He rested there, unmoving, with his face towards the wall, his arms
clasped round his head to comfort it. The seamstress, stealing about
her avocations, paused now and then to look at him. If he had raged
at her, if he had raged at everything, it would not have been so
terrifying as this utter silence, which passed her comprehension--
this silence as of a man flung by the sea against a rock, and pinned
there with the life crushed out of him. All her inarticulate
longing, now that her baby was gone, to be close to something in her
grey life, to pass the unfranchisable barrier dividing her from the
world, seemed to well up, to flow against this wall of silence and to
recoil.
Twice or three times she addressed him timidly by name, or made some
trivial remark. He did not answer, as though in very truth he had
been the shadow of a man lying there. And the injustice of this
silence seemed to her so terrible. Was she not his wife? Had she
not borne him five, and toiled to keep him from that girl? Was it
her fault if she had made his life a hell with her jealousy, as he
had cried out that morning before he went for her, and was "put
away"? He was her "man." It had been her right--nay, more, her
duty!
And still he lay there silent. From the narrow street where no
traffic passed, the cries of a coster and distant whistlings mounted
through the unwholesome air. Some sparrows in the eave were
chirruping incessantly. The little sandy house-cat had stolen in,
and, crouched against the doorpost, was fastening her eyes on the
plate which, held the remnants of the fish. The seamstress bowed her
forehead to the flowers on the table; unable any longer to bear the
mystery of this silence, she wept. But the dark figure on the bed
only pressed his arms closer round his head, as though there were
within him a living death passing the speech of men.
The little sandy cat, creeping across the floor, fixed its claws in
the backbone of the fish, and drew it beneath the bed.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE DUEL
Bianca did not see her husband after their return together from the
Round Pond. She dined out that evening, and in the morning avoided
any interview. When Hilary's luggage was brought down and the cab
summoned, she slipped up to take shelter in her room. Presently the
sound of his footsteps coming along the passage stopped outside her
door. He tapped. She did not answer.
Good-bye would be a mockery! Let him go with the words unsaid! And
as though the thought had found its way through the closed door, she
heard his footsteps recede again. She saw him presently go out to
the cab with his head bent down, saw him stoop and pat Miranda. Hot
tears sprang into her eyes. She heard the cab-wheels roll away.
The heart is like the face of an Eastern woman--warm and glowing,
behind swathe on swathe of fabric. At each fresh touch from the
fingers of Life, some new corner, some hidden curve or angle, comes
into view, to be seen last of all perhaps never to be seen by the one
who owns them.
When the cab had driven away there came into Bianca's heart a sense
of the irreparable, and, mysteriously entwined with that arid ache, a
sort of bitter pity: What would happen to this wretched girl now that
he was gone? Would she go completely to the bad--till she became one
of those poor creatures like the figure in "The Shadow," who stood
beneath lampposts in the streets? Out of this speculation, which was
bitter as the taste of aloes, there came to her a craving for some
palliative, some sweetness, some expression of that instinct of
fellow-feeling deep in each human breast, however disharmonic. But
even with that craving was mingled the itch to justify herself, and
prove that she could rise above jealousy.
She made her way to the little model's lodging.
A child admitted her into the bleak passage that served for hall.
The strange medley of emotions passing through Bianca's breast while
she stood outside the girl's door did not show in her face, which
wore its customary restrained, half-mocking look.
The little model's voice faintly said: "Come in."
The room was in disorder, as though soon to be deserted. A closed
and corded trunk stood in the centre of the floor; the bed, stripped
of clothing, lay disclosed in all the barrenness of discoloured
ticking. The china utensils of the washstand were turned head
downwards. Beside that washstand the little model, with her hat on--
the hat with the purplish-pink roses and the little peacock's
feather-stood in the struck, shrinking attitude of one who, coming
forward in the expectation of a kiss, has received a blow.
"You are leaving here, then?" Bianca said quietly.
"Yes," the girl murmured.
"Don't you like this part? Is it too far from your work?"
Again the little model whispered: "Yes."
Bianca's eyes travelled slowly over the blue beflowered walls and
rust-red doors; through the dusty closeness of this dismantled room a
rank scent of musk and violets rose, as though a cheap essence had
been scattered as libation. A small empty scent-bottle stood on the
shabby looking-glass.
