The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sundered Streams, by Reginald Farrer.

[There is no shore to the bitter Sea of Birth-and-Death: even the
touching of sleeves in passing is the result of some connection in a former life.]

The English language, flexible and rich though it be, lacks words in which to convey the subtler social distinctions. We have had to go abroad for ‘nouveau-riche’ and ‘parvenu,’ to say nothing of ‘Philistia,’ ‘Bohemia,’ the ‘demi-monde,’ and all the other geographical names that we have taken from the atlas of the human world to describe some small corner in our own little parish. But, as our civilization grows more and more complex, so does our borrowed vocabulary grow less and less adequate, until nowadays we find not a few fine differences in our microcosm which no word of our own or of any other nation avails to identify. The ‘Arrived’ and the ‘New-rich’ are familiar figures, but what of those many families who suddenly become wealthy and prominent after many generations of well-bred obscurity? They cannot fairly be described as ‘nouveau-riche’ or ‘parvenu’; they have been there all the time, though not in evidence; to brand them with the stigma of novelty would be manifestly unfair. They have antiquity without importance—a vast difference, in the eyes of social astronomers, between them and the blazing stars of wealth that so suddenly emerge from the black[2] night of genealogical non-existence. As well compare a dazzling meteor, here and gone in a flash, with a genuine star which, after æons of inconspicuousness, abruptly swells into a luminary of the first magnitude. To describe such fixed lights in our English hemisphere a new word must first be coined in another language, and then borrowed. Such people are not ‘nouveau-riche’; they are ‘renrichis.’ And to this class belonged the Dadds of Darnley-on-Downe—that obscure dynasty from which it is now necessary to show the gradual genesis, through many quiet generations, of Kingston Darnley, its apostate offspring.

Among soft Kentish meadows sleeps the little metropolis of Darnley-on-Downe. It lies on the grassy plain like a neat poached egg on a vast green plate, and, over all, the blue vault of heaven makes a domed lid. The Downe meanders placidly at the foot of its gardens, and comfortable little Georgian houses speak of agelong ease and decent leisure. Darnley-on-Downe has no local peer, no local palace; rank and fashion, therefore, are represented only by these dignified dwellings of red brick, each enclosed in shrubberies of rose and laurel and lilac, each tenanted by some family well known for generations in Darnley-on-Downe.

As Cranford was, as Highbury was, so also was Darnley-on-Downe—placid, happy and exclusive, intolerant of all new-comers and of all change. Mrs. John succeeded Mrs. Joshua, and Mr. Reuben Mr. James; and no outsider was ever permitted to disturb the orderly dynasties that so long had ruled in the little town. Crowns fell, but the serenity of Darnley-on-Downe remained unruffled, and the collapse of the Corsican ogre took no higher rank in general conversation than the misdoings of Mrs. Blessing’s Matilda, or the strange theft of Miss Minna Dadd’s Leghorns. So,[3] talking only to themselves, and only of themselves, the aristocracy of Darnley-on-Downe passed inconspicuously from the nursery to the grave, through the leisurely old days when the peace of the country contrasted so strongly with the restless misery of the great cities, and, in the absence of halfpenny morning papers, only rare rumours filtered down into the provinces of a young Queen gradually making her seat secure on a dishonoured and endangered throne.

Nowadays Cranford, probably, plays pit, and motors hoot beneath the walls of Donwell Abbey. Nowadays clash and clangour fill the one main street of Darnley-on-Downe, and the Georgian houses are being swept away to make room for glassy palaces of art-nouveau design. But, in the days when Fortune swooped so suddenly on the Dadds, only peace and slumber haunted the Market Place and St. Eldred’s.

Clean, humble, small, and quiet, the cottages and shops of the working-classes lined the broad pavement, with here a neat bank fronted by Corinthian pilasters, and there a rambling, wide-mouthed inn, haunted by loafing dogs and ostlers full of leisure. Then came the church, solid and unassuming, very essence made visible of that orderly if unimpassioned spirit that then possessed the Church of England. Under its shadow, flanked by tall clipped obelisks of yew, squatted the solid square of the vicarage, with green lawn and beds of roses leading down to the wicket that opened on the roadway. And beyond this again began a wide, ancient avenue of limes, fragrant and tranquil, on whose either side stretched that series of red-brick houses in which the Upper Ten of Darnley-on-Downe discreetly led its days, and formed an aristocracy no less rigid, no less zealous for birth and tradition than that higher world called ‘county,’ with which it had nothing to do, and yet so much in common.[4] St. Eldred’s was the name of this provincial faubourg, and the wayfarer, passing down its green length, might divine its exclusive character from the lack of any invidious distinction made between the houses. The identity of each was kept sacred for the elect, and the outsider was to know nothing. In our own assertive time each gate would bear a curly Gothic title—‘Chatsworth,’ ‘Arundel,’ ‘Sandringham’ would gratify our loyal eyes. In those days Mrs. Blessing knew Miss Dadd’s house, and Miss Dadd knew Mrs. Blessing’s. This knowledge was held to be amply sufficient, and it was even felt that to share it with the unprivileged world at large would be profane and vulgar. Thus the unguided stranger would have travelled uninstructed past gateway after gateway, past trim red wall after trim red wall, without being able to attribute any definite personality to the dweller in each cloistered precinct. And therefore he must necessarily have passed on his way without gathering any idea of the extent to which the Dadds dominated St. Eldred’s.

All the dwellers in these houses lived in a small way, and all of them drew their incomes from some retail trade. ‘County’ people, from their own high circle, contemplating these lesser worlds, would never have guessed the intense and silent arrogance with which, in turn, these lesser worlds looked down on the struggling aspirants from beneath, on the new and unknown persons who painfully fought to win a footing in St. Eldred’s. But, in the close ring of this aristocracy, the Dadds were certainly the ruling dynasty. Had the wayfarer been privileged with a guide, he would have learned that every fourth house in St. Eldred’s enshrined a Dadd or the relation of a Dadd. Here dwelt Mrs. Reuben Dadd; yonder Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Dadd; and, not a stone’s-throw[5] farther, was the house of the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd. As for the head of the family, Mr. Dadd, with his consort, dwelt in a stout-pillared edifice which even an uninstructed stranger must have seen to be the residence of a presiding Power.

The Dadds permeated social life in Darnley-on-Downe. They were everywhere, had married into every family, had accorded brides to every neighbouring house of repute, had come at last to be, as it were, the very incarnation of decency and proper pride in Darnley-on-Downe. They were no richer than their neighbours, but in those days wealth gave no precedence, and the Dadds had a prestige which their fellow-nobles in St. Eldred’s lacked. For the Dadds owned land, and, though St. Eldred’s made no attempt to connect itself with the world of landowners and county families, yet a vague aroma of grandeur still clung to the one family in its midst that might be said to verge on the territorial class. The glory of the Dadds was a big freehold farm beyond the town, where they had been established from time immemorial, honourably obscure from the days of Henry the Eighth. St. Eldred’s, accordingly, cherishing its own pedigrees and antiquities, as it did, with as fervent a passion as any Austrian noble, yet by tacit consent accorded supremacy to this landowning family in its midst.

The Dadds by now had gone down, alas, in the world; however, St. Eldred’s never dreamed of making worldly prosperity a criterion for approval. St. Eldred’s lived, itself, in a penurious prosperity or a prosperous poverty; wealth, being unattainable, was held to be undesirable as well as rather vulgar, and the fading income of the Dadds only set the seal on their title to general admiration. The farm was still theirs indeed, but its yield was less and lessening. All through[6] the good old Protection days their corn had brought high prices; but, unfortunately, the cost of living had grown even higher in proportion, until the Dadds found themselves forced to renounce agricultural hopes, leave the farm fallow, and plunge into small trade. From this they made a fair livelihood, and were able to support their regal position in the world of St. Eldred’s. So they lived, married, ruled, and died, till never a house in St. Eldred’s but was kin to the royal family of Dadd.

James Dadd after James Dadd contentedly took up his sceptre, swayed it during his time, and laid it by. Their clan, like all others in St. Eldred’s, was magnificently complacent in contemplation of its own position. No Dadd was ever heard to aspire to more giddy worlds, no Dadd was ever known to show any hankerings after wilder flights, after new courses, after original thought or action of any kind. In a young member of the family, in a collateral, the weight of his elders would immediately have crushed out such sparks of discontent; as for the head of the dynasty, so surrounded was the ruling Dadd by now with uncles, cousins, and aunts, not to mention dowagers of bygone sovereigns, that it would have been as easy for him to revolt as for a Pope to make headway against the College of Cardinals. Such, then, was the decorous state of affairs, when suddenly a most astonishing thing happened.

The railway mania was sweeping over England. Counties were being opened up, and landowners being driven crazy with hysterical apprehensions of ruin, and opposition to every threatened change. At first all these commotions left the quiet waters of St. Eldred’s unruffled. But eventually a railway company came sniffing round the ancestral but profitless farm of the Dadds, and, somehow, during the negotiations,[7] it was discovered that those barren acres covered a coal-field of exuberant richness.

It was not to be expected that this new fact should bring about any sudden alteration in the feeling of St. Eldred’s towards the Dadds. Only a mild flutter agitated for a while the red-brick houses. Then it was felt that the acquisition of wealth by the Dadds was very right and proper. Wealth was only vulgar when in new and plebeian hands. A Dadd could be trusted to avoid giving offence, a Dadd would never be ostentatious, nor presume to change his mode of life. So, undeterred by any disapproval from their peers, the ruling Dadds proceeded quietly to develop their new possibilities. What those possibilities were no one had the audacity or the grandeur of mind to compute. Unsuspected, unrealized, volumes of money rolled ceaselessly in to the account of the mine-owners, while they, in their innocence, continued unperturbed in the old simple ways, never caring to dream that their new wealth could do more for them than add, at most, a parlourmaid.

It was some years before even this grand addition was made to their scale of living, and then it was only when the sudden death of James Dadd the Eighth had left the family sceptre in the hands of a queen-regent. The widow ruled for her son (now, at a tender age, raised to the rank of James Dadd the Ninth), and hardly had she grasped the reins of power than she began to show signs of wishing to use the abundant resources which had now been accumulating for fifteen years or more. Her ambitions were not approved, and the extra parlourmaid was only condoned as an indulgence for the sorrows of widowhood. But from that moment a little rift began to widen between the reigning Dadds and Darnley-on-Downe. The money began insensibly to come between the rulers and the[8] ruled. It was inevitable that it should. An income—even an unspent income—of fifteen thousand a year cannot long live on terms of perfect friendly equality with incomes of several hundred or so. The richer, sooner or later, condescends; the poorer, sooner or later, grudges. Thus it was in Darnley-on-Downe. Even the suspicion that Mrs. Dadd had ‘notions’—that she would have liked a landau, and had conceived thoughts of sending her sons to Eton—caused a certain vigilant enmity to exasperate the keenness with which her every action was watched and weighed by her council of relatives. The slightest sign of ambition was soon marked as a treason to the clan. All the Dadd connections, all the Dadd collaterals, all the dowagers and younger branches of the Dadds made common cause with St. Eldred’s, and joined in the general suspicion with which the conduct of Mrs. Dadd was viewed. The widow found herself unable to carry out the smallest extravagance. Very innocent and trifling were the few indulgences that she had hoped for, but even these were put beyond her reach by the decree of her relatives, by that incorruptible synod over which even a Dadd queen-regent had no more power than a doge of Venice over his Council of Ten. Nor was her submission able to redeem her popularity. The very fact of having once had ‘notions’ was enough to mark her out for ever as a traitor to the Constitution of St. Eldred’s. She was no longer quite ‘one of themselves.’ The excommunication was pronounced by those terrible princesses, the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd, and no one was found to question its justice as it thundered across the tea-table.

Inquiries were made into her remote ancestry, and it was soon found that, though by birth an unblemished Blessing, yet she had inherited the sinister tendencies[9] of a Messiter great-great-great-grandmother, whom history convicted of eccentricities that went the length of reading her Bible in French. From such a tainted spring what purity could be expected? The situation was summed up by the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd. The stream cannot rise higher than its source, was their stern pronouncement. A regretful loyalty, a disapproving adherence now marked the family’s attitude towards her—a loyalty, an adherence as faithful but as disapproving as ever a virtuous believer in Divine right can have felt for a drunken and profligate Pretender, or a patriotic Catholic for Queen Elizabeth.

So far, it is true, her eldest son, James Dadd the Ninth, seemed a model of Dadd virtues. He had made no open move towards ostentation and prodigality. His younger brother Robert, however, was the incarnate tragedy of St. Eldred’s, the incarnate accusation of Mrs. Dadd’s regency. Briefly, this ulcer of St. Eldred’s must be skimmed; Robert Dadd had run away from home, and when next heard of, many years later, was understood to be in Japan, and to have become a Mormon or a Buddhist, or a disciple of whatever religion rules in those benighted parts. Never again was his name heard in St. Eldred’s, but the Messiter great-great-great-grandmother was held accountable for such a strange, terrible aberration—the first break in the impeccable succession of the Dadds. There was yet another child—a daughter—but she was ten years younger than her brothers, and could not as yet prove, in her own person, the corrupt heredity of her mother. However, she was already watched with care, and every tearing of her pinafore was held symptomatic of inherited depravity.

James Dadd the Ninth came at last to his own, and his unhappy mother, crushed by years of disapproval,[10] sank, unregretted, to the grave. And hardly had St. Eldred’s consigned her decently to the tomb, than James Dadd gave abundant proof of the evil spirit that all his relatives had long suspected. He left Darnley-on-Downe. He shut up the family house; he travelled; he began timidly to live on a scale that drove St. Eldred’s dizzy with horrified astonishment. Thanks to his mother’s economy, he was now extremely rich, and bit by bit began to realize the extent of his opportunities. But, though St. Eldred’s shook its head over him, though the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd refused to read the papers any longer, for fear of finding his iniquities chronicled, James Dadd remained the true son of his fathers. Wealth could not make him wealthy; it takes a generation at least to make the genuine spendthrift, to ingraft the joy and the splendour of purchasing. James Dadd remained nervous, awkward, bourgeois in his uneasy enjoyment of his money. Assertive one moment, he was uneasy and parsimonious the next, always self-conscious, always troubled by the disapproval of the only world he really knew—the world that had made him and written its signature large across the face of his personality. Wherever he went, he carried St. Eldred’s, and heard the mild but tremendous tones of the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd among the arches of the Colosseum as in the silences of the Desert. Sometimes he defied the voices, sometimes he quailed before them, but escape them he never could. He was out of his sphere; they told him so. He had cast off his own world, and could enter no other.

Often in his travels he met other men on similar errands of pleasure, young men and old, sons of country squires or illustrious families. In most cases they had not a quarter of his income, but they seemed to have the careless knack of getting more pleasure out[11] of half a crown than he could ever buy with a five-pound note. Poor as they might be, generations of spending ancestors had left them the secret of spending easily, gaily, serenely, of letting money flow unperceived between their fingers, of securing a double return for their outlay through their very indifference as to whether they ever got any return at all. This was the whole distinction between himself and them. Actual superiority of birth and breeding they had none, though their forbears might be more prominent than his. But centuries of inconspicuousness disqualify a man for the conspicuous position conferred by sudden wealth, and James Dadd, for all his long pedigree, was far less fitted for his new place in life than many a grandson of some successful politician or lawyer, who might number, perhaps, two generations to James Dadd’s twenty, but made up for this lack of quantity by the eminence of the father and grandfather whose high and hard-won position he had painlessly inherited.

So James Dadd, misplaced and ill at ease, passed thus through life with occasional spasmodic attempts at the assumption of a defiant self-complacency. He knew that he was an outcast from St. Eldred’s. Even if he would, he could never now return to the red-brick house of his early years. In the flesh, perhaps, he might, but his spirit could never again be admitted within its doors, could never again be admitted to intimacy by the spirit of St. Eldred’s. Rashly he had cut himself off from his own people, and must henceforth face the fact. Nor, though either diffident or vehement in the spending of his money, could he really contemplate returning to the life of Darnley-on-Downe. He had tasted of headier joys—tasted awkwardly, perhaps, and incompletely, but even so the small-beer on which St. Eldred’s had reared him must for evermore[12] be insipid to his palate. Though now he never heard from his brother Robert, he sympathized with his revolt, and resolved that he, too, could never again have any part in the life of Darnley-on-Downe. And at this point, just after the one brief tragic flash of romance that broke into his life, he came across Lady Kirk-Hammerton.

Lady Kirk-Hammerton was the sonless widow of a second-rate Lord Chancellor. Devoid of wealth or breeding, she and her husband had had recourse to blatancy to emphasize their value. Now that he was dead she redoubled the intensity of her methods, and soon acquired that notoriety which she considered synonymous with fame. Bereft of her husband, there was no reason why people should ever take notice of her again, unless her demeanour forced them to do so. Therefore she set herself heroically to the task of making her existence conspicuous in the eye of the world, with such success that, with the best resolve, nobody could succeed in ignoring her. Physically and metaphorically, she shouted her way from place to place, and her conversation blazed no less obtrusively than her gowns. As for a foil, she felt that her brilliancy needed none, and therefore had no reason for tolerating her daughter’s incorrigible respectability. With the more joy, therefore, did she fall upon James Dadd at Naples, and hurl him, not unwilling, into the company of her undesirable offspring.

But if the daughter emphasized the mother’s mature and vehement charms, so did the mother’s overwhelming presence show up the pale grace of the daughter. Lady Adela Vayne-Kingston was pretty, shrinking, mild, domestic—the very type that, in happier circumstances, would have been most dear to St. Eldred’s. She hated her mother’s loud voice and[13] louder manners; her one hope was to marry someone obscure and gentle, who would remove her from the burning atmosphere of Lady Kirk-Hammerton, in whose train, since her girlhood, she had been dragged hither and thither, never protesting, but always reluctant. James Dadd, for his part, found in Lady Adela a reminiscence of his old home-life. She seemed to him the ghost of peaceful St. Eldred’s, with an added touch of worldly experience and travelled charm. Her character, far from repeating her mother’s, harked back to some obscure ancestress, probably in domestic service, and was so meek and placid as to be the very incarnation of all that James Dadd had been brought up to love and respect. On the other hand, this same gentleness of temperament, which St. Eldred’s considered the hall-mark of good breeding, was believed by Lady Kirk-Hammerton to be especially distasteful to those high circles after which she hankered; and she had long, therefore, been eagerly seeking a chance to be rid of the daughter whom her best efforts had failed to render brazen and clamorous. Her delight, accordingly, surpassed all bounds, when at the end of a week’s acquaintance, James Dadd proposed to Lady Adela, and was thankfully accepted.

Though the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd had ceased to subscribe to ‘the Paper,’ they yet had their recognised channels for the reception of news. For the butcher conveyed the events of the world to their cook, and she, in turn, laid edited selections before her mistresses. In this way was brought to their notice the approaching marriage between ‘James Dadd, Esq., of Darnley-on-Downe, and the Lady Adela Vayne-Kingston, daughter of the late Earl of Kirk-Hammerton.’

That afternoon was hurriedly convened a great meeting of the Dadd family to consider this announcement.[14] Unmixed disapproval filled every bosom in the tribe. The engagement was held equivalent to the abdication of James Dadd from the headship of his race. In two ways the proposed marriage was disliked. It was thoroughly unsuitable to a Dadd; it was thoroughly unworthy of a Dadd. Lady Adela was at once too high and too low to be a fair match of James Dadd. Accident had given her a titular position superior to her lover’s, while her birth was in every way disastrously inferior to his own. Even St. Eldred’s had heard something of Lady Kirk-Hammerton, and it was impossible to imagine that her daughter could, by any stretch of courtesy, be called a lady in the true sense of the word. All the Dadd pride of birth rose up against the thought of connection with a girl without a grandfather—a girl, too, whom uninstructed sections of the world might dare to consider her husband’s social superior. It was felt that James Dadd had inflicted a crowning insult on his family in thus threatening to misally it. Mrs. John, Mrs. Reuben, Mrs. Joshua, coincided in the opinion firmly announced by the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd; the young Johns, Reubens, and Joshuas, dissented in nothing; only the peccant James’s sister, now a girl of promising beauty, held her own counsel, and decided to write congratulations to her brother and his destined bride. For in her, too, the blood of great-great-great-grandmother Messiter was at its fell work; her soul longed for change and variety and gaiety; and all these things she saw attainable through James’s marriage with the daughter of that notorious Lady Kirk-Hammerton.

But she was too wise to make her heresy public; and the condemnation of James’s choice was passed without protest by the assembled council. An ultimatum was drafted by the Misses Adelaide and Minna[15] Dadd, and would have been dispatched on the morrow, with the approval of all, had not the morrow brought news that destroyed every hope of reconciliation with the traitor. It was announced that, with royal permission, James Dadd, of Darnley-on-Downe, would in future be known as James Darnley. St. Eldred’s gasped at the wickedness of this public repudiation.

In point of fact it was Lady Adela, gentle and winning, whose vitality had stirred to a great effort, under great pressure, and had risen to urge upon her lover this change of name. She pointed out that to ask a girl to become Lady Adela Dadd was to exact a sacrifice as far beyond mortal power to grant as beyond mortal justice to demand. James Dadd, recognising that he could never hope to be reincluded in the clan whose nominal sovereign he still was, found himself inclined to consider Lady Adela’s plea in a favourable spirit. Together they decided to adopt the more euphonious name of Darnley, and James Dadd hastened to make his decision public, that thus he might at once be finally cut off from any remonstrances or embassies of his family. He judged the temper of St. Eldred’s rightly. His announcement was taken as an irremediable declaration of war. His name was never mentioned again in Darnley-on-Downe, except as that of one deservedly dead and unregretted. The sceptre passed into the capable hands of Mr. and Mrs. Reuben Dadd, and by silent consent it was agreed that no infant henceforth should bear the dishonoured names of James or Robert. Only James Dadd’s young sister remained hopefully loyal to his memory, and when, a year later, the redoubled severity of the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd alone betrayed their secret knowledge that a son had been born to Mr. and Lady Adela Darnley, the one acknowledgment of the event that reached the outlaw from Darnley-on-Downe was a[16] surreptitiously-posted letter of his sister’s. If anything could have aggravated the wrath of the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd it would have been the knowledge that the infant, that their own great nephew, had been christened, not James, but Kingston.

Kingston Darnley, indeed! There was a name for a child! You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, said the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd; and they were universally felt to have expressed the situation in all its bearings. And thus, from years of corrupting wealth and secret disloyalty, was generated the culminating disgrace of the Dadds, in Kingston Darnley. Kingston Darnley!

Why, why had great-great-great-grandfather Blessing married a Messiter of eccentric tendencies? And what a curse is money! Better decorum and a competence than stalled peacocks and a marriage with the daughters of Heth! It became the fashion in St. Eldred’s to affect, by contrast, a greater poverty than the circumstances of anyone necessitated. To give two cakes at tea became vulgar, and the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd took to going to church with only one Prayer Book between them. Nothing could have induced St. Eldred’s to confess that it knew anything of the Darnleys, and the various steps in Lady Adela’s progress were sternly ignored by a watchful world. Even when Mr. and Lady Adela Darnley entertained a Princess for some charitable function, the only comment made in St. Eldred’s was the tacit one involved in the simultaneous retirement to bed of the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd. Another outcast, however, was soon added to James and Robert—another topic for the silence of St. Eldred’s. For, after some secret correspondence, James Darnley’s sister eloped from the care of her aunts, and was next heard of under the wing of her[17] brother’s wife in London. Within a year she had married a stockbroker of abundant wealth. The lips of St. Eldred’s snapped on this fulfilment of the disasters brought about by great-great-great-grandmother Messiter. The old dynasty of Dadd was ended in Darnley-on-Downe. The main royal line was wiped out, and the Reuben Dadds reigned in its stead.

The new-made Darnleys, James and his sister, were triumphantly ushered into the upper world by Lady Adela, whose father’s rise, whose mother’s persistence, had won at last a reluctant toleration from her betters. Accustomed from her birth to live on terms of acquaintance with more or less interesting or conspicuous people, Lady Adela had developed something of that native air and ease which James Dadd had never been able to acquire in all his long exile from his own social hemisphere. Nor did James Dadd, transformed into James Darnley, ever succeed in fitting himself perfectly to his altered conditions. His wife, besides loving him devotedly, if placidly, did all she could to acclimatize him; she made him buy a vast new house on the Yorkshire moors; she filled it with people, she made her husband play the squire; but to the last this man of many descents remained less adaptable, less congenial to his new environment than many a versatile Hebrew whom twenty years of unlimited wealth transform into what is nowadays considered a very tolerable imitation of an English gentleman—especially as seen on the stage. Among people who talked of money and diseases with a freedom that struck him as indecent, James Darnley, brought up to think both topics unmentionable, remained timid and uncomfortable to[18] the end of his days, and when at last a combination of dyspepsia and a Primrose League banquet caused him to retire from a world in which he had always been a stranger, even Lady Adela felt that he was somehow set free from a long bondage. Gentle in her grief as in all her other emotions, she resigned herself to becoming crapes, and found new pleasure in the guardianship of her son Kingston, now turned eleven.

But if James Darnley, first of his line, died a failure, far otherwise was it with his sister. In her the blood of great-great-great-grandmother Messiter must have seethed and boiled with concentrated virulence, for she took to her new life with a zeal that left nothing to be desired, and soon dropped behind her all trace and all memory of Darnley-on-Downe. Her manners, from the first, were forward and easy; her ambition was to be considered a woman of fashion, and she carried to its accomplishment a temperament entirely devoid of bashfulness or indecision. Mr. Mimburn, her wealthy stockbroker husband, soon shrank into mere cheque-signing obscurity beside the flaming figure of his wife. Her remarks were quoted, her gowns described; she became at last, in those far-off days, a precursor of that modern type of woman who is perfectly virtuous, except in dress, manners, and mind. Nothing would have horrified her more than illicit proposals, except the accusation of being shocked by them; nothing have more appalled her than an attack on her virtue, except the suspicion that she had any.

Her gossip always made a point of flirting round impropriety, and she was at pains to damn her own flawless character by arch implications. She had cultivated French, and now was a walking chronicle of the demi-monde, as well as a living picture of its most prominent inhabitants. A passport to her friendship was the possession of a past, and she[19] hastened to attribute amorous adventures to all her dearest friends on any foundation or none. The foundation did not matter; the point was that the suggestion glorified them in her eyes; part of her admiration for Lady Adela arose from the fact that she suspected that saintly woman of having ‘consoled herself’ during the lifetime of the late James Darnley. Mrs. Mimburn’s knowledge of her sister-in-law’s untried and incorruptible virtue was never allowed to interfere with this romantic possibility; in the face of all probability, in the face of all evidence, she must imagine some such episode in any career that touched her own, or else immediately cease to take any interest in it. So far had she travelled from the mental chastity that ruled in Darnley-on-Downe.

So, between mother and aunt, the young Kingston Darnley journeyed through boyhood to maturity. Lady Adela was an ideal parent, and discharged her maternal duties with a gentle ease that made her son’s progress altogether pleasant. She was one of the cushion-women whose numbers nowadays are yearly diminishing. Without initiative, without any clearness of mind, she had the placid receptivity that often accompanies such a temperament. The lack of colour in her own character made it harmonious and restful as a background to more vivid personalities. Therefore, without effort or desire on her part, she attracted confidence. She was good to lean on; she listened well—though often without hearing, and always without understanding. But her sweet acquiescence gave everyone the idea of being fully comprehended, and her incapacity for independent action added to her value as a recipient of confidences. She could be trusted to say little and do less; and the large majority who, in making confession, only desire a sympathetic listener, felt that Lady Adela was an altogether soft[20] and comfortable personality to repose against. What more could be required? The faithful adviser frequently gives much less, and is, as a rule, much less valued than the imperturbable Lady Adelas of life. Kingston Darnley was universally held to be highly fortunate in his mother, and, by the time he came of age, as he had neither married an actress nor gone to ruin on the turf, her skill in managing him was considered marvellous, and even beyond what might reasonably have been expected.

‘I assure you, La-la, considering what young men are nowadays, I do think you have done wonders,’ said Mrs. Mimburn, who had called to congratulate her sister-in-law on the latest triumph achieved by her diplomacy.

‘Kingston is the dearest child,’ acknowledged Lady Adela, deprecating undue flattery of her own genius. ‘One only needs to guide him. He is all obedience. I have never attempted to drive him, Minnie.’

Mrs. Mimburn tossed her head. Her name was always a sore point. She had suffered heavily in the matter at the hands of her parents, who had christened her Minna Adelaide, after her great-aunts of formidable memory, the Misses Adelaide and Minna Dadd. Understanding that such names were a grievous handicap to any runner in the race of fashion, and desirous, too, of obliterating all traces of Darnley-on-Downe, Mrs. Mimburn did the best she could to remedy the disaster by resolutely calling herself ‘Minne-Adélaïde.’ This Gallicism Lady Adela could never bring herself to remember, and embittered the life of her sister-in-law by calling her Min or Minnie when in a good temper, or plain Minna on the very rare occasions when she happened to be in not so good a one.

‘Well,’ tartly replied Mrs. Mimburn, with another[21] toss of her plumed head, ‘I think you have been wise, La-la. But you need not be too sure of Kingston. There isn’t any reason to believe, La-la, that even your son is not made of flesh and blood. Such stories one hears! And a mother is the last person a boy could think of confiding in. Depend upon it, you don’t know everything. Boys don’t let their mothers marry them off at Kingston’s age unless there is a reason for it. Dear me! of course not; everyone loves a little bit of freedom,’ concluded Mrs. Mimburn, filling her voice with the suggestion of a wicked past.

Lady Adela had the happy knack of never hearing anything that displeased her. The process of years had brought her a sweet serenity that nothing could ruffle. Whatever happened Lady Adela smiled.

‘Dear boy,’ she answered reflectively, without any symptom of having noticed her sister-in-law’s remarks, ‘dear, dear boy! he has always been as free as air. And he has been so good about the engagement. Min, you know, five-and-twenty is such a charming age for a man to settle. If one waits longer the nice girls of one’s own age have all got married off, and one has to put up with an elderly one, or a widow, or something dreadful like that.’

‘Or something even worse,’ supplemented Mrs. Mimburn, with a smile of worldly knowledge. She was looking most typical that afternoon. She was a little round dark woman, with deep, luscious eyes, and more black hair than Nature had provided. Her gown was of brown velvet, adorned with an incalculable number of ruckings, tuckings, ruchings, quillings, flutings, flouncings, rosettes, and insertions. Her parasol lost its outline in a foam of scarlet, and her brown tricorne hat, with its one enormous geranium-coloured plume, was worn at an audacious tilt, in exact imitation of that assumed by Marie de Lorraine in the[22] second act of ‘Mélanges du Divorce.’ That gorgeous lady, whose notoriety almost passed into fame, was Mrs. Mimburn’s favourite model. She had constituted herself the especial chronicler of Marie de Lorraine, copied her clothes devotedly, bought every scent and powder that bore her name, and collected her anecdotes, apocryphal or unpublishable, with as much enthusiasm as a pious Pope accumulates relics. While the hat recalled ‘Mélanges du Divorce,’ the parasol to-day was based on that in ‘Infidèle,’ the gown was collated from two that appeared in ‘Messalineries,’ the tippet’s prototype had figured in ‘Autour de Mitylène,’ and the Parisian pearls that twined round Mrs. Mimburn’s throat had been specially copied from the historic necklace which her heroine had extracted from Prince Henri de Valois, to the general scandal of Europe. Even in the matter of cosmetics Mrs. Mimburn was faithful to her model, and her rich complexion glowed like a plum behind its bloom through a skin-tight mask of Blanc de Perle ‘Marie,’ while her ruby lips owed their flamboyancy of tint to the Vermeil de Lorraine.

Lady Adela looked at her across the tea-table with a kind smile. She felt that her sister-in-law added colour to the room. Lady Adela was one of those women whose habitations have a certain cool tonelessness that matches their own character, and, like their disposition, suits with any tint that may be introduced. Her boudoir was nondescript and mild in scheme; pale, sweet flowers stood here and there in transparent glasses, and the summer light flowed in, pale and ghostly, through the lowered white silk blinds. Entrenched behind china and silver, Lady Adela seemed the incarnation of the room’s spirit; she also had the same indefinable pale sweetness. Her gown was grey, her abundant beautiful hair snow-white,[23] her features were filled with a gentle complacency. Altogether she irresistibly called to mind an old white rabbit—a very soft, very fluffy, very reverend and lovable old white rabbit.

‘Dear Min,’ she said at last, ‘you have no notion what a comfort this engagement is to me.’

Again Mrs. Mimburn bridled. Why could La-la never realize the difference between Min and Minne?

‘Ah, ma chère,’ she replied, ‘indeed, it must be. And you certainly have done wonders. It is not every mother who can say that her son has never given her an hour’s anxiety in his life, and ended up by marrying the very first girl that she picked out for him.’

‘Never an hour’s anxiety,’ repeated her sister-in-law, always behindhand in a conversation. ‘No, dear Min; I can truly say that ever since Kingston had diphtheria at school he has never given me another hour’s anxiety. And they said afterwards that that was only some other kind of sore throat. But it was quite as alarming at the time, I remember. Anyhow, since then the dear boy has been everything I could wish.’

‘It makes him sound terribly dull,’ commented Mrs. Mimburn. ‘Now, I like a boy to be a little bit naughty myself—a—well, a bêtise now and then, you know.’

‘There is nothing of that kind about my son, Minna,’ protested Lady Adela in a momentary spasm of dignity. Mrs. Mimburn, as in duty bound, had, of course, suspicions that her nephew was not all he had the tact to seem. But she was anxious to hear details of his engagement, and therefore waived the question of young men’s iniquity, which she was usually inclined to treat with a wealth of illustrations and many anecdotes from the career of Marie de Lorraine.

‘But tell me about Gundred Mortimer, La-la,’ she said. ‘I have never met her. What is she like?’

Lady Adela warmed into the expression of a more positive enthusiasm than she usually showed.

‘Min,’ she answered, ‘Gundred is absolutely the dearest of creatures. Everything that is nice. I really feel that I have quite found a daughter—thoroughly well brought up, and charming manners, and truly religious, which is such a great thing nowadays. Not at all forward or fashionable, but just a steady, old-fashioned, good girl. I am sure you will love her, Min.’

Mrs. Mimburn began, on the contrary, to conceive a strong dislike for the future Mrs. Darnley—a dislike tempered only by the hope that she might be found to have had a mystery in her life.

‘Do have some more, Min,’ pleaded Lady Adela, with apparent irrelevance, exercising her usual happy power of ignoring unfavourable comment. ‘Yes, nothing could be luckier in every way. She is the very wife I should have chosen for dear Kingston. She will make him perfectly happy. And now, Min, I do really feel that my work is finished. It has been a great responsibility, you know, having sole charge of a son all these years. There are so many dangers. Mercifully, he has always had confidence in me, and I have been able to keep him away from everything undesirable. But, of course, as time goes on, one gets to feel more and more anxious. You can say what you like, but it isn’t always easy to understand young men. Even a mother’s sympathy finds it difficult sometimes.’

Mrs. Mimburn had a very terse answer to the riddle of young-manhood. Human nature presented no mysteries to her mind; woman was the solution of them all. She sniffed knowingly.

‘I think I could manage it, La-la,’ she replied.[25] ‘However, you are marrying off Kingston, and that is the great thing. I suppose he is very much in love?’

‘Oh, very, very, even before I suggested it. And she adores him, of course. I saw that long ago. But dear Kingston is so simple and good, he had no idea until I told him.’

‘After lunch, dear Min. I asked Gundred on purpose, and we had some really delightful Caviare biscuits. And then I managed to leave them in the drawing-room—and—and—it came off, dear Min. I am so pleased.’

‘Naturally he is charmed, Minna. What should he be? Besides, nobody cares much what Mr. Mortimer says. But his dear aunt, Lady Agnes, is quite on our side. In fact, you may imagine that she and I talked it all out between us.’

‘What an obedient boy Kingston must be,’ she said. ‘Had he nothing to say in the matter?’

‘Kingston trusts to his mother to know best,’ answered Lady Adela with gentle dignity. ‘Gundred is altogether pretty and good and sweet, so what more could he want? Besides, as I pointed out to him—and he quite understood—such a marriage will be a great help to him in his career, when he finds one.’

‘But Mr. Mortimer is very silly, surely,’ protested Mrs. Mimburn. ‘How can he be a help to anyone?’

‘One shouldn’t be harsh,’ replied Lady Adela, ‘and I am sure when he succeeds to the dukedom nobody will think him as foolish as they do now.’

‘The Duke himself is actually an imbecile, isn’t he?’ she asked. ‘How dreadful to marry into a family where there is madness, La-la! A mad, ga-ga—great-uncle, isn’t it? Yes. Poor Gundred!’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘we must trust that it will all be for the best. And there is a little insanity in my own family, too, Min, so that will make us quite quits, won’t it? No; the only thing I do regret is that dear Gundred has not got more relations. You see, Lady Agnes has never married, and Gundred is an only child herself, so that really poor Kingston will hardly have got so many nice new connections as I could have wished. There was an Isabel Mortimer, I am told, an aunt of Gundred’s, but they don’t talk about her. She married a New Zealander, or something dreadful, and went out there and died. I forget if she left any children, but of course it can’t matter whether she did or not.’

Mrs. Mimburn scented romance, and immediately became more friendly towards the match.

‘Ah, well, poor thing!’ she said. ‘We all have our temptations. I should be the last to blame anybody. Life teaches one to understand, La-la. It’s not Miss Gundred’s fault. Probably it runs in the blood. These things do. You know Marie de Lorraine’s mother used to drink methylated spirits, and they say she herself can never act unless—well, dear me, these things are very odd, aren’t they?’

Lady Adela was not listening; she rarely did listen to anyone, and never to Mrs. Mimburn. ‘Yes,’ she said, returning on her tracks. ‘I spoke to dear Kingston quite plainly. I told him that such an opportunity would never come in his way again. And after all, it is something to make a good marriage nowadays. And I said to him how delighted I should be if he would take it. He was so nice about it. I am sure he had been in love with Gundred all the while. I know he used to say how pretty and sweet she was.[27] Anyhow, he made no sort of difficulty, and they will be married at the end of the season.’

‘Yes,’ replied Lady Adela gravely. ‘One wants one’s son to settle down; and, of course, one likes cleverness well enough in other people, but in one’s own children one can really have too much of it. When it came to Kingston’s telling me he thought it wrong to shoot grouse, I knew it was time to see him safely married. Grouse are so truly excellent. It always happens, I am sure. If a young man does not marry early in life he becomes clever, and gets into every kind of uncomfortable fad. But Gundred will prevent and cure all that, I am quite sure. She is so religious and good, dear Min, as I told you; she will have no patience with humanitarianism and all those dreadful fashionable crazes. Humble and simple and devout, Min—just the wife that dear Kingston wants. I have never been really anxious about him, I need not say, but I certainly was beginning to think it time he fell into the hands of some nice sensible girl or other.’

Mental aberrations never interested Mrs. Mimburn. Her curiosity was confined to the vagaries of the flesh.

‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘that will wear off, you know, all that nonsense. You may be thankful it was nothing worse. Most young men—ah, well! One must be grateful that Kingston never got into the clutches of Marie de Lorraine, for instance. She is such a terror. Even her garters, you know, diamonds and pearls. Oh, dear me, how delightful life would be, wouldn’t it, if one didn’t have to be good?’

‘Men,’ continued Lady Adela in a ruminant manner, ‘are always a little puzzling at the best of times. Even if they seem perfectly satisfactory in every way they are quite liable to break out sometimes into most[28] extraordinary freaks. One can never tell. Though dear Kingston is as quiet as anyone could possibly be, I do feel that it is satisfactory to get him settled so nicely.’

‘As you say,’ admitted Mrs. Mimburn knowingly, ‘one can never tell. The strangest things one hears! Quite old men, too—so very funny! There was Lord Bennington; they say he wanted to run away with Marie de Lorraine—seventy, if he is a day, La-la, and eight grandchildren. Dear me, yes; one can never prophesy what a man will do. Only be ever so little polite to one, and the next minute—well, I suppose it is human nature, after all.’ She sighed coyly, as one whose virtue is for ever being besieged.

‘Even my own dear husband,’ continued Lady Adela, ‘the best and most devoted of men, had had his moments of madness—really, one can call it nothing else, can one, Min? You remember how good and orderly James always was? Nothing seemed able to excite him, and though I am sure he loved me most warmly, still—well, it wasn’t at all public, Minnie. And yet, you know, there was a Frenchwoman, or something dreadful like that, whom James quite lost his head over, so I am told, before he met me. Perfectly crazy, they say he was, and when she was drowned he wanted to commit suicide. Now, could anything sound more unbelievable, Min?’