"Have you found new lodgings?"
The little model edged closer to the window. A stealthy watchfulness
was creeping into her shrinking, dazed face.
She shook her head.
"I don't know where I'm going."
Obeying a sudden impulse to see more clearly, Bianca lifted her veil.
"I came to tell you," she said, "that I shall always be ready to help
you."
The girl did not answer, but suddenly through her black lashes she
stole a look upward at her visitor. 'Can you,' it seemed to say,
'you--help me? Oh no; I think not!' And, as though she had been
stung by that glance, Bianca said with deadly slowness:
"It is my business, of course, entirely, now that Mr. Dallison has
gone abroad."
The little model received this saying with a quivering jerk. It
might have been an arrow transfixing her white throat. For a moment
she seemed almost about to fall, but, gripping the window-sill, held
herself erect. Her eyes, like an animal's in pain, darted here,
there, everywhere, then rested on her visitor's breast, quite
motionless. This stare, which seemed to see nothing, but to be
doing, as it were, some fateful calculation, was uncanny. Colour
came gradually back into her lips and eyes and cheeks; she seemed to
have succeeded in her calculation, to be reviving from that stab.
And suddenly Bianca understood. This was the meaning of the packed
trunk, the dismantled room. He was going to take her, after all!
In the turmoil of this discovery two words alone escaped her:
"I see!"
They were enough. The girl's face at once lost all trace of its look
of desperate calculation, brightened, became guilty, and from guilty
sullen.
The antagonism of all the long past months was now declared between
these two--Bianca's pride could no longer conceal, the girl's
submissiveness no longer obscure it. They stood like duellists, one
on each side of the trunk--that common, brown-Japanned, tin trunk,
corded with rope. Bianca looked at it.
"You," she said, "and he? Ha, ha; ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!"
Against that cruel laughter--more poignant than a hundred homilies on
caste, a thousand scornful words--the little model literally could
not stand; she sat down in the low chair where she had evidently been
sitting to watch the street. But as a taste of blood will infuriate
a hound, so her own laughter seemed to bereave Bianca of all
restraint.
"What do you imagine he's taking you for, girl? Only out of pity!
It's not exactly the emotion to live on in exile. In exile--but that
you do not understand!"
The little model staggered to her feet again. Her face had grown
painfully red.
"He wants me!" she said.
"Wants you? As he wants his dinner. And when he's eaten it--what
then? No, of course he'll never abandon you; his conscience is too
tender. But you'll be round his neck--like this!" Bianca raised her
arms, looped, and dragged them slowly down, as a mermaid's arms drag
at a drowning sailor.
The little model stammered: "I'll do what he tells me! I'll do what
he tells me!"
Bianca stood silent, looking at the girl, whose heaving breast and
little peacock's feather, whose small round hands twisting in front
of her, and scent about her clothes, all seemed an offence.
"And do you suppose that he'll tell you what he wants? Do you
imagine he'll have the necessary brutality to get rid of you? He'll
think himself bound to keep you till you leave him, as I suppose you
will some day!"
The girl dropped her hands. "I'll never leave him--never!" she cried
out passionately.
"Then Heaven help him!" said Bianca.
The little model's eyes seemed to lose all pupil, like two chicory
flowers that have no dark centres. Through them, all that she was
feeling struggled to find an outlet; but, too deep for words, those
feelings would not pass her lips, utterly unused to express emotion.
She could only stammer:
"I'm not--I'm not--I will---" and press her hands again to her
breast.
Bianca's lip curled.
"I see; you imagine yourself capable of sacrifice. Well, you have
your chance. Take it!" She pointed to the corded trunk. "Now's your
time; you have only to disappear!"
The little model shrank back against the windowsill. "He wants me!"
she muttered. "I know he wants me."
Bianca bit her lips till the blood came.
"Your idea of sacrifice," she said, "is perfect! If you went now, in
a month's time he'd never think of you again."
The girl gulped. There was something so pitiful in the movements of
her hands that Bianca turned away. She stood for several seconds
staring at the door, then, turning round again, said:
"Well?"
But the girl's whole face had changed. All tear-stained, indeed, she
had already masked it with a sort of immovable stolidity.
Bianca went swiftly up to the trunk.