‘I have heard about it,’ replied Mrs. Mimburn; ‘one of those ridiculous affairs I was talking of. Poor, sober, straightforward, stodgy, bourgeois James, and some terrible creature with padded hips and a French walk. That is just what happens. Your nonconformist, your decent provincial, always gets caught by the most brazen horizontale. James was absolutely idiotic about it, so people told me—met her—now, where did he meet her?—anyway, he suddenly made himself more absurd than a schoolboy—and I could[29] tell you stories of them, La-la—fell in love with her at first sight, and talked the most amazing nonsense you can imagine. She was his affinity, if you please, the other half of his soul, the lost love of a century ago. And all this from sober old James. She must have been a shameless creature, too—but they always are, ces dames; for she seems to have met him—well, quite half-way, and encouraged his monstrous craze. And then she was most mercifully drowned, and after a week of sheer madness, James calmed down into his right mind again, and was only too glad to marry a nice quiet girl like you, La-la. Now, that just shows. If there ever was a person whom one would have thought perfectly safe from a passion like that, the person was our decent, beef-eating James. But no, one can never count on a man. Nine out of ten of the men we marry, however placid and devoted they may be, have had some dreadful insane romance in their lives, La-la. One knows what it is to be a man’s romance one’s self, and, dear me, it’s not by any means the same thing as being a man’s wife!’

‘Such a sad, dreadful story,’ commented Lady Adela comfortably, taking no notice of Mrs. Mimburn’s artful, question-courting sighs. ‘And to think of its happening to James, too. Do you know, Min, he always wore black for that woman on the twentieth of July. So stuffy of him, in the hot weather!’

‘Oh, my dear La-la, trust a man always to afficher himself in the most ridiculous way he can.’

‘My dear La-la, all men are alike. Let us trust that Kingston’s marriage will prevent him from playing the fool like that, though.’

‘Minnie, do you know Kingston sometimes seems to me so like his father that I am almost frightened.[30] And yet he is quite different, which makes it all the odder. Somehow, his father seems to look over Kingston’s shoulder at me from time to time, and every now and then I hear poor James’s voice distinctly in something Kingston says. And yet they are two quite different people. Isn’t it uncanny? I take quinine for it, Minnie. And I know dear James is safe in heaven, of course, but yet I can never quite help feeling that the father and son are the same in some mysterious way. And that is so uncomfortable, Min. One does like to think that people are really dead when they have been buried. It seems so much more proper, somehow.’

Exhausted by her effort of subtlety, Lady Adela sighed and poured more water into the teapot. Meanwhile Mrs. Mimburn was growing impatient.

‘Well, dear La-la,’ she said, ‘Kingston is just a man. That’s all the likeness there is between him and his father. It is the male element you feel in both. No woman can help feeling it—voilà ce qui donne les frissons. And now, La-la, I seem to have been a perfect age, and, really, I ought to be going on. Do you think Kingston and Gundred are likely to be in soon? Because I did want to see her, and it is getting so late that I can hardly spare more than another minute or two.’

‘The play surely must be over by now,’ she answered. ‘Do wait, Minnie. They will be here any time now.’

‘“La Tosca.” It sounds a very dreadful sort of play, and not at all one to take a nice girl to. But dear Kingston has always been interested in literature and things like that, so I suppose he wants to interest dear Gundred in them, too. There are such pretty books nowadays; I never can see what people want[31] with clever ones. However, I do think Gundred will cure dear Kingston. She has the sweetest, simplest tastes. We agree in everything.... Ah, there they are,’ broke off Lady Adela in tones of triumph, as if the return of the lovers were a personal achievement of her own. Mrs. Mimburn rose, diffusing an eddy of Peau de Marie as she did so.

‘Just a moment,’ she announced, ‘and then I must fly. I must, indeed.’ She gathered herself into a welcoming posture, picturesquely assumed the parasol, and stood with protruded hips to watch the opening of the door and the entrance of her nephew’s future wife.

Miss Mortimer had clearly no false bashfulness about confronting and challenging the approval of her future husband’s family. Sedately and collectedly she came into the room, greeted Lady Adela, and then underwent the introduction to Mrs. Mimburn. Her lover followed close upon her track—tall, fair, handsome, radiant, his manner filled with proprietary joy.

Miss Mortimer might be recognised at first glance as the very fine flower of that type which, after all, even Lady Adela only copied. From head to foot her appearance and bearing proclaimed that she belonged to a class that had ruled unquestioned for many generations. She was very neat, placid, clear-cut in dress, build, and demeanour, an elegant, tiny figure, unalterably, coldly perfect in every detail. Everything about her was exactly as it should be, from the elaborate neatness of her pale golden hair to the nice grace with which she accepted Mrs. Mimburn. Her manners, her smile, were consciously faultless, and she radiated the impression of imperturbable good breeding. She was, in fact, a crisp and charming specimen of that type which develops later into neat-featured peeresses with royalty fringes, violet toques, and short cloaks of sable or mink. It was easy to see how she had attracted[32] Lady Adela. The two women had ease, gentleness, placidity in common. But there the resemblance stopped. Miss Mortimer’s mind was as definite, as clear, as simple as her appearance; she had none of that soft vagueness which characterized Lady Adela; her decisions were as swift and firm as their expression was gentle and well bred; one could divine in her the immovable obstinacy of one who is never violent or angry, but always unchangeably certain that he is right. As she smiled upon Mrs. Mimburn’s congratulatory fondlings, she conceived an instantaneous dislike for that over-decorated woman, and had no difficulty in feeling sure that her disapproval was righteous.

‘Call me Minne,’ Mrs. Mimburn was saying effusively, gladly conscious that she was making a highly favour-impression on the bride-elect. ‘Always remember to call me Minne.’

Mrs. Mimburn had never allowed her nephew to emphasize her age by calling her aunt, and saw no reason for delaying to make the situation clear to her prospective niece.

‘So kind,’ murmured Gundred, smiling into Mrs. Mimburn’s eyes, and noticing the heavy rings of bistre that enhanced their charms. Then she turned to Lady Adela.

‘Just one cup of tea, dear Lady Adela, if I may? And then, really, I must be getting home. Kingston and I have been having the most delightful afternoon, but papa will be thinking I have been run over, or something terrible. And I sent the carriage home, too.’

Lady Adela poured her out a cup of tea, and Kingston Darnley offered it to her with due devotion.

‘No, dear, no sugar,’ said Gundred gently, repulsing his offer. ‘You forget, I never take sugar.’ His ardour was such that he persisted in plying her with[33] all good things; hers was such that she expected him to remember minutely all her preferences and dislikes. Accordingly, her clear, sweet voice conveyed a hint of reproach.

‘Very wonderful,’ replied Gundred. ‘But so painful, Lady Adela. I cannot see why they should want to perform such painful things. There is so much beauty in life—yes? So why should we look at the ugly things?’

‘It’s all in the day’s work,’ suggested Kingston Darnley. ‘Beauty as well as ugliness. One has to face both in life.’

‘But beauty can never be ugly,’ answered Gundred, ‘and art only deals with beauty——’ Her calm tones carried the conviction of perfect certitude, and flattened out the conversation like a steam-roller.

She was too pretty, however, for such syllogisms to be as daunting as they might have been from the lips of a plainer woman. Kingston contemplated the speaker with a pleasure that obliterated all close consideration of the thing spoken.

‘I like a play with plenty of passion in it,’ announced Mrs. Mimburn. ‘English plays are so absurdly mealy-mouthed. These things exist, and, really, the whole of life is wonderfully interesting. And yet English writers leave out the most exciting half of everything. Why, for my own part, as soon as I have read the haut goût parts in a book, I take no further interest in the story.’

‘It is all a matter of taste, I suppose—yes?’ answered Gundred, her cold tone implying that it was a matter of good taste and bad, and that on the point her own was as good as Mrs. Mimburn’s was bad.

‘Some women like to pretend that they are not flesh and blood,’ began Mrs. Mimburn.

‘Dear Lady Adela,’ she said, ‘really, you make the very best tea that anyone could imagine. And it is such a rare art nowadays. But, do you know, I must not stay another minute. Poor papa will be getting quite anxious. Kingston dear, you may get me a hansom if you like, but I cannot let you come with me. Your mother will almost forget she ever had a son. You must stay with her and tell her about that dreadful play.’

‘Look here, do let me come with you,’ pleaded Kingston. ‘I hardly feel to have seen you at all to-day. I want to talk to you.’

‘Dear boy,’ smiled Gundred, ‘you have just had three and a half hours of my company.’

‘In a stuffy theatre, with four hundred people looking on the whole time. Besides, one can’t talk—really talk, in a theatre. It isn’t really being together, sitting side by side in the stalls. One might as well be with one’s grandmother, for all one is able to say. There are ever so many things I haven’t had a chance of saying to you. Take me home with you, Gundred, and let me dine with you.’

Gundred shook her head. ‘Impossible, dear,’ she answered decidedly. ‘We have got people coming, and it would put the table out. You may run in to lunch to-morrow, though. And now, may he ring for a hansom, Lady Adela?’

But at this point Mrs. Mimburn intervened with an urgent plea that Gundred should let herself be driven home in Mrs. Mimburn’s carriage.

‘Now, do, dearest Gundred,’ pleaded Mrs. Mimburn, nerving herself to the inevitable audacity of calling the new niece by her Christian name. Then she[35] fetched her breath in a gasp of relief, and went on. ‘Our horses go like the wind, and you will be home in a flash—an éclair, a positive éclair.’

To Gundred’s British mind the word merely suggested confectionery, and the proposal, as emanating from Mrs. Mimburn, was altogether distasteful. She smiled a cordial refusal. But Mrs. Mimburn pressed her point.

‘We must really see something of each other, dear,’ she went on, ‘now we are to be relations. A cosy little drive together, now, don’t say no. I shall be quite offended if you do.’ Mrs. Mimburn persisted until Gundred saw that there was no hope of being able decently to decline the offer.

‘You are so kind,’ she said. ‘Well, if you are really sure it will not be taking you out of your way? Kingston, dear, may I have my parasol?’

‘Where?’ asked Gundred. ‘Come and show me.’ Together they slipped out of the room, leaving Mrs. Mimburn making her farewells to Lady Adela, and exchanging comments.

‘But look here,’ protested Kingston, as they stood on the landing, ‘why am I not to see you again till to-morrow? Why shouldn’t I dine with you? Confound the table, you know.’

‘Hush,’ said Gundred, but not sternly. ‘It really would put the table out. And papa is so particular. Besides’—she faltered for a moment—‘besides, Kingston dear, I—I don’t want you to see too much of me before we are married. You might—you might get tired of me, you see.’ She raised her eyes and looked full into his. In the smiling depths of her gaze might have been seen the whole truth. Sedate, restrained, correct, she loved her choice with a passion that no one was allowed to guess from the cool suavity of her[36] usual demeanour. Only in stolen flashes of privacy such as this was even Kingston permitted to realize his triumph. Gundred lived, as a rule, in public; every gesture, every inflection, was calculated to satisfy that pervasive invisible arbiter whose approval confirms its object’s title to ‘good form.’ Few and brief were the moments in which she consented to be, in body and spirit, alone with her lover. And rarely had he time to grasp the concession, before the blessed instant passed and Gundred slipped back into her cool, normal self, hastily evasive, as if frightened of her own self-revelation. So it was now. He heard her murmured words on the cool, dim landing, saw the look in her eyes, and realized her meaning. But as he caught at her hands, and broke into a hot protest, the mask flew back on to the girl’s face again. She reclaimed her hands and busied herself in putting on her gloves. It was the polite, public Gundred that stood before him. To his contrast with her public self, so self-contained and orderly, was due half the sweetness and the charm of that shy wood-nymph soul that only allowed itself to peep out at him so timidly and rarely. He saw that the moment was over.

‘You are so demonstrative,’ said Gundred calmly. ‘And putting on one’s gloves is a serious matter. One cannot do two things at once. And, oh, dear me! I have never said good-bye to your mother.’

She slipped quickly back into the drawing-room before he could stop her, and, as he remained outside, playing disconcertedly with the tassel of her parasol, he heard the well-known clear level tones taking a daughterly farewell of Lady Adela. Then Mrs. Mimburn emerged in such a roaring surf of silk petticoats that other sounds became indistinguishable. She squeezed her nephew’s hand.

‘A thousand congratulations,’ she whispered.[37] ‘Charming, charming! Just the sort of girl that pays for marrying. You will wake her up. She will be quite a different creature when you have been married a little while. I know that sleeping-beauty type of girl.’

Mrs. Mimburn smiled darkly upon him, and put a world of knowledge into her glance. But she had not time to say more, for Gundred now appeared, and the two women descended the stairs, exchanging civilities. Kingston followed, to see them safely tucked into Mrs. Mimburn’s elaborate victoria.

‘Lunch to-morrow; don’t forget,’ said Gundred, as a last reminder. Then the carriage drove off, and Kingston went upstairs again to his mother.

To love is by no means necessarily to understand, and Kingston Darnley, as Nature and life had moulded him, was a very different character from Kingston Darnley as his mother’s vague mind imagined him. In point of fact she, good woman, knew little of her son but his face, though, with the splendid intrepidity of the benevolent stupid, she claimed an intimate acquaintance with every detail of his being. Her complete ignorance was due to no conscious process on either side; he as little dreamt of concealing anything from her as she of ignoring any quality in him. But time had taught Kingston that whether he confided in his mother or not, she was just as wise after the revelation as before, being totally devoid of any power to understand what she was shown, or, indeed, to realize that she was being shown anything at all.

Kingston Darnley soon learned to lead his own life without reference to his mother; to help by listening[38] was her province; to help by comprehending was beyond the capacities of her nature. So Lady Adela was left to dwell serene in the world of her own happy little kindly fancies, while the facts of life went by her in a roar, without ever being able to capture her notice. She felt that never had mother been more loving or more beloved; that never had son been more loyal and devoted; her parental eye was fixed unerringly on her child, and she knew his nature down to the uttermost convolutions of its smallest eccentricity. Did she ever forget that he disliked the smell of onions? Had she ever failed to notice and deplore his coldness towards her favourite clergy? And had she not succeeded in the last, noblest, highest ambition of a mother’s life—that of imposing upon him a thoroughly nice and suitable bride? And he, for his part, had never rebelled, never repined, never objected, not even to the bride. Accordingly, Lady Adela felt proudly secure that she understood her son in every fibre of his being. So she smiled upon him with perfect unintelligence, and gave nightly thanks to the Powers that had so gifted her with the perfect tact of motherhood.

Kingston Darnley at one-and-twenty had found himself a great deal older than his years. His contemporaries were mere children. He had lived the sheltered life at his mother’s side, until at last came the belated time when she reluctantly permitted him to go to Oxford without her shielding company. General opinion—even that of her son—seemed opposed to Lady Adela’s plan of taking lodgings in Holywell Street, and thence keeping a mother’s eye upon her child. And to popular opinion Lady Adela accordingly yielded. She never made more than a mild and flabby resistance, and could always be induced by opposition to give up her most cherished plots with a smile. But until Kingston, alone and undefended, set off one sad[39] October evening from Paddington, he had never been allowed outside the sphere of his mother’s presence—one can hardly say of his mother’s influence—for any influence that Lady Adela may ever have had must always have been merely that of kindly, null proximity.

However, reared by carefully-selected tutors in the gentle but stifling atmosphere of a widow’s house, the mind of Kingston Darnley had shot into premature and unsuspected growth. Intelligence he would always have had, but his training forced it into early development. And, as the growing pains of the mind are always painful as those of the body—especially if experienced too soon or too keenly—so Kingston suffered from the unseasonable expansion of his thoughts, and his discomfort was increased, no less than its cause, by the fact of his essential loneliness. He had no one to speak to. On the first mention of an idea, Lady Adela confidently diagnosed the need of pills; and any perception of inequalities in this best of all possible worlds must be treated by the purer air of Brighton or Bournemouth.

So Kingston was driven in upon himself, and, by the time he came of age, had ardently discovered all the paradoxes that more fortunate people come to in due time at twenty-five or so, and then are able to take as platitudes. The injustice of wealth, the iniquities of sport, of religion, of land-tenure—all these crimes Kingston Darnley felt to be his own particular revelation, and they fermented in his mind until he had few thoughts in common with his fellows. They, meanwhile, went placidly on their way, and when Kingston arrived at Oxford, he found himself a stranger and misplaced among the men of his own years. He was filled at first with a gnawing, cavilling discontent that arose as much from idleness and opulence as from too[40] rapid and unhealthy growth. They, for their part, were honest, jolly fellows, who looked on discontent as an uncomfortable and ‘bad-form’ thing, to be strenuously frowned and jeered out of their circle. To enjoy what came, without analysis, was their scheme, and they resented being asked to inquire into the reasonableness and the morality of their enjoyment. At one-and-twenty no really sane creature wants to think. The time for thought comes later, when the first ardours of action are passing.

Kingston Darnley, though he had far too much sense and geniality to preach or impose his ideas on anyone, was felt to be always suggesting questions, never to be accepting the joy of the moment, in a properly acquiescent, youthful manner. And nothing is more annoying to the hedonist, of whatever age, than the companionship of someone who seems to be examining the sources of his joy. It may be that no joys can stand the test of reason, and the hedonist’s dislike of the sceptic may gain its intensity from the hedonist’s own unacknowledged realization of the fact. Even when Kingston got drunk his tone of mind seemed analytical, far removed from the frank, bellowing joyousness of the more healthy enthusiasts round him. They sat about in the Quad and howled, or beat baths beneath the windows of the junior Dean; Kingston, anxious to please, howled and beat baths with the best. But, whereas the ebullition was pure nature and joy of living with them, with him it was always an assumption, a pose, no matter how carefully assumed and disguised. And the consciousness of this was no less galling to him than to them. All felt ill at ease, disconcerted, disillusioned by his presence. His well-intentioned hilarity seemed somehow to turn the gold of their pleasure to brass, to strike a jarring note in the chorale of enjoyment they were playing so whole-heartedly.[41] So, though never unpopular, Kingston Darnley was isolated. His own set in the college did not want to be bothered with the iniquitous why and wherefore of the game-laws, or the manifest impossibility of miracles; and the other sets to whom he would have brought these discoveries in glad pride had grown accustomed to them long ago, and for many years had looked on them as the buried foundation-stones of all reasoning. So that Kingston fell between two stools, and must needs keep company with his ideas until the passing of time should bring him level with the contemporaries over whom his training had given him such an unhealthy and fictitious advantage.

In any case it is hardly likely that he could ever have taken any really intimate part in Oxford life. Training or no training, his mind had that inquiring tone so fatal to unreflecting hilarity. He was too much interested—in the wrong things, too, and in the wrong way—in people, in causes, in problems. The men who should have been his friends were concerned almost entirely with the joy of living and the avoidance of all unnecessary work. And how is the son of a widow, reared at home decorously, without other boys to riot and tumble with—how is he to have any personal enthusiasm for the joy of living, as understood by healthier, normal men of his own age? Nor is the precocious cleverness of the unquiet mind any real test of ability. Few of Kingston Darnley’s contemporaries but had as good an intelligence as his. Their brains, however, developed naturally along the natural path. In twenty years he had lived hurriedly through five-and-twenty of feverish mental development; their five-and-twentieth year—of mind no less than of body—still lay well ahead of them. By the time he and they would be thirty they might all, perhaps, be contemporaries together. The unhealthy, straggling[42] shoots of his forced growth would have been blighted down to a level with theirs, sturdy and natural; and by the time they came to consider the game-laws and the gospels, they would bring a ripe and genial intelligence to bear on such points, neither thinking nor talking in excess, but letting profitless points of doctrine slide, for the sake of hitting on a sane and decent scheme of living, such as can best be attained by the average sensible gentleman’s compromise between abstract justice and sound, everyday behaviour.

And Kingston himself would find, in the course of years, that the rubs and jars of life would bring his point of view to the same pitch as theirs, and would perceive that thought is a frivolous and profitless indulgence of the idle mind, as compared with the more fruitful achievement of an honest man’s daily duty, along the lines of obvious, rough-cast morality. Meanwhile, however, though without conscious arrogance, he realized his isolation, and viewed it alternately with pride and regret. On the whole, as self-satisfaction is the postulate of all human life, the pride predominated, and he carried unconsciously through Oxford the idea of being a chosen candlestick for spiritual light.

Other feelings, too, contributed to his sense of loneliness. Birth and wealth had given him caste; but custom had not yet trained him to it. From the middle-class, staid traditions of Darnley-on-Downe he had inherited several hereditary tendencies that not the most determined efforts could eradicate. He was conscious of them; they annoyed him, they disconcerted him by making him feel more than ever that he did not match his surroundings, and this mortifying consciousness was unsupported by any such heroic glamour as that which attended the independence of his sceptical spirit. He knew that he was not careless enough in the spending of money. Spend it he[43] did, freely and eagerly; but he always knew what it had bought, and his mind kept accounts long after he had fiercely broken himself away from the spell of pass-books and schedules. This was not as it should be. Money, to be spent correctly, should be scattered loosely, and the spender should have as little idea as possible of the way in which it has gone. Only thus can a well-bred indifference to finance be attained. The ideal of his contemporaries was to be perpetually in debt, and never to have anything whatever to show for all that had been spent. On four hundred or four hundred and fifty a year right-minded people might attain to complete destitution, bare rooms, shabby clothes, and a perpetual assumption of bankruptcy. One very popular man even achieved the result on six hundred. This was a rare triumph of extravagance, however, and a reasonable ambition would confine itself to a complete ignorance as to all outgoings. And this Kingston Darnley could never acquire. The ghost of his father stirred in him, demanding a solid recollection of every purchase. He bought the best, bought it and lavished it freely. But he never could rid himself of the knowledge that it was the best, and thus a faint suspicion of ostentatiousness hovered over all his entertainments, and the happy, slovenly wastefulness with which his contemporaries ran into debt for atrocious port or uneatable dinners could never be reached by a man with his finical instinct for perfection. This lack of carelessness, either as to quantity of pounds spent or quality of things purchased, stigmatized its owner for ever as an outsider—not to mention the fact that he invariably paid money down for all he bought. His wealth might as fairly have been blamed for this vice, perhaps; nevertheless, a hatred for debt was one of Kingston’s most inalienable legacies from Darnley-on-Downe, and, had he not been[44] able to pay cash for the best, he would certainly have remained content to buy the worst. And this, again, was a suspicious trait in the eyes of his contemporaries, who, though quite happy to buy the worst, always made it their pride to run up bills for it that would have been exorbitant had they been ordering the best.

These small hereditary feelings set James Darnley’s son apart from his contemporaries, and it only required the remains of middle-class prudishness to achieve his isolation. Kingston found it impossible, in spite of habit and effort, to acquire the easy personal sans-gêne, the tripping, untrammelled tongue of his contemporaries. He did his best; listened genially, accumulated anecdotes and retailed them among his friends; but always heavily, never as to the manner born. His friends held the free, frank language only possible to the perfectly cleanly mind, naked and unashamed; he, for his part, was always uneasy in his nudity, and took his share in the talk with that consciousness of impropriety that doubles impropriety. The Dadd respectability still hampered its rebellious descendant, and prevented him from ever entering into perfect harmony with that world where decency is a matter of conduct, not by any means of language. On this point his aunt Minne-Adélaïde had certainly the advantage. But the woman is proverbially more adaptable than the man.

Still isolated, then, at home and abroad, Kingston came down at last from Oxford at twenty-four, a character untried, unformed, unground by any real contact with the mills of life. An inordinate sensitiveness to impressions, an excessive personal daintiness, were the marks of his nature at that time, so far as a friend could discern it. For the rest, very pleasant of look and temper, friendly, honest, and no more selfish than a good-looking young fellow of four-and-twenty[45] has every right to be. Lady Adela was delighted to receive him under her wing once more, and noticed with joy the subsidence of some of his more tumultuous ideas into tranquillity. She had a fearful notion that everyone left Oxford ‘a roaring atheist,’ and it was a great joy to her that Kingston completely disproved this fallacy, not only by accompanying her to church, but also by carrying her hymn-book. She devoted herself to exploiting her son, and he, not finding rebellion necessary for his pleasure, allowed himself to be guided wherever his mother wished.

Rich and handsome in high degree, he began to find London a very pleasant and companionable place, without the ostentatious thoughtlessness of Oxford, or the frank intellectual apathy of his home. In point of fact, London began to do for him what neither home nor Oxford had succeeded in doing. Gradually he grew down to his own level, his edges were rubbed off, his generous, exaggerated ideas dwindled to their proper place in the perspective of life. He realized that to live well and beautifully it is not necessary to be for ever examining the foundations of action; that life is simple and enjoyable for those who prefer living it to discussing it; that justice, while august and unattainable in the abstract, and astonishingly contradictory in its precepts, is yet, in the concrete, very easily discerned and followed in this workaday sphere by plain-minded people whose eyes are fixed, not on the stars in high heaven, but on their reflection in the muddy ways of the world. He ceased to nourish fantastic theories against the hanging of murderesses, conceived the possibility of good in vivisection, and began at last to contemplate a Piccadilly midnight with the not unkindly stoicism of a man of the world. Inwardly, as he often told himself, his ideas remained the same, but their outward manifestation grew calmer[46] and more ordinary. When he met his Oxford friends he found that he was much more in sympathy with their way of taking life as a matter of course.

Meanwhile Lady Adela was bent on seeing him safely married. This, she considered, was the easiest and most desirable way of protecting him against all the wicked possibilities that lie in wait for a young man. To save him from the contamination of many women by tying him tight to one, before he had had time to look about and make his choice, seemed to her a very prudent, not to say holy, course. So she paraded desirable damsels before him, and held amicable counsel with mothers not at all averse from an alliance with Kingston Darnley’s wealth. The mothers and Lady Adela worked and manœuvred with Machiavellian cunning; needless to say, their designs would have been plain to a sucking child; and, equally needless to say, Kingston, pleased and flattered, lent himself more or less amiably to their strategy, with a guilelessness that quite reassured them as to his ignorance of their purposes.

But that very blamelessness of her son’s which Lady Adela wished to safeguard was the ruin of her plan. For, as a matter of fact, Lady Adela, by an accident of fate, rather than by any perspicacity of intellect, was right in holding the mother’s usual superstition of her son’s purity. Kingston Darnley, emotional and fastidious of temperament, impressionable rather than passionate, curious and idealistic, had hitherto not gone the way of all flesh. He had avoided ‘experiences’; and experiences had never sought him out. The sense of personal decency remained strong upon him, and its strength was reinforced by his old theories of morality, and by his strong tendency towards mental, rather than physical passion. So he remained a spectator in the great sexual battle of life.

And this onlooker attitude is not endearing even to the most holy and maidenly of women. Women require to feel that a man is a man—that is, they require to feel the thrill of his virility in the deep fibres of their consciousness—to have their interest caught and held by the proximity of the dominating male. It is only to the depraved woman that the saint is of personal interest; and, even then, her interest is depraved as her nature. The normal girl—though she has not the faintest understanding what her wishes mean—needs to feel the possible conqueror in the man she is talking to—at least, if he is to rouse her curiosity and grow in her acquaintance. And this mysterious thrill, of the man triumphant, Kingston was utterly unable to communicate. Therefore his friendships with women were almost wholly impersonal. He had none of that love-making power which experiences confer; had no idea of how the blood is stirred and defiance stimulated; no gift for that bold expression of physical approval which is so dear to even the best of women. Women had to ask him if their frocks were pretty, and if he liked their hats; even then his answers never went the fervent lengths that their questions had been meant to open up.

His flirtations were abstract, platonic, unearthly—all that a mother considers most unprofitable, though perilous. The artist, indeed, can be a sensualist; but the artistic spirit and the sensual have no real relationship. What attracts the one repels the other, and it is only within the fierce energetic soul of genius that the two can be reconciled. Kingston Darnley, without genius, had the artist spirit. And the artist spirit was for ever showing him fresh superficial blemishes in the offered maidens—blemishes whose deterrent force his animalism was not powerful enough to overcome. This one had hands that didn’t match;[48] that one perpetually wore lace mittens; a third had a nose that perspired at dances; or an irritating cackle that revealed a golden tooth. One and all, he liked them—even loved them—in so far as their minds were clear, pleasant, friendly, lovable. But to be loved for her mind is the last thing that a well-looking young woman requires. And when he thought of marrying them, when he considered the prospect of living for ever with a perspiring nose or a mittened hand, Kingston revolted at the idea, no matter how precious the soul that owned the nose or the mitten.

It may be imagined, then, that, whatever his relations with older, plainer women, settled in life, he was neither popular nor at ease with the marriageable maidens provided by his mother. In vague dissatisfaction with his home, he was even anxious to marry and settle down with some sympathetic, adorable woman—but always that accursed prosaic aspect of the case came uppermost, and repelled him in horror from the plan.

Only once had he ever felt what he hoped might be the premonitory thrill of a really great passion—a passion such as might tide him over the more difficult questions involved. In this hope he had nurtured young love; and as love in so many lucky people is a matter of habit and determination, he had seemed soon to be in a fair way to success. The girl, too, showed signs of approval, and everything appeared so prosperous that Lady Adela gave hearty thanks and put half a crown into the plate, feeling that Heaven had earned more than its customary shilling. And then one day he had sat with the girl and her aunt in Kensington Gardens. And the cruel glare of daylight had shown him a fine colony of down on her nose, and the places whence and where her maid had transferred a rosette to hide a stain on her gown. All was[49] over. The girl was everything delightful; but the idea of being bound eternally to a potentially bearded nose was impossible. Kingston could no longer bear the thought of marrying, and told his mother that his hope had proved fallacious. Heaven only got sixpence the next Sunday; and, even so, it was in coppers.

It was shortly after this episode that Heaven, bearing no malice, had thrown Lady Adela into the track of Lady Agnes Mortimer. Lady Agnes was a single woman of small means, and an eccentricity that passed all bounds. However, she was something of a personage, by virtue of her name as well as of her character, and the great-niece whom she was trying to marry might do very well for Kingston Darnley. So thought Lady Adela, pondering the many eligible qualities of the girl who would one day be daughter to a Duke of March and Brakelond, and who, besides, had so many qualities that endearingly resembled her own—at least, so far as kindness, devotion, sweetness, and piety went. She brought her son, accordingly, into contact with Miss Mortimer, and was surreptitiously overjoyed to find him obediently disposed. As for Lady Agnes, she contemplated with equanimity the introduction of the Darnley wealth into the impoverished House of Mortimer, and tried to soften down her asperities lest the match should be impeded.

The House of March and Brakelond no longer loomed so large in the public eye as once it had, and as Gundred still felt it should. The reigning Duke was an imbecile, uncomfortably poor and very aged. There was no Duchess, no near relations, nothing to give prominence or interest even to the daughter of the heir-apparent. Gundred Mortimer attracted little notice in London, keeping house parsimoniously for her father in Russell Square, and going out on the rather shabby arm of Lady Agnes. Lady Agnes was[50] accepted because her eccentricities made her so incalculable as to be amusing; but Gundred was soon found to be almost depressingly normal and correct. There were scores of more naturally noticeable girls in London; Miss Mortimer, as Miss Mortimer, had no sort of personal importance, whatever power and dignity Fate might see fit to bestow at some later date on ‘Lady Gundred.’ Nicely mannered, nicely minded, nicely dressed, Miss Mortimer was an inconspicuous, if pleasant, figure in the crowd, and the elevation of her father to the dukedom seemed so remote that there was no according her any advance on her face-value. Had the prospect of finding her mistress and deputy Duchess at Brakelond only been more actual or imminent, then the world might have lent Miss Mortimer credit and respect on the reversion; but Mr. Mortimer and his daughter had been Mr. and Miss Mortimer for so many years now that no one found it easy to think of them as prospective ‘Duke of March and Brakelond’ and ‘Lady Gundred.’ Whenever anyone thought now of the Mortimers, it was always of the old—incredibly old—imbecile, dying eternally at Brakelond among his parrots.

Nor was Mr. Mortimer himself of a commanding character, fit to capture that popular interest which his daughter’s quiet neatness had been unable to attach. Mr. Mortimer, son of the late Lord Roger, and heir-apparent to his uncle, must always, whatever his position, have been a nonentity, not only from his poverty, but from his silliness. Mr. Mortimer was strangely, unbelievably silly. He was merely silly. He was silly in the wrong way. He neither shocked people nor amused them. Even his daughter realized that he was silly, and felt no grievance with the world for ignoring him. The world had, at one time, done its best to encourage a coming Duke. But the long delay[51] in the succession, coupled with Mr. Mortimer’s overwhelming foolishness, had gradually worn off the patience of even the most far-sighted; and now his daughter went about inconspicuously with her great-aunt, while her father stayed unregretted at home, and presumed on his prospects in a placid, most-comfortable-chair-assuming way.

Gentle, neat, polite, Miss Mortimer, in her heart of hearts, resented the indifference with which the world seemed to treat the future mistress of Brakelond. And this resentment, demure and calm as it was, did not make her more attractive or approachable to the men from whom she would have liked to claim attention as her right. She stiffened herself into a rigid piety, and by contrast with the gay, attractive girls around her, made herself defiantly dull and godly in demeanour, pluming herself the while on her unfaltering maintenance of old-fashioned piety in degenerate days. And as soon as the men discovered that, in her way, she was mildly sulking at them for not making more of her, they ceased their efforts to make anything at all, and took refuge with the hundreds of other bright, pleasant girls who had twice Miss Mortimer’s charm and none of her prospects or pretensions.

It was strange that Gundred, delightfully pretty in her cool way, serene, beautifully mannered, could exert no compelling force on her surroundings. That she wished to claim attention was the sign of her weakness; for those who can command attention never take the trouble of asking for it. But Gundred’s mind was always secluded, self-centred, reserved. She never gave out any light or warmth. She accepted, absorbed, received with gracious dignity; she never had the power of radiating any return of friendly feeling, any comforting geniality of human sympathy. As a talker she was gently frigid, sweetly insipid in her[52] way of avoiding all topics of general interest, and, while restricting the conversation to her own concerns, of restricting it entirely to such of those as were most obvious and least interesting to the world at large. The weather, as it affected her plans; the visits that she paid, the churches she attended, and the cooks that she engaged; such were the subjects on which she pellucidly discoursed in the prettiest of voices, with the most pleasant of smiles; to the unutterable weariness of some partner who wanted a little more vitality in the conversation.

Nor was she more successful as a listener. Even during the most thrilling recitals her eye might be seen wandering towards the next comer, or her mind guessed to be wondering whether she had not accorded the speaker enough of her attention. Men soon ceased to tell her anything of value, and followed her own example of talking amiably but saying nothing. Lady Agnes was beginning to despair of her great-niece’s prospects when Kingston Darnley was ushered into the lists by his mother.

He came, he saw, he conquered. Idle-looking, tall and fair, beautiful in build and feature, he could not but command personal admiration; while in mind, keenly active, riotously fanciful, he was the last man in the world to conciliate Miss Mortimer’s approval, and, therefore, the first to captivate her attention. To her prim and maidenly habits of thought he was seductive in his lazy twinkling moods, seductive in his moments of emotion, seductive in those ebullitions of ridiculous gaiety that Gundred knew to be so disorderly and unconventional, yet reluctantly felt to be so delightful. Hitherto men had either bored her or been bored by her, had always failed to penetrate the closed garden of her attention; Kingston Darnley now came swinging carelessly into the sacred enclosure, and paid her the[53] compelling compliment of making her believe herself brilliant and amusing.

Often it happens that the staid and decorous, hard as iron in their disapproval of all frivolity, are suddenly and completely melted by someone frivolous beyond their uttermost possibilities of disapproval. One is liable to love one’s opposites, if those opposites be sufficiently opposed. Only a little less different herself, and Gundred might have disliked Kingston Darnley; but he was so madly divergent from all her ideals that the very sharpness of the contrast drove her to capitulate rapidly and completely. She even ceased to claim his attention; she began to beg for it.

Her training had collaborated with her nature in guarding her from self-betrayal. Her manners continued gentle, guarded, suavely frigid as before. But Lady Adela, with the eye of a hopeful mother, pierced the disguise of Gundred’s feelings, and lost no time in proclaiming the discovery to her son. Kingston Darnley, for his part, was strongly attracted by Gundred. To his fastidious temperament she never offered a jarring note. She was always crisp and cool; always deliberate and graceful; her hair was never disordered, nor her hat crooked, nor her stockings ill-gartered. At all points she was unalterably serene, impeccable and satisfying. Emotionally, too, she gave him what he wanted. He needed no ardent, unbalanced temper in his wife. He needed just that gracious acquiescence which Miss Mortimer supplied. She was restful in all her ways, her mind was thoroughly well-mannered, and her smiling calm assured him of a sympathetic nature. As he laid his ideas before her he was enraptured to see how sweetly, how reasonably she listened, and found full agreement in her cool grey-blue eyes, behind which, in reality, her inattentive brain was admiring the tact of his tie. But, whatever her[54] secret thoughts, she never revealed them, and those cool, grey-blue eyes had been trained to express decorous attention; therefore Kingston Darnley soon realized that in Miss Mortimer he had found that perfect conjunction of ideal soul with ideal body in the quest for which his five-and-twenty years had hitherto been vainly spent.

That his feeling was not a great passion he sometimes felt—that it was not even commensurate with the passion which he had sometimes found himself forced half-incredulously to divine behind the chill fires of Gundred’s eyes. But his experience with the lady of the downy nose had daunted him and disillusioned him; with the knowledge of wide experience he now knew that a great passion falls to the lot of very few, and that it is well to take the good the gods provide. Failing the Supramundane Mate to whom all idealists look with longing, he would compromise with a woman in every respect charming, alluring, delightful—a woman of temperate mood, a woman of neat and faultless style in body and mind, a woman, in short, who could be trusted never to clash with any of life’s harmonies or discords.

Her name, too, tragic and glorious, fired that curiosity of man to possess something rare and old and precious. Of Brakelond he only thought as a fit setting for Gundred’s mystic charm. For Gundred’s serene correctness, so prosaically pleasing in a London drawing-room, became ‘mystic charm’ when associated in the mind of her idealizing lover with the long oaken galleries of Brakelond. And Gundred, for her part, considered the possible glories of position and power only as gifts to confer on her radiant, ridiculous captor. She did what she decently could to please and captivate Kingston, deployed cunning little unsuspected wiles of dress and manner; brightened her[55] garments and her ways; achieved at last that miracle only possible to a first-rate woman, of being gay without becoming skittish. Little need had she of wiles. Her gentle flawlessness satisfied Kingston Darnley completely; and at his time of life, after his experience, he knew enough to be humbly content with satisfaction, asking no more of life, and expecting much less. What folly to let a plump chicken escape from the hand on the chance of a Phœnix flying out of the bush at some far-distant date! Better give thanks that the chicken is at least plump. Kingston Darnley gave thanks accordingly, and dawdled along the happy path that leads to proposal.

He could only see perfection everywhere. If Gundred was sometimes unresponsive, that was surely her cold and lovely maidenliness. If her acquiescent sweetness lacked salt at times, and seemed to promise biliousness, the criticism showed, in itself, a bilious bachelor for whose ailment that sweetness had been especially prescribed by Fate. If Gundred’s answers sometimes seemed remote, inadequate, half-hearted, that was but the effort of a loyal soul struggling to get into perfect stride with his, and neglecting the interests of the present for the sake of the future. As he looked and listened, her unruffled pleasantness destroyed for his emotions the grosser terrors of marriage, and yet gifted them with a strange, appealing fascination. Carried away by his approval, he proposed at last, and was placidly accepted by a heart resolutely dissembling its delight. Lady Adela heard the news with joy, and a pound was not too much for Heaven next Sunday.

‘My dear,’ said Kingston Darnley to his mother one afternoon, ‘being in love is the strangest thing.’

Long habit had taught him to indulge in soliloquy under the mask of a dialogue with his mother. She allowed him to talk, and never interrupted the flow of his self-communings by any sudden sign of understanding them. Few people are more comfortable to confide in than those who can always be safely reckoned on to understand nothing of what is said to them. Lady Adela laid down her knitting and beamed lovingly at her son over her spectacles.

‘I wonder,’ continued her son, ‘whether everybody feels alike. More or less, I suppose—although everyone thinks that he has the secret all to himself.’

‘But how do people know that it is the right love?’ questioned Kingston. Then he went on, without waiting for the irrelevant answer which his mother would surely provide. ‘Uncertainty is a deadly thing. And the worst of it is that everyone who really wants to find happiness must always be uncertain as to the way. Only those who don’t care can ever be perfectly, securely certain.’

‘True love is always unmistakable,’ replied his mother, who, in her time, had married the late James Dadd from a feeling that anything would be preferable to prolonged existence with Lady Kirk-Hammerton.

‘Yes; but it must have different manifestations. I remember when Tom Clifford was engaged to that[57] Menzies girl he couldn’t bear her out of his sight, never let any other man have half a dozen words with her. Now, I don’t mind who Gundred talks to, or what she says—not a scrap. And—well, it’s always a joy to see her, of course—everyone must feel that—but I haven’t any wish to go about all day at the end of her hat-ribbon. Is that because I am cold-blooded, or is it the proper normal thing to feel?’

‘My dear boy is so full of chivalry,’ answered Lady Adela with affectionate vagueness. ‘No nice girl would like to be too much monopolized. It is hardly delicate.’

‘One had a sort of notion,’ continued Kingston, unregarding, ‘that love-making was more of a desperate flesh-and-blood affair. I suppose the real thing is more ethereal than the everlasting philanderings that one reads about. Heaven knows, they are earthly enough.’

‘And love is made on earth, I gather—at least, love of the novelist’s sort. Certainly marriage is happier in every way—calmer, less discomposing, more orderly and decent and—and—abstract, as it were. I cannot imagine anyone not loving Gundred. She appeals to everything that is best in one. And the crowning mercy of it all is that she never gives one thrills of any kind, never rouses any primitive, prosaic emotions. She is always just what one expects—gentle and charming and satisfactory—and nothing else. There is no intoxication about her. And, really, you know, that is a relief. One had imagined that love—love in the completest sense—was a kind of celestial drunkenness. It is a tremendous relief to find that it is only a quiet temperance drink after all—the Water of Life, as it were. I don’t think either my head or my stomach care very much for intoxicants.’

‘Your dear father was just the same,’ replied Lady Adela calmly; ‘two glasses of port never failed to upset him. Some people’s interiors are so sensitive. If one is in the least troubled that way, it is far better never to touch stimulants. Or peppermint, they say, does wonders.’

‘One has wrestled through loves of different kinds,’ said Kingston, securely continuing his soliloquy, ‘and it is certainly a blessed surprise to find that the real thing is placid and satisfying. The hunger and thirst of passion are fierce and dreadful—it never seemed likely that perfect happiness could be found in the mere appeasing of them. I am sure I much prefer the lasting, tranquil completeness of an emotion to the feverish clamour of an appetite. And that, after all, is what most people seem to mean by love. I have always rather hated violence and brutal manifestations. They seem a little vulgar, very crude and indecent, very unworthy of our higher emotional powers.’

‘My boy is so full of nice feeling,’ said Lady Adela; ‘violence is a terrible thing. I remember I once saw a dog run over by a tram. I have never forgotten it.’

‘One feels a certain something solid and eternal about real love,’ went on her son, contentedly talking to himself aloud under pretence of addressing his mother. ‘It is a huge level tract of feeling, stretching out into the immensities, without anything to break the enormous flat surface of it. It goes on for ever and ever, without valleys or pinnacles, or rough places of any kind. And surely that is better than perpetually scrambling up peaks and falling off them again, into abysses. Real love is not a mountain track; it is a solid turnpike road with a smooth, sound surface. One’s life jogs along it imperceptibly, and one’s attention need not be kept fixed on the driving to see where one is going. With Gundred I feel that I am with[59] someone whom I have known for ages in the past, and whom I shall continue to know for ages in the future, without jars or disconnections. There is something monumental, something filling about the sensation. People who find the hot rough-and-tumble pandemian love enough for them would think the real heavenly feeling stodgy and perhaps—well, perhaps even a little dull. It does lack diversity somehow. It offers repletion without any sauces to appetise. But, then, I suppose the immensities must of necessity seem monotonous to our small, jigging intelligences.’

‘I am sure, Kingston,’ said Lady Adela with conviction, ‘that no one could have a better intelligence than you. It is quite something to be thankful for.’

‘Now, Gundred, for instance—very often with her I have a shut-out feeling of getting no further, of finding locked doors and stone walls. Sometimes I have nothing that I want to say to her, and sometimes she has nothing that she wants to say to me. Sometimes she does not understand what I mean, sometimes we seem to be talking different languages, without any real wish to make ourselves intelligible. When we have said that we love each other there is nothing much left for us to say. And isn’t that exactly as it should be? The love is the only thing that matters, after all. One does not marry for the conversation, but for the love. Other people can give one the conversation. No; one has to look forward over the whole field of life—it is not only the present amusement that matters. What is very amusing and delightful for half an hour would be quite intolerable to put up with for fifty years of marriage life. Marrons glacés and caviare sandwiches are excellent in their way, but, when everything is said and done, bread is the real staple of existence. The primitive passionate lover is trying to make half an hour’s surfeit of sweets and[60] savouries supply the place of all healthy meals through all the years to come; it is only the idealist who sets himself calmly down to a long indefinite course of bread-and-butter. There can be no doubt that the bread-and-butter regime is the saner and the more blessed and the more refined of the two. But, of course, if one simply lives from hand to mouth and from hour to hour, the bread-and-butter scheme is apt to look a little dull by comparison with frequent snacks of indigestible, exciting dainties. However, thank Heaven, I have got what is best for me—and sense enough to recognise the fact. If Gundred sometimes fails to feed me up with pretty fancies from hour to hour, she is laying up for me a supply of satisfying bread-and-butter for the rest of our lives. And one’s whole life is obviously more important than any given half-hour of it.’

‘Yes,’ replied Lady Adela after a pause, ‘but one must be careful about bread-and-butter. Too much is apt to make one stout. I quite agree with dear Gundred, though, as to plain food being the most satisfactory in the long run. I read the other day a very nice book, in which the characters sat down to “a plain but perfectly-cooked meal.” Now, that struck me as expressing so exactly what one wants.’

‘My dear,’ said her son abruptly, ‘what did my father and you talk about when you were engaged?’

Lady Adela, who had expected from her son the soothing accompaniment of another monologue to the music of her knitting, started at his abrupt question, lost count of her stitches, then looked vaguely up at last, her lips moving in a vain effort to recover her place in the row.

‘What did we talk about?’ she repeated. Then she blushed faintly. The distant past was transfigured with romance.

‘Dear boy,’ she resumed in hushed, reverent tones. ‘The engagement is the sweetest time in a woman’s life. The loveliest things your poor dear father gave me. We were at Naples, you know, and one gets the most charming corals there, and mosaics, and brooches carved out of lava. I have got them all. And then your poor dear father and I used to go out on to the terrace in the evening and look at the sunset and Vesuvius, and the steamers coming into the bay. He used to take my hand, and we stood there, saying nothing. There was nothing to say, dear. We both felt too much. One does not want to talk. And sometimes he—he would give me a kiss. And all the time—well, there was nothing else in the world, somehow, but just ourselves. We were quite alone. We should have been quite alone, even in a crowd.’

‘Ah, that is just exactly different with Gundred and me. We are never alone. We should not be alone in the wilderness. Gundred seems to live her life before an invisible audience of hundreds of people. That is why one can never get near her real self; there is always the consciousness of the audience restraining her.’

‘So well I remember,’ she went on, ‘how the evening used to get darker and darker as we stood on the terrace, and the smell of dinner used to float up to us so deliciously from the ground-floor. Your poor dear father adored the Neapolitan cookery, and we used to talk of how we would have someone who could do risotto when we were married and settled down. But none of our cooks ever could. Dear me, and the lights in the bay, and the warm, quiet darkness of it all, and just us two, alone in the world.’

The sweet and innocent sentimentality of Lady[62] Adela had succeeded in draping the usual beautiful gauze of romance across an episode which, in its time, had been marked by plain and practical precision. As ivy, in the course of years, grows over the bare stone of a ruin, so does romance cover over the hard bare facts of a woman’s past. No matter how stark and cold it may have been, yet, if her nature be loving and soft, its softness will subdue and transfigure the roughnesses of many crude bygone days. By this time Lady Adela believed in her romantic marriage as firmly as she believed in her vicar and her Sovereign.

‘So delightful it was to be with your poor dear father,’ she went on; ‘he was the kindest and most thoughtful of men. He always saw that I had a footstool and a corner seat, and the sun nicely shaded off my eyes. He used to come and sit by me, too, while I was sketching, and read aloud to me until we both fell asleep. I have never liked any one else to read aloud to me since. Mamma was very bustling and worldly, and I was not at all happy with her. But when your poor dear father came and found me, the whole of my life was changed. He was the fairy prince that came to rescue me.’

‘But you told me once, my dear, that my father had once cared very much for someone else.’

‘The world, dear boy, abounds in the most dreadful women. And, indeed, why God made so many women at all—and most of them so plain—nobody has ever yet been able to tell me. There was a horrid creature who made your poor dear father think he was in love with her, as they call it. But, of course, he was nothing of the kind. For as soon as she was safely drowned and out of the way, he forgot all about her, and came and married me, and no two people were ever happier together in the world than he and I. Ours was a case of true love, dear boy, if ever there was one. And[63] I am certain yours will be the same. It is my earnest prayer, dear, and my sure hope. Gundred is the most thoroughly nice, good girl.’

‘And it would not matter if a shade of dullness sometimes seemed to fall between us?’

By this time Lady Adela was, for a wonder, awake to the purport of her son’s questionings. Her excursion into the past had brought her back refreshed into the present.

‘Kingston, dear,’ she answered, ‘what else would you expect from a really nice-minded girl? She is not a married woman yet. The time has not yet come for her to enter fully into your life, or you into hers. Remember how your poor dear father and I used to sit silent together for hours, never saying a word.’

‘Yes; but you did not feel the want of words. I think we sometimes almost do. That makes all the difference.’

‘Words will come, dear—words and all other blessings in their time. Gundred will be the greatest help and comfort to you in your life, and I am sure you love each other tenderly.’

Kingston suddenly began to feel the difficulties of the dialogue. To confide is all very well and comfortable, so long as the confidant is not listening or understanding. The moment he shows signs of noticing what is said, the mortifying indelicacy of the proceeding becomes plain. Finding his mother unwontedly awake to his remarks, Kingston’s sensitiveness drew in its horns.

‘Oh, thanks, my dear,’ he said lightly. ‘I am sure everything will turn out for the best. I am the luckiest fellow alive, and don’t suppose I forget it.’

‘Some people always touch wood,’ said Lady Adela meditatively, ‘when they say a thing like that. Such[64] a silly superstition. But, still, there may be something in it.’ She rapped the tea-table firmly.

Mother and son had been so absorbed in their dialogue that they had not heard the hall door bell ring. Suddenly the door opened, and Miss Mortimer was announced. Fresh, crisp, pleasant as ever, Gundred entered the room and kissed her future mother-in-law.

‘Dear Lady Adela,’ she said, ‘I felt I must come round and see how you were. This heat—so ridiculously trying for a climate like ours.’ Then she turned to Kingston. ‘And Kingston,’ she added; ‘how is he?’

‘Poor gentleman,’ replied her lover tragically. ‘Mr. Darnley has been quite on his last legs lately. But he recovered miraculously all of a sudden, as soon as he saw Mapleton showing somebody into the room.’

‘You really do talk the most shocking rubbish,’ said Gundred sensibly, but without disapproving sternness. ‘Lady Adela, why do you let Kingston talk such rubbish?’

‘My mother,’ replied Kingston, intercepting the mild remonstrance of Lady Adela’s reply, ‘brought me up to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You asked me about the state of my feelings, and I gave you a truthful reply. Behold! Your coming has taught me, for the ninety-ninth time, that life is worth living. Sit down and I will ring for tea. My dear, surely it is tea-time? Gundred has clearly come here simply and solely to get a cup of tea. With me she will have nothing to say. It is tea she wants. She pants for it, like the hart for cooling brooks.’

‘Hush!’ said Gundred; ‘don’t talk like that. It’s irreverent. But, indeed, Lady Adela, I certainly should be delighted if you would let me stay and have[65] some tea with you. I lunched with Aunt Agnes, and she gave me a lunch of unimaginable nastiness, so that now I feel as if I had not eaten for days.’

‘You poor darling!’ cried Lady Adela with pitying indignation; ‘that is always the way. Wait, and I will order you something really nice. Look after Gundred, Kingston dear, while I go and interview Tessington about to-night. I have been wanting to see her all the afternoon, and I can just as well have her up to the dining-room.’

Having thus tactfully explained her departure, Lady Adela left the lovers alone. A silence fell.

‘I am wondering,’ replied Kingston, ‘what, precisely, is going on behind those inscrutable eyes of yours—what thoughts are playing about behind that cool white forehead of yours. And the worst of it is that I can never find out. You will never let me in of your own accord; and if I took an axe and forced my way in I should only find a mess of blood and bone.’

‘Don’t be horrid,’ said Gundred, shuddering. ‘I am sure I tell you everything I think. I hide nothing from you.’

‘Perhaps not, you well-mannered Sphinx. But you reveal nothing. Nothing about you gives any index to your thoughts. You are too fearfully and wonderfully trained. I have seen you suffering agonies of boredom with a smile; I have seen you suffering torments of cold and discomfort with the sweetest blandness. No one can ever guess what a person like that is really thinking. For all I know, you may, at this very moment, be remarking a smut on my nose or a blemish on my character. Your behaviour gives no clue.’

‘But, Kingston dear,’ protested Gundred, moved by this denunciation, ‘you would not have a rude[66] and boorish wife, I am sure. And you know I have no fault to find with you. I think I have shown that—yes?’

‘With really rude people one knows where one is. Their amiability means true friendship and true approval. With your suave, elegant, charming sort smiles may mean anything or nothing. One never knows where one is. “Mind you come again soon,” you tell me, ever so pleasantly. And the very instant before you have said exactly the same thing, in the same cordial inflection, with the same inviting smile, to some woman whom I know you intensely dislike, and only allow inside the house on sufferance. Now, what am I to think?’

‘But, Kingston,’ she cried, ‘one must be civil. One simply must. Why do you attack me like this? What have I done?’

‘You are such a beautiful little icicle,’ answered her lover. ‘Will you never thaw? You are an icicle inside an iron safe. How can one get at you to thaw you?’

‘How utterly absurd you are, Kingston! Haven’t I given you the key? Besides—oh, I’m not an icicle; I’m not a bit of an icicle. Only—well, what is it you want?’

‘Be quite, quite honest for a minute, Gundred. Strip your soul stark, and tell me whether you love me.’

‘That is the muffled up, overdressed sort of thing you always say,’ replied Kingston. ‘Give me the bare, naked truth. Do you truly love me, Gundred?’

‘You would never ask me such a question if you weren’t sure of your answer already,’ she cried.

‘Perhaps not, but give it me all the same. It’s not enough to know a thing; one wants to be told it sometimes.’

‘Oh, that is just like a silly woman—never believing a man cares for her unless he goes on telling her so twice a minute. Oh, Kingston, don’t let us be so childish. These things don’t need to be talked about. I hate talking about them. It isn’t decent. The more one feels the less one should say. Only kitchen-maids chatter about their love affairs, and wear their hearts on their sleeves.’

‘Anyhow, that’s better than wearing it in someone else’s pocket, as so many others do.... Gundred, does your soul never take off its stays? Does it always live in public, on view, in full Court dress and train and feathers?’

‘Kingston—dear Kingston, I think you must be a little bilious. I am not always in public. Here I am alone with you—yes?’

‘Alone? Oh dear, no! You are always acting, always posing to half a hundred people in the room whom I can’t see. They prevent you from ever speaking honestly to me, as I speak to you. They dictate the way you walk, the chair you sit in, every word and action of your day.’

‘I don’t understand you, Kingston. A woman has so much more to think of than a man in some ways. Surely ... you know by now that I—well, that I do care for you. You mustn’t ask me to be always[68] saying so. You wouldn’t like it if I did. Do be reasonable. One has to behave decently—yes? Our points of view are so different. It seems to me that I tell you far too much—sometimes I think I am shameless and horrid—and yet you—you think me cold and unsatisfactory.’

‘I hate to think of men like that; I am sure you are not one of them. Anyhow, I hope we shall never condescend to their horrid level. You are engaged to me, Kingston, and that ought to be quite enough.... It is for me.’

She glanced at him with gleaming eyes. He heard the cool, level tone, and missed the gleam. He sighed.

‘And some people have thought me cold and fish-blooded,’ he thought, in a spasm of irritation. But clearly it was useless to dash himself against the firm rock of Gundred’s placidity.

‘You are almost as impersonal as one of those Buddhist saints that my Uncle Robert has lived with,’ he replied. ‘You make one feel cold.’

Gundred, resolved in her attitude, would take no notice of his renewed attack. ‘Your Uncle Robert,’ she said, ‘have I heard of him? Oh yes; he is that brother of your father’s who ran away to Japan so many years ago and became a Buddhist himself, poor man, didn’t he? Will he ever come back to England?’

‘Not if he’s as wise as he sounds. His life out there seems to be almost perfect contentment.’

‘How strange that is—yes? Well, I have got odd relations, too, in out-of-the-way corners of the world, you know. There’s poor papa’s sister, Isabel Darrell, away in Australia, with a daughter. I really rather hope they will never come home. Colonial relations[69] are apt to be so truly dreadful. And now, Kingston dear, what I came to see you about to-day is this. Have you any very strong ideas as to the honeymoon? Because papa and Uncle Henry and Aunt Agnes are all very anxious that we should go to Brakelond. And I do think there is something rather nice in the idea. After all, I suppose it will be our place some day, and our children’s after us. In a way it is my wedding-present to you. Don’t you think we might begin our married life there? Uncle Henry won’t be in our way at all. He is kept in a wing right apart from the rest of the Castle, and the building is so enormous that you might put up twenty people there, and no one need have any notion that there was anyone in the place besides himself.’

‘Yes,’ replied Kingston, warming to the prospect; ‘it sounds a delightful plan. I was wondering when we could go to Brakelond. Hugh Frazer did say something about lending us his place, but I can easily explain. Luckily, all my Dadd relations are out of the reckoning, so there is no one to claim any tiresome rights. By all means let us go to Brakelond. It must be the most gorgeous old place. Haven’t they still got the room where Queen Isabel sat and worked?’

‘Yes, horrid woman!’ said Gundred tersely. ‘I don’t like to talk about her. I can scarcely believe she was my ancestress.’

‘I never can see why wicked people are especially splendid or tragic or romantic,’ she said. ‘Goodness is so much nicer—yes?’

‘Perhaps it is,’ replied Kingston, after a pause, ‘but not always so interesting.’

‘One has no wish to be interested in anything that is not pure and beautiful and good,’ announced Gundred, with an air of virtuous finality.

‘Oh, well, we’ll go there, anyhow,’ answered Kingston, shying away from the imminent argument, ‘and have no end of a mystic splendid time. We’ll sit about all day, and forget the world, and read novels to each other.’

Kingston shrugged his shoulders. Clearly the conversation had run into one of its frequent culs-de-sac, and there was no continuing it. Gundred was impregnable to all assaults of the picturesque, and adamant to all new opinions or suggestions. Over Kingston was coming that bruised and daunted feeling to which, sooner or later, his meetings with her seemed invariably to lead. She held him at arm’s length, baffled him, rebuffed him, deliberately kept herself a stranger from his ardours, his intimacy. Each dialogue of theirs seemed to resolve itself inevitably into a futile if friendly discussion of topics indifferent. Of course this offered all the richer promise for the long years of coming matrimony, but meanwhile Gundred’s maidenly reserve turned the preliminary canter of courtship into a jog over rather arid and sterile ground. When Lady Adela tardily returned to the room, in the wake of tea, she found the lovers canvassing the Academy. Gundred, however, was so perfectly certain that her choice was sound and holy that the conversation was unfruitful if amiable. Lady Adela joined it, and it easily admitted a third voice.

Brakelond had the impassive mouldering grandeur of a great house that has outlived the troubled hours of its glory, and settled into a lethargic contemplation of its past. From very far away its castellated mass could be seen dominating the country from the steep wooded hill on which it perched. On three sides the forest flowed down in ample splendid folds, a cloak of emerald in spring, and, in autumn, cloth of gold. And along the fourth side the crag dropped away sheer into the western sea. Seen from afar, the Castle on its pinnacle had a remote and fairy-like effect, as if, indeed, the scene had been of Camelot or Broceliaunde. Into the clear blue of the sky pricked the soft sapphire masses of the Castle, the looming great Drum Tower, and the smaller, indistinguishable turrets; while, below, fell smooth and swift the dim violet of the woodland, like a misty drapery of colour. Over the country ran other lesser ranges, clothed in younger, neater woodlands; but the great building on its eminence ruled supreme, and the forest round the skirts of its hill was the very fairy-haunted forest of old romance. Among those gnarled trunks, in those green eternal twilights of the thicket, might Merlin still lie sleeping, or King Mark, a-hunting, yet hap on Tristram of Lyonesse. And far overhead, the crown of the country, rose the mystic walls of a Castle that might have held the fair Iseult or Morgan the Sorceress, a great drowsy splendour of stone, willingly cut off from the rush and turmoil of to-day, dreaming for ever, in complacent calm, of that hot and glorious life that it had long ceased to live.

As an old illustrious man or woman carries always the consciousness and the glamour of his achievement,[72] no matter into what feebleness or decrepitude old age may have brought him, so buildings that are not of yesterday carry always the haunting sense of their past, and achieve a tranquil pride in desolation and the world’s oblivion, for ever beyond the reach of any smug, inglorious new country-house, all red-brick and sham Elizabethan gables.

The country-house has telephones and electric light and all the latest devices of luxury; the old castle has matted corridors and inadequate lamps, and a general air of shabbiness. But that shabbiness is more beautiful and well-bred than all the clamorous elegancies of the other; the comparison is between some old and splendid lady, poor, dowdy, and forgotten in the clacking crowd of tongues, but serene in her impregnable charm, the incarnation of all that is finest in the traditions of a thousand years—and some scented, powdered woman of to-day, frilled, curled, decorated with all the lavish and assertive ornaments by which novelty seeks uneasily to impose its fancied supremacy over antiquity—a woman of loud tones, loud colours, loud movements, in her own person a great braying band of jingles from the latest edition of that comic opera which is such a creature’s London life.

Only the self-sufficient—in fact, only those who are perfectly calm and indifferent to the general suffrage, secure in their unalterable, unselfconscious certainty of breeding—can afford to ignore the tricks and trappings on which the less fortunate have to rely for notice. Only the well-bred can afford to be dowdy; only the well-bred can afford to ignore the Peau d’Espagne or the Violette des Bois which may happen to be in fashion, and trust for their triumph only to the faint, unanalyzed fragrance of beauty and nobility that accompanies them inseparably from birth to death, without effort or expense of theirs. And as[73] a modern building, decked out in modern old oak, and fussy with stolen ornaments from bygone times, must always base its claim to admiration on the self-advertisement of its luxuries, so some old collapsing turret, the haunt of dead Queens, the chosen home of sad beautiful memories, needs no adornment, no advertisement to reinforce its calm and unconscious right to our worship. Brakelond, old, gorgeous, forgotten Brakelond, was too proud to trick itself out for popular applause, too quiet in its self-centred pride to allure the vulgar; it challenged reverence by right divine, and held the attention without desire to do so.

All this of Brakelond far away, throned on the undulating horizon of misty woodland. It was a sapphire crown on a pinnacle of the world’s rim. It did not flop and flounder along its hill, like Windsor; rather, it held itself bravely, concisely, on its seat, with something of Belvoir’s distant majesty. But Belvoir is as generous as it is beautiful, offering itself to the world’s admiration; Brakelond, on the contrary, was governed by a grimly selfish passion of seclusion, severe and rigid. It kept aloof as if it had indeed been some magic Castle of Lyonesse, and none was permitted to approach beyond the outermost borders of the forest precincts. Lonely, menacing, fearful, Brakelond frowned away the approach of all new-comers. The spirit of its owner haunted it, insisted on inviolable privacy.

For, from the great dominating Drum Tower flew perpetually the flag that told of an old man, brainless, dribbling, dreadful, dying for ever by slow inches in his high, drug-scented rooms. Around him ceaselessly screeched the parrots whose bright colours were the one consciousness of his life, whose poignant yellings made the one music capable of penetrating to his ears. Their clamour drove his attendants frantic, but the[74] old Duke, immobile, log-like, gave no sign of discomfort, gave no sign at all of life or its energies. He seemed dead, had seemed dead for many years; his existence tottered on a breathless poise that a hair’s touch might send swinging over the border-line of death; but that poise was firm and even; nothing shook it; nothing, in the cool unbroken lethargy of his days, could agitate the balance that rested so unwaveringly on such a razor’s edge of insecurity. So the parrots daily rent heaven with their screams, and amid the infernal din the aged wizard of the fairy castle, shut away from all the world by a barrier of stout walls and locked gates and impassable centuries, lay and awaited his end, a creature long since wiped out of life, having no part in to-day or to-morrow, but already one with the innumerable yesterdays of the dead.

Into this haunt of sad mystery did Gundred bring her husband for their honeymoon. So stern and tragic a setting for the bright, modern drama of their lives had something stimulating about the abruptness of its contrast. Happiness, after all, could build beneath the eaves of that immemorial tragedy, and the flower of joy spring gaily from the crevices of that citadel whose mortar was tears and blood and the bones of innumerable generations, crushed and mangled. Kingston and Gundred took their pleasure lightly amid the surrounding atmosphere, and, in the labyrinthine vastness of the building soon lost all consciousness of that secluded presence, high up in the remote wing where the parrots made their song in the undiscerning ears of the dead that could not die.

The main bulk of the Castle was old—some of it very old. On one projecting spur of rock that overhung the sea a hundred feet and more below, stood the most ancient relic of all—a suite of little wooden-panelled[75] rooms, low, many-cornered, slippery-floored, with strange turns and steps between them. This wing was cut off from the rest of the Castle, which towered over it from behind like a crouched monster. It was connected only by one small corridor, and held a rough primeval chapel which dated from days before any other stone of Brakelond, and was given by tradition as a place of assignation between Tristram and Iseult. This fragment of myth made visible seemed to be no part of the building, but a precious jewel of the past extruded from its enormous fabric.

The body of the building, too, contained ancient, history-haunted corners. A series of rooms was credited to the design and the occupation of Queen Isabel. Here the She-Wolf of France, old Queen Jezebel, had dwelt with the lover whom she nearly seated on the throne of England. A traditional portrait of her still gazed out across the rooms she had owned, a stiff daub on a wooden panel, giving the fierce, tight-lipped stare of the adventuress, high-boned, pink-cheeked, archaic in drawing, angular, convincing in its very primitiveness of workmanship—jewelled and furred there and here in dimmed patches of colour that had once been crudely brilliant. Brakelond had been the scene of Queen Isabel’s highest fortunes. Her ghost still seemed to hold the high halls of her prosperity, her pitiless spirit dominated that wing which owed its life to her. This was her true burial-place—rather than Castle Rising, where at last, after all the changes of her eventful life, she died, old, fat, monstrous, honoured in dishonour, incredibly wealthy, the first millionaire of Europe.

Dark and dusty were the windings of the Castle corridors—dark and dusty as the winding paths of Mortimer and Isabel. The building had been put together from time to time, added to, built on to, with[76] no thought of conformity, of harmony, of convenience. It was rather a congeries of Castles than one unanimous edifice. From far off it was seen as a single fabric; within its walls the daunted visitor could gain comfort from noticing its many discordancies, the innumerable violent breaks in the continuity of its development. There was no complete rhythm in the building’s design; part clashed with part, and in the jarring conflict of tastes and periods the enchantment which distance had lent was shattered by the sudden onslaughts of criticism. Here jutted out a Georgian wing, solid and stiff, but ill-attuned to the austere majesty of the great Drum Tower. There, a Duke of the eighteenth century, a friend of Pope and Lady Mary, had erected a Chinese pagoda, that perked impertinently up with its fantastic, saucy eaves among the stalwart turrets that had frowned on Edward of York, and given vain shelter to Marguerite of Anjou. Then, again, another Duke, contemporary of George the Glorious, had appended to the Elizabethan front of the Castle a small but accurate copy of the Brighton Pavilion. Its wriggling cupolas, its fluted minarets, shone white with plaster, and its main plantation of bulbs, like gigantic onions, bulged and swelled beneath an oriel whence the Virgin Queen had watched a masque.

Each inhabited portion of the Castle, too, was of a style violently and even deliberately discordant with the severe and uninhabitable splendours of the Drum Tower and the old Keep. These contained huge, gloomy rooms, with infinitesimal windows, that looked out, for the most part, on sunless little courtyards, mere wells of darkness, made by the addition of new buildings to the old. Here, in these big, stark halls, were mouldering arrangements of armour, or acres of dingy pictures, bloated Flemish boors, dubious angular Madonnas, riotous female nudities, all hidden from the[77] world by a merciful veil of dirt. The stone floors were inadequately disguised with worn matting, and at night one feeble, smoky lamp was allotted for the illumination of each apartment. A proud neglect, an almost arrogant ostentation of poverty and discomfort, reigned supreme.

The inhabited wings of the Castle were different in effect, though similar in scheme. Rows of bare barrack-like rooms lined the corridors—hung with glaring chintzes, and furnished with chairs of rep and horsehair. Their ornaments were meagre as their blankets, and their large windows threw a merciless glare of daylight on their serviceable sterling ugliness. Each had a square of carpet from which the pattern had long been trodden out and through in patches; each had cupboards and washstand of light grained wood; each was coldly spacious, airy, cheerless, and inhospitable. Most loud of all the discords that many generations of bad architects had contributed to the original of Queen Isabel’s castle was the high white wing where the old Duke lay dying. An Early Victorian Duchess had made this addition; it was big and bald and bare, faced with white stucco and adorned with modern-Gothic pinnacles. It grew out like a monstrous polyp from the side of a gracious little Jacobean pavilion, and dominated the main entrance with its stalwart blatancy. To crown all, the same Duchess had built on to the great Drum Tower a porte-cochère on the model of the Erechtheion, and had holystoned the Drum Tower itself of a pale and repellent buttermilk blue.

Of all this accumulated history Gundred was, as it were, the sum and incarnation. The Castle, village of unconnected houses though it was in reality, yet had a collective personality of its own, even as a crowd of unrelated human beings has a collective personality[78] beyond and above that of a mere aggregation of units. And she, its daughter and heiress, was also its result. It is written that neither man nor woman can ever escape from his or her traditions. The traditions are the character, and we are the reincarnated spirits of very many dead ages. As sunlight brings out all manner of unguessed possibilities from the innocent blank photographic plate, so the influence of Brakelond on the last child of its history must bring out in her nature new moods and unguessed colours of mind that had lain dormant in the undistinguishing atmosphere of London. And thus Brakelond could not but set a distinction between Kingston and Gundred. Between the flaming memories of Brakelond and the long, quiet, eventless story of Darnley-on-Downe there must always be a great and significant difference. Gundred, gentle, unimpassioned, mild and calm, was yet the daughter of fighting centuries, of men and women who had lived, suffered, loved and died magnificently, flamboyantly, full in the eye of the world. She was the daughter of a ruling race.

And he, emotional, energetic, ambitious, was sprung from an interminable line of sterling, honest mediocrities. Great glories, great sorrows had avoided Darnley-on-Downe; the crashing crises in the House of Mortimer had no parallel in the long unchronicled history of the Dadds. No more than his wife could he escape from his traditions. And those traditions, well-bred, decent, honest though they were, yet were not the traditions of a ruling race. Inconspicuousness was their keynote. And Kingston found himself an alien in the citadel of the dead Mortimers. Their ghosts, insolent, gorgeous, tyrannous, looked down with contempt on the colourless shadows of all the sober Dadds. Those ghosts had ruled, in their great day, over counties of Dadds, over legions of good honest gentlemen[79] of coat-armour who had been glad and proud to take service under the banner of the Mortimers. The House of March, perpetually struggling for sovereignty, had drawn to its service squires and knights innumerable from all the counties that it ruled. And the sense of feudal over-lordship was strong in the inherited blood of the Mortimers, even to the uttermost generation. Those others, those lesser people, noble and gentle, were but small and insignificant in the eyes of men and women who had violently swayed the destinies of England. They were loyal subjects, those others, perhaps, but equals and allies never. And now a man of the obscure order was lawful possessor of the last Mortimer. Queens and the sons of Kings had been, in old days, the mates of Brakelond; and the Castle seemed as if it could never accustom itself to the formal ownership, even to the presence, of one who might in former years have been squire or feudatory, indeed, to some Lord or Lady of March, but who could never, in the wildest upheaval of King Henry’s time, have hoped to become the master of a Mortimer.

Gundred had given her whole heart to her husband. But now, in the shadow of all her ancient selves, something began to thrill in her veins that was more than the mere pride of part-proprietorship in a splendid and historic house. An old house, soaked in all the personalities of a thousand bygone years, must needs retain the flavour and fragrance of them; and on one who in his own person resumes the lives of twenty generations, the compelling influence of his home, the scene and material of all those lives that throb again in his, must necessarily be so dominant that insensibly he takes the colour of the past by which he is surrounded. If this was so in the case of Kingston, hampered and controlled by all the decent ancestors that had lived[80] and died unnoticeably in Darnley-on-Downe, it was likely that the effect would be far more obvious in the case of one whose own character was so neutral as Gundred’s, and whose ancestors were so terrific and blazing as the Mortimers. From every flagstone, from every wall, pressed out upon Gundred the influence of some masterful forefather; and in her quiet nature here and there a secret nerve or fibre, latent hitherto, and unsuspected, recognised the call of the soul in which it once had formed a part, and thrilled to life again. At Brakelond Gundred insensibly took the lead. It was she that decided to settle in the little ancient wooden wing that jutted away from the main mass of the Castle out upon the spur of cliff by the Chapel of King Mark. Her gentle manner grew more and more imbued with sovereignty, and her husband found himself now amused and now rebuffed by Gundred’s obvious sense of being at home. Away in London she might be anyone in general, or no one in particular, concealed her family pride in the Mortimers, was able to give her zeal for morality full sway in the condemnation of Queen Isabel. But at Brakelond her own individuality was swamped. Half reluctantly at first, but soon openly and even proudly, she began to contemplate the career of the wicked Queen, and exalted her with faint damnation that soon passed into positive sympathy. She spent her days unfolding to her husband all the nooks and secrets of the Castle. And, whereas normally she was a person of the most sensitive and neat-minded righteousness, hating fierce crimes, frigidly abominating love-intrigues, here in Brakelond her sense of right and wrong was in abeyance, and at times she canvassed old bloodstained stories with an unmoral calm, and a manner that admitted a not uncomplacent participation in their horrors.

To Kingston it became a relief to hear her retailing[81] the legends of her house. The honeymoon, in its undiluted intimacy, may well become a strain. However much two people may have to say to each other, the knowledge that there is absolutely no one else at hand to speak to may well impart that itch of rebellion which most people experience when bowed under the yoke of necessity. Not to be able to do a thing often brings the wish to do it; a wish which, without the prohibition, might never have occurred. So an enforced duet may occasion faint hankerings after an occasional trio.

In a honeymoon, too, after the first emotional stress and glory are over, a revulsion well may threaten—a revulsion to which ardent lovers are more liable than those couples who have married on lower calmer levels, and who, having never risen to great ecstatic heights, can never, therefore, fall to the emotionalist’s profound abysses of languor and depression. And, if two people shut up together in a lighthouse, with the hope of some day parting, develop insane, irrelevant furies against each other’s ways, how much greater danger of disillusionment must there be for a man and woman forced into minute prolonged contemplation of one another, with no reasonable hope of any release on this side of the grave. The most passionate love leaps over crimes and vices in the loved object; but stumbles at times over a personal habit, a veil ill-tied, a faulty taste in hats. The Ideal is a high and holy empyrean where love can range unfettered and unimperilled; the kingdom of daily life is a lumpy and uneven territory where the winged feet of emotion are apt to trip over some mean, unlooked-for obstacle. And the honeymoon is a time for complete revelation of personal as well of spiritual peculiarities, in which the veil of mystery is finally torn away from the nude reality of two people’s lives.

Kingston and Gundred began insensibly to enter on that period of prosaic exploration which lies between the mystic raptures of the first hours and the later harmonies of settled married life. The day of blind passion seemed over. Gundred found herself commenting inwardly on Kingston’s habits; the smell of tobacco was no longer so precious to her as in the days when it stood for part of an enthralling enigma; his ways were untidy, he dropped the newspapers on the floor and never picked them up, he wrote his letters at odd times instead of setting aside a definite hour for correspondence; he was never in really good time for meals. And then he had mannerisms which, in the dual solitude, began to prey upon his wife. He sometimes walked up and down the room like a bear in a cage, until she wanted to scream; when he sat quiet, he occasionally kept up a maddening succession of little rhythmical taps with his feet; and, above all, he was given to whistling. Then in mind, though altogether precious, of course, and adorable, he had certain flaws. His religious views were clearly lax, his moral attitude was not strenuous, he was too eager, too inquisitive, for Gundred’s intelligence, which preferred to hold on firmly, with the unswerving trust of the dutiful pupil, to everything it had received at second-hand. She took life for granted, considered the scheme of things very admirable, and her own position in it more admirable still. Nothing was to be questioned. Therefore Kingston’s habit, divined or expressed, of accepting nothing without examination, made his wife feel worried and restless, as if her mind had mated with an earthquake. Finally, as the days went by, Kingston dissatisfied her inmost desires by gradually relaxing the amorous enthusiasm of their first married days. It is usually the man who first wearies of conjugal outbursts—men having other business in life, and women,[83] under the old primeval dispensation, none. And Gundred’s discontent was the more exasperating that she was secretly ashamed of it, and had far too much personal pride, far too strong a sense of decorum, to express it. As Kingston grew less and less demonstrative in his affection, Gundred revenged herself at once on him and on her own feelings by stiffening herself into an added primness of factitious maidenhood, by which she had the power of holding herself aloof from her nearest and dearest, as well as of repelling that very sense of intimacy that her own most secret soul desired. Her soul was of those that render themselves to no subduing warmth of love, but, whatever the fate of the body, must be violated, if possible, and taken by assault.

Kingston, for his part, found that marriage had not dissipated or broken the spiritual barrier between himself and Gundred. Her citadel was still locked against him, inexpugnable, not to be captured by any guile or violence. There were still great heavy gaps in their conversation, great tracts of desert country across which their souls were incapable of taking hands. The calm beatitude that Kingston had foreseen began to reveal itself a state of something not unlike sterility, diversified with moments of irritation when he skirmished round the stone walls of Gundred’s guarded mind, and only succeeded in bruising himself, no matter how furiously he attacked. She could not be led, forced, cajoled, kissed, harried, or bullied into understanding. A sense of hopelessness sometimes seized him before the sweet indomitable obstinacy of her mind. It was at once so hard that no blow could make an impression, and so soft that no blow could strike home. Unlike Anne Elliot in all else, her manners—of mind and body alike—‘were as consciously right as they were invariably gentle.’ That[84] invariable, gentle consciousness of rectitude was cruelly trying to the restless, questioning, agile temper of her husband. He longed to stir up its provoking serenity, to stick pins into its lethargic mass. But nothing, no effort of his, could move it, shake it, upset that tranquil self-complacence. It was like grappling with a phantom in a nightmare. Neither men nor angels could ever turn Gundred Darnley from an opinion or a habit. She knew that her outer and her inner woman alike were both thoroughly, faultlessly dressed, in the best-fitting, most suitable garments, and no jot or tittle would she alter of her physical or mental trimmings. Neat, not gaudy, was her equipment, and, secure of perfection, she could not conceive the possibility of any improvement.

That was another thing—her neatness was something inhuman, something almost appalling. She always put everything back in its place, always folded up the papers and laid them down tidily on the table when she had finished them, always devoted the hour after breakfast and after tea to the writing of letters, was always dressed and ready exactly a minute before the gong sounded. Neat, neat, heartlessly neat, were all her proceedings, from the way she docketed her ideas to the way she buttoned her boots and did her hair. True it was, indeed, that the maid was responsible for these details, but she, too, had evidently been mastered by Gundred’s devastating tidiness. Never a thought mislaid, never a curl misplaced, never too much or too little of anything, no excess, no enthusiasm, no hot outbursts, nothing but a serenely equable development, as cruel and crushing in its steady, remorseless movements as the advance of a steam-roller. If she sat, she sat with perfect correctness: feet in the proper position, hands folded in her lap, or prettily occupied with some pretty piece of work. If[85] she walked, it was crisply, concisely, without softness or undulations, erect, well-modulated, and poised in the certainty of faultlessness. And the very qualities that had so appealed to Kingston’s fastidiousness a month before, now became a terror when he contemplated a lifetime’s endurance of them. To see Gundred ruffled, muddy, untidy, would have been as great a joy to him as water in the wilderness; but no wind ever tumbled the orderly daintiness of her hair, no gale ever pushed her hat out of place, no mud ever dared adhere to her brilliant little boots. Never tired, never angry, never out of looks, Gundred was also never buoyant, never ecstatic, never radiant, and the bland sweet monotony of her threatened to become as maddening to her husband as the incessant repetition of one level, unvarying note.

One or two small habits she had, too, which exasperated him at times. She was fond, for one thing among others, of talking about God in a frequent, casual way that he found intolerable in its assumption of intimacy, and in its cheapening of the soul’s most private thoughts. God’s, to Gundred, was the biggest name on her visiting-list, and she displayed it with a pride that people quite devoid of terrestrial vulgarity sometimes think it allowable to display when talking of their acquaintance in celestial circles. Her soul had a tinge of supramundane snobbishness, and though, on earth, she would not have thanked a Queen for a kiss, she took a gentle satisfaction in emphasizing her possession of the Almighty’s approving friendship. She conceived heaven as an enormously magnified and everlasting Court-concert, where only the “nicest” people were admitted, and where she herself was not only to have the entrée, but to be in the very heart of the royal set.

She had, besides, a way of appending an interrogative[86] ‘yes’ to every other sentence, which, by degrees, drove her husband to distraction. He found himself looking ahead for it along the conversation as one looks ahead for the next telegraph-pole on a slow journey. And as surely as the telegraph-pole that ‘yes’ would come, maddening him with the certainty of its reiteration.