"You shall!" she said. "Take that thing and go."
The little model did not move.
"So you won't?"
The girl trembled violently all over. She moistened her lips, tried
to speak, failed, again moistened them, and this time murmured; "I'll
only--I'll only--if lie tells me!"
"So you still imagine he will tell you!"
The little model merely repeated: "I won't--won't do anything without
he tells me!"
Bianca laughed. "Why, it's like a dog!" she said.
But the girl had turned abruptly to the window. Her lips were
parted. She was shrinking, fluttering, trembling at what she saw.
She was indeed like a spaniel dog who sees her master coming. Bianca
had no need of being told that Hilary was outside. She went into the
passage and opened the front door.
He was coming up the steps, his face worn like that of a man in
fever, and at the sight of his wife he stood quite still, looking
into her face.
Without the quiver of an eyelid, without the faintest trace of
emotion, or the slightest sign that she knew him to be there, Bianca
passed and slowly walked away.
CHAPTER XL
FINISH OF THE COMEDY
Those who may have seen Hilary driving towards the little model's
lodgings saw one who, by a fixed red spot on either cheek, and the
over-compression of his quivering lips, betrayed the presence of that
animality which underlies even the most cultivated men.
After eighteen hours of the purgatory of indecision, he had not so
much decided to pay that promised visit on which hung the future of
two lives, as allowed himself to be borne towards the girl.
There was no one in the passage to see him after he had passed Bianca
in the doorway, but it was with a face darkened by the peculiar
stabbing look of wounded egoism that he entered the little model's
room.
The sight of it coming so closely on the struggle she had just been
through was too much for the girl's self-control.
Instead of going up to him, she sat down on the corded trunk and
began to sob. It was the sobbing of a child whose school-treat has
been cancelled, of a girl whose ball-dress has not come home in time.
It only irritated Hilary, whose nerves had already borne all they
could bear. He stood literally trembling, as though each one of
these common little sobs were a blow falling on the drum-skin of his
spirit; and through every fibre he took in the features of the dusty,
scent-besprinkled room--the brown tin trunk, the dismantled bed, the
rust-red doors.
And he realised that she had burned her boats to make it impossible
for a man of sensibility to disappoint her!
The little model raised her face and looked at him. What she saw
must have been less reassuring even than the first sight had been,
for it stopped her sobbing. She rose and turned to the window,
evidently trying with handkerchief and powder-puff to repair the
ravages caused by her tears; and when she had finished she still
stood there with her back to him. Her deep breathing made her young
form quiver from her waist up to the little peacock's feather in her
hat; and with each supple movement it seemed offering itself to
Hilary.
In the street a barrel-organ had begun to play the very waltz it had
played the afternoon when Mr. Stone had been so ill. Those two were
neither of them conscious of that tune, too absorbed in their
emotions; and yet, quietly, it was bringing something to the girl's
figure like the dowering of scent that the sun brings to a flower.
It was bringing the compression back to Hilary's lips, the flush to
his ears and cheeks, as a draught of wind will blow to redness a fire
that has been choked. Without knowing it, without sound, inch by
inch he moved nearer to her; and as though, for all there was no sign
of his advance, she knew of it, she stayed utterly unmoving except
for the deep breathing that so stirred the warm youth in her. In
that stealthy progress was the history of life and the mystery of
sex. Inch by inch he neared her; and she swayed, mesmerising his
arms to fold round her thus poised, as if she must fall backward;
mesmerising him to forget that there was anything there, anything in
all the world, but just her young form waiting for him--nothing but
that!
The barrel-organ stopped; the spell had broken! She turned round to
him. As a wind obscures with grey wrinkles the still green waters of
enchantment into which some mortal has been gazing, so Hilary's
reason suddenly swept across the situation, and showed it once more
as it was. Quick to mark every shade that passed across his face,
the girl made as though she would again burst into tears; then, since
tears had been so useless, she pressed her hand over her eyes.
Hilary looked at that round, not too cleanly hand. He could see her
watching him between her fingers. It was uncanny, almost horrible,
like the sight of a cat watching a bird; and he stood appalled at the
terrible reality of his position, at the sight of his own future with
this girl, with her traditions, customs, life, the thousand and one
things that he did not know about her, that he would have to live
with if he once took her. A minute passed, which seemed eternity,
for into it was condensed every force of her long pursuit, her
instinctive clutching at something that she felt to be security, her
reaching upwards, her twining round him.