Brakelond, accordingly, was a relief to both husband and wife—how great a relief they neither of them knew. They could take refuge from themselves among the ghosts of the dead Mortimers. Gundred almost grew excited as she repeated the stories of her people, and the spirits of the dead seemed to fill her veins with some of the blood she apparently lacked. A stark thorny tree it was, to have borne, at the last, so mild and white a bud as she. Always in opposition, always ambitious, always unscrupulous, maniacs in persecution, in martyrdom, in love, the Mortimers had risen and fallen, tempestuously fighting, up and down the steps of the throne. Ruined with Queen Isabel, they had survived only to fall again before the House of York. With the Tudors their glory towered once more, until a characteristically ambitious attempt to marry the Queen of Scots had destroyed the March of the time. Then, after a few years of comparative quiet, they had risen conspicuous as the only great house that had sided with the country against King Charles. This unpopular piece of patriotism forced the Mortimers into discreet seclusion through Restoration days, until a new opportunity of manifesting it arrived with the Great Revolution. The House of March, always especially patriotic when patriotism involved enmity to the Crown, had had a narrow escape of ruin at the time of King Monmouth’s disaster, and, for its safety, the Prince of Orange did not land a day too soon. His coming, however, with the[87] comparative loyalty that followed, and its resultant dukedom, had established March and Brakelond in that period of slow prosperity which had led on through two centuries of gradual inanition to its present effete or atrophied state. It seemed as if the furious old Castle and the furious old race that owned it could not live fully nor thrive without that atmosphere of violence in which they had so often gloried and agonized together. Peace—slackening, corroding, monotonous—was fatal to the vitality of the Mortimers.

But, despite the obvious influence exerted by the Castle on the individuality of Gundred, Kingston could not but be struck again and again by the contrast between his pin-neat, impeccable wife, orderly in mind, body, desires, and the many riotous scarlet lives that she summed up in her own neutral-tinted nature. Always turbulent, always passionate, impatient of rule, loving and hating without limit or bond of reason, breathing the air of battle from birth to death, and flagging in the close air of peace, the Mortimers were a strange race to end thus, in a woman to whom peace, order, reason, limit were the very conditions of her being. As she talked to him of her people, Kingston noticed the small, flickering flames of vitality that leapt up in her nature out of the dead past. Here and there in her utterance from time to time some bygone tyrant dictated an inflection, some dead Queen contributed a thought. Kingston heard these voices so distinctly, noticed so clearly the occurrence of each foreign thought that twanged abruptly in the music of Gundred’s voice, like the sudden throb of a harp across a piano’s level ripplings, that it seemed to him at last as if, at moments, she were the mere mouthpiece of ghosts. For a vanishing instant, now and then, her lips spoke what her mind had not conceived, what her heart had not sanctioned. She was possessed by a[88] fragment of the life that had gone before. But was this all? Robbers and wantons that they were in their lawless splendour, had the Mortimers given their descendant nothing beyond these fragmentary reminiscences? Was there in her, far down under the orderly, decorous placidity of her surface, no stirring possibility of those old primitive passions, of those fierce blood-lusts or those religious frenzies, that should have come with the very fabric of her life out of the buried long-ago? The question was strangely interesting, in the bizarre contrast between the neat, methodical thing she was, and the wild daughter of the past that, by some freak of fortune, she might perhaps again become. Kingston watched her keenly, hoping that some day, sooner or later, might raise again the hidden depths of her nature, and reveal, in a tempest of passion, the frantic possibilities of the Mortimers. The idea was inconceivable, monstrous, grotesque; but attractive as a romantic paradox. As with most paradoxes, deep down in his heart he utterly disbelieved it.

Kingston Darnley, as usual, was late for breakfast. He had loitered pleasantly over his toilet, relieving the repellent prose of the process by frequent intervals of poetic rest at the open window. The little old diamond-paned casement of his dressing-room was open, and the crooked oak-panelled apartment was flooded with morning sunlight. Very far below, against the feet of the cliff beneath, the blue and gold of the clear water came lapping in friendship, and its lazy utterance rose faint and thin to the listener through the virginal clarity of the air. The day was not yet old enough for the haze and stress of heat: all[89] was still clean and fresh from the cool sweetness of the night and the unclouded dawn. To the uttermost horizon spread the level floor of the sea, a glory of scent and colour, gleaming, vital, incredibly buoyant and young for all its uncounted æons of life. Again and again Kingston stayed to dally with the enormous loveliness of life, leaning from the window whence he might have dropped a pebble straight into the purple ripples a hundred feet and more below, where they played leisurely at hide-and-seek among the rocks under the cliff.

It was indeed a morning to be up and alive—a morning to be naked in the naked embrace of the world. As the hours go by, the world, no less than man, puts on its clothes. Clouds and shadows and haze come up to cover the strong free limbs of the earth. It is only in the short space after sunrise in some still morning that the world stands out pure and glorious in its nudity—vivid, stainless, triumphant as the white flawlessness of the young Apollo newly risen out of the dark, formless void. The upspringing day is our emblem of youth fresh from slumber—beautiful, ardent, splendid in the clear glory of his build—before he makes haste to hide himself in the sombre, ugly trappings of convention. Kingston was in no haste to take that leap of many centuries that separates man, as Nature set him forth, from the clothed, shapeless dummy that man has made himself.

From the adjoining room his wife recalled him again and again to the flight of time. She was never to be distracted from her duties by any beauty or ugliness of the outer world. Had the Last Day dawned in fire, Gundred would have duly finished having her hair done before confronting it. There is a time for everything, she says, and all reasonable people know that the time for looking at landscapes is after lunch, while[90] taking one’s afternoon drive, before going home to tea and the second post. Then, at the proper moment, ecstasies are allowable, and even suitable. But every minute of the day has its task, and nothing can be plainer than that dressing-time is the time to dress. Kingston, however, whistled idly at his desultory work, and dawdled as if the whole forthcoming week were vacant. He loved the young tenderness of the sunlight, and drew great breaths of life at the open window. Overhead, and far away to the right, stretched along the cliff a mighty, menacing shaft of darkness, the shadow of the huge Castle behind. But this little old wing, on its spur of rock, jutted so boldly out from the main mass of the building that all here was radiance. Gundred, too, enjoyed the sun, but did not allow his ardours to distract her from her duties. She had the white blinds pulled down, and her toilet was cheered merely by a subdued consciousness of the warmth outside. Then, when all was carefully and properly accomplished, she made her way down twisting steps, and along a strip of corridor, to the end of the wing, where the last two rooms on this ground-floor were portioned off as dining-room and sitting-room. The whole arrangement was quaint enough to please her, but neither so inconvenient nor so unusual as to offend her sense of what was becoming. It was better than living, sitting and dining, in the grim, mouldering halls of the Drum Tower, or in the bald, chintz-hung rooms of the modern wings.

The unexpected booming of the gong roused Kingston to a sense of time. With an effort he tore himself from his ecstatic contemplation, and compressed the remainder of his toilet into half a dozen crowded moments. Then, flurried, and filled with the feeling that he ought to be apologetic, he hurried towards the dining-room.

He found his wife seated at the breakfast-table,[91] decapitating a boiled egg with her usual crisp neatness, which always suggested that she was doing the egg a favour in making it an example of exactly how an egg should be eaten. She was a lesson to the world. And he felt that she knew it.

She, for her part, noticed immediately that his tie was under one ear, that it was exceedingly ill-knotted, and that it was the wrong sort of tie for that particular collar.

‘I thought I would begin, darling,’ said Gundred. ‘I did not know when you would appear. Such a lovely morning—yes?’

Here, also, she had shown her appreciation of its loveliness by having all the blinds drawn down. A muffled white radiance was all that she allowed to reach her from outside.

‘Leave them there, darling, will you? I never look at my letters till after breakfast. It is so nice to make a habit of everything—yes?’

Her husband, returning to the table, helped himself and sat down. For a time the meal went forward in silence. Then he looked across at his wife with intense approval. In the softened light Gundred looked wonderfully pretty. The table was bare—a piece of oak too beautiful to hide—and beyond its dark surface, where silver, glass, and white china gleamed and glittered, Gundred’s head and shoulders rose in soft relief against a very old painted panel on the further wall, a dim, dingy portrait of King Henry the Seventh. Before her on the table stood a bowl of pink and salmon-coloured sweet-peas. In the dim, primeval room, in the quiet mellowed glow, she struck a note of exquisite modernity. The curled gold of her hair,[92] the small clear features, the inconspicuously perfect gown harmonized, in the very audacity of their contrast, with the ripened antiquity that surrounded her. She touched another octave. From head to foot there was nothing about her to find fault with. And, against such a background, her charm was seen more whole and successful than in a garish setting of modern furniture and other, showier women.

‘By Jove!’ said Kingston, ‘you do look extraordinary cool and beautiful, Gundred. How do you manage it? I don’t believe you could ever grow old!’

Gundred was pleased. Such comments had been growing too rare. But she was one of those women who repel what they most desire, whether from motives of mortification or allurement, it would at first sight be hard to decide.

‘Nonsense, Kingston dear!’ she said; ‘one gets older every day. You must really not try to make me vain.’

‘Never,’ replied her husband, ‘have I seen anyone who gave me the same perfect feeling of satisfaction that you do. You always look as if you had just come out of the smartest bandbox that was ever made. One can’t realize that it’s all taken to pieces again every night.’

‘Don’t, dear,’ said Gundred. ‘You are always so exaggerated. I am so glad I look nice, but it is only a matter of taking pains. Anybody can be neat—yes?’

‘I couldn’t. If it weren’t for Andrews, I should always have odd socks and boots, I am sure I should. I believe I am capable of wearing an up-and-down collar in the evening if it was put out for me. What would you do if I did, Gundred—divorce me on the spot?’

‘Darling, don’t talk so lightly about such a dreadful[93] subject. God has joined us together, and of course I should not think of divorcing you if you came down to dinner in an up-and-down collar. It would be very wrong of me. But, oh, Kingston dear, I do hope you never will. It is so easy to be tidy. Your tie is all crooked this morning, dear.’

Her husband whistled instead of answering, as he helped himself to cold ham. A man may let a woman mend his morals or his mind, but he would rather suffer any reasonable torture than have it suspected that she meddles with his clothes.

When Kingston returned to the table Gundred was ready with a renewed supply of tea. ‘Nice and fresh and hot,’ she advertised. ‘Let me give you another cup.’ She poured out for each, adding cream in fair quantity to her own, and lavishly to her husband’s. This was a habitual little silent proof of her love for him, and had no reference to the fact that he particularly disliked cream in his tea. As for herself, she expected Kingston always to remember and respect her avoidance of sugar. But then his tastes were wrong, while hers were right. For he was Kingston, a man: and she was Gundred, a good wife.

She gave her cup a rapid final stir to make the cream disappear amid the tea, then handed it to him, and watched complacently while he drank it without any further complaint. She imagined that he was deceived, and felt herself happily embarked on that career of small benevolent falsehoods which make so necessary a part of the good wife’s success. She foresaw innumerable ways of cheating him for his own good, of making him eat veal in disguise, of teaching[94] him to like rabbit by serving it up as chicken cream. As a matter of fact he fully realized what she had done, but knew that it was useless to make a protest. He had learnt by now in a fortnight that all opposition to Gundred’s ideas was unprofitable. She had a firm notion that cream was good for him. Therefore cream he was evidently doomed to have, for the sake of domestic peace—and in quantities, too, as generous as the love that poured them out. Gundred had the bland pertinacity of the martyr, combined with the imperturbable self-complacence of the Pharisee. Before her gentle, inexorable determinations all hostile resolves were as the stone which an incessant drip of water permeates and dissolves.

Kingston swallowed his polluted tea as quickly as possible; then, breakfast being over, began to think of the day’s news. He offered his wife a paper.

‘Letters first, thank you, dear,’ said Gundred, seating herself concisely on a small, stiff-backed settle. She always preferred hard and rigid furniture to the cushions and softnesses that nowadays prevail. She felt them more virtuous, more decent, more suitable. She turned towards her husband. ‘Take the arm-chair, dear,’ she said.

There was but one in the room that had any pretensions to comfort. Kingston, finding that Gundred was determined to remain where she was, settled himself in it with his papers.

‘Kingston, dear,’ pleaded his wife suddenly, ‘you won’t leave the papers all anyhow on the floor, will you? It’s so untidy—yes?’

For answer he softly whistled a snatch, then, growing absorbed in the news, began abstractedly to drum a small rhythm on the oaken floor. Gundred bore it for a moment. Then a combined instinct of martyrdom and love rebellious stirred her to action. She[95] rose and picked up a small cushion that happened to be on the settle, a bony little unyielding square, prickly and stiff with embroideries that tradition attributed to Queen Elizabeth.

‘A cushion, darling,’ said Gundred in level tones, standing behind his chair. ‘Move your back—sit up a little, and let me arrange it for you.’

Her utterance, her action, were characteristic of her nature. The utterance decorous, cold, impassive, the action springing from an unresting love. Neither from her words nor from their inflection could Kingston have guessed the warmth of the affection that beamed out of her eyes as she stood looking down at the back of his neck with an ardour which she would have been utterly ashamed to show to his face. Only by such attentions as these, valuable as symptoms of her concealed devotion, could Kingston ever make a guess at her feelings.

‘Thank you, dearest,’ he replied gratefully, shifting himself so as to admit the insertion of Queen Elizabeth’s uncomfortable comfort. It harassed him, its adamantine corners cut into his ribs and the small of his back, but as an emblem of his wife’s tenderness he endured and welcomed it. What she zealously concealed from him in word she was perpetually anxious to reveal vicariously by such actions as these. ‘Thanks awfully,’ he repeated, then twisted round, so as to get a glimpse of Gundred’s face. Instantly the light faded out of her eyes, and all she allowed him to see was a decent wifely expression of solicitude. He never divined that any other had been there.

‘I always want you to be comfortable, dear,’ she said. The words were cool and coolly spoken, but under them lay the warmth of Gundred’s secret nature.

Kingston, fired by such an advance, rose and swung round. He caught his wife’s two hands—those charming hands that were never hot or cold.

Very gently Gundred drew herself away. Her heart was afire with gratification, but she felt that every consideration of decency, economy, and pride compelled her to conceal it. To be made cheap was the last horror that her mind could imagine; and all outward displays seemed to level her with kitchen-maids and factory-girls.

‘Don’t be so boisterous, darling,’ she remonstrated, while her heart longed to thank him for what he had done, and beg him to do it again. In the daytime, however, the invisible audience before whom she lived forbade these manifestations; only under the cover of darkness could she feel them permissible. ‘It is too early in the day,’ said Gundred, patting into place a curl that had never been out of it.

Not for the first time Kingston sighed and found himself baffled by his wife’s perpetual assumption of virginity. Beyond the reach of all allowed caresses, her soul remained untouched, immaculate. The bloodless chastity of temperament that invested this last of Queen Isabel’s offspring was for ever a barrier between man and wife. And neither Kingston nor Gundred had any doubt as to whether the barrier were natural or artificial. Both believed it an essential part of Gundred’s nature. If Gundred herself ever doubted, she stifled the doubt as ill-bred, repulsive, almost irreligious.

‘Ice-house!’ cried Kingston. ‘One may kiss your lips, but the real you is far away beyond the reach of kisses.’

Gundred knew that this was not true, longed to deny it, yet was glad that her husband thought it.[97] She was taking a shamefaced, almost fierce delight in the dialogue. For once her correct coldness had proved a challenge. Too often she had grieved that the low temperature of her behaviour was passing unregretted, unnoticed, and was even beginning to lower the temperature of her lover. Cold she still wished to be, for pride and decorum, yet without paying any of the penalties. The personal intimacy that one aspect of marriage enforces only the more impelled her soul, for the sake of its stiff self-respect, to take refuge in all possible mental reservations and seclusions, by way of indemnifying itself and justifying itself for the other candours into which Nature had driven her, not unwilling, indeed, but always feeling that she ought to be unwilling. Gundred’s temperament was civilized very far below the surface, and the rough facts of life never ceased to strike her as monstrous and barbaric. And most barbarous of all was her own surprised acquiescence. She could only recapture her vanishing dignity by emphasizing at every possible moment the immaculate maidenhood of her mind. This was at once her revenge on Nature, and on herself for loving what Nature sent. But her husband could not understand these subtleties; no clue was given him to the labyrinth of Gundred’s hidden emotions; he took her at her face-value, and imagined her as deeply, incurably frigid as was the manner that she thought proper to assume.

He stood before her, still holding her hands, gazing hotly into the depths of her cool eyes. But now they gave him no answering light. Shallow, clear, and cold, they met his own without a tremor. No soul looked out of them.

‘The real you,’ he repeated at last, after a long pause—‘the real you. Where is it, I wonder? Or is there any such thing? I thought once I could thaw you, but one can’t thaw an icicle unless one can get near it.’

The passion of his speech pleased her no less than the success of her own decorous hypocrisy. Now evidently she was winning the demonstrations for which she secretly hungered, and without any sacrifice of her pudicity.

‘Let me go, dear,’ she said, with mild decision. ‘You make me feel hot and rumpled. If you want to kiss me—well, I suppose I am your wife—yes?’

The tacit invitation, the unexpressed desire, were too successfully concealed by the decorous dullness of her tone. He read into it annoyance and disgust. Abruptly the flame of his mood was extinguished. He dropped her hands, so suddenly that they, not expecting any such desertion, hung limp and disappointed for a moment in the air.

Without another word he subsided again into his chair, and fell to reading the paper. Gundred retired to her settle, feeling how glad she ought to feel thus triumphantly to have vindicated her sense of decency. But her satisfaction was hollow; her soul had received a shock when her hands had been so suddenly dropped—a nasty jarring shock such as one receives in a dream, stepping into vacancy where one had expected solid ground. Her hands fell slowly to her sides, cheated, frustrated; then set languidly about opening her letters, as if diverted from their proper use. It was a minute or two before she could concentrate her attention. In her turn she experienced something of that snubbed, humiliated sensation which she had so often inflicted on her husband. Then good training conquered personal disappointment, and she began to read. In an instant her attention was chained.

‘Kingston,’ she cried, looking up, ‘here is a letter[99] from Isabel Darrell, of all people in the world. She wants to pay us a visit. Why, I declare,’ she added, ‘Isabel writes from London. I must say she loses no time.’

‘Isabel Darrell?’ questioned Kingston. ‘Who is she, and what does she want with us—especially now, when we are supposed to be on our honeymoon?’

‘My cousin,’ Gundred reminded him. ‘Her mother was my father’s sister, Isabel Mortimer. Don’t you remember, I told you about her? Poor Aunt Isabel! She married a dreadful man who came over from Australia or New Zealand, and took her back there, and led her a most terrible life, I am afraid. Aunt Isabel died three years ago, and now her husband seems to have died, too, and the daughter has come to England to see her own people. We shall have to have her here, Kingston. I must write at once. I’ll let her have a line by this morning’s post. But I do wish Aunt Agnes ever wrote letters: we ought to have heard of Isabel’s arrival at least a week ago. We must certainly send for her at once.’

Gundred wanted her husband to protest against this sacrifice of their privacy, perhaps to forbid it. If he had done so, she would have resisted his objections, and eventually have made a wifely virtue of yielding to them. But the best of people are not without their small ungenerosities, and Kingston Darnley was in a mood to punish his wife for her obstinate chilliness. If their privacy were to give no real intimacy, it might just as well cease.

‘Capital!’ said Kingston. ‘We want someone to liven us up a bit. Write to your cousin and tell her to come here at once. She’ll be someone for you to talk to.’

‘Won’t she—yes?’ assented Gundred, wounded indeed, but quite successful in concealing the fact.[100] ‘Poor thing! I will send her a wire. She can be here by dinner-time. How odd of her, though, to think one likes being interrupted on one’s honeymoon! Do you suppose they do that kind of thing in the colonies?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I dare say she heard we had been here for more than a fortnight, and thought we must have had about enough of it.’

‘I don’t mind,’ answered Kingston indifferently. In the circumstances wild horses would not have forced him to confess how much he resented the invasion. Not even to himself would he confess it. But already he had conceived a keen dislike for his cousin, Isabel Darrell.

‘Quite an odd letter,’ commented Gundred; ‘not at all like anyone else’s. My poor aunt was always strange and eccentric—evidently Isabel takes after her mother.’

‘Let me see,’ said Kingston, in the hope of finding something to feed his feeling for Isabel Darrell.

Gundred handed him the letter. It was written in a large, flamboyant hand, on large flamboyant paper; twirls and flourishes abounded, and the signature was written with a sprawling arrogance that might have done credit to a second-rate actress.

‘Dear my Cousin,’ it began,

‘I have come to England at last, to enter the bosom of my family. My father, to the relief of everybody, has entered Abraham’s. Don’t think me flippant, but one cannot always mourn, not even for the worst of parents. Meanwhile, here am I in London, buying frocks so as not to disgrace my family. When can I come to you? As soon as you like. A wire will fetch me. I understand that your honeymoon is nearly over, so I[101] don’t suppose a casual third will be much of a nuisance by now. And, anyhow, I have nowhere else to go. I am dying to see Brakelond, too, and the ducal great-uncle. Aunt Agnes and I have had quite enough of each other in a week, but she has been doing her duty nobly by the returned prodigal. Really, she is too weird for words. I believe she thinks New Zealand is the capital of Australia, or else the other way round.

‘Your affectionate and only cousin,
‘Isabel Darrell, of the Mortimers.’

Kingston found himself amply justified in his dislike. Underbred, loud, vulgar, evidently Isabel Darrell was a very undesirable specimen of the colonial. Her clashing presence would teach him anew to appreciate the quiet perfection of Gundred. He returned the letter with a laugh.

‘So very odd—yes?’ said Gundred; ‘just like her poor dear mother. Aunt Isabel was just the same—so flaunting, and independent, and unconventional. Isabel must be the oddest girl.’

‘She is my cousin, dear,’ said Gundred, very gently, after a slight pause. The emphasis was slight but unmistakable. Another pause followed.

‘And when are we to expect that sacrosanct person, your cousin?’ inquired Kingston, who knew nothing of that calm loyalty which people of Gundred’s sort display towards even the most despised and detested of their relations when they come up for discussion in the presence of anyone unconnected with ‘the family.’

‘Isabel? Ring, dear, for Murchison, and I will send a wire. She will have time to catch the midday train, and we shall have her here in good time to dress for dinner. But of course she won’t be able to see poor Uncle Henry.’

Kingston rang, feeling himself powerless to avert the coming of this discordant, pestilent alien, and Murchison was duly entrusted with the telegram. As soon as it had gone both Kingston and Gundred began to feel injured, and by common consent forbore to say another word about Isabel Darrell. Gundred felt herself aggrieved that her husband should so readily and with such apparent gladness have consented to the invasion of a stranger; Kingston felt himself aggrieved that Gundred should so gladly and with such apparent readiness have suggested the importation of a third person. Each thought the other bored with the honeymoon; neither was, but the one from offended pride, and the other from conscientious delicacy considered it a duty to make the pretence; and, each concealing his feeling strictly from the other, husband and wife drew deliberately apart to make room for the figure of Isabel Darrell between them.

The day drifted by in colourless talk, and the fine splendour of the morning grew clouded with a leaden haze. Kingston and Gundred sat out the hours in the small close garden that was shut in by the Castle. Their own little oaken wing jutted away ahead of them, but the line of the cliff, before it ran out in that unexpected spur, was enclosed by three old towers of the building, and here, in the square levelled space, looking straight over the boundless sea, with a battlemented wall of windows behind, and the Drum Tower glooming high over it in the background, had been made the only patch of garden that existed to give light and life to the grey mountain of masonry. The little flowery patch, gay with sweet-peas and roses, seemed as discordant with the Castle as a bow of ribbon on the brow of a precipice. It was frivolous, impertinent, saucy in its defiance of the stern greyness that it adorned. The only fit colours to relieve the sombre majesty of Brakelond were those[103] of blood and fire, not those of grass and flowers. But the contradiction was so flagrant as to be fascinating, and the lovers took daily joy in this little impudent oasis.

However, their unuttered thoughts of the new-comer dominated every remark they made, and it was a relief when evening drew near, and each minute brought nearer and nearer the abrupt termination of their solitude. Isabel had telegraphed her joy at being permitted to come, and her intention to do so immediately. Orders were given to prepare for her, and she was expected to arrive in time to dress for dinner. When, therefore, the carriage returned empty from the station, six miles away, after having kept dinner waiting for half an hour, both Kingston and Gundred felt their grievances redoubled. Kingston saw how right he had been to detest the very notion of this disorderly stranger, and Gundred realized more than ever how slack and neglectful of her husband it had been not to forbid the importation of such a disconcerting element into their ordered tranquillity. Meanwhile a telegram arrived, explaining that Isabel had lost her train, had taken a ‘special,’ and hoped to arrive in an hour or so. Again the carriage was sent, and, after another tedious interval of expectation the lovers were told that its lights could be seen returning up the hill. To ease the arrival of a shy, desolate colonial Gundred decided to receive her in the great hall itself. Accordingly, at the news, Kingston and Gundred passed on through the dim, gaunt passages of outwork and bastion until they found themselves at last in the heart of the big Drum Tower. The hall was a vast flagged expanse, walled in by high, dusty glooms, into whose recesses no light of any feeble lamp or lantern could penetrate. Grime and weary antiquity seemed to permeate it, and the air was close and heavy with a scent of mouldered greatness.[104] Kingston, as he went, began insensibly to play a game with himself. He picked out the names of four moods, to be repeated to himself, one for each flag on which he trod; and his fate, his whole attitude to Isabel was to be foretold by the paving-stone on which his foot should rest at the instant of the new-comer’s alighting. His fancy was taken from the game which children play with their cherry-stones, and the moods he chose were ‘Love, Hate, Fear, Contempt.’ In turn he repeated them as he stepped from flag to flag, careful always never to set his foot on any boundary line. ‘Love, Hate, Fear, Contempt,’ he murmured inwardly from stone to stone, while Gundred walked briskly at his side, her clear mind a hundred years removed from any such silly infantile fantasies. Now they were drawing near the huge, gaping doorway. There were not so many of the great squares left to tread, and the jingling approach of the carriage could be more and more clearly heard. Kingston’s heart began to beat with the artificial excitement of his game. ‘Love, Hate, Fear, Contempt....’ The carriage had driven up.... ‘Love, Hate, Fear, Contempt....’ He lingered, hoping that the stranger would alight appropriately on the word ‘Contempt.’ In vain. There was some delay. Perforce he must advance to the three or four remaining flag-stones. Quickly, to get it over without danger, he hurried with a long stride on to the stone that meant ‘Love,’ eager to leap to the next. But the unconscious Isabel was quicker. As his foot was set on ‘Love,’ Isabel jumped untidily from the carriage. Kingston laughed internally. ‘So much for fate,’ he thought; then, calmed again, he advanced with Gundred to meet the stranger. In the flickering light, among the draughts that swirled in the high cavern of darkness, his first impression was of a limp, floppy hat, bulged, overtrodden boots, and[105] a deplorable draggled tippet. Greetings were hurriedly exchanged, and Kingston felt justified of all his hostile forebodings. Awkward, shapeless, inopportune, tawdry,—‘Contempt’ or ‘Hate’ should certainly have been his footing with regard to Isabel Darrell.

It was not till the three had arrived in the oaken parlour of the old chapel wing that Kingston could pause to take stock of the new-comer, and revise his first impression. Revise it? It needed only to be amplified, many new details to be added to the first rough sketch of his dislike, fresh lines and shades to be stippled in on the displeasing portrait.

Gundred was one of the comparatively few Englishwomen whose hat always looks as if it had grown with her hair, and forms an integral part of her head as Nature made it. Isabel, on the other hand, was one of the vast majority whose hat sits on their hair awkwardly, like a stranger, with no suggestion of anything more than an accidental and reluctant relationship painfully achieved with pins. And it was a bad hat, too—formless, flabby, large and slatternly in its lines. It made no pretence at being straight, but flapped and floundered distressingly as she walked. Clearly Isabel was one of those women who can never keep a hat straight. Regiments of daggers and skewers cannot prevent them from giving the impression of living perpetually in a gale. Their headgear is aimless, uncongenial, offering a perpetual suggestion of irrelevance. And, as the hat is symptomatic of the woman, the rest of Isabel fulfilled the dire promise of her headgear—immense, shapeless, foolishly waved and undulated, of limp, coarse black straw, with the[106] big bow of cheap satin that did not seem to belong to it, but to be stuck on casually with one of the protrusive, jetty pins that ironically pretended to keep it fixed, and, with it, sagged from side to side in a futile and disconsolately impudent manner. Isabel, throughout, was flimsy, loose, and flaccid in design. Nothing about her seemed to be in any relationship to herself or to any other detail of her dress: her attire was a mere careless aggregation of unsuitable elements, as depressing in its feeble slovenliness as a party of ill-assorted people. Her gown dragged and trailed around her here and there, suggesting that she daily tied it on anew with tapes, and secured the more salient points with safety-pins. It was not a gown—no homogeneous creation of any sane mind. It had none of a real gown’s individuality; it was a mere haphazard covering. Then her boots: again, as she sat in the settle, the lamplight caught their toes: they were both wrinkled and bulgy, an ingenious prodigy of the incorrect. As Kingston watched them in the little oaken room, the lamplight seemed to concentrate its efforts on their shapeless points: they held his gaze as if by mesmerism, and seemed to swell monstrously and waver gigantic in the gloom, till the world was swallowed up in those amorphous lumps.

It was some time before Kingston could turn his attention from the clothes to the woman that they so disastrously symbolized. Here, too, he met at every point with a violation of all his favourite canons. Isabel Darrell was evidently as untidy as her garments. Her figure was long and elastic. Only a certain arrogant untidiness of carriage could save her from the reproach of lankiness. She walked with a free unconventional swing from the hips, with a sort of bounding spring that might have been more pleasantly noteworthy had it not set her hat mopping and mowing[107] afresh at every step. At every step it jauntily jumped, up and down, and from right to left, until the attention was concentrated on its antics rather than on any beauties that might have been found in the gait which compelled them. Very different indeed was the barbaric looseness of Isabel’s movement from the neat and civilized precision of Gundred’s every motion. That she wore no stays was very evident, and the flapping freedom of her legs suggested that her nature had been built for breeches rather than for petticoats.

Her face, when you came to look at it, was not, perhaps, quite so terrible as might have been expected. In fact, Kingston found it rather disappointing in its possibilities. He consoled himself by noticing that the mouth was ridiculously wide, revealing, too, a glimpse of gold; but, still, it was an eager, mobile mouth, full of energetic vitality. Gundred’s pretty, definite lips invariably preserved their proper lines; but Isabel’s had smiles and flashes of feeling that kept no limits and obeyed no conventions. Agile, too, and expressive beyond due bounds, they had a gleaming redness that was put to shame by the decent pallor of her cousin’s. Her face was irregular, uneven, unconventional, yet not without a certain heady and unlawful charm. Like her mouth, it was so very much alive. It did not seem, as did Gundred’s, to be a moulded mask, but to be the woman’s very own naked soul. The claim of her birth was clear in the strangely delicate beauty of her ears—the only part of her that could ever, by any possibility, be called neat or dainty—and in the firm, fine curves of her nose and upper lip. The nose especially, swift and decided in its line, carried high and defiant, had the long thin nostrils, sensitive, fierce, cruel in their lifted curve, that one sees in the conspicuous women of old[108] ferocious days. Kingston and Gundred had seen them in the face of Isabel the Queen.

As for the rest of her character, a student might have found traces of uncontrolled personality in her broad forehead, heavy along the supraciliary ridge, and in the deep set of her eyes. The eyes themselves were big and ardent, of that grey-green whose precise tone can never be actually discerned. Golden at one time, emerald at another, they are always vivid, blazing, inscrutable. And over all hung in a dense cloud the heavy obscurity of her hair. Black as darkness it was, long, straight, and utterly impatient of restraint. Its arrangement was of a piece with Miss Darrell’s whole accoutrement. Evidently she was content with twirling it into a rough lump, poking it here, pinning it inadequately there. At every point it burst its bonds: loose coils and ropes were dropping and trailing unreproved; each movement, each jump of the hat, set free a fresh strand. Miss Darrell clearly counted on the hat’s pressure to preserve at least some semblance of order; but that unhappy adornment was powerless to exert any influence; it jigged and jolted as the hair dictated, and the mass on the top of her head hopped happily in a unanimous heap as she went, carrying the hat unresisting to its sway.

Meanwhile Gundred was pouring forth a stream of pleasantness. Her gentle voice ran on in an orderly melody, expounding the joy that she and Kingston felt in welcoming a kinswoman to Brakelond. And, as she spoke, not a detail of her cousin’s untidiness escaped her eye. But the pitying disapproval that she felt found no hint of expression in her voice. Tone and manner remained calm, dispassionate, colourless as ever. Isabel, for her part, had no such nice polish, and made no attempt to conceal her excitement. Her eye roved, her head went eagerly from side to side,[109] scanning her surroundings. When Gundred paused, she interposed some quick question, some keen remark on what she saw. But to her cousin’s formal little speeches she was evidently not attending. Her manners were careless as her dress.

Kingston, taking no part in the dialogue, devoted himself to watchful criticism of the enemy. He noticed how the smile flickered and flashed across her eager face, and how the fine nostrils thrilled and contracted now and again with enthusiasm. Those nostrils, he felt, were well known. Where had he seen them? He did not remember the face of the She-Wolf Queen, but, as he looked at that of Isabel, stronger and stronger grew his impression that it was no stranger. His hostile feelings grew and deepened. The face, the manner, the charm of Isabel made some vehement, inexplicable claim upon him; and in his resistance to so unreasonable a call, his attitude stiffened itself into a determined enmity. There could be nothing appealing or desirable about this sloppy, disorderly creature, yet he felt the beginning—was it the beginning or the renewal?—of a paradoxical fascination that contradicted his own most cherished sense of what was admirable. He looked again at Gundred, and strenuously admired her neat, cool beauty, the perfection of her appointments, her gestures, her inflections, her expressions. Nothing was wrong there; no criticism could be made: it was all just right; there was the admirable, incarnate.

Thence, his judgment reinforced, his gaze swept back to Isabel. There it was all just wrong: criticism could run riot; there, incarnate, was the second-rate. Second-rate? Blind instinct protested, and pointed the way to a discovery. Isabel was not second-rate. By every rule she should have been, but second-rate she was not. Strangely, unaccountably not. The[110] rules in this case seemed to have collapsed. There, at all events, was everything that normally makes up the second-rate—cheapness, tawdriness, untidiness. But these items could not be added up to make the expected total. He hated his consciousness that in her was something—something that he recognised almost as an old friend—character, enthusiasm, whatever it was, that exempted her from ordinary rules. And, as he chafed against himself for not being able to pass the whole-hearted condemnation that his fastidiousness clamoured for, so he doubly chafed against the mystery in her that imposed so illogical, so unreasonable a limitation on his judgment, and forced him to feel, in what all the laws of taste denounced, a monstrous, fantastic fascination that defied analysis and resistance.

‘So nice,’ he heard Gundred saying; ‘and then you will go with us to Ivescar, I hope—our place in Yorkshire. I have never been there yet, of course, so you and I will have great fun exploring it—yes?’

‘Too glorious for words!’ cried Isabel irrelevantly, her eyes roaming eagerly from wall to wall of the little low room. ‘I have never dreamt of a fairy-palace like this. That panelling! Oh, it’s too precious. And the beautiful dim dustiness of it all! One feels as if one were trespassing on the domain of ghosts. These tiny, crazy, oaken parlours—they must be simply soaked with memories.’

‘Nice little rooms—yes?’ said Gundred complacently, contriving to reprove such undisciplined enthusiasm by the very gentleness with which she accepted it. ‘Dusty’ did not seem to her at all a fitting compliment to pay the oldest wing of Brakelond. She was certain that the housemaids discharged their duty perfectly.

‘Nice!’ cried Isabel ardently; ‘what a ridiculous[111] word! They are the haunt of dead centuries. Don’t you feel either primeval or irreverent every time you drink a cup of tea here?’

‘Oh no,’ replied Gundred mildly. ‘I hope I should never have such dreadful feelings anywhere, and the rooms are really quite convenient. The only thing is that they are so cut off from the rest of the Castle. You’ll see to-morrow. This wing stands right away from the rest of the building, on a spur of rock that drops straight into the sea. They are all wood, these rooms—the oldest part of Brakelond.’

‘I know I thought I had walked miles before we got here,’ replied Isabel—‘miles, through the most fascinating dreadful dark halls and passages, just like the dim labyrinths in a Maeterlinck Castle.’

‘Yes,’ answered Gundred; ‘it takes the servants quite a time to answer the bell; and if one didn’t use hot irons in the urn it would be cold before it got to us. And what one would do if anybody fainted or anything I simply can’t imagine. There is just one long passage leading to these rooms, and all the servants are ever so far away in the Georgian part.’

‘Well,’ said Isabel, ‘you can make this your last resort. When the Castle is carried by invaders or catches fire, you can run out here, and shut yourselves up on your little promontory, and nobody will ever be able to get at you again.’

‘This wouldn’t be at all a good place if the Castle took fire,’ said Gundred—‘built of wood, and no other way out. But everything is very safe, I am truly thankful to say. Our great-uncle Henry saw to all that before he was taken poorly.’

For a moment she was the Mortimer, talking to a Mortimer, and leaving her husband outside the conversation. He, for his part, did not notice the recurrence of that little, proudly conscious yet unconscious[112] inflection in her voice. He was too much absorbed in watching Isabel. The returned colonial was even more obviously the daughter of Brakelond than was Gundred. The vividness of her personality was in full harmony with the stern old building to which Gundred’s nature only occasionally chimed in tune. Isabel was the contemporary of Brakelond. The contrast between the two women was that between a jungle and a Dutch garden—between a passionate, loose-petalled rose and a decorous, shapely lily. And, though the lily had its place in the pleasance of Brakelond, though the Dutch garden might be thrust into its vast scheme, yet the true frame of the Castle was the untamable wildness of the forest, its most inevitable ornament the glowing ardour of the rose. In the long list of all who had been March and Brakelond here and there a lily-life occurred, it is true; but the rose, flaming, riotous, red, must always stand for the fittest emblem of the Mortimers.

Kingston doubted; a sense of renewed acquaintance was very strong upon him. ‘No,’ he replied; ‘we have never met before. I don’t see how we can ever have met before.’

‘I believe,’ said Isabel abruptly, ‘that one has met everyone in the world before, and that every now and then one remembers something here and there. Your husband and I have probably met in a dream, or—perhaps we loved or hated each other thousands of years ago, or our ancestors did, which is the same thing.’

‘Oh, I don’t believe that,’ answered Gundred,[113] gentle, but shocked. ‘That’s evolution, isn’t it? A horrid idea—yes?’

Kingston, meanwhile, with stern loyalty, forced himself to compare the neat and ladylike blankness of Gundred’s mind with the uncontrolled wanderings of her cousin’s. He himself might have much the same ideas as Isabel, but how much more restful and proper for a woman to abide by conventional views. So he denied his own feelings, and disliked more than ever the untidy apostle who seemed to have a mind as restless as his own.

Isabel began developing her theme excitedly—talked of the innumerable ghosts of Brakelond, of inherited memories, previous existences, and the impossibility of supposing that life begins abruptly at birth and ends at death. No friend, at the best of times, to abstract discussions, Gundred had the orderly-minded wife’s intense dislike of such a display in the mouth of another, and an unmarried, woman. In a man it was permissible, if regrettable; in a wife it was reprehensible and unwomanly, though not utterly unpardonable; but in a mere maiden it was a dishonour to her sex, a brazen revolution, a discarding of that spiritual chastity which makes the really nice girl’s mind a closed and cloistered garden, impossible of access. Accordingly she made haste to nip the conversation.

‘You must be so tired,’ said Gundred, rising suddenly from her chair. ‘I am sure you will be glad to go to bed—yes?’

Isabel was one of the people whom a long journey animates and inspires. Quite careless as to smuts, dishevelled locks, and crooked hats, she was at her best in that weary hour of arrival which makes other women rush to looking-glasses. However, Gundred’s tones clearly conveyed the impression that etiquette,[114] if not common politeness, demanded agreement with her statement. Isabel admitted that she was tired accordingly, and allowed herself to be guided to her room.

Kingston and Gundred grew closer thenceforth. The warmth of their first married days seemed to have returned. Kingston, in the ardour with which he regarded his wife, was secretly indemnifying her for that obstinate folly in his own heart which refused to condemn the new-comer absolutely. He took countervailing pains to emphasize his love and admiration for Gundred. And she, realizing that he loved her more keenly, thanks to the comparison with Isabel, yielded to her own heart’s desire, passed from acquiescence to reciprocation, and was delighted to find how successfully she emerged from the comparison, and shone by the side of ragged, reckless Isabel. If Kingston could not divine, or dared not divine, the deep current of emotion that underlay his actions, how much less could such a subtlety be expected of his wife? She noticed with joy that Isabel was in every way the foil best calculated to show off her own perfections. She rejoiced to find that her husband was as keen-eyed as herself for the edifying contrast, and, though already conceiving a disapproving distrust of Isabel, believed so strongly that her presence would assure the continuation of Kingston’s renewed warmth that she decided to prolong her cousin’s visit to the uttermost.

Her motives in making the suggestion were also her husband’s in accepting them. He was glad to find himself so appreciating that nice precision of Gundred’s which he had been beginning to find monotonous; and, when she suggested that Isabel should more or less make a home with them till she married, he let himself believe that her presence would perpetually[115] fire his admiration for Gundred, and fell gladly in with his wife’s benevolent design.

‘Poor darling,’ said Gundred; ‘she wants forming so. It will be quite like training a child. I never saw anyone who was so—so—just anyhow—yes?’

‘A bit all over the place, certainly. Well, she couldn’t do better than copy you. And you might give her a hat or two. But not that one you wore in the garden this afternoon.’

‘How nice of you to notice my hats, dear! No other woman’s husband does that.’

‘I always notice everything you wear. Every line of you, every bow and ribbon. But I can’t always tell you what I think of you. You won’t often let me. You hold one at arm’s length, and make one think one’s self silly and childish. If you knew how much one loved every detail of you, you wouldn’t make one feel such a violent ass every time one tries to express what one feels.’

‘But I don’t want to make you feel an idiot, Kingston darling. It is sweet to hear you say how much you—care about me. It seems to make my whole life seem warm and comfortable. Never leave off feeling as you do. I think I am always glad to know you feel like that, and I—well, I do enjoy hearing you tell me so from time to time. But in the daylight, somehow, it seems undignified and—a little common, to exchange rhapsodies. And yet I love to think the rhapsodies are there. And—don’t you find it makes them more precious to keep them rare—yes?’

To Kingston a feeling unexpressed was apt, sooner or later, to degenerate into atrophy. But in the warmth of the moment he entered into Gundred’s[116] point of view. Her reserves seemed beautiful and well bred by the side of his deliberate recollection of Isabel and her leaping, uncontrolled enthusiasms.

‘Perhaps you are right, you exquisite thing,’ he answered. ‘But now and then you ought to let me speak. I must tell you now and then, in word as well as in deed, that you are the most exquisite thing in the world, the most dainty, the most well-finished, the most adorable thing in the whole world. Altogether without a fault or a blemish you are, like a clear polished jewel; one is for ever seeing a fresh facet of your perfection.’

‘Oh, Kingston, you really mustn’t say such things. It can’t be right. I am sure you are flattering me.’

‘Ah, that is your usual answer. You always cut me short whenever I try to tell you what I feel for you. You make love seem silly and indecent. You are always trying to nip it in the bud.’

Gundred hesitated. Then she smiled. ‘Well, Kingston dear,’ she said, ‘I have not had to nip it in the bud so often lately—no? You have not given me the chance so very often.’

‘One gets tired of being rebuffed and chilled and made to feel a demonstrative, tiresome fool.’

‘Not tiresome, darling. And, Kingston, whatever I say, you—you—well, you need not always pay quite so much attention to it, need you? One sometimes says a thing because one ought to, not because one means it—yes? I don’t think I am always quite such a chilly fish as you seem to imagine. You must not always judge by what one says. I—well, I love everything you say and do, dear. Don’t ever leave off because you think I don’t approve. I do, Kingston, whatever I may say—I approve, because it is you. Only you must not expect me to say so in the daytime, with the sun showing up everything, and servants[117] all over the place. I hardly like to say it, even here in the dark, with nobody to see. It seems to put me into your power too much.’

‘Into my power! Well, I am in yours. That is what marriage is. I am between your hands—between those wonderful little cool hands of yours, Gundred. What will you do with me? Crumple me up and throw me away, or drop me on the rocks, as if I were a toad? That is what your civilized daytime manner seems to threaten every now and then. Or will you keep me safe, and stroke my fur the right way, and keep me warm?’

‘I like to hear that my stupid hands can do such wonderful things. Do you really admire my hands, Kingston dear?’

‘They are just carved ivory fresh from the hands of God. There is nothing human or hot or earthly about them. They are fresh and calm, and without spot or frailty. They are the most lovely hands that ever woman had.’

‘Poor Isabel? With her hands like a pair of boxing-gloves? Don’t let us talk about great floppy Isabel now. It is only you I want to talk about. You are the only person in the world.’

‘Oh, you mustn’t be so unkind about poor Cousin Isabel,’ protested Gundred, purring with unconscious pleasure. ‘You must remember she did not make herself. And think how tiresome it would be if there were nobody different from me in the whole world. It takes all sorts to make a world, dear, yes?’

‘No, it doesn’t, wonder-lady. The whole world is nothing but a huge infinite room of mirrors, reflecting you, always and everywhere. Hundreds, thousands, millions of you, that is what I see in the world. How can I make you believe me?’

To make one’s self believe one’s own statements is, unfortunately, a far easier task than to make other people believe them. However, Gundred’s mind asked nothing better than to be convinced, and the roseate state of her rapture was far above analysis and metaphysics.

‘I am sure you would not say such a thing if you did not mean it, dear,’ she said. ‘It is a beautiful thought of yours. But you must not grudge poor Isabel a home with us until she marries. After all, whatever her shortcomings, poor darling, she is my cousin. And so it won’t be long before she marries. It’s not as if she were just nobody in particular.’

Kingston, convinced that the presence of Isabel reinforced his admiration for Gundred, made no opposition.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose it will make much difference to us. She is not the kind of woman who is likely to come between husband and wife.’ He laughed.

‘I am certain she is not, poor darling!’ assented Gundred. ‘We must try to pull her into shape and teach her better,’ she added, with meditative earnestness, as if coming between husband and wife were the especial object of a woman’s life and training. ‘And yet, I believe there are men who admire that sort of girl, Kingston. I never can understand a man liking a woman who cannot put on a hat properly, but everybody says they do. I remember Mary Capplethwaite; she was neater than a new pin, with her hair most beautifully done, and the sweetest little face. But that did not prevent her husband from running away with Mildred Gunston, who always looked as if she had been left out all night in the wind and the rain. Of course, dear Mary may have got a little monotonous, but, still, I do think it is a great thing to be tidy and nice—yes?’

‘That is all a man asks of a woman,’ answered Kingston. ‘And one might ask it for ever of your cousin Isabel, and never get it, I imagine. One knows that type of woman so well. The idea is that inferior clothes show a superior soul. The poor things believe that they reveal the beauty, and the freedom, and the preciousness of their individuality by neglecting everything that makes the ordinary woman desirable. They think they are above using the means that no really clever woman ever disdains. They are the half-baked, the half-clever, the weak, feeble copies of the strong-minded, strong-souled creatures they imitate and think they are. One meets them at Oxford; the place swarms with them. They sham genius by means of untidiness. Half of them are tailor-made and half of them are æsthetic—in blue plush sleeves and moulting terra-cotta-coloured plumes, or in short skirts and boat-shaped hats with a cock’s feather on one side. How well I know it; and that is your Cousin Isabel.’

‘You really mustn’t dislike the poor darling so dreadfully, dear. We must make her happy with us. But I am so glad that you agree with me about that kind of woman. I never can see why one’s hair should not be properly done, however clever one is—yes? I have never wanted to be dishevelled or slovenly. We must gradually get poor Isabel into the way of thinking about her appearance a little more. After all, she ought to look at least well-bred, dear, and even now she has one or two good features.’

But Kingston would not agree. He grew forcible on the new-comer’s imperfections, and would allow her no saving grace of line or carriage. She was all wrong. He insisted on the fact, proved it again and again, revelled in it, and turned it to the glorification of his wife. Gundred, for her part, made a weak[120] defence; without quite knowing it, she drew joy and sustenance from her husband’s condemnation of her cousin. It seemed an earnest of his love’s ardour. So she merely palliated Isabel’s faults, and was more glad to challenge admiration for herself by their discovery than sorry that such blemishes should be brought to light. Sweetly and lovingly did she encourage her husband’s criticisms with her mild protests. Her line was to admit her cousin’s shortcomings, but to declare that she loved her notwithstanding. Thus she preserved the full delight of the comparison, while at the same time preserving also the proper loyalty of a Mortimer for a Mortimer. But her daylight dignity had melted; the loyalty of a Mortimer was felt to be now subordinate to that of a wife. Gundred had the happy power of making a virtue of everything she did, no matter what inconsistencies her actions might seem to involve. Husband and wife continued to make love over the faults of their cousin, and it was decided with joy that the woman whose weaknesses could be turned to such delectable account must on no account be allowed to deprive them of her company. Isabel was to live with them, to go with them to Ivescar, to serve as a perpetual whetstone for Kingston’s admiration of Gundred. Some day she would undoubtedly marry, but meanwhile Gundred’s kindness should achieve the double end of giving her cousin a home and turning her cousin’s existence to a profitable purpose.

The next morning Isabel was as late as Kingston. Gundred condoned the offence on the score of fatigue, but Kingston regarded it with that severity we always show to our own pet faults when we meet them in[121] people we dislike. Daylight added nothing and softened nothing in his first impressions as to his wife’s cousin. Still untidy, still disorderly, still ebullient, Isabel was as reprehensible as ever in all she did and said, and Kingston’s irritation grew as he noticed how often she said what he would have said himself, how she caught his own flying thoughts while Gundred’s mind was still loitering in their track, or busy with the teapot; how unable his instinct still was to endorse the opinion of his reason that Isabel was altogether unworthy of notice. Without seeming to, without caring to, she claimed his notice, insisted on it, held it; and as the day went by, he found himself looking at her again and again with reluctant interest. Each time he forced himself to notice a loose strand of hair, a brooch unfastened, a hook and eye gone wrong; but not the most strenuous disapproval of details could kill his angry curiosity as to the personality of which they made part. As she talked, her wide mouth, with its scarlet lips, flickered and flashed at every feeling, and her great eyes blazed at him, now green, now grey, now gold, till the white was visible all round, and he felt himself bound in the magnetism of their stare. Isabel had accepted Gundred’s proposal with equanimity. Yes, she would make a part of their household gladly, until such time, she said, as she married or eloped. What Gundred had meant—at least, in part—as a favour done to the poor colonial cousin, the poor colonial cousin accepted with the high calm of perfect equality, easily, gracefully, and without a second thought or any emphasis of gratitude. Gundred felt that her cousin’s manner of receiving favours lacked something; she made them seem mere services; and her words, too, sounded flippant and offhand to Gundred, who clung to small politenesses and the proper observances of courtesy.

They were sitting out, all three, in the small square garden. The day was sultry and mysterious, with curling heavy masses of white and fawn-coloured cloud towering high over the rim of a pallid sea. Behind, the mass of the Castle was of a bronzy-rose in the strange light, dreamlike and splendid. In bed and border no flower stirred, and the scent of roses rose straight into the leaden air like so many spires of faint invisible smoke. They sat looking out towards the edge of the world, the unwavering dim line of water that stretched beyond the old wing of King Mark’s Chapel. Above all the rest of the Castle Isabel loved to look at that old haphazard rickle of rooms, that crazy hive of long-dead activities, which stood out from the rest of the building on its defiant promontory over the sea. It was a little barnacle, growing off the hulk of Brakelond, and attached only by the slender stalk of one narrow passage, at whose outer end was its cluster of buildings, the low squat chapel, then the rooms where Kingston, Gundred, and Isabel had their dwelling, and, above, a second story, a series of low rooms at present uninhabited.

‘Ivescar?’ said Isabel. ‘Ivescar—oh yes, thank you very much, Gundred. I shall be ever so pleased to go to Ivescar. Oh, those little rooms of ours are too delicious for words. And there’s no ivy too; that would make them conventional. I love them. I don’t think the Castle does, though. They seem too proud to belong to it. They keep themselves to themselves. The ghosts are happier there than in the big tower. My room was simply crammed with them, Gundred. All last night they hovered about.’

‘You don’t say so!’ exclaimed Gundred. ‘How dreadfully inconvenient! I do hope they did not keep you awake, dear. Do you really believe in them? Surely not—no? One believes that God would never allow such things. Anyhow, we must be very careful[123] not to let the servants hear about them, or all the housemaids will be giving notice. But I was talking about Ivescar. We thought of going there in quite a few days now. The summer is getting on, and Kingston wants to show me to all our people there—tenants and so forth. One feels it rather one’s duty—yes?’

‘Ivescar?’ repeated Isabel; ‘I don’t think I am very much interested in Ivescar, am I? Of course, I am looking forward to going there. But it cannot be anything like this. And I belong here. I am sure I do. It is not anything like this, Gundred?’

‘Oh, dear me, no, of course not. There isn’t anything like this anywhere. Ivescar is just a nice modern place, large and comfortable, but quite modern. I haven’t been there yet, but Kingston has told me all about it. His father bought it, estate and all, when he married—didn’t he, Kingston?’

‘Yes,’ replied her husband; ‘he chose a county as far away as possible from all his own people in Kent. They quarrelled with him when he married, and now none of them will have anything to do with us. So he thought when it came to settling down as a landed proprietor and all the rest of it—my mother’s pet fancy, that was—that he would go right away to the other corner of England. So now our own family, the Dadds, are still sitting in Darnley-on-Downe, watching the coal-pits that support the head of the clan at the other end of the country. It is a quaint irony.’

‘Haven’t you any exciting possibilities among your relations?’ asked Isabel, turning to him. ‘They sound a little stodgy, to say nothing of the fact that they have all cut you.’

‘Well, there is a mystery, I believe. An uncle, a brother of my father’s, who ran away to Japan, and is now a Buddhist Abbot or Bishop, or something of the kind. But for all the excitement one is ever likely to[124] get out of him, he might as well never have been born. He is twelve thousand miles away, and we shall probably never set eyes on him again.’

Gundred looked a little pained, and made haste to divert the conversation from this irreligious topic, just as Isabel was about to burst out into enthusiastic curiosity.

‘So Mr. Darnley bought this delightful estate in Yorkshire, and there is no use thinking of unpleasant things in the past. Nothing could sound nicer than Ivescar. Describe it, Kingston.’

‘Oh, well, it sits right up among the fells and moors, just under one of the big mountains, in a tiny little bare glen all of its own. It is a stern, splendid country, very large and stiff and barren, up at Ivescar, and then, down below, there is a great fat valley, all smooth and smiling, that rolls away westward to the sea. There are jolly rivers and waterfalls all about in the hills, too, and wonderful caves and crevasses and pitfalls. It’s quite unlike anything else in England, and it grows on one in the most extraordinary way. There is something very primeval and mysterious about it.’

‘And capital shooting,’ added Gundred. ‘Such nice moors, they tell me, Isabel. We will go up and have lunch with the guns as often as we can—yes?’

‘Yes, the moors are gorgeous,’ said Kingston. ‘I don’t shoot myself; I have given it up. But the moors are certainly gorgeous. One can lose one’s self on them for hours, and probably fall into potholes and things.’

‘Oh, you must take up your shooting again, dear,’ protested Gundred, who had the usual tender-hearted woman’s ambition that her husband should destroy innocent lives as lavishly and enthusiastically and successfully as fashion demands. ‘You must certainly take it up again. I do think it such a good thing for a[125] man to have some interest in life, don’t you, Isabel—something for him to do in the country—yes?’

Isabel abruptly let this uninteresting development of the conversation lapse unanswered.

‘The country does sound attractive,’ she conceded, turning eager eyes on Kingston. ‘And you talk of it as if you belonged there. But you don’t, of course.’

‘No, but my dear mother has spent so many years pretending to that the pretence is second nature by now. Dear mother! it used to be the funniest thing in the world to see her playing at the Old Established Family. It was her great ambition, and she drilled my poor father day and night into acting the squire. By now I verily believe she has persuaded herself that we have been settled at Ivescar for half a dozen centuries at least. She goes about among the tenants with the most splendid air of having known them all, and all their families, since the days of Edward the Confessor. There’s nothing so genuine as a good imitation—except that the good imitation is generally too good, and overdoes itself.’

‘Well,’ said Isabel, ‘you have fired me with a longing for the mountains and the caves and waterfalls. But what is the house itself like?’

At this point Gundred caught them up again. She had dropped out of the dialogue in a twinge of decorous annoyance at the cavalier way in which Isabel had ignored her opening on sport and shelved the conversation.

‘A very nice house, Kingston tells me,’ she put in. ‘Built about a hundred years ago. Very comfortable and convenient.’

‘Ah, I know,’ interrupted Isabel. ‘That tells me everything. All of the best Early-Victorian Tudor. Everything solid and handsome and expensive, with a picture of your husband’s father in the hall, life-size,[126] carrying a gun and a dead rabbit. I can imagine Ivescar—just a house—just a thing with doors and roofs and windows—simply a place to live in. Now, this, this’—she waved her hands comprehensively—‘this isn’t a place to live in. It’s a place that lives on people. Here it’s the people that are subordinate to the building. At Ivescar nobody cares about the house except for the people. The house only exists to keep their feet warm, and send them up their dinner all cosy and hot from the kitchen. Yes, Ivescar is a place to live in, and this is a place to die in. One can’t imagine one’s self dying in an ordinary house. Death is too big a thing to come under its nice squatty ceilings. One feels the whole thing would fly in flinders; Death would lift the roof off, and burst the walls, if he came in. He is so large. But one could die here, and the setting would not be a bit mean or unsuited to the drama. Any nice, carpety, cushiony building does to live in; one wants a really-truly house to die in—a place where one can receive the Great Visitor without feeling cramped or undignified or cheap. Imagine dying in a chintz bedroom, with enamelled tin baths and foot-pans and hot-water cans.’

‘Lots of people do,’ protested Kingston. ‘I suppose they have the Elizabethan feeling that the play is more important than its setting.’

‘Oh, but they don’t die at all,’ cried Isabel. ‘Very few people are great and holy enough to die. Nine people out of ten just change shapes and go on again. You can tell that by the fuss they make. One always fusses more when one harries about at a junction than when one arrives at a terminus. Most people, when they come to die, are simply getting out of one train and into another on their journey. Arriving at the end is a much more simple solemn business. That is what I mean by dying. And for that one needs a[127] splendid stage. It is a far leap into Nirvana, and if one is to make it, one wants a good take-off, a running jump from a strong springy board, with nothing to trammel one and lessen one’s movements. To hop along into another mean little manifestation, as most people do, requires very little outside help. It is hardly more than a shuffle from one bed to another. One does not want any spring-board for that.’

‘I expect,’ said Kingston, ‘that a vast number of quiet good people reach Nirvana without big jumps or spring-boards, or anything of the sort. They go on living obscure, kindly lives, and then, at the end of everything, they just gently slip away and cease, and enter Nirvana without any splash at all.’

‘Ah, those are the people who go on the great journey without luggage. But the average person takes any amount of packages and parcels with him, all kinds of fears and fusses and hopes and terrors. And the reason why he makes such a to-do whenever he has to change trains or carriages is because he is so afraid he may leave one of the precious bundles behind. He thinks they are his individuality, just as a decent woman thinks that her clothes are hers. In fact, scarcely anyone can conceive an idea of himself without his trappings. And so, all along the Great Railway, you have people wailing and shrinking at the thought of death. They know, in their heart of hearts, that at each change they leave one or two of the bundles behind—a fear or a hate or a habit—and they cannot understand that they can continue to be themselves without the bundles. They think, as I said, that the bundles are an essential part of themselves; whereas it is not till one has gradually shed all one’s bundles that one can hope to arrive, one’s own real unhampered self, at the Terminus. It is only the Self that is meant to arrive, not the bundles. They are the common property[128] of all, like clothes and rugs and umbrellas, but each man’s self is a lone, isolated thing.’

She spoke with her usual fire, urgently, with hands lavishly waved, and blazing eyes. Gundred, quite out of the talk, left behind in the lower world, looked on with bewildered disapproval.

‘Travelling is a great trouble—yes?’ she hazarded. ‘I always have as little luggage as possible.’

Kingston dropped back into Gundred’s world with a crash. He had been interested and uplifted on the wings of his cousin’s fantasies. He could meet her flying in that empyrean of ideas. He loved the vague, dim regions of her thought. Gundred, without clipping his wings, kept him tethered to her own perch. Happily she clucked and hopped with him in the glittering cage—a hen-soul yoked with a restless hawk’s. Now, out of the free air beyond, had appeared a second hawk, and insensibly Kingston’s wings began to flutter uneasily for a flight.

‘Yes,’ he said rather savagely, answering an unspoken question. ‘No wonder poor Gundred can’t understand such mists and inanities. Have you any idea what you mean, Isabel?’

His irritation was all against Gundred’s inadequacy. It showed her almost in an inferior light. Characteristically, though, he diverted his annoyance to the score of his cousin’s mysticism, and unburdened on her the feelings that his wife had engendered.

‘Idea?’ replied Isabel scornfully. ‘No; why should I? If anyone ever stopped to think what their words really meant, and refused to speak until they had found out, why, no one would ever open their lips again. Man sends the words, and Heaven, we trust, sends the meaning. I have vague notions of a meaning very far away above and beyond all the harassing futilities of language, beyond the domain of grammar and derivations[129] and split infinitives and metaphors and things. But of course one can’t hit it; one can only aim at it. One shoots off into the clouds in the hope of sometimes winging a truth. There’s no use sitting and aiming, aiming, aiming; one has to up with the gun of one’s mind and blaze away. Nine times out of ten one misses dead, but bit by bit one gets practice, just as in earthly shooting, until at last one has attained a good average level of success, though I am afraid till the end of the chapter one only wings Truth, never gets it fair and square in the heart.’

‘Shall we go in and have tea—yes?’ said Gundred, with gentle dignity, into which was mixed a fine proportion of reproof. She rose and moved towards the door. Isabel looked after her.

‘I have shocked Gundred,’ she said candidly and callously. ‘I suppose I was bound to. She is too fascinating and pretty for words, but I don’t feel, somehow, as if her soul and mine were really cousins. I’m sorry if I have hurt her. It is all my fault. One is such a fool. One gets interested in an idea, and off one goes at score, and nothing else matters in the world but the hunting of it down. You are like that, too, though you are pretending hard not to be. Why do you? Are you trying to match Gundred? You’ll never be able to, you know.’

She looked up at him, laughing. Her face had a radiant, exasperating vitality. In that moment he disliked her more even for what she had than for what she lacked.

‘Don’t see how you can possibly tell that,’ he said, standing over her, with his hand on the back of his wife’s chair; ‘and I don’t see that it matters—to you, at all events.’

‘A perfect match,’ continued Isabel, pursuing her thought with no attention to Kingston—‘a perfect[130] match—I suppose it is when neither husband nor wife is a match for the other. No, it doesn’t matter a bit. Only I am interested. I always am. I have only just arrived from the back of beyond, and yet I feel as if I had known you both—known you, at least, for half a dozen centuries. I can see all sorts of odd things in your mind—things that you have no idea of. You are quite naked to me as I look at you.’

Kingston conceived an instant red desire to shake and maltreat this insolent barbarian.

Angrily, against his will, he stopped and turned towards her. Her voice compelled him. Unknown voices were answering her in his heart.

‘Well?’ he asked, trying to mitigate the animosity that surged within him, no less at her demeanour than at the power she exerted.

‘Don’t be so angry with me,’ she replied; ‘or don’t be angrier than you can help. I am a moral hooligan; I am quite irresponsible. So you need not think me more odious than I am. Honestly I mean no harm. But one must amuse one’s self.’

‘Necessarily by annoying everyone else?’ asked Kingston as amiably as he could.

‘I don’t mean to,’ said Isabel; ‘nobody ever cared less about annoying people than I do.’ She rose swiftly, with a certain lithe splendour of movement. ‘Listen,’ she said in a new voice of seriousness, her eyes on a level with his: ‘I have an impulse. I will tell you the truth, as far as I can. Perhaps you think that what I say and do is simply bad manners and sheer native offensiveness. It isn’t that. It is that I[131] don’t care—neither what happens, nor what I say, nor what anyone else in all the world may say or think or do. I don’t care a damn. Not a single solitary. I never have. And, of course, that simplifies conduct immensely, though I admit it may make one a little trying to live with at times. Do you understand?’

She spoke calmly, indifferently. But in every word she spoke he could hear the note of a perfect pride, of a pride so intense as to be quite careless, quite impersonal, quite unself-conscious. It was true that she did not care. But her indifference was based on no obtrusive conceit, on no selfish ill-breeding, no instinct for flamboyance and advertisement. It was the deep base of her nature, a serene impermeability to other people’s opinion, and Gundred had something of the same quality; but Gundred was indifferent because her pride made her feel superior to all the world. The pride of Isabel was that higher, more terrific pride which leaps beyond a mere comparison of one’s self with others, and is simply an all-absorbing sense of individuality. Whether Isabel was superior to others she never cared to stop and consider; all she cared for was the thought that she was she and they were they. The comparison was still there, but implicit, subconscious, tacit. Her personality defied criticism by ignoring it. Kingston suddenly found the serene audacity of her attitude a challenge to his interest.

To wake feeling in such a Stylites of egoism, to win her praise or her condemnation, would be a task more piquant to a professed emotionalist than any seduction to a sensualist. To seduce the mind of Isabel, to draw it down from its heights, and force it to feel, fear, or hate—at least, to abandon its indifferentism, there was a test of skill. Had the indifference been a pose, the task would have been cheap, lacking in adventure. That it was mere undecorated nature was at once the[132] defender’s great strength and the besieger’s strong attraction. It challenged arrogantly, irresistibly. Then Kingston remembered how much he disliked his cousin, and refused to hear the call. Strenuously he shut his ears to it, and gave her appeal a colourless answer.

‘In some ways,’ he said, ‘I suppose it is as well not to care what people think or say. But the position is always an ungraceful one, and is certain ruin to one’s hopes of popularity. However, if you don’t care, of course, popularity does not matter to you, either one way or the other.’

‘No,’ said Isabel; ‘one demands it, and expects it. And if one doesn’t get it as one’s right, one refuses to accept it as anyone’s favour. And obviously the lack of it can make no real difference. How can unpopularity affect one’s opinion of one’s self? And that is the only thing in the world that really does matter. By that alone one rises or falls, is glorified or condemned.’ She spoke quietly and carelessly, as much to herself as to him or the world at large. Just so, in such cool, insolently indifferent tones might Queen Isabel have discussed her own attitude from a dispassionate external point of view.

‘Incidentally,’ replied Kingston, ‘one runs the risk of giving any amount of pain to any number of inoffensive people.’

‘Now you are trying to make me feel a brute,’ answered Isabel. ‘But it is no good. If they are hurt, it is their own fault. Pain always implies some weakness in the person who suffers it. And you can’t make one person responsible for the inherent weaknesses of another, just because his action has stirred certain hidden symptoms to life. You might just as well scold me if I gave a tea-party, and somebody with advanced consumption got a cold at it, and died off. The disease was in him, not in me or my tea-party.[133] And moral suffering is the symptom of a sort of moral phthisis. Only the diseased can suffer. So, as long as my actions are sane and healthy in themselves, you must not call them names if they happen to stumble on weak spots and corns in other people’s natures. I never knew the corns were there. I simply went my way. Everyone has a right to. Everyone must. And one is only responsible to one’s self, and only responsible for one’s self. So much for your accusation of hurting other people.’

‘I never heard anything so callous in my life. If you were as bad as your words you would be a perfect fiend. But, mercifully, everyone in the world is better than their words, and worse than their thoughts.’

‘Everyone thinks himself that. The only difference between the sentimentalist and the realist is that the sentimentalist’s reality is warm and beautiful, while the realist’s is glacial and hideous. And they are neither of them real realities, either. The real reality has something of both, and a great deal more than either or both together. Each view is only a glimpse of the great whole.’

‘Yes; that’s not a bad idea. However old one may grow or think one’s self, one remains astonishingly much of a baby in the face of the immensities. I suppose to take any point of view is childish. One ought to take them all together, all at once—be a drunkard and a teetotaler and a bishop and a butcher and a thief and a saint all at one moment in one’s own person. That is the only way to get the perfect knowledge. And that, I suppose, is what the idea of God is. To understand everything by being everything. However, as that is so, I don’t think one need be[134] ashamed of being a baby with lop-sided, partial, babyish views and fanaticisms.’

‘Perhaps not. But you seemed to be proud of it. There is a great difference between being proud and not being ashamed.’

‘Yes, Kingston, there is. And I admit it. And I give in. And I am defeated. And I want my tea. And I will try to behave prettily. And be an altruist with the tea-cake instead of an individualist.’

Concessions occasionally mollify. But Isabel made hers so abruptly, so flippantly that it seemed as if she threw up the battle not conscientiously, but because she no longer thought it worth the trouble of fighting. Irritation swept over Kingston at being thus cheated like a child—played with, flouted, and put by as soon as the game had begun to weary the older player. His little victory lost all its satisfaction. He attributed his exasperation entirely to the impudent frivolity of Isabel and not at all to any underlying eagerness and enjoyment that he might have been beginning to develop in the dialogue. Outraged reasonableness swelled his demeanour as he turned in silence and led the way towards the Castle. Suddenly he felt a hand on his arm.

‘Do be friends,’ said Isabel softly and earnestly. ‘We have been friends for such ages in the past, I expect, that it would be a pity to begin badly in the present. I am only a barbarian, not a venomous toad. So do be friends.’

‘Yes,’ said Isabel—‘yes,’ she repeated slowly, as if surprised at herself.

‘Soberly and seriously?’ inquired her cousin. ‘I mean, is it a thing you honestly want? I thought you cared about nobody’s opinion.’

‘I didn’t,’ she answered, ‘and I don’t. And yet just this I do care for. I want you to be friends with me. In my heart I am friends with you already—greater friends than I could ever have believed. Why should I be, why should I want to be? I have no idea. Well, what do you say?’

‘Yes, if you will,’ replied Kingston. ‘Why shouldn’t we be friends? We count as cousins.’

‘You don’t like me yet, of course,’ said Isabel calmly. ‘But, then, nobody does at first. All I want is that you shouldn’t be hostile and stick out bristles and resist. The rest will come.’

Kingston’s consciousness was in a whirl. He knew that he thoroughly disliked this saucer-eyed, eager creature. Everything she said and did aroused in him pulses of animosity so keen as to be almost physical. On the other hand, in some strange way, she allured, fascinated, excited him. She led his instincts captive, while his judgment went charging down upon her undaunted. Irritating though she might be, she was neither stodgy nor boring. His mind seemed to pringle under her influence, fiercely yet thrillingly, like a numb, constricted limb awakening from its sleep. Compared to Gundred, she was as brandy to milk. Of course Kingston loved the milk and loathed the brandy. But loathsome though it might be, he could not deny that the brandy was more potent, more stirring, more exciting than the milk. Since the brandy was forcing itself into his cup, there was no need to throw it roughly away; he might sip, under protest, now and then, without danger of contracting any disloyal craving for brandy instead of milk.

‘Very well,’ he said; ‘let us be friends, Isabel. One can’t control one’s love or liking. But everything comes to those who wait. So we will be friends.’

‘Control?’ she said. ‘Our feelings control us, if they are real feelings. The only real feelings are those that are uncontrollable.’

‘I am the son of many generations of unreal feelings then. There are no love stories in my quiet family—at least, only one, and that was a mad freak.’

‘There are no others in mine,’ said Isabel, ‘except hate stories, perhaps. And I suppose they are the same thing, only turned wrong way out.’

‘I believe that real love is quite calm and level, you know,’ explained Kingston. ‘Your great blazing stories are built of passion, not of love. A big love is very quiet, and goes on peacefully from day to day, almost monotonous in its imperceptible development.’

‘It sounds too like the kingdom of heaven to be very satisfactory on earth,’ said Isabel.

‘Anyhow,’ replied Kingston, hotly defending what nobody had attacked; ‘I say that the happy concert of lives and marriages—ideal lives and marriages—is based on tranquil harmonies, not on melodramatic chords.’

Isabel smiled quietly. ‘Why are we talking about love?’ she asked. ‘It was friendship we were settling on.’

The friendship between Kingston and Isabel did not progress apace. Its development was jerky, uneven, unsatisfactory. Kingston was at once restrained and spurred on by resentment. He resented the fact of the friendship, was perpetually reluctant, suspicious, filled with a strange, alert uneasiness. Isabel, for her part, found the relation less careless and smooth than[137] her friendships usually were. It brought an usually poignant satisfaction, and, in revenge, an unusually poignant feeling of strain and annoyance at Kingston’s refusal to meet her half-way. Normally she should not have cared a straw—by all her rules she did not care a straw—yet, none the less, the guarded hostility with which he met her advances stimulated and exasperated her to the point of defiance.

The two women did not find, as their acquaintance grew, that any intimacy ripened between them. Gundred retained her desire to keep Isabel by her side as a foil, but not even the ardour that the contrast was to keep alive in Kingston could quite reconcile her to the mental eccentricities and untidinesses of Isabel. In Gundred’s mind nothing was ever disorderly or misplaced; second-hand ideas lay neatly labelled in rows; the chaos of Isabel’s thoughts, her incessant flurry of pursuit after some wild notion or other, her ransackings of her intellectual store to find some lost fancy, to run down some far-fetched theory, were so many evidences, to Gundred, of her cousin’s unmethodical, ill-balanced nature. All thought, to Gundred, was clear, simple, obvious; she never entertained any opinion that had not been sanctioned by fashion and much previous use; she could not imagine why anyone should accept new notions, much less go wild-goose-chasing them up and down the cloudy domain of ideas. What had been thought before by wise, good teachers was quite good enough for her; to want more, to ask questions, to test ‘truths’ by reason, seemed forward, ill-bred, and unwomanly. She put down all Isabel’s vagaries of mind to her disastrous colonial education, and believed at first that a few weeks’ association with ‘nice people’—the nice people being, in the context, herself—would cure her cousin of such vagabond tendencies. So by smiles and indifference[138] she repressed Isabel’s ebullitions; and when she found that her conduct had no effect beyond excluding herself from the conversation, she resigned herself calmly to the inevitable.

Irritated at first by Isabel’s mental jumps and flights, Gundred, after her attempts at repression had failed, grew tired and bored, made no effort to follow her cousin’s mental movements, and, with a mildly reproving air which nobody noticed, stood graciously aloof from Isabel’s dialogues with Kingston. She let them talk, and, by way of tacitly rebuking her cousin, ostentatiously ceased to take any interest in what they said.

With Kingston, as was inevitable, this course insensibly began to shift her relationship. As the days went by, he talked more and more to Isabel, until by degrees she became insensibly the target for everything he said. Imperceptibly he grew to ignore his wife, thanks to the attitude that she assumed. However, she was perfectly, increasingly happy. For, as his intellectual intimacy with Isabel advanced, he grew more and more the warm lover of his wife. And she, the apparently cold and ethereal, by the irony of her own limitations, came at last to base the triumph of her wifehood on the strength of her husband’s embraces. His raptures, his compliments, his kisses, grew in number and ardour; she had her heart’s desire. No thought of jealousy could ever have approached her; for intellectual intimacy she had no taste, no wish. As long as she had Kingston’s arms, Isabel was perfectly welcome to a monopoly of his tongue. She, Gundred, was his wife, and nothing could alter the glory of that. She triumphed in the successful development of their relations.

That men like to chatter and overflow and sweat off in talk the superfluous energy of their minds she knew[139] to be an accepted fact. Some women are born for men to talk to, but the ultimate triumph belongs to the wife, the woman who orders the man’s dinner, sees to his comforts, has him for her property at bed and board. As long as his body remains faithful and loyal, who cares where his undisciplined mind may go roving from hour to hour? So Gundred was glad to compound for Kingston’s increasing affection by welcoming the distractions in which his mind indulged, and even, in the rare moments when she could divert her attention from her own bliss, was vaguely sorry for Isabel, reduced to so poor and undignified a rôle as that of wash-pot to the intellectual offscourings of a married man. But Isabel, after all, had brought the humiliation on herself, and Gundred soon returned to the contemplation of the mastery which she had established over her husband’s affection by providing him with someone to talk to. Wifely tact, she felt, had been splendidly justified. She never stopped to consider that the means by which she had achieved her end in themselves betrayed the disastrous weakness of her position. Her idea of temptation was limited to physical allurements; husbands, she knew, were only led away by bad, beautiful women, never by untidy, talkative ones. Her position was absolutely safe and dominant; the more freely her husband’s mind was allowed to wander and kick up its heels, the more securely was her husband’s body bound in the bonds of its allegiance. Infidelity is only a matter of the flesh. Without physical desire there can be no adultery.

So passed the remaining days of their stay at Brakelond. Then the three removed to Ivescar, and, with the setting, the colour of the whole drama changed. Human life and death was the keynote of Brakelond; its Castle seemed built and mortared with the tears and tragedies of innumerable generations. Every stone was[140] permeated with the history of ten thousand men and women, who, through eight centuries, had brought to bear upon the building the fire and fury of their individual existences. Outside the walls rolled down the skirt of forest, and below lay the sea; but forest and sea were subordinate in the scheme, decorations and embroideries on the main theme. And the main theme was the incessant human note that resounded in every detail of the old tragic Castle.

At Ivescar, on the other hand, man was a new-comer, an accident, a thing irrelevant and even incongruous. High up in its narrow mountain-valley lay the house, amid a plantation of stunted, wind-swept pines. It had the air of having been put there, not of having grown. Brakelond had sprung and waxed from the rock it stood on; it was the last crowning development of the land it dominated. Ivescar was an artificial product, unrelated to the soil, the work of alien brains and alien natures. Twenty centuries might pass over it without bringing it into any closer kindred with its surroundings, without softening the raw, crude note of novelty that it would always strike among the solemn eternal hills. It was a large sandstone building, of the most solid Early-Victorian Tudor design, as Isabel’s instinct had foretold. In the middle rose a big square tower, finished off with a stone lacework of circles and spikes. It had a flagstaff, a cupola with a bell in it, and a huge conservatory that had been put there because it was expensive to set up, and now remained there because it would be expensive to remove. On three sides of it stretched a bare lawn, and on the fourth its less honourable quarters were shrouded in sparse plantation, created at great outlay, with much difficulty and no success. The one level space of ground in the glen had been picked out, all its irregularities trimmed away, and the pretence of a[141] park elaborately maintained under the mountain-slopes that rose stark and stern on either side. A little river struggled down from the end of the valley, and found its way among stones and mosses through the young woodland. Where it passed within sight of the house, at the other side of the flat lawn, it had been civilized and sedulously constrained into decorum. Its banks had been widened, made uniform and flat. Dammed at one end, it had been made to stretch out into a square shallow lake, whose grey and steely surface reflected the staring yellow of the house against the grey hills and sky behind, with a dreariness impossible to conceive. Coarse, rank grasses grew along its margin, and its shoals, malodorous and muddy, were abristle with melancholy rushes.

Behind and on either side of Ivescar rose the fells—steep slopes of grass and scree, carrying up to the white precipices that hemmed the little valley in. High above these again, but out of sight, rose the mass of the great mountains, each standing on its plinth of limestone. Here and there the line of a wall betrayed the existence of humanity, but otherwise, except for the house in its artificial wood, with its artificial lawn and lake, the landscape utterly ignored the world of men. It was grand, primeval, solitary, remote from all the small mortal concerns of life. As it had been since the dawn of history, so it remained to-day. Peoples had come and gone, dynasties towered and crashed; but the little glen under the shadow of the Simonstone had wrought out its own fate untroubled by the clatter and tinkle of collapsing empires. Silent and serene as it stood, the finger of man had never scarred its tranquillity, the voice of man had never broken into the current of its dream. And yet, in the midst of this immortal solitude, the fancy of a rich manufacturer had planted this insolent mushroom of a[142] house, this brazen assertion of a fact which the hills had always chosen to ignore, though Celt and Saxon, Dane and Norman had vainly striven to enforce it on their consciousness, as they fought out their ephemeral fights across the flanks of Ravensber, or made their settlement on the flat crown of the Simonstone. The valley and the mountains had taken their unruffled course. Had the house been less clamorous, the assault on their notice less insistent, they might in time have come to assimilate the signs and the presence of man. A quieter dwelling might insensibly have melted into their scheme, have been merged into the vast individuality of the hills. But Ivescar was too flaunting, too blatant, too eternally new. It compelled attention, was an unceasing penny-whistle across the great harmony of silence. And so, unable to make Ivescar one with themselves, the mountains took the only other course, refusing all compromise, and forced the incongruity of the building upon the world’s notice, by the blank contempt with which they ignored it. Their unnoticing disdain made its yellow stones, its pretentious tower appear even more undignified than ever, emphasizing every detail of their parvenu richness, their uneasy vulgarity. Man at Brakelond was the dominant note of Castle and country; here the note was an isolated discord. Man was nothing, his works an offence, amid the enormous loneliness of the fells.

Gundred, however, found herself warmly approving of Ivescar. True, the country just round was “dreadfully black and barren, very ugly and uncultivated”; but the house was roomy, airy, warm, comfortable, quite suitable and pleasant in every way. It would hold plenty of people, and had been built with an eye to the convenience of house-parties. Carpets and curtains and cushions were all opulent and softly luxurious. They compared well, to her taste, with the[143] bare floors, the flags, the worn matting of Brakelond. She resolved on a few improvements, but, on the whole, was very well satisfied. A building produced by one mind may, perhaps, have a less complicated personality, a simpler sense of unity, than one built up by the varying tastes of twenty succeeding generations. Ivescar was plain and direct in scheme. There was a good collection of pictures, bought, all together, by James Darnley from the previous owner, who had accumulated them because he imagined it a suitable thing to do; otherwise Ivescar was tormented by no ambitions whatever, artistic or dramatic. It only aimed, with a good-humoured whole-heartedness, at being altogether comfortable. Gundred entered into its spirit, and in an environment so congenial her abandonment of all attempt to share in conversation with Kingston and Isabel became at once more complete and less noticeable. She passed into entire absorption in the details of daily life, lost any wish to be in touch with intellectual life, took the colour of her surroundings so perfectly that neither she herself nor the others realized how completely she had withdrawn from their company.