Conscious of all this, held back by that vision of his future, yet
whipped towards her by his senses, Hilary swayed like a drunken man.
And suddenly she sprang at him, wreathed her arms round his neck, and
fastened her mouth to his. The touch of her lips was moist and hot.
The scent of stale violet powder came from her, warmed by her
humanity. It penetrated to Hilary's heart. He started back in sheer
physical revolt.
Thus repulsed, the girl stood rigid, her breast heaving, her eyes
unnaturally dilated, her mouth still loosened by the kiss. Snatching
from his pocket a roll of notes, Hilary flung them on the bed.
"I can't take you!" he almost groaned. "It's madness! It's
impossible!" And he went out into the passage. He ran down the
steps and got into his cab. An immense time seemed to pass before it
began to move. It started at last, and Hilary sat back in it, his
hands clenched, still as a dead man.
His mortified face was recognised by the landlady, returning from her
morning's visit to the shops. The gentleman looked, she thought, as
if he had received bad news! She not unnaturally connected his
appearance with her lodger. Tapping on the girl's door, and
receiving no answer, she went in.
The little model was lying on the dismantled bed, pressing her face
into the blue and white ticking of the bolster. Her shoulders shook,
and a sound of smothered sobbing came from her. The landlady stood
staring silently.
Coming of Cornish chapel-going stock, she had never liked this girl,
her instinct telling her that she was one for whom life had already
been too much. Those for whom life had so early been too much, she
knew, were always "ones for pleasure!" Her experience of village
life had enabled her to construct the little model's story--that very
simple, very frequent little story. Sometimes, indeed, trouble of
that sort was soon over and forgotten; but sometimes, if the young
man didn't do the right thing by her, and the girl's folk took it
hardly, well, then---! So had run the reasoning of this good woman.
Being of the same class, she had looked at her lodger from the first
without obliquity of vision.
But seeing her now apparently so overwhelmed, and having something
soft and warm down beneath her granitic face and hungry eyes, she
touched her on the back.
"Come, now!" she said; "you mustn't take on! What is it?"
The little model shook off the hand as a passionate child shakes
itself free of consolation. "Let me alone!" she muttered.
The landlady drew back. "Has anyone done you a harm?" she said.
The little model shook her head.
Baffled by this dumb grief, the landlady was silent; then, with the
stolidity of those whose lives are one long wrestling with fortune,
she muttered:
"I don't like to see anyone cry like that!"
And finding that the girl remained obstinately withdrawn from sight
or sympathy, she moved towards the door.
"Well," she said, with ironical compassion, "if you want me, I'll be
in the kitchen."
The little model remained lying on her bed. Every now and then she
gulped, like a child flung down on the grass apart from its comrades,
trying to swallow down its rage, trying to bury in the earth its
little black moment of despair. Slowly those gulps grew fewer,
feebler, and at last died away. She sat up, sweeping Hilary's bundle
of notes, on which she had been lying, to the floor.
At sight of that bundle she broke out afresh, flinging herself down
sideways with her cheek on the wet bolster; and, for some time after
her sobs had ceased again, still lay there. At last she rose and
dragged herself over to the looking-glass, scrutinising her streaked,
discoloured face, the stains in the cheeks, the swollen eyelids, the
marks beneath her eyes; and listlessly she tidied herself. Then,
sitting down on the brown tin trunk, she picked the bundle of notes
off the floor. They gave forth a dry peculiar crackle. Fifteen ten-
pound notes--all Hilary's travelling money. Her eyes opened wider
and wider as she counted; and tears, quite suddenly, rolled down on
to those thin slips of paper.
Then slowly she undid her dress, and forced them down till they
rested, with nothing but her vest between them and the quivering warm
flesh which hid her heart.
CHAPTER XLI
THE HOUSE OF HARMONY
At half-past ten that evening Stephen walked up the stone-flagged
pathway of his brother's house.
"Can I see Mrs. Hilary?"
"Mr. Hilary went abroad this morning, sir, and Mrs. Hilary has not
yet come in."