As for Isabel, the exasperating vividness of the woman leapt into more violent relief than ever against the smug complacency of Ivescar. At Brakelond Isabel had been a part of the place; her individuality had toned in with all the other individualities that had gone to make up Brakelond. As one organ note is inconspicuous among a crowd of other organ notes, so Isabel’s nature had there been merged in a crowd of other similar natures. Here, however, at Ivescar the organ note of her personality sounded harsh and tremendous, almost terrifying, amid the clacking babble of mediocrity for ever kept up by the house. Only trifling, futile people had had part in the building and[144] the life of Ivescar; their influence had left the place a pleasant little chorus of tinkling inanities; and, by contrast, the fierce song of Isabel’s nature rose dominant, tyrannous, obliterating all the lesser voices around.

Kingston by degrees began to notice the disappearance of his wife and the supremacy of her cousin in his mind. Occasionally he showed a dim foreknowledge of the inevitable by brief spasms of anger against Isabel, by fruitless attempts to carry Gundred with them in their flights. But by now Gundred’s mental immobility had begun to be an annoyance to him, and he was always glad to relinquish his efforts and fall back into the familiar swing of dialogue with Isabel. The faint air of greatness which for a time had been reflected on Gundred from the walls of Brakelond had now faded utterly. She was swallowed up in household details, could be seen meditating on ‘menus’ while the most fantastic notions were flying swiftly between her husband and her cousin. Her life was now consumed in coping with the cook; she was completely happy in her task, and it was with growing readiness and growing wrath that Kingston let her drop from his mental intimacy. She filled up time by talks with her mother-in-law, who had a dower house down the valley. The somewhat woolly mind of Lady Adela was very congenial to Gundred, and her small, clear-cut nature found it both harmonious and restful—like her own, though so utterly unlike. The two women took refuge in each other; and Gundred, taken up by the house and Lady Adela, would not have had the leisure, even had she had the acumen, to remark how completely she was passing out of her husband’s life.

‘Is the house insured?’ asked Isabel one morning. Kingston and she were sitting together under the long wall of the picture-gallery.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered; ‘I always forget[145] things like that. My dear,’ he cried, calling to his mother, who had walked up across the fields with her knitting, and now had established herself in one of the cushioned window-seats close to Gundred, who was methodically checking a Stores List—‘my dear, is the house insured?’

Lady Adela answered in the affirmative, and Gundred made haste to clutch her share in a conversation that she could understand, by swiftly affirming that, if not, it ought to be at once.

‘Otherwise one feels it such a responsibility to live in a house—yes?’ she added.

‘I don’t like betting and gambling,’ replied Isabel, assuming a manner of exaggerated rectitude.

‘My dear!’ protested Lady Adela, looking mildly up at her over her spectacles. If Lady Adela could dislike anyone, she disliked her daughter-in-law’s new cousin. Deep in her heart she condemned Isabel as strong-minded. Tiresome and strong-minded.

‘It’s a gamble with Fate, you know,’ explained Isabel; ‘all insurance is, of course—having a bet on with the Almighty that He won’t burn down your house or throw your train off the rails.’

‘You have such strange fancies, Isabel,’ said Gundred coldly. ‘You always think of things that no one else would think of.’

Clearly, as delivered in Gundred’s neat, precise tones, this was the final expression of righteous disapproval.

‘My feet must be extraordinarily small,’ said Isabel to Kingston. ‘I seem to be always putting them into it. They go into the most incredibly tiny loopholes. I don’t believe I could walk across the lid of a pepper-pot without putting my foot into it somehow.’ She stuck out both her feet in front of her, and gazed at them dispassionately.

The action may have been an instinctive appeal for admiration. The feet, though large, were beautifully shaped, with a suggestion of strength and swiftness in their lines. But Kingston angrily compelled himself to notice that they overlapped their shoes, that one shoe had lost its buckle, and that the stocking above each descended in wrinkles that betrayed a weakness in the matter of suspenders.

‘They haven’t died young yet, though,’ replied Isabel, finishing the quotation. ‘Perhaps they will, though—the feet, I mean.’

‘I was thinking that you might welsh the Powers that be, and burn the house down, and get the money to build a decent one. This great garish glassy palace is not a bit at home here among the hills. You want something sombre and quiet and self-sufficient as they are—something that will be at ease with them. This house of yours is about as much at ease among the hills as a brewer’s wife having tea with half a dozen Dowager-Empresses. You want a building that won’t be fussy and assertive.’

‘Then want must be my master. You have the most placid way of suggesting things. Do you always get what you want yourself, quite irrespective of the means?’

‘What is the use of wanting things,’ said Isabel defiantly, ‘if one doesn’t get them? One might as well never want them.’

‘But what about other people? If they object? If you can only win over their dead bodies?’

‘Oh, they must look out for themselves. Every herring must hang by its own tail. It is everybody’s business to get what they want. If they can prevent me from doing as I wish, why, then they may; and if they can’t, well, I romp in; and if they get in my[147] way while I am doing it, why, so much the worse for them. They go under.’

‘There’s your crude individualism again,’ protested Kingston. Then he turned to his wife, determined to bring her into the dialogue. She was soberly conversing with Lady Adela over the Stores List.

‘Are you an individualist, Gundred?’ asked her husband. ‘Isabel’s a terror; she has no respect for other people.’

‘Besides, they say that spotted ones are bad for the eyesight,’ she concluded, then prepared to answer her husband. ‘What did you say, dear? Of course one must respect other people, or how are other people to do the same to us?’

‘Oh, Gundred doesn’t count,’ she cried. ‘Gundred’s a civilized woman. Now, you and I are only pagans, Kingston.’

‘My dear, dear child,’ exclaimed Lady Adela, unspeakably distressed, ‘Kingston is nothing of the kind, I am sure!’

‘Don’t trouble about Isabel,’ explained Gundred. ‘She is always talking nonsense—yes? Nobody ever cares what she says. Go on talking to Kingston, Isabel, but really you must not interrupt us any more. We have our duties, Kingston, and you idle people must not disturb us.... Dear Lady Adela, do you really think we want a dozen of those common table-cloths?’

Kingston and Isabel were silent for a moment, listening to Gundred’s conversation with her mother-in-law.

‘Well, I always believe it is best in the long run to get rather too much than too little,’ replied Lady Adela, pondering the question.

‘Besides,’ amended Gundred, with a more cheerful air, ‘they might give one discount on a quantity.’ Nothing should induce her to waste the superabundant Darnley wealth. She licked the tip of her pencil, prepared to tick off table-clothes with a lavish hand.

‘Would you say at eight and six each, or at nine shillings?’ she asked anxiously, poising the pencil in indecision.

‘Oh, for the servants, my dear, eight and six will be ample. They wear out their things in no time. It is quite shameful that they should be wanting new ones already. I got them a whole supply only the year before last.’

‘Dear, dear,’ she said, ‘that Mrs. Bosket must really be a very careless woman—yes? And she tells me that new sheets are wanted as well—sheets and pillow-cases, dear mamma.’

‘My child, how truly dreadful!’ answered Lady Adela. ‘You must certainly keep a close eye on Mrs. Bosket, though I do trust the poor thing is honest.’

‘Oh, perfectly, and most obliging, but not equal to responsibility. One so often finds that in a household. And it is so important to have an efficient head—yes? I feel that one cannot safely leave her the ordering of things like this, for instance. I have to do it myself.’

Had she had ten housekeepers—had she been the daughter of two reigning sovereigns—Gundred would still have insisted on ordering the table-cloths herself. It was her nature, but she made a virtue of her nature’s necessity, and fell to weighing the comparative merits of pillow-cases at half a crown and at three and six. Half a crown was eventually fixed on.

Isabel looked at Kingston. She saw that Gundred’s dialogue had irritated him. Why his annoyance was so keen she hardly knew. He himself would have[149] been puzzled to account for it. Her eyes triumphed as she watched him, and obviously rejoiced at the defeat of his effort to pull Gundred into their talk.

‘That’s all you are likely to get out of Gundred for an hour or two,’ she murmured.

‘Martha is a much more pleasant, useful person than tiresome, head-in-the-air Mary,’ he flashed back at her resentfully.

‘Especially to talk to,’ replied Isabel mildly. ‘As a matter of fact, a man wants both sorts—a Martha-wife and a Mary-wife: the Martha-wife to air the beds and order the dinner, and the Mary-wife to look at and talk to. Most of the tragedies in history have arisen from a man’s failure to get the two in one person. Lucky men have an aunt or a sister, as well as a wife, to fill the second part; but generally a man either has a Mary-wife who talks brilliantly, but feeds him on cold mutton, or a Martha-wife who will order a good dinner, but can only talk about the servants. And then he looks round for someone to think about meals, while Mary discusses the soul; or to discuss the soul while Martha is interviewing the cook. And then there are complications. The whole system is wrong. People ought to be much freer to get what they like.’

Kingston resented Isabel’s tranquil description of the Martha-wife. It had nothing to do with any case they knew of. To talk about it was silly impertinence.

‘Individualism again,’ he answered. ‘You are an anarchist, Isabel, like all egoists. Anarchy never pays in the long run.’

‘No,’ admitted Isabel, ‘one has to pay for it in the long run, of course. But until the bill comes in one has a good time—quite worth the price one has to give.... Ask the lady behind you. There is a triumphant[150] instance of the Mary-wife, and the egoist, and the individualist, all in one. She died for it at last, but she had all she wanted while she lived. That is me; I’ll die gladly, but I mean to have all I want till then.’

Kingston turned to look at the picture to which Isabel pointed. From a background as dark as her end there smiled out at him, enigmatically, whimsically, the face, so much more prudish than passionate, of a woman so much more passionate than prudish—the face of Anne, “Marquis” of Pembroke, concubine and Queen.

‘So there is your model,’ he answered her contemptuously. ‘Well, she had her way, and her way led her to the block on Tower Green.’

‘Let it. What does that matter? It had led her first over the scarlet cloth of a throne. The price was heavy, yes, but she always knew it would be. I expect she was even glad to die at last, and have rest, and be out of all her glorious, dreadful suspense. And the splendour she bought was worth it. What do I care for the bill I may have to settle some day? If I want a thing, that means I intend to have it. Do you think a beggarly consideration of economy would stop me? Thank Heavens, I am not a miser. Why, to haggle over Fate’s account would be like Gundred wrestling for a twopenny discount off a pillow-case. No, Queen Anne and I know better, don’t we, your Grace?’

Isabel rose and stared into the picture. The pursed lips, the sly, slanting eyes beneath their demure lids, responded mysteriously to her gaze. This was not the woman that Holbein drew in the last hours of her tragedy, weary, worn, and haggard; this was the Queen of his earlier paintings, as he and Lucas Cornelisz saw her in the radiance of triumphant battle, the fierce adventuress-soul that, with nothing in her favour—neither beauty nor position nor wealth—and with everything against her in the fight—a kingdom,[151] a wife, a Church—yet by sheer force of brilliancy, courage, and charm, fought her way at last, through the wreckage of a religion, to the throne of a Queen.

‘Your Grace,’ said Isabel, ‘you and I are friends. You were a pagan like me. What you wanted nothing could stop you from getting, neither armies of enemies nor any silly dread of the price to pay at the end.’

‘I wish you joy of your friend,’ said Kingston, filled with inexplicable hostility. ‘Ask her what she thought of it all at the end; ask her what she felt that last night at Greenwich, when the King had deserted her, when she was still treated as Queen by people bowing and backing and saying “Your Grace” to her, who in their hearts were all stealthy enemies from whom there was no escape (with bets among themselves as to when her head would be off and a new Queen crowned); when she had to be brave and royal among all those crowding black, invisible dangers, under the descending shadow of the axe. Don’t you think she wished then that she had not been such a pitiless individualist? Don’t you think she wished then that she had been allowed to live and die plain Lady Northumberland?’

‘Brave and royal you were, your Grace,’ cried Isabel to the picture. ‘You never regretted, did you? If you had, you would have been a poor lath-and-plaster creature, unworthy of what you did. Your nerves gave way for an hour or so. They had been at full stretch for three terrible years of crowned suspense. So it was no wonder they snapped just for a moment in your fall. But it was not death you were afraid of; it was just the crash and the dying. You were a Queen at heart. You fought for your life as a Queen, and in the end it was as a Queen you died. Nobody else, not even in that strong, brutal time, died in such an exaltation of gladness.’

‘An egoist should not be an idealist as well,’ protested[152] Kingston. ‘You make too pompous a song about a peddling adventuress put shamefully out of the way by a political job.’

‘Take care,’ cried Isabel. ‘When I knew her Grace, she was not a lady to be spoken lightly of. Her enemies only killed her because they did not dare to let her live. Even her worst enemies dreaded her cleverness and her courage. And her dying words must have taken the skin off her husband’s back when he heard them. The demure gentleness of them, the vitriolic irony of them! You may have been “spiteful, flighty, and undignified,” your Grace, but you were splendid, terrible, indomitable. And you must have been marvellously charming when you chose, you plain, prudish-looking creature with six fingers and the devil’s temper. There’s a Mary-wife for you, to hold the interest and curiosity of the King, while his poor good Martha of a Katherine was everlastingly saying her beads and hemming shirts.’

‘My dear Isabel, I tell you that the song of history is “Pay, pay, pay.” If you want to follow Anne Boleyn, you must follow her all along the road.’

‘My dear Kingston, history may sing “Pay, pay, pay,” but it sings to deaf ears when it tries to impose its twaddling threat on well-bred souls. Only stupid, parvenu people ever think of reckoning up the cost of anything beforehand. It’s the hall-mark of recent wealth to be sparing of its pence. One does not bother about such things. One buys first, and only asks the price when the time comes to pay the bill.’

‘Oh no. Fate’s bills are paid in courage, and I hope one would never be bankrupt of that. I think I shall always be able to settle up. One plunges, like Queen Anne. Your Grace did not stop to haggle. You and I go boldly forward, order what we want from the[153] Stores of Life, and don’t give a thought to discounts and reductions and Summer Sales. And then, when the time comes, we fork up with a will, and pay out our uttermost penny.’

For a moment Kingston did not answer her. He stood looking into the secretive face of the Queen. Gundred’s voice broke the silence.

‘I know where one can get them at two and six,’ she was heard remarking in her clear, level tones.

‘There’s Queen Katherine arranging the household,’ laughed Isabel, with insolent regardless frankness, ‘and here is Queen Anne ordering a crown across the counter of life. No discount asked, and only the best required.’

Kingston looked at her with rage in his eyes. She was always saying crude things like that—things that roused in him swift opposition and dislike. Yet he remained helpless, as if bound by a spell. And her indifference to everyone’s opinion was so profound, her scorn of conventions so sincere that no reproach could be brought home to her. She had no common standard for measurement by the rules of the world. One might as well have attempted to reprove a savage for going naked, or an Englishwoman for going clothed.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I hope your bill will be as heavy as Queen Anne’s; then we shall see how you behave when it comes to paying for it.’

‘But perhaps I have not really decided what I shall order from the shop-keeper?’

‘Oh, well, I neither know nor care,’ replied Kingston savagely. ‘And you don’t seem to have the decent instincts of the real honest buyer, either. From the anarchistic things you were saying a few minutes ago, I should have thought you would have been a shop-lifter, pure and simple, going in and stealing whatever you wanted, without a thought of paying for it.’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘When it comes to the big things of life, I am as honest as the day. Love and hope and so on I should expect and intend to pay the top price for—pay it thoroughly to the last farthing, sooner or later. I am only an anarchist in little things. I might steal for a fancy, and assert my individualism for a whim, but really, really, Queen Anne hasn’t a thought of bilking when she orders her crown. Whatever I buy I shall pay good money for, Kingston—pay it ungrudgingly, if I have to die for it.’

Her earnest face, as she turned it to his, burning and eager, had a strange fascination. He turned roughly away towards his wife.

‘We are talking about Anne Boleyn,’ he cried, raising his voice to penetrate Gundred’s attention—‘how she had her fun, and then paid the money.’

‘And nine is twenty-one,’ answered Gundred, completing her sentence in mechanical tones.... ‘What, dear? Oh yes, Anne Boleyn, poor little thing! so dreadfully treated by her husband. The first martyr of the Church of England.... And now, about prunes, mamma?’

Kingston, angry and disappointed, turned again to Isabel. Primly, inscrutably, Queen Anne smiled down upon them from the wall. She had heard about that martyrdom before. She knew better. She had been the martyr of ambition, not of dogma; she sold her life for a crown, not by any means for a faith. And she thought her martyrdom the grander. In her passionate mysterious heart she pondered Isabel’s brave declaration, and wondered whether the modern woman, too, would be content to pay her debt, when the time should come, for the big things she had ordered at the counter of Fate. Beneath the riddle of her smile Kingston and Isabel fell once more[155] a-talking, while across the room Gundred was still ticking off groceries, and exchanging plans of household economy with her mother-in-law.

‘Yes, very, very pretty,’ said Gundred approvingly. ‘No sugar, thank you.’

Delicately, with neatly-lifted little finger, she raised her cup and sipped. From top to toe she was the fine flower of deportment, and her manner exhaled a mild consciousness of being the perfect model of decorum for the country neighbour on whom she was conferring the honour of a call. The afternoon being brilliantly fine, Lady Adela had wished to take her daughter-in-law to call on some intimate friends of hers, proprietors of a celebrated view, who lived on the other side of the lowland valley that stretched beneath the glen of Ivescar. Gundred was happy in the opportunity of exacting provincial approval, and, against everyone’s wishes, including his own, Kingston had insisted that he and Isabel should join the polite pilgrimage. Accordingly the landau had duly sallied forth with its burden of four, and after more than an hour’s drive through the soft country beneath the hills, had brought them to their destination. Now, on the famous terrace of Blakebank, Gundred sat full in the light of her hostess’s admiration, consuming cakes and tea with her usual crisp yet ethereal daintiness.

‘The lights on the hills!’ cried Mrs. Norreys ecstatically, anxious that Mrs. Darnley should appreciate the full beauty of the prospect.

‘Delightfully pretty,’ replied Gundred, casting a comprehensive glance across the world. ‘One quite[156] envies you, Mrs. Norreys. We have no view like this at Ivescar. A charming place to have tea, out on this terrace. Oh, thank you. How greedy I am!—yes? But this air makes one so famished, and these little cakes of yours, so delightful.’

With a sweet smile Gundred accepted a second cake, and devoted her whole attention to its decent consumption.

In front of Blakebank the ground sloped away sharply to the river far down below. Dense woodland filled the hollow in which the water flowed, and rose again in a blue foaming mass on the farther side of the valley. Thence the eye followed undulation after undulation of meadow and copse, fields of soft green, plumed hedgerows, a placid country full of opulent peace. The foreground of the picture was formed by a strip of meadow beneath the terrace that dropped in a steep brow towards the woods. Here the grass was hidden and gilded by a sheet of buttercups, and the pure ardour of their gold was touched to a keener fire by the shafts of sunlight that slanted across them. Beyond their blaze lay the voluminous splendours of the woodland, dull and heavy in sullen shadow. For the day had its sharp notes of contrast. The air was leaden and lurid, dazzling, here and there, with a golden rain of sunlight, and here and there, again, made sombre by thunderous masses of cloud. Huge curling crags of purple and silver rolled and towered above the world, and the sky was opalescent with a hundred shifting colours. The landscape, drowsy and complacent, was transfigured into something mystic and dreamy. From the poignant glory of gold in the foreground the eye wandered on over the steamy blueness of the woods, over the rippling waves of vaporous green and blue that filled the valley, to where, seeming very far away across the glamour, the great rampart of[157] the hill-country lay high against the faint rosy lights of the north. The lowering air, the sleepy, fantastic colours of the day, seemed to remove things distant to another world, and the mountains, dim, misty in shades of amethyst and azure, hardly appeared distinct from the ranges of cloud amid which they faintly loomed. Far away, far above the valleys, they lay in crests and billows of dreamland along the border of a fairy world. Yet only six miles of comfortable peace was all that lay between Gundred at her tea and those mysterious giants in the haze.

Full in the middle of that walled horizon, isolated on all sides, rose the mass of the Simonstone, unrolling his apathetic splendour on the ranges of lesser hills that formed his throne. In steep, precipitous slopes his lines dropped abruptly to the western valley; to eastward they trailed away in long, placid curves. The ranges of white limestone that formed his pedestal shone dimly pink across the distance, and the towering bulk of the mountain was lucent as a carved sapphire from crown to base. His sheer stern western cliff, his flat summit, loomed disdainfully over the sleepy valleys at his feet; and his presence, serene and enormous, ruled the whole country with the inevitable weight of its majesty. Steep glens in the range divided him from the heights to either side; he stood out the conspicuous tyrant of the horizon. Away to the right, over a range of smaller fells, the leonine head of Ravensber stood up in secondary authority, and above the western cleft where Ivescar incongruously squatted in the undiscoverable distance, rose the slouching back of Carnmor. But of the trinity that dominated the hill-country, Ravensber and Carnmor, the lesser and the greater, were both subordinate to the imperious sweep of the Simonstone. Here, from the terrace of Blakebank, in the complete contemplation of his[158] grandeur, might be perceived the full grotesqueness of the insolence that had planted Ivescar beneath the sombre glory of his shadow. From that parvenu house itself the blatancy of the contrast was not so evident; for Carnmor and the Simonstone were both shut out from view by the amphitheatre of white cliffs that closed in the glen, and gave support to their dominating mass. But to Blakebank, far away, the whole supremacy of the hills lay revealed in all its greatness, and their empire seemed, in the mysterious clouded lights of rose and blue, to belong to a world that had no knowledge of man or his evanescent doings. Gundred, meanwhile, having finished her tea, began to think of departure. She set to work delicately drawing on her gloves and preparing her farewells.

‘Such a long drive—yes?’ she said; ‘I am afraid we must really be starting, Mrs. Norreys. My husband’s aunt is coming to us to-day, and we ought to be home in time to receive her.’

The carriage was ordered, and the party stood exchanging compliments and politenesses.

‘Such a delightful day,’ said Gundred, ‘and a drive home in the evening so charming in weather like this—yes?’

‘You will have a lovely view of the hills as you go home,’ replied Mrs. Norreys. ‘You will have them in front of you all the way. Do notice the sunset-lights; too exquisite they are.’

Long habit had developed in Mrs. Norreys a proprietary manner when she talked of the distant hills that made the attraction of her terrace. She spoke of them as a successful actor-manager might speak of a scene that his own great skill has contrived and arranged.

‘Charming, charming!’ answered Gundred, with the enthusiasm which everyone thinks it a duty to[159] manifest for landscape, though the true intelligent passion is so rare and sacred.

Then the carriage was announced, and the party from Ivescar embarked on their homeward voyage.

Kingston and Isabel had not contributed much to the gaiety of the entertainment. They had been possessed with the delight that Gundred had merely expressed. To them the beauty of the world as it lay unfolded before them had been so vast and holy as to make all comment obtrusive and irreverent. Kingston had felt the unspoken sympathy of Isabel’s mood, and her silence had mitigated for a time the feverish animosity with which he regarded her. As they drove home, there was little conversation between the four. Now and then Lady Adela made some remark on Mrs. Norreys’ kindness, her charm, the successful blend of her tea. But even Gundred was feeling too serene for speech. Everything combined to make her happy. Her gown was a perfect fit, the evening was comfortable, and she was conscious of having given her hostess a flawless model to copy—in manners, conversation, hair, and hat. Of course she never doubted her faultlessness or felt a qualm, but there were moments when its lovely perfection came upon her in a compelling wave of pleasure. She sat in a rapture of satisfaction as the carriage whirled her home through the quiet sunset. Tea and a good digestion assisted the placidity of her mood, and the influences of the atmosphere collaborated to make it complete. The twilight was pink and sweet as Gundred’s own opinion of herself. Immovably tranquil, roseate and mild, it had the fascination of a drowsy fairy tale. Cowslip and bean and hawthorn sent her their tribute in wafts of fragrance. She accepted everything as her due, and felt that all the world was showing a very proper spirit in conspiring to do her honour.

So their road led them up and down the gentle slopes that filled the valley with ripples of green. Sleepy old farmsteads they passed, nestling in dense knots of verdure, and villages with their brilliant little strips of garden. The day’s work was over, and in the clear air rose the song of peace and rest. Only far above, over the nearing mass of the mountains, rose stormy ranges of cloud, flushed and splendid in purple and gold. And so at last they had done with the broad lowland, and the road set itself to mount up towards the high glen of their destination. Now the country changed. Below lay the wooded, feathery richness of copse and hedgerow, meadow and pasture. Stone walls began to replace the hedges, stiff wiry moor-grass the lush growth of the valleys; the framework of the earth was near the surface; the soil became a thin stretched skin, no longer a warm soft coat of flesh; here and there the film broke, and the limestone bones protruded. So the road wound its way to the upper levels, and climbed at last to the glen between the hills. Far ahead of them it streamed away up towards Ivescar—an undulating stripe of whiteness. Above, to their right, rose, stiff and stark, a wall of white rock, shutting out from sight the mountain above. To their left lay the narrow desolation of the defile, a stream meandering among sparse meadows, with here and there a bare barn or a farm surrounded by a few wind-tormented trees. And beyond these again, towered the farther wall of the valley, another escarpment of long limestone cliffs, which could be seen rising tier upon tier to the first brown and violet slopes of Carnmor. The road, hugging the western precipice, commanded a full view of the valley’s eastern rampart, but of the cliffs overhead revealed only the first and lowest range. This, in the sunset-light, was[161] radiantly pink, but the sheer rocks across the stream, cut off from the light, were grey and grim, rising up in bank upon bank towards the moors above. No colour touched them, no softness made them lovable. Their inhospitable, irreconcilable sternness foreshadowed the abomination of desolation, and gave the valley a stony, lifeless melancholy that recalled the land that once flowed with milk and honey, but is now a wilderness of sterile stone.

As the road led on up the narrowing pass, so the shadows deepened across the way of the travellers. Suddenly, however, the western wall of cliffs overhead, now no longer touched by the sun, dipped in an abrupt cleft; and there, very far above them, hung the sheer western face of Simonstone. Keen, precipitous, menacing, the mass of the mountain impended suddenly over the valley, and the apparition was almost terrifying in its unexpectedness. Another twenty yards, and the lower ranges would once more conceal it from view; here, for a swift moment, it revealed its over-lordship of the glen at its feet. Behind and over its brow high volumes of cloud stood stationary, and in the glow of evening the mountain and all the upper air was rich with a glamour of amethyst and hot violet.

Gundred was dominated by this revelation, and her powers of expression rose to the emergency.

‘Oh, look, how pretty!—yes?’ she cried, indicating the obvious with a neat wave of her neat hand.

Never had her gift for inadequacy burst upon her husband in such a terrifying flash. For a moment he could not speak.

‘Quite good,’ he answered at last, incapable of saying more to a woman who would have been incapable of understanding it.

Isabel remained silent. Her eyes were fixed. Then she put out her hand in an eager gesture to stop the carriage.

‘Stop them, Gundred,’ she cried; ‘I want to get out. I am going up there into the glow and the glory. I am tired of this dull grey world. Kingston, come with me. Let us go and be gods on the heights.’

‘Well, don’t be late for dinner, darlings,’ she conditioned. ‘Remember, Aunt Minna will be arriving. Do you really think you will have time?’

‘What does time matter!’ exclaimed Isabel rebelliously. ‘There is no such thing.’

Kingston would have liked to go alone. Gundred had just succeeded in irritating him, he felt, to the last point of endurance. Her bland impenetrability was nothing short of tragic. Nothing could ever teach her what to say and what to leave unsaid, for nothing could teach her to feel. She had the sublime elephantine tactlessness of perfect self-satisfaction. Her husband, for one wild moment, wanted to get away from it all—from Gundred, level, monotonous, stodgy, yet unsatisfying; from the dear good old mother who did not count, who never could count; from Isabel, tormenting, tantalizing, odious Isabel. To be alone, up there in the radiance, far above the world of desire and dissatisfactions—that would be, at least for half an hour, rest and relief. But he was to have none; Isabel was to come, emphasizing at every point the exasperating perfections, the exasperating limitations of his wife. With her usual primitive clumsiness, so utterly at variance with Gundred’s well-drilled movements, Isabel flounced out of the carriage, alighting with a jumping flop that brought down a coil of hair and a shower of pins. Kingston noticed that, as[163] usual, her placket was open. He waited in silence till she should have finished her untidy adjustments.

‘Aunt Minna will be so surprised if you are not there in time to receive her,’ she said. ‘Do be certain that you have time, darling.’

Kingston forced himself to speak. ‘Ivescar is just over the hill,’ he said. ‘We shall be there as soon as you. It will be a short cut—up one side of the Simonstone, and down the other. Are you ready, Isabel?’

Yes, Isabel had finished tucking up her skirt. It was a skirt as inadequate for visiting as for mountaineering. And now she had bunched it up on one side to give her legs full play, and its effect was not only incongruous, but lumpy and lopsided. However, for such matters Isabel cared nothing. She was ready. Without another word, Kingston turned aside and opened a gate. Together they passed through into the field bordering the road, on their way to the copse above, that sloped up to the limestone cliff, and so led on to the heights overhead. Gundred watched them go. A faint, a very faint ripple of doubt trembled across the calm waters of her self-complacency. She had the strangest, the most ridiculous, the most unheard-of feeling that in some way she had not been at the height of the situation. In some way, she had a dim instinct of having failed. As the carriage drove on, she suddenly found herself feeling a little lonely, a little cold.

Kingston and Isabel wrestled their way to the cliff’s top, and found themselves on a flat floor of scar limestone that led straight away to the long, swift slope of the mountain. As if arranged by mortal hands, the blocks of white stone made a regular pavement, like the wrecked foundation of some Cyclopean temple. Between each block was a deep, dark rift, where ferns[164] and lilies of the valley, and strange flowers with white plumy spires flourished in the shelter where no wind could ruffle them. Together the wanderers crossed the level, leaping and balancing lightly from rock to rock. Then heather and sedge began to break the even surface of the paving, and soon usurped its place altogether. Thence, to the summit, was nothing but moor and whortleberry, steep slopes of shale and grit. Kingston and Isabel addressed themselves resolutely to the ascent. Steep and arduous as it was, they had neither time for breath nor talking. They climbed strenuously, silently, taking pride in each step that proved their mastery over the earth by lifting them steadily higher, foot by foot, on the flank of the mountain that had seemed at first too vast to be conquered by any movements of so infinitesimal a creature as man. Slowly but certainly they found themselves advancing up the stark ladder of tussock and poised boulder. Each stone that they dislodged rolled crashing into farther depths, and at last they found themselves moving into the cold shadow of the clouds that evening seemed to be drawing down upon the summit. The crown of the mountain was now beyond their sight, cut off by the fierce angle of the slope; but they could see that the upper air was still aglow with sunlight round it, though the volumes of dark vapour seemed to be growing and darkening. Suddenly the acclivity took a swifter line, then paused for a moment from its labours. Surmounting it, they found that the ground lay for a few yards in a gentler curve, and there beyond, straight above them, was the summit, glorious and crimsoned. A last eager voiceless effort, and they had attained it. Around them whistled and hurtled a sharp wind, and before stretched away the round level plain of the hill’s crown.

It was with a sigh of relief that the climbers rested[165] and faced round to see the extent of their conquest. The whole world far beneath them was misty, ardent, gorgeous in the glamour of evening. Kingston and Isabel made their way to the ruins of the old cairn that had sent northward the news of many centuries. Among the scattered, rough-hewn boulders they settled themselves for an interval of repose in achievement. Behind them rose the ruined wall of the beacon tower that had talked, in its day, of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, of the Armada’s coming, and the passing of the Tudors. Before them, unrolled at their feet like a map, two thousand feet below, was all the splendour of the earth, phantasmal and glorified—tiny towns, and the worm-like track of great rivers, the minute tessellation of meadows, and the dim velvet of wide forests. The whole air, before them and beneath, was a-tremble with motes of gold. Gold filled and pervaded the atmosphere, confounding detail in a haze of glitter, and softening the great dazzling stretches of the western sea into an imperial harmony with the golden heaven and the golden earth.

Kingston Darnley looked out across the glowing mystery beneath him. Rest, profound and eternal, seemed to be enveloping him. In reality, the very foundations of his nature were stirred and stirring. Insensibly, through the heat and worry of the foregoing days, his life had been growing ripe for a great upheaval. Slowly the tormenting desires, the incessant, unacknowledged hunger, the uneasy, restless, emotional uncertainty, the strenuous nourishment of artificial feelings, had all combined to bring his restless unhappiness to a head. Through unacknowledged storm and secret stress he had come at last to that deceptive calm which precedes the breaking up of the soul’s settled weather—the discharge of the soul’s accumulated electricity in a devastating nerve-cyclone.[166] To-day his endurance of himself and his own forced contentment had touched its limit. Gundred had given him the last least touch that was needed to destroy the perilous equilibrium of his mood. Unconsciously he was waiting, in a breathless interval of suspense, for the crash of thunder that was to precipitate the crisis, and clear the air of all its unhealthy restraints.

Suddenly as he lay there, with Isabel silent and watchful at his side, the glory of the world shivered coldly and vanished. A black shadow swooped over the mountain-top, and soon only the uttermost distance retained the glimmer of gold. Down, down upon the old cairn sank, like the portcullis of a fairy castle, a heavy curtain of darkness, shutting out all that was left of the gleaming distance. The cloud was upon them. And, as their gaze was fixed on the gloom descending from above, no less abruptly, no less silently, in grey coils and whirling streamers the mist curled up at them from beneath, rippling and foaming over the rim of the mountain, as a devouring wave sweeps round an islet and over its crown. In an instant the world was blotted out by the white darkness. Uniform, monotonous, it obliterated everything. Only the old cairn and a few yards of ground around it could now be seen. Kingston and Isabel were cut off from the earth, set alone as Deucalion and Pyrrha in a new sphere, one solid point amid a vast ocean of chaos....

Kingston rose. ‘I don’t like this,’ he replied. ‘It will be the very mischief to get down again. Come and help me find a way.’

Together they moved away from the old cairn into the mist. As they went it widened before them, revealing a few dim feet of distance, then closed in again behind. Through the drifting pearly gloom objects were strangely magnified, made mysterious, portentous;[167] rocks became monsters looming through the darkness, the level crown of the mountain, shifting fantasy of vapour. The ground beneath their feet seemed to swirl and shift with the movement of the fog, and, now that shape and colour had vanished from the world, an enormous crushing silence dominated the air. Faint and melting before their eyes stretched away the few visible yards of the flat soil, covered with short sedges, and, among the loose piles of grit, with a thick growth of little mountain-sorrel, whose brilliant reds and yellows had been levelled by the blank twilight into a sombre note, as of stale blood spilled out among the stones. Then, beyond, the solid earth wavered away into a phantom, revealing here and there a rock or a patch of grass, uncertainly, evanescently, as a faint, half-guessed shape, as the mist lightened or lowered.

So they wandered carefully on across the plane of the summit, till suddenly, ahead of them, grim and mysterious, rose a long grey barrier fading to right and left in the profundities of darkness. It was the old boundary wall of the summit, built by Celtic kings in the lost ages when the hill-top was the last great British outpost in the north. Humped, shapeless, an indistinguishable mound of stone, the old wall remained intact, running round the plateau in a solid ring, unbroken except at the point where the beacon tower stood. Knowing that outside its precinct cliffs and pitfalls awaited the unwary, Kingston and Isabel turned, and set themselves to follow it on its circuit, hoping to find an outlet or a path. At one point they came on a small stone chamber built into its bulk, but no sign of gateway or track could they discover. Now they were crossing a bare part of the summit, a wilderness of rocky wreckage. Here and there, at short intervals, great rings and semicircles of half-buried[168] stone could be divined in the level of the soil, foundation-lines to show where the huts and palaces of the Celtic kings had stood. Now they were but dim ridges, grown with dwarf sedge and sorrel, through which roughly burst the gritstone bones of their fabric. Adventurous climbers of the mountain had had their fun of the rocks that former occupants had made their houses and defence. Often the flat, hewn blocks had been lugged from their places by modern hands, to be arranged in some riddle or motto. One ambitious tourist had perpetrated a great design. Kingston and Isabel came suddenly upon it. It stretched bravely across the earth, a device of big boulders, carefully arranged. ‘I love you,’ it said to them, in its audacious, solid letters. ‘I’ and ‘you’ at either end of the legend faded away into the white obscurity beyond, and at their feet lay ‘love,’ obtrusive, unconquerable, built of sound stones so square and firm as to defy the enmities of time and weather.

Hitherto few words had passed. Words, in that blanched silence, seemed futile and impertinent. There was in that vast loneliness of the mist a sense of intimacy too close to be profaned by speech; man and woman were alone, two halves of one primitive creature, in a primitive, floating chaos, where nothing else, as yet, had taken shape. How could such a drifting void hold anything so formal as speech? Speech belonged to that forgotten world of things visible and tangible, that world where other human beings lived, and there was light, sound, movement. Here, in the level, immovable silence of the primeval twilight, Kingston and Isabel found the intervening ages swept away.

They had gone back into the dim time before the dawn of the world, when there was nothing more than this poised existence, vague, voiceless, pervasive.

‘I love you,’ repeated Isabel, studying the tourist’s device—the blatant modern cry breaking into the abysmal stillness of old chaos.

Kingston, with an effort, tore himself from the white mist of fantasy that had closed in upon his mind. The gloom suddenly held dangers; they loomed ahead. He had a dim sense that something unseen was moving towards him out of the swirling uncertainties around.

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘We shall have to stay here till the clouds lift a bit. I simply can’t pretend to know my way. We should probably wander half over the moors, and go on in a circle till we got hopelessly lost or fell in a pothole. What a fool I was not to watch the sky! However, if the worst comes to the worst, you can shelter in that little shanty, and I don’t expect Gundred will be anxious; she never is.’

‘Read what this creature has written,’ said Isabel. ‘It sounds better in a man’s voice.’

Kingston looked down at the straggling stone letters at his foot. ‘I love you,’ he read. Then he looked up at Isabel.

She was facing him. The motto lay between them. Her face, against the luminous pallor of the mist, was burning, aglow, filled with a strange triumphant challenge. Suddenly, with an appalling crash of thunder, the fantastic world in which he had lived so long shattered and broke about his head. He saw the call in her eyes, understood it, answered to it, helplessly as a bound slave. This was the one woman in the world. He had known her since the beginning of time, been with her since the creation; now at last she threw aside her veils, and stood before him, no longer a stranger, but the lost part of his own soul—that lost part for which he had so long been vainly seeking. Now, in an instant, he recognised the cause of all his enmity, his unrest, his gnawing hunger, the incessant[170] angry cravings which had tormented him. Hitherto he had not seen the truth; he had guessed it. And those guesses, painful, secret, stifled—they had engendered all the throbbing hostility, all the restless enmity with which he had regarded this half-recognised intruder into his life. Now he knew her, now his heart heard the lost language for which it had pined, now his soul stood complete again in the acquisition of its lost part.

Isabel saw that the answer to her call had come. At last she was known. ‘Old friend,’ she whispered, smiling into his eyes.

‘You—you,’ he stammered. ‘And I did not understand. It is You. I have never seen you before, Isabel, and yet—and yet I have known you all my life.’

Suddenly she was clothed in glorious beauty from head to foot. From head to foot she was altogether splendid and desirable. Every inch of her called aloud for his worship. As the sooty kitchen-maid of the tale strips off her rags and stands revealed a King’s golden daughter, so now the accidents of Isabel’s disguise, the untidy hair, the shapeless clothes, all passed out of Kingston’s consciousness. Henceforth she stood far above such peddling criticism. The rules of his ordinary taste could never apply again to this recovered spirit out of the dead ages. She was his—his right, his property, his existence. She was altogether without fault or blemish, the completion of himself.

‘You are beautiful,’ he said in a low voice—‘you are beautiful, the real Isabel. I never guessed what beauty was. It is you, Isabel. It has always been you.’ Wonder at the miracle possessed him, tied his tongue, gave him the pathetic little blundering gestures of the blind—of one suddenly emerged from a lifetime’s black darkness into the blinding glare of daylight.

‘You have come to me at last,’ smiled Isabel. ‘I wondered when you would. You have been trying not to wake.’

‘I have been holding my eyelids down,’ he answered. ‘I have been making myself blind. It has been hell; Isabel ... Isabel!’

‘Yes,’ she replied—‘yes. You have been denying me ... you have been denying yourself. It is Peter’s crime. Of course it was hell. But now you have confessed the truth—the truth which was from the beginning.’