"Will you give her this letter? No, I'll wait. I suppose I can wait
for her in the garden?"
"Oh yes, sit!"
"Very well."
"I'll leave the door open, sir, in case you want to come in."
Stephen walked across to the rustic bench and sat down. He stared
gloomily through the dusk at his patent-leather boots, and every now
and then he flicked his evening trousers with the letter. Across the
dark garden, where the boughs hung soft, unmoved by wind, the light
from Mr. Stone's open window flowed out in a pale river; moths, born
of the sudden heat, were fluttering up this river to its source.
Stephen looked irritably at the figure of Mr. Stone, which could be
seen, bowed, and utterly still, beside his desk; so, by lifting the
spy-hole thatch, one may see a convict in his cell stand gazing at
his work, without movement, numb with solitude.
'He's getting awfully broken up,' thought Stephen. 'Poor old chap!
His ideas are killing him. They're not human nature, never will be.'
Again he flicked his trousers with the letter, as though that
document emphasised the fact. 'I can't help being sorry for the
sublime old idiot!'
He rose, the better to see his father-in-law's unconscious figure.
It looked as lifeless and as cold as though Mr. Stone had followed
some thought below the ground, and left his body standing there to
await his return. Its appearance oppressed Stephen.
'You might set the house on fire,' he thought; 'he'd never notice.'
Mr. Stone's figure moved; the sound of along sigh came out to Stephen
in the windless garden. He turned his eyes away, with the sudden
feeling that it was not the thing to watch the old chap like this;
then, getting up, he went indoors. In his brother's study he stood
turning over the knick-knacks on the writing-table.
'I warned Hilary that he was burning his fingers,' he thought.
At the sound of the latch-key he went back to the hall.
However much he had secretly disapproved of her from the beginning,
because she had always seemed to him such an uncomfortable and
tantalising person, Stephen was impressed that night by the haunting
unhappiness of Bianca's face; as if it had been suddenly disclosed to
him that she could not help herself. This was disconcerting, being,
in a sense, a disorderly way of seeing things.
"You look tired, B.," he said. "I'm sorry, but I thought it better
to bring this round tonight."
Bianca glanced at the letter.
"It is to you," she said. "I don't wish to read it, thank you."
Stephen compressed his lips.
"But I wish you to hear it, please," he said. "I'll read it out, if
you'll allow me.
"'CHARING CROSS STATION.
"'DEAR STEVIE,
"'I told you yesterday morning that I was going abroad alone.
Afterwards I changed my mind--I meant to take her. I went to her
lodgings for the purpose. I have lived too long amongst sentiments
for such a piece of reality as that. Class has saved me; it has
triumphed over my most primitive instincts.
"'I am going alone--back to my sentiments. No slight has been placed
on Bianca--but my married life having become a mockery, I shall not
return to it. The following address will find me, and I shall ask
you presently to send on my household gods.
"'Please let Bianca know the substance of this letter.
"'Ever your affectionate brother,
"'HILARY DALLISON."'
With a frown Stephen folded up the letter, and restored it to his
breast pocket.
'It's more bitter than I thought,' he reflected; 'and yet he's done
the only possible thing!'
Bianca was leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece with her face turned
to the wall. Her silence irritated Stephen, whose loyalty to his
brother longed to fend a vent.
"I'm very much relieved, of course," he said at last. "It would have
been fatal"
She did not move, and Stephen became increasingly aware that this was
a most awkward matter to touch on.
"Of course," he began again. "But, B., I do think you--rather--I
mean---" And again he stopped before her utter silence, her utter
immobility. Then, unable to go away without having in some sort
expressed his loyalty to Hilary, he tried once more: "Hilary is the
kindest man I know. It's not his fault if he's out of touch with
life--if he's not fit to deal with things. He's negative!"
And having thus in a single word, somewhat to his own astonishment,
described his brother, he held out his hand.
The hand which Bianca placed in it was feverishly hot. Stephen felt
suddenly compunctious.
"I'm awfully sorry," he stammered, "about the whole thing. I'm
awfully sorry for you---"
Bianca drew back her hand.
With a little shrug Stephen turned away.
'What are you to do with women like that?' was his thought, and
saying dryly, "Good-night, B.," he went.
For some time Bianca sat in Hilary's chair. Then, by the faint
glimmer coming through the half-open door, she began to wander round
the room, touching the walls, the books, the prints, all the familiar
things among which he had lived so many years....
In that dim continual journey she was like a disharmonic spirit
traversing the air above where its body lies.
The door creaked behind her. A voice said sharply:
"What are you doing in this house?"
Mr. Stone was standing beside the bust of Socrates. Bianca went up
to him.
"Father!"
Mr. Stone stared. "It is you! I thought it was a thief! Where is
Hilary?"
"Gone away."
"Alone?"
Bianca bowed her head. "It is very late, Dad," she whispered.
Mr. Stone's hand moved as though he would have stroked her.
"The human heart," he murmured, "is the tomb of many feelings."
Bianca put her arm round him.
"You must go to bed, Dad," she said, trying to get him to the door,
for in her heart something seemed giving way.
Mr. Stone stumbled; the door swung to; the room was plunged in
darkness. A hand, cold as ice, brushed her cheek. With all her
force she stiffed a scream.
"I am here," Mr. Stone said.
His hand, wandering downwards, touched her shoulder, and she seized
it with her own burning hand. Thus linked, they groped their way out
into the passage towards his room.
"Good-night, dear," Bianca murmured.
By the light of his now open door Mr. Stone seemed to try and see her
face, but she would not show it him. Closing the door gently, she
stole upstairs.
Sitting down in her bedroom by the open window, it seemed to her that
the room was full of people--her nerves were so unstrung. It was as
if walls had not the power this night to exclude human presences.
Moving, or motionless, now distinct, then covered suddenly by the
thick veil of some material object, they circled round her quiet
figure, lying back in the chair with shut eyes. These disharmonic
shadows flitting in the room made a stir like the rubbing of dry
straw or the hum of bees among clover stalks. When she sat up they
vanished, and the sounds became the distant din of homing traffic;
but the moment she closed her eyes, her visitors again began to steal
round her with that dry, mysterious hum.
She fell asleep presently, and woke with a start. There, in a
glimmer of pale light, stood the little model, as in the fatal
picture Bianca had painted of her. Her face was powder white, with
shadows beneath the eyes. Breath seemed coming through her parted
lips, just touched with colour. In her hat lay the tiny peacock's
feather beside the two purplish-pink roses. A scent came from her,
too--but faint, as ever was the scent of chicory flower. How long
had she been standing there? Bianca started to her feet, and as she
rose the vision vanished.
She went towards the spot. There was nothing in that corner but
moonlight; the scent she had perceived was merely that of the trees
drifting in.
But so vivid had that vision been that she stood at the window,
panting for air, passing her hand again and again across her eyes.
Outside, over the dark gardens, the moon hung full and almost golden.
Its honey-pale light filtered down on every little shape of tree, and
leaf, and sleeping flower. That soft, vibrating radiance seemed to
have woven all into one mysterious whole, stilling disharmony, so
that each little separate shape had no meaning to itself.
Bianca looked long at the rain of moonlight falling on the earth's
carpet, like a covering shower of blossom which bees have sucked and
spilled. Then, below her, out through candescent space, she saw a
shadow dart forth along the grass, and to her fright a voice rose,
tremulous and clear, seeming to seek enfranchisement beyond the
barrier of the dark trees: "My brain is clouded. Great Universe! I
cannot write! I can no longer discover to my brothers that they are
one. I am not worthy to stay here. Let me pass into You, and die!"
Bianca saw her father's fragile arms stretch out into the night
through the sleeves of his white garment, as though expecting to be
received at once into the Universal Brotherhood of the thin air.
There ensued a moment, when, by magic, every little dissonance in all
the town seemed blended into a harmony of silence, as it might be the
very death of self upon the earth.
Then, breaking that trance, Mr. Stone's voice rose again, trembling
out into the night, as though blown through a reed.
"Brothers!" he said.
Behind the screen of lilac bushes at the gate Bianca saw the dark
helmet of a policeman. He stood there staring steadily in the
direction of that voice. Raising his lantern, he flashed it into
every corner of the garden, searching for those who had been
addressed. Satisfied, apparently, that no one was there, he moved it
to right and left, lowered it to the level of his breast, and walked
slowly on.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Fraternity, by John Galsworthy*