He stared at her—the man made perfect in full self-realization—at her, the woman, whole and entire in her reunion with himself. Soul imperiously cried to soul, and body to body. She had the unimaginable beauty of the thing created by its lover, loved by its creator. Every line and curve of her was perfected handiwork of his own rapture. The loveliness that he saw in her, his own heart, his own flaming fancy had planted there, had fashioned and worshipped as the lover always fashions the idol that he worships.

‘How is it,’ he said hoarsely—‘how is it you can be so beautiful, Isabel? You are not beautiful. My eyes know you are not beautiful. And yet my heart knows better. My heart knows there is nothing like your beauty—nothing like it, Isabel, anywhere in the world. My soul is twisted up in every part of you; there is something of me in every part of you. Your hair, your skin, your eyes—they are me, Isabel; I have given myself to make them. Can you understand it, Isabel? There isn’t an inch of you in which the sinews and the nerves of myself have not always been woven and twisted.’

‘Ah,’ she cried, answering his low tones with a deep burst of feeling. ‘We have been together through the worlds. We are not strangers. That is what you[172] mean. You have buried yourself in me, and I have buried myself in you. We belong to each other. We have always belonged together. There are only you and I in this white pale world. That is what real lovers are. Alone—alone together for ever and ever and ever. Nothing can ever break our solitude—nothing can put itself between us—if only we are honest with ourselves.

‘Isabel, what does it mean—this that we feel? What is it that we are?’ he asked, whispering as if in the presence of a sacred mystery.

‘Ourself,’ she answered triumphantly—‘ourself, awake, brought to life, welded together again. We have come out of a hundred ages. Do you suppose that we come together now for the first time? How do we know each other, then? This that we feel is the song of many dead souls calling in each of us to the many dead souls that have loved us in the other. We have been bound together since first we met in the far-away distance of things. Love is that. Love is never a new thing. Love is the oldest thing in the world. It has lived through a hundred thousand deaths of the body, and gathered strength and knowledge at every stage of its journey. It’s a jewel of a hundred thousand memories crushed together and crystallized into a pure sparkle of lights. It’s a chain of a hundred thousand links, each heavier than the last, and more golden. Kingston, the chain is round us and round us. Tie it tighter, tighter, for ever and ever. We will live everlastingly in this land of splendid bondage.’

‘Isabel, what is it the wise people of the East say?’ answered Kingston, in the stupefaction of ecstasy. ‘They pledge themselves to one another for half a dozen lives or more. Isabel, that is what you mean. You and I are both bound together. We’ll plight our troth again now, far ahead into the future. For a score[173] of existences, Isabel. Our love was not born a minute ago; it will not die to-morrow. It goes on and on, whatever bodies it takes to clothe itself. Our love is the only thing of us that goes on. And nothing can destroy it. It is ourselves. You are mine, Isabel, and I am yours—you are me, and I, you, not only now, in these shapes of ours, but through half a hundred more that are not yet born, Isabel. Isabel, what do words and talking matter? We cannot get away from each other; we are the same person. Now and always, Isabel. But we will never lose ourselves again; we must always recognise each other.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘again and again and again. For ever and always. You have been trying to cut me, Kingston—me! trying to cut yourself.’

‘You are chained to me, Isabel, and I to you! I will never break the chain at my end; you must never try to break it at yours.’

‘No; we are always the same person henceforth. Why, there is no bond. We are too close together now even to be bound.’

She stood gazing at him, her eyes, her pose, her manner inspired with conquest. The blank, sickening ferocity of passion seized him as he answered her look. It caught him by the throat, swept him away in a rapture of agony. To crush that beauty of hers, to mangle it, strangle it, absorb it utterly in himself, became at once the one blinding, obliterating need that filled his whole consciousness. An insatiable thirst of her loveliness possessed him. The keen, flame-like delirium of his desire was a devastating pain. His whole being moaned with the aching torment of it. The sight of her, the thought of her, went through him, pierced him, rent his innermost heart in twain. The drunken glory of suffering that held him on the wheel of knives was a frenzy very different from that placid[174] repletion which had been his ideal—how long ago?—of the great ideal passion. Now at last he knew what passion was—the parching, gorgeous misery of it, the straining, leaping martyrdom. The ancient secret madness that once had dwelt in the orderly rooms of his father’s heart now stirred again in the son’s, and bled once more, under the wounds of ecstasy, as once, for a wild hour, it had bled long since at the hands of that ill-fated, forgotten woman whose place was now usurped by Isabel. Kingston, his calmer self destroyed by the red intoxication, moved towards his fate, vaguely, blindly.

‘Isabel—Isabel!’ he murmured with dry, cracking lips, groping hands outstretched to take her.

And Isabel welcomed his coming as the crown of life. She threw his arms wide and waited, glowing and transfigured.

The ghostly twilight of the mist was round her, behind her. The face it revealed was fierce with joy, exquisite in its vividness. The dark hair drifted round it, and the throat rose vivid and white from the low-cut collar of her dress, thrown back splendidly, an ivory column. The neck of her dress was fastened awry by a little brooch, whose diamonds gleamed dully in the pale glooming.

And in an instant the man’s flaming drunkenness had passed—passed utterly, in a spasm of torment almost beyond his bearing. As sometimes we are torn painfully, violently from the gay madness of a happy dream by the sound of a bell or some other noise that penetrates to our consciousness from the outer world beyond our vision, so now, in the crisis of his passion, the sight of his wife’s brooch at Isabel’s throat recalled Kingston Darnley, with a jarring crash, to the horrible realities of life. Isabel, characteristically buttonless and pinless, had borrowed it from Gundred to make good the[175] deficiencies of her blouse. His arms fell, the light of his eyes grew dull, and died. His body stood motionless, and his spirit went down into the abyss of hell.

Isabel saw the change, and at the sight her own glory sympathetically faded. They had done with the heights. Now their feet were set on earth again.

‘Isabel—Isabel!’ he repeated. But the flame of his utterance had died down into a grey dreariness.

Isabel saw that her moment was passing. A horrible anxiety possessed her. ‘What is it?’ she cried. ‘Kingston, what is it? What has come between us?’

He pointed to the brooch. ‘Gundred,’ he answered—‘Gundred. We had forgotten.’ He was suffering so acutely in the death of passion that he could hardly make his words intelligible. The wrench was agonizing. Passion was not dead, but his heart knew that it must die—that he himself must be its executioner—must cast out the guest that was the dearest part of himself—cast it out and cut the throat of it. He desired still with all his soul, but knew that his desire must rest for ever unfulfilled. He belonged to Gundred. He must face his own responsibilities.

Isabel could not hear what he said. But she shivered in the cold that had fallen upon them. Without words she understood what it was that had cut down the flower of his rapture in a moment, what drawn sword it was that had suddenly thrust itself between them. She stood withered and stricken with the shock, grown suddenly pale and old.

Kingston was fighting down his pain, struggling with it, and gradually bringing it into bounds. He was too clear-sighted to give himself any hope. Had he been sprung of a more lawless stock, of men accustomed to love where they chose, without consideration of morality, he might have taken his pleasure as it came, and never given a thought to self-reproach or duty. But as[176] it was, bygone generations stirred again in him, of men who had lived cleanly, decently, according to their lights, avoiding the wild urgencies of passion. Law, custom, convention had ingrained into them a respect for rule and restraint, and now their latest descendant reaped in his own person the cruel reward of all their virtues. To go further in the ghastly labyrinth was impossible. Joy was unattainable. Only duty could be pursued. And for shirking that there could be no excuse.

Without a word he turned and walked away from that ill-omened motto on the hill-top. Vaguely, with hands thrust down into his pockets, he wandered on, crushing down the misery, the angry clamours of his nature, and steeling himself violently to the preservation of what remained possible to him of decency. For the sake of Gundred, of himself, of Isabel—for the sake of his love and hers, he must at least live as clean as might be. The struggle was a martyrdom, though, the shock of self-mutilation a grinding, lancinating anguish.

Isabel stood for a moment, then followed him across the flat ground. She soon caught him up, and they advanced together in silence through the driving mists. Suddenly, vague and ghostly, the old cairn rose before them again, looming mountainous. When he had reached the stones at its foot, Kingston threw himself down upon its steps with a heavy gesture of lassitude. And still the silence ruled.

‘Isabel,’ he said at last, in a dull, tired voice—‘Isabel, you must forgive me if you can. I have been a beast. I must have been off my head. I feel as if I had been drunk, and was only just beginning to come to. Whatever rot I talked you must try and forget it, Isabel. I can’t make out what the devil can have come over me!’

The woman gave him an angry, challenging glance. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I won’t forget it. You spoke the truth. Why are you beginning to tell the old weary lies again? Surely we have got beyond that.’

‘You didn’t understand,’ he said. ‘I was a brute; there’s no more to be said. Don’t try to say any more. Of course you can’t understand. My God, what a damned muddle I have made of things!’

‘But of course I do understand, Kingston. Nothing can undo what you have said. It didn’t need saying, and no amount of denials can ever make it untrue.’

‘Isabel,’ he said in a broken voice. ‘Do you realize what you are saying? I was fool enough to tell you——’

‘What we both knew before in our heart of hearts,’ she interrupted passionately. ‘And now we know each other. Oh yes, I understand you. All of a sudden you have been overcome by some absurd qualm—some whim or other. You think we are to be separated by some ridiculous fad.’

Amazement held him. This time he fixed his eyes on her and spoke slowly, laboriously, as one speaks English to someone who can only understand a foreign language.

‘A fad!’ he repeated. ‘Hang it all, Isabel, is honour a fad, and decency, and all the rest of it? One does what one can. Is it only a whim?’

‘Yes,’ she answered violently. ‘It is only a whim. These artificial scrupulosities of yours, they are just middle-class superstitions. You belong to me, and I belong to you. We know that is true. Very well, then; why should we deny in deed what we know to be true in fact. Oh, I have no patience with such whims. Nothing can separate us; why should we[178] pretend to be separated by the fact that you have got what you call a wife? I am your wife. You have no other. You can’t have another. Your only duty is to me—to me and to yourself. All the rest is mere romantic sentimental nonsense.’

His fastidiousness swung him back into a reaction of almost physical repulsion as he contemplated her. The impossibility of making her understand any honourable point of view was dreadful. He loathed her with all his heart as she sat there trying to enforce her claim. And yet he could not deny her claim, and, despite his shuddering disgust, he loved her as much as ever, reluctantly, angrily, but with all the secret unreasoned impulses of the bondage that held him.

‘Isabel,’ he said, with forced gentleness, ‘can’t you even try to understand? I am sorry. Yes; it is true what you say. We belong to each other. Nothing can alter that. But I have given my word to someone else, and I must—don’t you see?—having struck the bargain, I must keep it. Make it a little easy for me, Isabel, though God knows I don’t deserve it. But one wants to keep one’s self as clean as one can.’

‘I won’t make it easy for you,’ cried the other, beginning to realize that he had entrenched himself behind a wall of determination. ‘Clean? You won’t keep yourself clean by playing the hypocrite with Gundred.’

‘Ah, God! Poor Gundred! It is a dirty game I have played with her all along. And yet I never knew. Before God, I never understood. I meant to deal fairly, and I will deal fairly, too, as fairly as I can. The mistake was mine, and I’ll pay for it—pay for it all alone. Don’t you see, whatever happens, she must not suffer, Isabel. She—she has given me all she had to give. So much for so little, Isabel. I[179] must never let her guess that I haven’t an equal love to give in return.’

‘As if she will not guess it every day and hour of her life! Do you suppose you can deceive her?’

‘At least, I can give her a decent show in the eyes of the world,’ replied Kingston, showing a really subtle knowledge of Gundred’s temperament. ‘That will be better than nothing, any way. Oh, Isabel, the whole affair is a damned horror. It’s all my fault. But we shan’t make it any easier by letting ourselves go to pieces over it. The only thing I can do now is to save myself from being any more of a brute than I can help. Yes, I know we love each other; we shall always love each other, worse luck. But we must spend the rest of our lives trying to forget it. We must kill our knowledge, Isabel. It’s the best thing we can do, damn it, for the best that is in us. I’ve made my mistake and had my fling, and come my cropper; now I must stand the shot.’

‘It is not as if you could,’ cried Isabel—‘not as if you could pay your debt by yourself. It falls on me, because I am a part of you. I have to pay the heaviest price of all. I have done nothing; I have made no mistake; and now I am to pay!’

‘We pay together, then,’ he said slowly, ‘and we pay a heavy price to keep our love for each other untarnished. That is what it comes to. I’ll pay anything not to tarnish my love for you, Isabel, my opinion of you. It is all I have left. I must save that at any costs. And save a—well, a little rag of my own decency, too. You are asking me—I hate saying it, but it is true—you are asking me to dishonour both of us by dishonouring my wife. I rate our love and ourselves a little higher than that, Isabel.’

‘Oh, you are bloodless!’ she answered passionately—‘a[180] bloodless prig! There is nothing of the man in you. Have you nothing in your veins—no warmth, no life at all—that you can go on talking these frigid fancies of yours? Where do you come from—what are you? What are you made of? Can you feed your passions with these romantic metaphysics? What’ll they give you? Will they warm you when you are cold—with Gundred? Will they feed you, when you are starved—by Gundred? Will they give you company, when you are alone—with Gundred? Talk of your honour and mine! Our love is our honour. There is nothing else in the world. Gundred is nothing; there is no such thing as Gundred. I have blotted her out of existence!’

Never had the pagan egoism of Isabel been more terrifying, more repulsive. Through his love he hated her as he watched the cruel swift sneer of her nostrils as she talked of his wife.

‘Have you no shred of pity?’ he asked quietly. ‘Think of Gundred. The most damnable thing in the world has happened to her. She has given herself—her whole self—and got nothing in exchange. Can’t you at least let her have pity and respect? Poor little Gundred! I thought it was a square bargain when I struck it. I thought I gave her all I had to give. I swear I thought so. And yet all the time I belonged to you, Isabel, and you to me. Don’t you see that the only thing we can do now in common honesty is to spare Gundred all we can, and spare ourselves the dishonour of cheating Gundred even more than we have already?’

But Isabel was beyond appeals, frankly barbarous and merciless. ‘Gundred took her risks. All women do when they marry,’ she said. ‘And now she does not count any longer. What sort of man are you, to be pining about Gundred when I am here by your side?[181] Look at me—yes, look, look—and see how long you can remember Gundred.’

She fixed his gaze with burning eyes. But he turned away his head and refused to take up the challenge.

‘I suppose it is your right,’ he answered, ‘to make everything as hard for me as you can. I deserve it, I know. Oh yes, you blot out all thought of everything but you, as soon as I look at you. You are the only thing I can see in the world. And I won’t look at you, Isabel. It is no use. Must I tell you again? I won’t stain the love we have for each other by any further treacheries towards the duty we owe to each other and my wife. Oh, Isabel, if you would only believe me, it is because I love you so awfully, so damnably, that I cannot look at you, or touch you. I love you too much. I ache in all my bones with the love of you, and I love you too much and too well to satisfy my love. Oh, don’t you understand? We could never forgive ourselves, never feel clean again. Our love would have been spoiled, made filthy and horrible with deception and mean lies and beastliness. It’s a sort of responsibility we have, to keep it clean. We can’t kill it; it is there, it always will be there. But, at least, we can prevent it from turning us black and rotten. I’d sell my life, Isabel, to have our love free and honourable—I would, Isabel.’

Isabel laughed. ‘Oh, this dry and tedious discussion!’ she cried. ‘How many men would hair-split and quibble like this? Thank God, I have blood in my veins! My people never cared where or whom or why they loved. They took their pleasure where they found it. They were above all laws but their own desires. No silly conventions and superstitions ruled them. They were big, passionate men and women, with life in their veins, not sawdust.’

‘Do you care nothing, absolutely nothing,’ he asked, ‘for—well, for feeling that you have behaved as cleanly as you can? Nothing for consequences? Nothing for anything but the pleasure of the moment?’

‘It is in my blood,’ repeated Isabel arrogantly, investing the crude horror of her selfishness with a certain barbaric grandeur. ‘You know how I hate these huckstering considerations of yours. My self-respect is involved in getting what I want. Defeat is my only shame. And consequences—who cares for them? I know,’ she went on, giving the quotation with proud defiance—‘“I know that about this time there is a prophecy that a Queen of England is to be burned, but I care nothing if I be she, so that I have and hold the love of the King.” The love of my King I have and I hold; what does the rest signify? I told you Queen Anne and I were cousins.’

‘How I wish,’ he said—‘oh, how I wish to God I could make you understand what I feel. I feel the most contemptible beast on the earth; you alone can help me to win back a little of what I have lost. If only you would make it easier for me, Isabel—if only you would make it easier for me, by believing how ghastly hard it is.’

‘Yes; hard, hard, hard,’ said Isabel—‘hard I believe it is,’ she repeated, meeting the anguish and the struggle of his gaze. ‘And I want to make it harder. I want to make it impossible. Find yourself, Kingston—know yourself. Don’t go on tormenting us both with scruples and neurotic nonsense.’

He rose and stared down at her with furious eyes. ‘You are pitiless,’ he said—‘altogether horrible and evil. There’s no decency or civilization in you. You are as fierce as a savage. As I listen to you I hate you; every fibre in me hates and dreads you.’

‘When I look at you,’ he groaned—‘when I look at you, every fibre of me longs for you and cries out for you. And yet I swear I hate you, Isabel.’

‘Go on hating me, then, like that,’ answered Isabel triumphantly. ‘You have conquered me now. I feel that I cannot get near you again. For I know what that hatred means. And some day I shall win. I am bound to. You belong to me. You are me. You recognised that a few minutes ago. But now you are a fool. You refuse your happiness. Well, one day I shall bring you to it again.’

‘Let me go, Isabel,’ he pleaded. ‘Let us try to do the little best we can, you and I. Don’t make our lives more difficult or shameful than they need be. Oh yes, I know that you have everything in your power—too well I know it.’

He spoke wearily in a low, broken voice that seemed to foreshadow the end of his resistance. As his weakness grew manifest Isabel’s strength grew greater.

‘There is no escape from me,’ she said. ‘Remember I am yourself. And I shall always be there at your side, in your house, waiting, waiting till you wake up again from this foolish dream.’

His struggle had suddenly collapsed into the helplessness of fatigue. Even at this defiance of hers he made no sign of revolt. ‘Oh, God,’ he said, ‘how can I get rid of you? What chance am I to have? But it is no use talking. One can’t talk the same language as you—one can’t talk in the same century. It is hopeless, I know. Your ideas are as savage as Queen Isabel’s—you have got all that fearful barbarous selfishness of hers, and one’s only chance of making you understand would be to talk to you in the old French that she must have spoken.’ His voice trailed off into silence.

Isabel drew closer to him, and laid her hands softly on his arm. ‘Kingston——’ she began.

He shook off her light touch, and looked her full in the face. His eyes were blazing, and his manner had the restrained roughness of passion held hard in leash.

‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘if you touch me, I swear to God I love you so much that I shall kill you—here and now, with my naked hands.’

She believed him, and was exalted by triumph. ‘Ah,’ she cried, ‘you do love me. You are becoming a man at last. That would be a good death to die.’

‘Body and soul of you,’ he went on fiercely, ‘hateful and glorious—I might destroy them, mightn’t I, but never could I be rid of them. I know there is no escape, Isabel. And now surely you can let me be. I am bound to you now and for always. Isn’t that enough?’

Isabel smiled. ‘Enough,’ she cried. ‘It is everything; now or later, what does it matter? I win. I win. Kingston,’ she added, dropping indifferently from the heights of emotion to the plain lands of prose, with something of that unconscious ease which one might have imagined in the nature of a woman like Isabel the Queen, the very prose of whose life was emotion, and whose emotion was so practical as to be daily prose of her existence—‘ah, Kingston, I am tired. I am simply dropping with weariness. Are we going to get down off this mountain to-night? Because, if not, I must try to sleep in that hut we saw. And I know you will not be able to run away from me.’

‘Sleep, by all means, if you can,’ he answered. ‘There is no going down through this mist. Luckily the night will be fairly warm, and by morning the clouds will have broken. But you will be hideously uncomfortable, I am afraid.’

‘No,’ she replied; ‘I am naturally primitive. I have never minded roughing it.’

Exhausted by their discord of wills, they now, by mutual consent, talked coolly and indifferently, casting memory behind them.

Kingston helped Isabel to find the hut, and did what he could to make it habitable. Then, leaving her to get what rest she might, he returned to his thorny vigil under the old beacon. The air was motionless, and not ungenial in its temperature. Enveloped above and below in blank darkness, he had the sensation of being balanced softly in space. The calm, after the ardent misery of their dialogue, was inexpressibly refreshing. He abandoned himself to its placid influences, and instead of devoting the night to a thrashing out of all the many difficulties that threatened his relations with Gundred and with Isabel, he let it drift him away into the domain of peace. He hardly knew how completely exhausted he had been, and it was with the surprise which always attends us when we find ourselves doing prosaic things that seem at variance with the high dramatic moments of life they follow, that at last he found himself floating quietly off in sleep.

Anguish was still there, deep down in his heart—a bruised feeling of hunger and dissatisfaction, a great shame for himself, and a great pity for his wife, as well as a firm resolve that she should not suffer. But passion had dulled the edge of its own intensity; only dull aching pains were left, rather than acute stabbing ones. Disappointment and hopelessness possessed him in an inexorable but not agonizing grip. In fact, he was too weary to feel the full weight of the yoke that was laid upon him. Cradled in the great silence, his tired consciousness sank at last to rest.

When Kingston Darnley woke, the clouds had broken. Overhead was the clear vault of stars; beneath, a vast flocculent sea of milky whiteness. Already the eastern air was lightening with the first green tremors of dawn, and the warm calm of the night was giving place to the keen freshness of a new day.

Kingston could rest no longer. He rose, and wandered to and fro across the summit, thinking out the situation in which he had become involved. A force too great for his resistance had swept him into its dominion; so much was certain. The force was hateful, paradoxical, inexplicable. But its grip was at his throat, and no struggles could extricate him. The whole face of the world had suddenly changed; hidden things had been made clear, and things which had once been thought precious and sufficient were now shown in the light of this strange sunrise to be altogether false and valueless. No reluctance, no blinking of facts, no well-meant pretences, could alter the fact that life had suddenly opened out before him, enormous, passionate, in all its scope, and that, in the revelation the mountains of bygone days were dwarfed to molehills.

But these changes ruled only in the secret places of the heart. There remained the practical aspect of things. In the depths of his soul he now carried with him a knowledge of what was highest and most glorious in life, but that knowledge must for ever be buried in the depths. His own rash action, in the days before he had understood, before he had been awaked, had put it eternally beyond his power to stretch out his hands openly, and seize the happiness that his soul had found. Chains of diamond might bind him now[187] and for ever to this second self that he had discovered; but chains of his own making, of his own riveting, made him prisoner to another life, in the lower world of daily existence. In the clear cold of the dawn the heats and tempests of his brain seemed to grow calm; he saw more and more clearly into the future and its possibilities; passion and its stress had given way to a cooler appraisement of circumstances. His nature, emotional rather than sensual, helped him to regain his balance. It was on the spiritual, transcendental side of his feelings that he dwelt.

This love of his for Isabel, this love which came from outside, which had nothing to do with moral or æsthetic approval—it should be a thing altogether high and holy. To keep it clear of contamination, to sanctify it by restricting it to the loftiest regions of life—this was the task that lay before him. The task might be difficult. Isabel might try to increase the difficulty of it. But he would gather strength from the very difficulty of his position, the very intensity of his passion, which, by the sheer weight of it, must lay so great a responsibility upon him as his soul must needs rise to bear. For the heavier the weight, the easier it is to endure; the soul braces itself sternly, deliberately, to the labour, and carries off the burden of a crushing load more triumphantly than the straws which daily life and little desires impose—the straws which seem of no account, and for which, therefore, the soul makes no preparation, stiffens no muscles to sustain. Against a lapse Kingston felt himself defended as much by the solemn ecstasy with which he had come to accept the fact of his passion as by his sense of the redoubled duty which it made him owe to the other life that he had innocently involved.

Tragic affection possessed him as he thought of Gundred;—Gundred, giving her all—that all which now[188] appeared so little; Gundred, whose greatest gift had now become inadequate, yet must never be slighted or discarded. In a moment he saw the vast distance that now separated him from his wife. Had they ever, in reality, been close together? Now, without conscious treachery on either hand, time had removed them very far away from each other. He understood what impulse it was that had lately been making him try to pull her back into his life, and realized how completely she had passed out of it. There was no fault in her—at least, no other fault than a limitation of nature. How he himself could have escaped the penalty of his own character he could not see. The crisis of remorse was passing. He had committed no deliberate sin against his wife. What had come about had come about through no volition of his. If he loved Isabel that love was something outside himself—something that he could not kill, though he might duly cage it and control it. To cage it and control it accordingly was all that remained for him to do. Infidelity, treachery, adultery of the flesh would be an unpardonable treason to his love and his loyalty; the adultery of the heart is a thing instinctive, inevitable, committed sooner or later by many blameless men and women. This, the most important of human treasons, stands for ever beyond the reach of human restraint. No judge can analyze it, no jury weigh it; it can be valued by no damages, absolved by no divorce. The marriage of heart with heart is a matter outside the reach of law; the world and its laws are only concerned with external and visible manifestations. Let the outward life be clean and seemly; but nothing can govern the impulses of the inner secret life. Its movements can only be prevented from reacting shamefully on daily demeanour; they can never be measured, foretold, forbidden. Kingston knew that[189] his heart was faithless to his wife—knew that, in reality, it had never been pledged to her at all. Her heart to his, perhaps; but he had pledged her nothing, he found, but his approval, his affection, his respect. All the more reason, then, that, having bought so much of her, and for coin so innocently false, he should pay his debt to the uttermost farthing in the only money he had to pay. Respect, affection, approval, all that he had pledged and promised—these should be paid without grudge or chicane, and the very completeness and honesty of these tributes must atone as far as possible for the cruel fact that he had no more to give her. In the fullness of his tribute to Gundred he must find at once the redemption of his own self-respect, the safeguarding of her happiness, and the glorification of this love of his, that might sink so low, and might be made to rise so high.

The whole air, vibrating with cold intensity, was now of a poignant emerald. In the East it grew keener and keener from moment to moment. Beneath, at his feet, through the milky sea of cloud, the heavy presence of the lowlands began to pierce, and grew from mere darkness into dim husky purples. Against the fierce green of the dawn a few clouds stood out fiercely black against the pure sky. The deep abysmal blue of the night was flying westward, retreating, fading, passing. Now it looked wan and worn; the faint stars staled and grew sickly as morning lamps. Slowly, very slowly, the world began to stir, to reveal itself far down in the valleys and distances. Detail had not yet been delivered of chaos, but gradually the separate existence of hill and hollow showed itself in flat masses of obscurity. And then the tones began to change, to grow sharper, more real. In the first dawn outlines had been clear and hard, the blackness dense and without modification. Against the pale horizon moorland[190] and mountain had stood out hard and stark, as if cut from cardboard. Now the haze of atmosphere began to clothe the new-born world in glamour, faint, mysterious, phantasmal. Along the eastern rim of the darkness stretched the swooping profile of Ravensber, like a lion couchant, flushing now, from a thing grey, cold, and dead, to a living mass of opal. Diaphanous, vague, uniform in colour against the pulsing vividness behind, the far-off mountain came nearer, its azure and amethyst grew every moment keener. At its feet the lower hills still lay dim and indistinguishable, but to them also life was returning; and as the great leonine shape above took warmer and warmer shades, from the first vaporous dimness of opaque blue to the splendours of a transparent jewel, so the intervening fells grew deeper in their tones of violet, more solid, more easily discernible among the faint mists in which the dawn had vested them, and from which they now began to separate themselves, while out of the vaporous films of the sky long trails and volumes of cloud were beginning to condense.

Emerald was now passing into topaz, and the rolling masses of distance seemed every moment a shallower, greener blue. For the oldest and most primeval of all colours is blue—that vast, profound sapphire of midnight. But as darkness dies before the advance of dawn, each colour recedes westward as its successor presses hard upon it out of the East. Blue gives place insensibly to green—to green, faint at first and tremulous, then growing swiftly more sharp to its note of greatest pungency. And so, when the lucence of emerald is at its height, it rises abruptly into yellow—a yellow very pure and thin, and coldly pale. Blue has faded out altogether. The air has the vivid transparency of a topaz. Quickly the clear light intensifies itself, and passes on into richer, angrier tones of[191] saffron and flame. Then, last of all, crimson and scarlet appear, final heralds of the approaching day.

Already, very far up in the shrill green of the zenith, a few feathered clouds were growing pink. The Ravensber, now, was of a rosy blue, and the sky behind it thrilled with gold. The air rippled cool with increasing keenness, and the awakening earth seemed to await an imminent summons. Gradually the details of the earth below could be discerned in blocks of uncertain light and shadow. It seemed as if the day were pausing on its road. The golden east grew increasingly golden, and the green overhead grew pale and melted; but to eyes that had watched the swift advance of the earlier stages this tantalizing moment of suspense seemed interminable. The world now was purple and azure; the Ravensber stood out no longer the phantom of a dream. Life was growing plain and plainer. But still the poignant moment hovered indecisively on its way. The path of the sun was barred with streaks of cloud. Ashen grey and violet in the beginning, they had kindled at last through wine colour to an ardent amethyst, and their lower surfaces were edged with rose. As their fluffy masses mounted the sky, their surfaces grew brighter, their purple warmer, till, high overhead, their last faint drifts were now of a uniform glowing pink. Everything was ready for the sun: the earth was clean and fresh from its sleep, the air was vivid and clean and sparkling.

When the last change came, it came with a blinding abruptness after its delay. The fire of the clouds grew swiftly fiercer, their purple turned to molten bronze, their edges broadened, became red, scarlet, flaming. Kingston saw now the exact spot where the sun was to rise. Down in a cleft of the hills, where far-off Ravensber tailed away into the first slopes of Fell End, there lay the heart of the cloud-drift, and there through its[192] sombre curtains, the sun would have to break his way. Crimson and scarlet dominated the world now, throbbing from horizon to horizon. Splashes of infernal sanguine began to streak themselves across the East, growing every moment in number and in violence. The day was hurrying up in a leaping fury of splendour, and the path of the sun was a ladder of flame, leading upwards from the ravelled veil of darkness between the hills. And then, in a moment, the curtain of the clouded East was gashed suddenly and rent asunder: the earth seemed swept by a blast of blood and fire. The sun was up. Another instant, and his awful globe had leapt free of the broken masses of bronze beneath, and was mounting on its tyrannous way through heaven.

Instantly before his glory all rival splendours faded. Scarlet, crimson, gold, and orange paled and died in the glare of his presence. The magical moment was passed. Clouds, mountains, and valleys were mere clouds and mountains and valleys again; the transfiguring radiance was dead. Only the air was still pervaded by the red glow. The world was torn from dreams to reality again. Calm, clear, definite, it lay below, stripped of mystery, a world of men and women, fears and desires, eating and drinking.

Kingston walked round to where the western edge of the mountain dropped away to the fells far below. Beneath those, again, lay the narrow glen where Ivescar stood. Between the Simonstone and Carnmor it cut its way southward and then sloped down into the great valley beyond. The Vale of Strathclyde stretched softly through the distance, very broad and fertile, to the remote low hills that bounded it on the farther side. From where he stood Kingston could see its whole course mapped out before him, far away, clear and rosy in the fresh daylight. In a swooping curve it flowed westward under the wall of the mountain[193] country, westward from its source away in the east, in the heart of Yorkshire, out to where its last placid ripples passed into the indistinguishable golden glory of the western sea. And there, beyond the low cleft in the woodlands, where a faint smoky haze betrayed the town of Lunemouth, the vast, flat glitter of the bay ran farther and farther out, till it was merged in the bright opalescence of the sky, against whose gleaming softness rolled northward, in dim sapphire, the jutting ranges that passed up into the tangled mountain chaos of Cumberland and Westmoreland.

Trees, steeples, villages, stood up clear and vivid everywhere in the valley beneath, remote and tiny in the depths; but where each river coiled and writhed through woodland, there coiled and writhed across the face of the earth a monstrous sleepy dragon of white vapour. Higher up, again, in the narrower mountain valleys, wherever water flowed, the runnels of its course were filled with a dense bellying mass like pale smoke. From the hills behind, too, from the stern, deep-channelled country of fell and moor, rolled down towards the lowlands of Strathclyde great sluggish remoras of mist, blotting out each hollow in a snowy void, and leaving only here and there a little islet of dark rock or heather in the white swirling sea of their tide, as they lapped and curled round the lesser hills below. As the sun grew stronger, their volume momentarily ebbed and melted, but in the first moments of day the glen of Ivescar brimmed over with their confused currents, beneath the brow of the Simonstone, and as Kingston gazed down over the edge, he looked into a blank and woolly vacancy.

While he stood there Isabel approached. There was no more battle, no more challenge in her air. Knowledge of the truth was enough for the hour. In the cold clear purity of dawn the ardours and agonies of[194] passion could have no place. Kingston and she had found the great secret of their common life; no more words were needed.

‘We may as well be starting down,’ he said. ‘It will be easy enough now. I only hope Gundred has not been in a great state of anxiety. Did you get any sleep?’

‘It was a bony bed,’ replied Isabel, ‘but I managed to rest quite fairly. But I feel utterly tired and squashed. Do let us go home, and get fed and cleaned and decent again.’

‘In a few minutes,’ said he, ‘we shall hardly be able to believe we have ever been up here. This night will seem like fancy.’

‘Or else we shall feel that we have been up here all our lives, since the very beginning of things. Kingston, I was angry with you, but you have taken me up on to a mountain, and showed me more beautiful things than I ever thought there were in the world. I have been thinking. Perhaps I understand a little better now.’

He studied the calm radiance of her face. The sun fell full upon it, gilded and glorifying.

‘Yes, Isabel,’ he said, ‘we must do what we can. We must try to—to honour ourselves. I am glad you begin to understand. After all, nothing can take away the thought of what we have found together up here, you and I. And we must not let that thought get spoiled, Isabel. How pompous I sound, though!’

She sighed. ‘I am always running my head up against the walls of life,’ she answered. ‘I think I do see now what a mistake I made. I hurt myself and you. Oh, I shall never pretend to have conventional morals like you, but I am beginning to understand that self-denial is sometimes a splendid form of self-indulgence.’

The thrill of the new day, the glowing serenity of everything around him had their influence on Kingston. His emotions reached calmer, greater heights than before, above the reach of storms. His tongue was loosened for a moment.

‘And yet,’ she answered, ‘you are going to lead me down into the valleys. Do you think one could always stay on the heights?’

‘At least we have been there once in our lives,’ he replied. ‘How many people can honestly say that?’

‘The valley is full of clouds and mists,’ said Isabel, peering down. ‘Death and horrors may lie below us.’

‘We are going there together, Isabel. We shall always be together now. We cannot help it, even if we wanted to. Nothing can release us from each other.’

‘Oh, I am cold and cramped, perhaps; I am frightened of things all of a sudden. Even you and I will have each to go alone into the Valley of the Shadow, Kingston. You will not be able to go with me there, not even if we are to meet again on the other side. I am dreadfully afraid of death and dying. Life has suddenly become more lovely than ever. I love it and worship it. Come with me into life. But, even with you, I don’t like passing out of this warmth down into the mists and cold damps below there.’

‘They will have disappeared by the time we get on to the lower flats,’ he answered. ‘Let us set off. They are thinning every minute.’

With a last look round the radiant plain of the hill-top, Isabel followed him over the edge, and down the[196] first steep slope. Instantly they were out of the sunlight and the glow, in chill shadow as yet untouched by the influences of day. Down and down they plunged towards the mists beneath, while, far overhead now, the rosy beams of the day shot out across the world, cut off from them as they went by the intervening bulk of the mountain, sombre and stark. So they came at last to the pavement of white limestone below, and stood on its last, lowest ridge. Beneath them, grey, barren, inhospitable, lay suddenly revealed the topmost end of the little valley, hemmed in by its amphitheatre of cliffs. The mists were scattering now in desolate wisps of vapour, and the air was cold and dank in the shadow of the mountain behind. Through the torn veils of the white fog they could see clearly down upon every detail of the glen—the shape of each poor profitless field of brownish grass, enclosed by intersecting lines of stone wall, with here and there an ash-tree or a hawthorn, weird, tormented, witch-like, crouching eternally beneath the lash of the wind, and shivering in its sparse, blighted garment of leaves. Just below them rose the struggling stream, out of a stone slope thick with nettles that dropped away steeply from the foot of the cliff; it wandered homelessly through two or three grim meadows, where wiry herbage battled with the white outcrop of stone, then passed through a grated barrier into the domain of Ivescar. From the height of the cliff Ivescar itself, house and plantation, seemed more impudently vulgar than ever. The plantation filled the valley, glaringly artificial, glaringly unsuccessful, a serried army of wretched dwarfish little pines. And in the middle shone, steely and cold, the square expanse of the lake, and by its side, isolated on the desert of lawn, the house itself, dome, tower, pinnacles and all, raw, yellow, brutal in its contented ugliness.

Kingston and Isabel gazed down at it with distaste; then they turned from the mournful glen, filled with chill shadow and sterile discomfort, to look back at the mountain from which they had descended. Very high overhead towered the imperious western face of the Simonstone, and the whole mass was glowing now like a thing alive, flushed with pulsing blood and vitality. From crown to base it was kindled to an ardent and luminous crimson, at once sombre and gorgeous, at once brilliant and terrible. Kingston and Isabel looked up at it in silence for a moment, then plunged, without a word, down into the bleakness of the stony valley. Another moment, and the mountain had vanished from their sight. They were in the cold shade of the cliffs, and the upper glories were hidden. So, still silent, they made their way through the fields, through the elaborate iron gates of the park, and into the pretentious deserts of Ivescar.

Gundred had a quiet, practical spirit. When her husband and her cousin had failed to reappear in time for dinner, she wasted no energy in grief or anxiety, but came to the conclusion that they must have lost their way, and either found some other haven, or, at all events, taken the most prudent steps possible in the circumstances. It was never in her calm nature to be harassed without good cause; she always expected the best till she heard the worst, and gave everybody round her credit for coolness and imperturbable sagacity equal to her own. Accordingly on this occasion she made her husband’s apologies to Mrs. Mimburn, dined without agitation, and slept the night through in placid confidence that the wanderers would return with the morning. Her perfect trust in Kingston’s sense precluded all anxiety as to his welfare, and her perfect trust in his affection all anxiety as to his absence. When at last Kingston and Isabel[198] returned, Gundred received them with a complete lack of fuss or excitement, but with proper attention suited to their state. Warmed, washed, fed, they soon fell again into the orderly course of the life that she had arranged. She condoled with them on the misadventure that had kept them prisoners on the hill-top, and troubled no more about the matter, as soon as she had made certain that neither of them had contracted chills or colds. Very tiresome she felt the misfortune to have been, but a thing that might have happened to anyone, of no real lasting importance.

Not so, however, moved the keen mind of Minne-Adélaïde. That astute woman, ruffled by the inexplicable absence of her host, depressed by the barbarism of the view from her window, and at all times prone to the more passionate interpretation of life’s problems, set herself to the careful watching of Kingston in his relations with this strange new cousin of his wife’s. Mrs. Mimburn from the beginning was no friend to Gundred. She could not but suspect that Gundred disapproved of her. No persuasions could induce Gundred to call her ‘Minne.’ To Mrs. Mimburn’s complete disgust, the new niece persisted in calling her ‘Aunt Minna.’ Thus predisposed against her hostess, Minne-Adélaïde unfavourably noted all Gundred’s limitations, her apparent coldness, her lack of appetizing brilliancy, of appeal, of all the many attractions with which a wise wife arms herself against the inevitable satiety of marriage. In an evening’s space, Mrs. Mimburn became convinced that Kingston must be dreadfully bored by this unsalted wife of his, with her frigid little excellencies. She kept a sparkling eye wide open for complications. When she heard that Kingston was on the hills with a female cousin, she smiled in one corner of her mouth; when time went by, and he was discovered to be spending the night[199] with her on a mountain, she smiled in both, and licked her lips with a delightful foreboding of catastrophe. She welcomed her nephew with perfunctory joy when he at last appeared, and devoted her keenest attention to the examination of Isabel. And at once her experienced glance discerned what it had taken Kingston weeks to discover, what Gundred was still a long way from discovering. She saw that Isabel was attractive—illogically, unreasonably so, but attractive all the same—even unusually so. And Minne-Adélaïde knew that it is just these illogically fascinating people who do the most harm, and establish the most devastating tyranny over men’s roving tastes. ‘Aha!’ thought Minne-Adélaïde. Time began to hang heavy on her hands, and she fell to scanning the future with a hopeful anticipation.

The days passed by in their usual lethargic orderliness. Nothing happened, nothing seemed likely to happen. Kingston and Isabel were rather better friends than before, perhaps, but Gundred was so clearly satisfied with the situation that no perils appeared to threaten. Minne-Adélaïde began to grow a little disappointed. Neither Kingston, Isabel, nor Gundred gave her anything to be interested in. Their behaviour continued merely amiable and ordinary. Perhaps Kingston had grown more ardent in his treatment of Gundred, but Mrs. Mimburn was not in a position to realize the fact. Certainly he grew daily more and more affectionate; he pulled her perforce into every conversation, he devoted himself to her comfort, he never allowed himself to be happy out of her sight.

As for Isabel, he and she had very little to say to each other in these few ensuing days. What had happened had happened; it had given them a blessed consciousness; there was no need to be putting it into words. Exhausted by emotions, they were content to[200] let themselves drift. That the situation was terribly unsafe and precarious Kingston knew in his heart. He realized that it could not long be continued. But for the moment he acquiesced, and trusted that, before the strain broke in catastrophe, Fate might provide some solution; and, meanwhile, there was nothing for Minne-Adélaïde to get hold of.

Mrs. Mimburn had made herself into one of those women who belong to the town, and are quite out of place in the country. Her dress, her voice, her every movement suggested the perpetual neighbourhood of shops, and an habitual dependence on their resources. Paris and London spoke in her, and she looked garish and inappropriate whenever she carried her elaborate boots or her silk petticoats into the country. Her rustic clothes and hats were never genuine. They overdid their effects, and only succeeded in looking like those of an actress at a garden-party on the stage. Mrs. Mimburn’s soul was as urbane as her body and its appointments. She could not live or breathe for long in the country. A nice suburban corner like Surrey might be all very well for a week-end or so. It had a saving artificiality—motors and bridge-parties and all kinds of gaieties seemed quite in place. One could wear decent clothes, and yet be in the picture. A civilized landscape like that was nothing more than a good mise-en-scène for an added last act to the “Drama of the Season.” Mrs. Mimburn could tolerate such an atmosphere without beginning to sigh for Bond Street. But Ivescar, dumped in its desolation, was nothing short of appalling. Minne-Adélaïde withered and shrank. She bitterly regretted that curiosity had brought her there. Nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to say: only clouds and rocks to look at, and the rain for ever spotting one’s hat, and midges biting one awfully through the openwork of one’s stockings,[201] if ever one went out on the lawn in a presentable shoe! Minne-Adélaïde looked restlessly round for any possibilities of amusement. She felt completely dépaysée, out of her world, an exile in a desert that made her most brilliant gowns seem blatant and tawdry. She grew homesick, feverish, overexcited by sheer weight of dullness. She would not go away till she had well spied out the land. But in the meantime she must have something to do—or die.

‘So fascinating, your cousin,’ said Minne-Adélaïde one afternoon, suddenly wearied of counting the raindrops on the window-pane.

‘Isabel is quite attractive,’ she replied, her tone implying, ever so faintly, that it was a presumption of Mrs. Mimburn even to praise a Mortimer.

The two women sat alone in the picture-gallery, Kingston being gone on some errand to his mother, and Isabel writing letters upstairs. Of late days Gundred had begun to notice the increasing warmth of her husband’s nature, and in some strange way his affection seemed to set her at a distance from him instead of bringing him nearer. Though she had never thought twice of his night on the mountain, yet the faint chill that she had felt that evening had never since quite left her. She could find no fault in their relations, could guess no limitation in himself or her; yet now his love seemed to leave her outside his life. She felt cold and lonely—quite without reason, she knew, but yet cold and lonely she felt. Therefore she was more than usually on the defensive against the impertinences of Minne-Adélaïde.

‘Dear Kingston has a lot to say to her,’ she went on viciously. ‘He always has such a lively mind. He likes people with plenty of élan.’

‘Doesn’t he—yes?’ replied Gundred quietly, yet feeling the stab as she would certainly not have felt it a fortnight ago. The skin of her self-contentment was wearing thin. But she saw the other woman’s intention to hurt, and brought all the resources of her pride to repel the attack. ‘Isabel and my husband are the greatest friends,’ she went on. ‘I am so glad of it. She can talk to him about so many things. Sometimes she can amuse him better than I.’

Her whole splendid pride shone in the calm with which she made these admissions. It was her crowning confession of faith in her husband. And yet, as she made it, the confession hurt her. Deep down in some secret place of her heart it touched a little hidden wound.

Minne-Adélaïde saw only the rebuffing self-complacency of the speech, and was spurred to angry indiscretion by her niece’s arrogant tranquillity. ‘So wise you are, dear Gundred,’ she said, ‘to let them go about so much together. Now so many young women ride their husbands on the curb, and end by boring them to death. Not that your system has not got its dangers, dear. I wonder you are never anxious. Men are men, when all is said and done, and at your age you cannot be expected to know the horrors they are capable of.’

‘You have probably been unfortunate in your experiences, Aunt Minna,’ she replied. ‘Everything depends on the set in which one lives—yes?’

Mrs. Mimburn laughed—a high, giggling laugh, with a clever upward run at the end.

‘Nothing, my child—nothing,’ she replied. ‘All men are alike under the skin.’

‘But the skin may be clean or dirty,’ she answered, ‘and that is what makes the difference—yes?’

‘Life, my dear,’ said Minne-Adélaïde sententiously, ‘is a garden of roses growing in manure. You cannot play about in that garden without getting dirty. And men like the gardening work, and they don’t trouble to put on gloves for it either. Life is a dirty affair, ma petite.’ Minne-Adélaïde honestly thought so, though her own life had been plain and clean in the most uninteresting degree, so far as its facts went. Gundred looked at her with chilly distaste. She misunderstood Mrs. Mimburn, thought her attitude genuine, instead of mere pose, and disliked her accordingly.

‘We shall never agree,’ she answered. ‘We see things very differently, Aunt Minna. We have always known different sorts of people.’

Mrs. Mimburn bit her enamelled lip. ‘Well,’ she answered, ‘I am sure I hope you will make a success of your life, dear Gundred. I do think the experiment is a little risky, though. Isabel is really a little dangerous, you know.’

‘Are you talking about my cousin?’ asked Gundred loftily. ‘Oh, please don’t trouble. I think we understand each other.’

‘No woman understands any other woman when there is a man in the case,’ replied Minne-Adélaïde. ‘Only misunderstandings happen then. We are all cats together. One always has to be careful of other women.’

‘How kind of you—yes?’ said Gundred; ‘but there is really nothing to warn us against.’

‘Oh, ma chère, of course not. Dear Kingston is the best husband in the world. It is a pity, perhaps, he was not—well, a little more noceur before he married. That would make one feel so much more secure of him as a husband. One has to remember, you[204] see, that marriage is not only a matter of—obvious things. It’s not a case of having a man, but of holding him. A woman should always have reserves and spices in her nature to keep her husband on the alert—ordinary women, I mean. But you are so brave. You are trying to run a ménage à trois on quite original lines——’

‘My dear Aunt Minna, there isn’t any need to give me so much good advice. I have no wish to interfere with my husband’s amusements.’

‘Not even to have any share in them? Now, that is so courageous. Of course you don’t seem able to amuse Kingston as much as Isabel can. I suppose you see that. He makes it plainer and plainer every day. Or perhaps you simply don’t care for the trouble, and so you give him a lively pretty creature to fill up the time with? So sweet of you. I only trust he won’t fill up the time so well that he won’t have any left for you. Men are so uncertain.’

This time Mrs. Mimburn had pierced Gundred’s armour. Her colour deepened. ‘I should think it a silly insult to have any doubts of my husband,’ she answered. ‘And—and—well, it’s not as if Isabel were very extraordinarily beautiful.’ She regretted the lapse as soon as she had committed it. But Minne-Adélaïde pounced mercilessly.

‘Let me tell you,’ she said, ‘if Isabel is not exactly beautiful, she is something much worse: elle est pire. She is fascinating. Now, mere prettiness is apt to get very fade and insipid after a time—the monotony of marriage, you know. And if there is anyone so attractive as Isabel anywhere near, a man is terribly ready to forget mere prettiness.’

‘Perhaps, but a gentleman does not forget his duty,’ answered Gundred, losing command of the situation for a moment.

Minne-Adélaïde pursued her advantages accordingly. ‘Oh, well,’ she laughed, ‘if one only wants to hold one’s husband by his duty! And even a gentleman—what else is he but a man, as soon as his clothes are off? And they do show the strangest forgetfulness at times. I could tell you stories.’

Gundred hated herself for permitting such a dialogue. Mrs. Mimburn seemed to have entrapped her.

‘You see,’ went on Minne-Adélaïde, ‘if one lets one’s self slide out of a man’s life, one is encouraging him to forget one—and to remember other people, which is worse. Now you—of course one can’t always fill one’s husband’s life, one can’t always talk to him, can one? Between ourselves, now, one can’t always understand him. And she does, this cousin of yours. And that may be all right, or, again, it may be all wrong.’

Thus baited, Gundred grew furious. Her colour came and went, her manner became neater, cooler, blander than ever. And yet she could say so little. Mrs. Mimburn’s darts had found the weak spot that she was hiding even from herself. Through all her anger at Minne-Adélaïde’s insolence, the dialogue had for her a fearful, poignant interest that forbade her to follow her own first angry instincts, and cut it off with a snub.

‘I think you are quite mistaken,’ she replied. ‘And, anyhow, I should always be glad to see my husband being amused—no matter who it was by.’

‘Ah, you have the reckless unselfishness of the very young,’ answered Minne-Adélaïde intolerably. ‘That has wrecked so many marriages. “Trust nothing and nobody” ought to be one’s motto, and do all the amusing that may be necessary one’s self. It is safest in the[206] long run—if one can do it, that is. However, you seem content to let someone else do it, and all I say is that I hope no harm will come of it. But when you want to take up your own position in your husband’s life again, you may find that someone else has filled it while you were ordering dinner and talking about the weather. It is even better, my dear, to bore your husband than to let him find that he can be kept amused all day and every day by someone else. I should get rid of the cousin, if I were you.’

‘Yes?’ answered Gundred, gelid with wrath, yet, despite herself, enthralled in Mrs. Mimburn’s dreadful foreshadowings. She began to have some notion what it was that she had been finding unsatisfactory in her relations with Kingston. He petted her more and more, but more and more did he talk to Isabel, and his recent efforts to include Gundred only revealed his inability to do so. This it was, this situation of her own making, that had been giving her secret, unacknowledged qualms, and feelings of vague hunger. The more proudly, then, did she revolt against Mrs. Mimburn’s insinuations, and the vigour of her anger was the measure of her inward conviction that the insinuations held some truth.

Minne-Adélaïde thought that she held Gundred helpless. She presumed on her power, made reckless at once by boredom and by gratified spite.

‘Oh, well,’ she pursued, ‘it may pay to leave your husband for ever alone with Isabel. I can’t say. It wouldn’t pay with any other man or any other woman. But, of course, your husband may be an exception. Most husbands are—to their wives—until the catastrophe. Now, if I were you, I should want to know a great deal more about that night they got lost on the hill together—or said they did. That sort of thing isn’t done, you know. It wants a good deal of explaining.’

Confronted with the final insult, all Gundred’s pride, the best side of her courage rallied to her aid. Her manner betrayed no agitation, paid Mrs. Mimburn no compliment of excitement. Perfectly cool and level was her voice as she looked up and answered:

‘You seem to forget that we are not living in one of that dreadful man’s plays,’ she said. ‘I should despise myself if ever I were capable of having such thoughts of my husband or my cousin. As you said just now, such things are not done—in the class I know, at all events.’ She fixed a cool, contemptuous, grey stare on the astounded Minne-Adélaïde, who suddenly had an unaccustomed feeling of getting the worst of it.

Fluttered by this sudden revolt, Mrs. Mimburn made an effort to recover lost ground.

‘I am sorry you take it like that,’ she began. ‘Of course one does not mean to accuse——’

‘We will talk of something else—yes?’ said Gundred very coolly, but with complete decision.

Minne-Adélaïde gasped. She considered her attitude towards life all that was chic, up-to-date, and sound. She imagined that no man or woman could ever spend the dark hours in each other’s neighbourhood without the ultimate disaster, and piqued herself on the smart knowledge of the world that discerned adultery in the most casual compliments. Gundred’s sudden revolt was preposterous in its ignorance of human nature, as well as supremely insolent in its offhand condemnation of her own views. She completely lost her temper.

‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘one has to remember how little you know of things, poor dear! Your innocence is really beautiful—if it weren’t so pathetic. You will have a rude awakening one of these days. I am afraid there can be no doubt that your husband has already——’

She broke off, daunted by the look in Gundred’s eyes. The immemorial pride of the Mortimers gleamed and flashed in them. Gundred might have been brought up to be calm, unemotional, well mannered, but she came of a race that had never allowed itself to be baited by inferiors. And almost everyone else in the world was an inferior. Gundred fixed a chilling stare on Mrs. Mimburn’s excited face. ‘Be quiet, please,’ she said; ‘I am afraid you are a very vulgar woman.’

All was over; Mrs. Mimburn was summed up and condemned in that one placid sentence, so judicially delivered. She could make no appeal; for the life of her, she could not even finish her remark. For the moment she was dominated by the force that came from her rigidly decorous enemy.

Then in the silence, the door opened, and Kingston entered. Gundred turned towards him with a happy smile.

‘Isn’t it a pity,’ she said in pleasant, gentle tones. ‘Aunt Minna says she must go back to London to-morrow. Nothing can persuade her to stay, I find.’

Minne-Adélaïde stuttered and choked with wrath at this defeat. ‘Yes,’ she said, purple through her powder—‘yes—yes, I must positively go back to town—positively go back to town to-morrow.’

Minne-Adélaïde was gone, but her work remained. A week had passed, but Gundred could never forget that dialogue. Still as far from her mind as ever was any crude distrust of her husband. It was not in her[209] nature to have vulgar suspicions—to attribute to others that ugly baseness of which she herself could never have been capable. But, none the less, she grew vaguely fretted by Isabel’s presence, vaguely unhappy over the interest that Kingston took in her cousin. The two were always saying things that Gundred could not understand. Bit by bit she grew to feel that even to be an efficient housekeeper and a nice, well-dressed person is not always quite sufficient for a wife’s endowment. She made spasmodic attempts to follow Isabel’s flights into the abstract, and sometimes gave a book the preference over needlework. Her conversation became ambitious, aiming at brilliancy, but only achieving flatulence. She talked in capital letters, of high big words without definitions. Her contributions to ethical debate were windy, wearisome, perpetually circular and pointless. She saw that she could not attain to Isabel’s fantastic lightness of touch; she tramped a heavy ring of argument, and, being for ever unable to analyze her own meaning, was quite incapable of conveying it to others. Never before had she found herself inadequate. Now the conviction grew upon her that inadequate—at least, in some directions—she certainly was. She took refuge in the consciousness of her wedding-ring, and in the thought that impiety would be involved in the sharing of much that her husband and Isabel talked of. And for no possible consideration of earthly happiness would Gundred have wished to share impiety.

Kingston and Isabel noticed Gundred’s efforts to keep pace with their conversations. On Isabel they had no effect. Isabel admitted no consideration of Gundred to any place in her life. She lived alone with Kingston, in a world of their own creation, and Gundred had for her little, if any, real existence. On Kingston Gundred’s manœuvres impressed the full[210] ill-luck of the situation. He saw how she was trying to come near him, and her struggles to do so only emphasized the fact that she was far away. Her attempt had come too late. Understanding now, as he did, the relation in which his whole soul stood to Isabel’s, it became piteous to watch Gundred’s efforts, and understand their futility. He redoubled the warmth of his demonstrations, and, after the habit of men, tried to make up for denying her what she wanted by lavishing upon her everything she did not. Outward signs no longer satisfied her; she had awaked to the fact that true marriage involves the exchange of something more, and that something more it was not now in Kingston’s power to give her. He was delightfully attentive, delightfully demonstrative; he picked up cushions, placed footstools and pillows, fetched and carried with eager docility; he complimented, praised, gave lip-worship and kisses and embraces; but these vigorous manifestations were all so many simulacra of the love that was lacking. Gundred insensibly came to realize the lack, and Kingston’s well-meant attempts to dissemble it only had the effect of forcing it on her attention. He gave her no cause to feel lonely, was always at her side, always included her in the talk, never allowed himself to be alone with Isabel. Yet lonely Gundred still felt herself—shut out from something. By whose fault? The fault was undiscoverable.

Her husband’s attitude was negative and balanced. He threw all his efforts into making good to Gundred the fraud that he had innocently perpetrated. He had no need to look at Isabel, to talk to her, to aggravate the trouble of Gundred’s position. To Kingston and Isabel their secret glory was glory enough. He even shrank from the idea of open friendship with the woman whom his heart loved. It was enough—completely, triumphantly enough—that she should be[211] there in the same house with him, and that he should be for ever conscious of her presence and her relationship to himself. That relationship might have been profaned, spoiled, made common, had they allowed themselves to indulge in talk, in rapture, in the perilous delights of intimacy. As things were, it remained a lovely secret possession, a thing between them both, silent and holy, not to be brought down to earth. The earthly agonies had passed, or only recurred for fleeting moments. The privilege of keeping sacred a feeling so absorbing was enough for the glorification of the present. Morbid and perilous, the situation stood. A month would probably have destroyed its frail balance. In the nature of things it could not last. No sane lover could have contemplated its lasting. But Kingston and Isabel had no plan. They lived from hour to hour; they did not dare to look forward. Destiny would somehow loose the knot of their relations. Silent love was enough for the moment. Their emotions hung breathless on a delicate poise that would not let them contemplate any to-morrow. Besides, such a transcendental attitude, so dangerous, so unpractical, so deadly, left Kingston’s nature free to pay consolatory court to Gundred. With all his external nature he did homage to his wife, and concentrated his skill on paying in full to Gundred the debt he owed. Exalted and fantastic, rather than sensual and practical, his temperament made the task easier than it might have been found by many better, more full-blooded men. To him it became rather a fine martyrdom, in the successful achievement of which lay not only purification, but even pleasure. In the mutilation of the lower self for the sake of the higher he found a comfort so keen as to be almost joy.

Thus, in eager self-mortification, he humbled himself before Gundred, and believed that she had no[212] suspicion of any defaultings on his side. He felt that he was giving her good measure, pressed down and running over—though only of the second-best. That she guessed it to be the second-best her husband had no notion; so subtle an instinct would always have been beyond the prosaic Gundred whom he had known and married. Now he knew her no longer; life had developed them along different roads. So he continued in the confident hope that he was giving her the perfect satisfaction to which she had the right, while she, for her part, secretly chafed at his obvious efforts, grieved that effort should be necessary, and exerted herself more and more to enter his life again. And as for the future, that might look after itself. Sufficient to the day was the marital duty of it. Marriage, however, is a dead thing by the time it becomes a duty. Kingston had no suspicion of this, but Gundred, suddenly outstripping him in the race of intuitions, understood in her heart of hearts, and felt a mortal chill.

The habits of a lifetime, though, are not easily broken by emotional gales; Gundred, for all her leaping excursions into the regions frequented by Kingston and Isabel, retained her old, well-drilled enthusiasm for domesticity. Hearts might break and sunder, but the trained courage of Gundred saw no reason why soup, for that, should grow tepid, or beds ill-aired. Whatever she might fear or suffer, however much she might strain and agonize for real intimacy with her husband, she could not have excused herself to herself for allowing her attention to wander from his comfort or neglect his health. She pursued the useful tenour of her way with a Spartan cheerfulness that might have been even more splendid than it was had not long habit so engrained in her the zeal of domestic services. She continued overhauling the house, its[213] resources, its supplies, its deficiencies. Lady Adela having handed over to her the reins of government, she assumed them with unfaltering grip. Soon she became the housekeeper’s terror, and put to rout all the slack ease that had prevailed under the ineffectual amiability of her mother-in-law’s rule. While one side of her nature was battering for admittance into Kingston’s life, the other, the older, larger side, was occupied in examining store-cupboards, choosing wall-papers, pulling the house and its appointments into shape once more. Many improvements must be made, lighting remodelled, some of the worst horrors tactfully but decisively obliterated.

And at this point, some ten days after Kingston’s understanding with Isabel, her inquiries brought Gundred face to face with the revelation that the drains of Ivescar were of an Early Victorian Tudor design no less pronounced than the style of its architecture. The discovery filled her with consternation. Her husband had confessed the day before to a sore throat. Diphtheria at once painted itself grimly on her imagination. Their stay at Ivescar must immediately end. With a strenuous exertion of character she swept Kingston and Isabel into harmony with her own determination, and the next morning they fled from Yorkshire. There was only one place for them to go to while the sanitary inspectors got to work. The London house was impossible—a desolation of painters and builders. They must return to Brakelond. Accordingly to Brakelond Gundred carried her acquiescent flock, and they took up their residence once again in the little wooden wing that jutted out over the sea. And so three more days passed, drifting Kingston and Isabel insensibly nearer to the inevitable catastrophe. In their fantastic ecstasy they were heedless of peril. But without some intervention of fate their path led[214] downwards towards disaster, though they might ignore or angrily deny the fact even to themselves or each other.

At Brakelond some of the old reflected strength came back to Gundred. She became, once more, rather the châtelaine than the glorified housekeeper. Her mind, less distracted by congenial cares, was able to devote itself with all its might to what she called, to herself, the recapture of her husband. She talked, claimed his attention, attempted metaphysical flights. Her efforts aroused in him sad laughter, irritation, and pity. They were tragically futile as ever—futile in the very nature of the case, no less than in the limitations of Gundred’s character. The situation drifted on and on. As for Isabel, Gundred not only tried to copy her methods, but to monopolize her company. She sat with her, took her for drives, kept her at her side as much as possible, flattering herself all the time that her manœuvres were imperceptible. Isabel, secure in her secret supremacy, allowed herself to be captured, and, in the superficial victory of Gundred, found an added joy in her own hidden amusement.

‘A little drive this afternoon—yes?’ said Gundred, after lunch. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice? You will come with me, Isabel?’

‘Oh, four o’clock. I don’t want to go far. There is a woman I rather wished to go and see. Dear Mary Restormel, Kingston, you have often heard me speak of her. They have been friends of the family’s for I couldn’t say how long.’

‘Shall I come with you?’ asked Kingston, not fancying the back seat of the victoria, and hoping to be excused.

‘Oh no, dear. You had better sit in the garden and make yourself comfortable. We shall not be[215] away long. Restormel is only about two miles off across the valley. And we’ll take the new horse too. So I expect we shall be home again in next to no time.’

‘Oh, I’ll do that,’ replied Gundred, not admitting, even to herself, that her motive in taking Isabel was to prevent her from having Kingston to herself that afternoon. ‘I really want to see her. She is expecting a child in about a month, dear Mary Restormel. Such a mercy if it is a son—not that it will make any difference, I am afraid, for the place will certainly have to be sold as soon as poor Hugh Restormel dies. Such a cruel pity—the sweetest little old place, Isabel. But the Restormels are poorer than Church mice nowadays, and positively cannot keep it going for another generation. You will simply love it, Isabel; you will be able to wander in the garden and get lost.’

‘You are quite sure you will not be lonely, Kingston,’ said Gundred, after a pause. She spoke with a tinge of remorse in her voice, reproaching herself with painful conscientiousness for her wish to deprive him of amusing company.

‘Oh no,’ he answered, not discerning her veiled apology, nor caring to. ‘I shall get along quite happily.’ He no longer answered her as he might have done in his first innocent friendliness, before Isabel had been revealed to him.

Gundred noticed the difference, with a subtlety for which he would not have given her credit.

‘It is so nice having Isabel with us—yes?’ she said, apologizing both to himself and her.

Her husband had long since ceased to criticize Isabel; now he warmed honestly to her praise.

‘She is splendid company,’ he replied. ‘Always full of interesting things to say. Don’t you think she is very amusing, Gundred?’

‘Oh yes,’ answered Gundred with pathetic insincerity. ‘So bright and witty and facetious. I often wish I could say all the clever things she does. I am afraid I am much slower than she is, though. My brain does not run along so readily. I am fonder of serious things.’

Her voice was touched with a faint wistfulness. Kingston hardly noticed it. He saw an opportunity for a show of that ardour which she found so unsatisfactory, and which he believed that she found so satisfying.

‘She is one person, and you are another,’ he replied. ‘I would not have you different, little lady, for anything in the world.’

This was pleasant and pretty. Gundred’s instincts found it blankly empty and chilling. He meant to be so warm, but a month ago such an advance as hers would have been very differently met. Then he had thought her cold, had been for ever calling upon her to thaw. Now he hardly appeared to notice whether she was warm or cold, despite his manifestations of enthusiasm. Now it was he that was frozen, and she might thaw, it seemed, in vain. Had her melting come too late?

‘Wouldn’t you?’ she answered slowly. ‘Are you really sure you wouldn’t? Kingston,’ she went on in a low voice, ‘I do so want to do and say what you like.’ She hesitated and broke off, seeking piteously for words that should salve her pride in its downfall.

He could not understand that her seriousness demanded the tribute of a serious answer in return. He[217] gave her another of those easy protestations which sounded so well, and yet, as she felt, meant so little.

‘You always do,’ he replied, ‘always and always. You can’t tell how much pleasure you give us, Gundred.’

Against this geniality, so smooth, so superficial, she felt horribly powerless. There seemed no way, any longer, of piercing to her husband’s notice, of spurring him up to sincerity. And that casual ‘us’ shut the door against her so finally.

‘Ah,’ she answered in a tired tone, her smile tinged with tragedy. ‘You say such delightful things. But I do feel I am not clever enough for you.’

‘It is not cleverness one wants,’ he said. ‘It is just you. You, and only you. You are exactly perfect. One doesn’t criticize and say you are not this and that. You are just You.’

She knew that he no longer criticized. But what he thought loyalty she felt to be lack of interest. The ardour of his words awoke now no answering ardour of conviction in her mind. As for Kingston, an emotion of pure pity stirred him. This charming, dear little woman, how awfully much, after all, he owed her. He believed that he could only pay his debt to her by redoubling the formal warmth of his words. The more pitiable he found her, the more he intensified the eagerness of compliment that was his atonement at once to her and to himself, that eagerness which she found so void and cold. ‘Dear pretty lady,’ he said, ‘you should never have foolish little doubts. Don’t you realize that nobody’s husband was ever so happy in the world before?’

She knew it. And she feared that she counted for nothing in that happiness of his. Her hands dropped, her voice grew chilly in its hopelessness. ‘Such a comfort—yes?’ she answered. ‘I am glad you are so happy, Kingston. I hoped you would be.’

Isabel came back into the room, and in a moment an animated conversation was going forward. Gundred took her part bravely, speaking wherever speech was possible, always falling short or wide of the point, always on the edge of giving up the attempt, and always being picked up by her husband, and pushed back again into the dialogue. Then the carriage was announced, and she set off with Isabel to visit the Restormels.

Kingston sat in the garden, pondering the strange situation, hoping that he was behaving fairly to all concerned, and believing that he was. What could come of it all he had no idea. Poor Gundred, he admired her, respected her, marvelled at her—did everything, in fact, but love her. And that was now beyond his power. Love he could show, love no one can force himself to feel. She no longer stirred any pulses of emotion in him. She was a mere acquaintance—a pretty, charming, well-mannered acquaintance, but nothing more. What could he do, except what he was doing? To send Isabel away would be to find himself soon ceasing even to tolerate his wife. Without Isabel his life would become vacant and boring beyond conception. And it was not possible but that his boredom would react unfavourably on his attitude towards Gundred. It was fairer to all that Isabel should remain with them, easing off the tension of the difficult situation. And in time everything would settle down somehow, and the problem of existence would solve itself. He would not look ahead. Ten days had passed in a dream of holy happiness. Why not ten months, ten years, ten lustres?

Meanwhile the return of the two women was strangely delayed. Tea-time came and went without a sign of them. And then the agitating news arrived that the new horse had emphasized his novelty by[219] bolting on the homeward way, and upsetting the carriage at the foot of the hill leading up to the Castle. Gundred was unhurt, and soon appeared, pale and shaken, but intrepid. As for Isabel, her leg had been badly broken.

The next few hours passed in ceaseless bustle. Isabel, unconscious, was carried up to the Castle. Doctors, nurses, medicaments were wired for. Gundred’s courage came nobly to the fore. Despite the shock she herself had sustained, she went calmly, self-denyingly, self-importantly about her business. Kingston, who had seen nothing and suffered nothing of the accident, was far less placid and level-headed than Gundred. The sight of Isabel appalled him; Gundred firmly faced the responsibility, had her brought to the oaken parlour at the end of the old wooden wing, did all that could be done for her till the doctor arrived. When Isabel returned to consciousness it was Gundred who watched over her, comforted her, tried to mitigate her pain; Kingston could not bear to contemplate the horror. Had the sufferer been a man, Kingston, perhaps, might have confronted his groans more stolidly, though even so his sympathetic, emotional temperament must always have been less fitted than Gundred’s cool, unimaginative bravery, to cope with the manifold uglinesses of physical suffering.

At last, however, the telegrams began to bear fruit. The doctor arrived, and matters showed signs of settling down into a more regular train. The bone was duly set, Isabel made comfortable, and hope held out of a speedy and prosperous recovery. A nurse came, and proved a very capable and decisive young person, whose only weakness was for looking-glasses. She was established in the empty upper rooms of the old wooden wing, and gave nightly scandal to the Castle servants by lighting all the candles she[220] could get together, the better to contemplate her charms and curl her hair. Except for this trick of collecting so lavish an illumination and leaving it to take care of itself while she went about her other businesses, she turned out both pleasant and useful. Her charge soon grew to like her, and, within a day or two of the accident, life at Brakelond was subsiding once more into calm and comfort. Helpless Isabel lay in state in the little oaken parlour, where Kingston and Gundred kept her company, hardly leaving her alone from morning to night. There was even, as her recovery satisfactorily advanced, a certain quiet charm about this invalid life. Isabel incapable of movement was rather a softer, more human person than Isabel insolent in perfect vitality and health. Kingston and Gundred enjoyed sitting with her and talking to her. They took it in turns to read aloud, and did everything they could to make the victim’s imprisonment as bearable as possible.

So the days went placidly by till, though she was as yet, of course, unable to set foot to ground, the doctor promised that before long she might expect to be getting about once more, without any ill-effects from her accident. The nurse’s position, relieved by Gundred’s assiduities, grew more and more formal, more and more of a sinecure. She spent most of her time among the servants in the Castle, and her own looking-glass saw less and less of her. There were her morning duties and a few routine services to be discharged later, but in the evening, when Isabel had dined, she could safely be left to the care of Kingston and Gundred, while Nurse Molly, her fringe in perfection, could go and delight the housekeeper’s room away in the Drum Tower.

The conversations between the three over Isabel’s bedside took many a strange turn. Gundred was never[221] encouraged by either Kingston or Isabel to feel any of her inability to take an adequate part. They chatted of everything that interested them, and Gundred was compelled to believe herself interested also.

‘Now that the pain is over,’ said Isabel one night, ‘one wonders, looking back, what it was all about—what it meant, what it really was.’

‘Oh, they always say a broken bone is dreadfully painful,’ replied Gundred. ‘I have always heard so—yes? Dear Isabel, you bore it so bravely.’

‘One has to worry through,’ rejoined Isabel. ‘But what I meant was, why is the pain there? What makes a cracked bone produce all the unpleasant effects it does on one’s consciousness. It sends all kinds of horrible little burning, grinding, stabbing messages of spite to the brain. That is what pain is. But what are all those little messages for? Why does the beastly bone go on repeating itself so? If it only told the brain once and for all that it was broken, that ought to be quite enough. I hate a tautologous bone.’

‘Yes,’ said Kingston, ‘but it only goes on sending those messages when your brain tries to disregard them. Your leg only hurt when you tried to move it. Pain is simply the repeated warning of Nature.’

‘And the test of endurance—yes?’ put in Gundred. ‘Pain has the most marvellously elevating effect.’

For a moment the conversation lapsed. They were sitting in the oaken parlour after dinner. The hour was growing late, and soon Nurse Molly might be expected to come and shut up Isabel for the night. However, at present she was at the other end of the Castle, taking her pleasure with the rest of the household, and the old wooden wing, with its inhabitants, was left quite deserted.

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Isabel. ‘Pain is absolutely[222] horrible. I am a coward about it. I loathe and dread it altogether. Pain and death—dying, rather—are awful to me. I love being alive and warm in the blessed world. Dissolution is ghastly. For nothing would I give up the joy of living. Oh, agony is too horrible. It’s not a lesson so much as a punishment. Oh yes, a punishment, even if it’s for something one has done hundreds of years ago, before one was in this body at all.’

‘Oh, what a dreadful idea!’ cried Gundred, shocked—‘a terrible unchristian idea!’

‘Not at all,’ contributed Kingston; ‘what about the blind man in the Temple? They asked Christ, “Did this man sin, or his parents, that he was born blind?” How could he have sinned, then, before he was born, except in some other existence? And Christ passed the question. If He had disbelieved the theory of reincarnation, He was quite capable of saying so very definitely. But He did not. By His silence He implicitly admitted its truth, instead of challenging it, and devoted Himself to the healing of the blind man.’

‘I always feel,’ went on Isabel, ‘whenever I have a bad time, I am paying for having enjoyed a too good one once in a wrong way. I expect this broken leg of mine is the result of some selfish enjoyment of mine in bygone days that I have forgotten. I had prepared this penalty for myself in some mysterious way. For these things come automatically. Touch a button—commit the tiniest, wee-est action, good or bad—and years and years later, long after one has thought the action dead and forgotten, something happens that shows it has been alive and steadily working from the first hour to the last. Every littlest thing that happens, pleasant or painful, can always be traced back,[223] I expect, to some cause, infinitely small and infinitely remote in the past, far, far away beyond one’s recollection.’

‘Don’t you wonder,’ said Kingston, ‘what your actions of yesterday and to-day will produce, and how long it will be before their effects come down upon us? We shall probably have forgotten all about to-day by then, but everything that we have done must bear some sort of fruit some day or other, as you say. Your accident, for instance, will have some effect upon us, and Nurse Molly must make some change in our lives, sooner or later. If one cannot introduce a fresh action without effect into our lives, still less can one introduce a fresh person. Nurse Molly, with her marvellous fringe, will certainly bring some new element with her into our lives. Now, what will it be, Isabel?’

‘Talking of Nurse Molly,’ she said, ‘really, she must be terribly vain. Morgan tells me she lights all the candles she can get together, and then sits and looks at herself in the glass. The servants are perfectly scandalized. And when she goes away from the room, she never dreams of putting the candles out. She leaves them all burning quite happily, and never thinks about them again. Such a sinful waste—yes? And she might set these old wooden rooms on fire any day, by her carelessness.’

Isabel ignored her cousin’s intervention, and went back to the original topic. ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘I have atoned for my wickedness of the past with this broken leg of mine. What I want to do is to lay up for myself a great fat store of merit, so as to go on getting happier and happier in all the later stages of my existence.’

‘Yes, but before one can attain the perfect happiness,’ replied Kingston, ‘remember that one has to lose the desire for it. After ages and ages of purification,[224] one leaves the last trace of desire behind—even the desire for good. Then one becomes the perfect knowledge which is the perfect peace.’

‘Well, but the warmth of life is also the torment of life,’ replied Kingston. ‘Desire may be as warm and pleasant as possible, but all desire is sorrow. Without desire there is no disappointment, no suffering, none of the horrible things in life that we all want to get away from.’

‘Would one rather sacrifice desire for the sake of getting rid of sorrow, or is desire so pleasant that one would put up with sorrow to retain desire? I suppose desire is very painful and all the rest of it, but it does make life wonderfully interesting, and one’s days would be deadly lonely without it.... I don’t know that I want the perfect peace, as yet, Kingston. Perhaps when my soul has grown a few centuries older. At present all I want is to lay up for myself a supply of happiness to go on with.’

‘You can only do that,’ he answered, ‘through suffering—self-abnegations, martyrdoms, and all sorts of uncomfortable strenuous virtues. By despising pain and bearing it for others, you may attain to happiness. Not simply by sitting quiet and saying you want to acquire merit. You must go through dreadful things cheerfully if you hope to lay up merit.’

‘Nothing for nothing is the rule, evidently,’ said Isabel, ‘in morality as well as in commerce. So tiresome, when everyone longs to get bargains, and buy a pound’s worth for half a crown. But when happiness comes to the hammer, it always fetches its full price, I suppose, in whatever market you buy it.’

‘Talking of hammers,’ replied Gundred, ‘there are[225] the strangest thumpings going on upstairs. Don’t you hear? Hammerings and bumpings and knockings. Do you think Nurse Molly can be nailing up pictures?’

‘Running pins into the fringe, I should think,’ replied Kingston, with a touch of petulance. Certainly Nurse Molly was making the oddest noise in her room overhead. In the silence that followed Kingston’s suggestions her unmethodical clatterings could be distinctly heard.

‘We must certainly ask her to be quiet—yes?’ said Gundred. Then she rose and went to the window. ‘Why should it be so stifling in here?’ she went on. ‘There is quite a gale outside. Only listen.’ She paused, and the roar of a great rushing wind was clearly evident.

‘Oh yes,’ answered Gundred; ‘all in a minute. Especially so late in the year. That is what makes the heat so extraordinary.’ She peered curiously out into the darkness. ‘Why, Kingston,’ she exclaimed, ‘it is actually snowing. How perfectly astonishing! Quite a number of snowflakes are falling. And Nurse Molly’s illumination is really too scandalous; I can see it glowing quite far out into the night, throbbing and flickering.’ She pulled back the catch, and threw the little window wide.

Instantly, from above, a long, keen shaft of pure flame curled swiftly down into the room, licked round the casement like a dragon’s tongue, and was gone again. Gundred had self-possession enough to close the window, then she staggered back. The roaring sound overhead was louder now than ever.

‘The Castle is on fire,’ she remarked at last, after a heavy pause. Suddenly she felt elated by her sagacity. ‘The Castle is on fire,’ she repeated slowly.

‘I think we had better get out of this,’ said Kingston. ‘It’s that woman’s confounded candles upstairs. Ring the bell, Gundred, will you?’

He went to the door, and opened it. The passage, their one hope of reaching the body of the Castle, was an impassable mass of flame at its further end. Kingston came back into the room. Even now the full horror of the situation had not struck him.

‘I’m afraid we can’t escape that way,’ he said quietly. ‘The corridor is ablaze.’

Gundred, meanwhile, was vigorously pulling at the bell; in the silence that followed Kingston’s announcement she continued methodically at her task, and the knob could be heard slapping again and again into its socket as she released it.

Isabel had said nothing hitherto. He waited poignantly to hear what she would suggest.

Kingston turned furiously upon Gundred, who, in an access of vain frenzy, was rending and tearing the bell.

‘Leave off making that hideous row!’ he exclaimed. ‘What do you suppose is the use of it? Do you imagine the servants will come through three yards of fire to get us out?’

‘I’m hanged if I know,’ replied her husband. ‘We must do something, that’s certain, and pretty quickly. These old rooms will burn like tinder. There must be some way along outside.’ He looked out of the farther window. Now the clamour of the fire was growing every moment more insistent. The night air was[227] aglow, and burning fragments were dropping like meteors towards the sea beneath.

‘Yes,’ said Kingston. ‘There is a little ledge of rock. One couldn’t walk along it in the daytime, but we have no choice. Gundred, you will have to do what you can. You will be able to get along quite safely, if you go quickly and don’t think about it. And I must take charge of Isabel. Isabel, I’m afraid it won’t be very good for your bad leg, but I must carry you somehow. And there is no time to be lost.’

Then Gundred understood everything. In the midst of an orderly comfortable life, it is not easy to understand that one is suddenly hemmed in by inexorable death. But at last the facts of the situation all burst in a shrieking pandemonium upon Gundred’s brain. She faced round upon her husband, read his face, and knew suddenly what terrible thing it was that he was thinking. In that awful moment of unveiled sincerity she saw that she, his wife, came second in his consideration. She was to get away as best she could. It was Isabel that mattered. The slow secret fears of her life roared out into the open, swept down upon her in a storm, and culminated. She clasped her hands for self-control, as the world shook and tottered round her. Desperately she clutched at her escaping senses; then, in a swirl, everything rushed together, grew dark, vanished. She dropped her hands, gave a sharp, moaning cry, and fainted. In the blank silence that followed her fall the voracious bellowing of the fire drew closer and fiercer.

‘My God!’ said Kingston, in the low tone of absolute terror, ‘what are we to do now?’ He looked at Isabel. Between the two helpless women he must make his choice. He must make it instantly, too. He could not by any possibility save both. He[228] looked again from Isabel to Gundred. Isabel’s face, in that supreme hour, was white and wet with anguish, but she said nothing. She saw too well what Gundred’s collapse involved. Kingston still stood glancing from one to the other. He knew which of the two his whole soul cried aloud to save; he knew also which of the two his duty called on him to save. Love and duty were at last impossible to reconcile. On the razor’s edge of agony his mind poised and quivered through a pause that seemed to fill whole delirious hours, yet was come and gone in a flash. Insensibly he was waiting to hear Isabel pronounce his sentence and her own. All her passionate love of life shone in her straining eyes. They implored him, called upon him, cried violently to him for safety. And then, in an instant, Isabel’s eyes were opened, and her soul rose triumphant on its wings.

‘Your wife,’ she said, with dry lips, almost inaudibly. ‘Your wife. You must save her. Go—go quickly—and then come back for me—if there is time—oh God, come back for me quickly.’

All was over. He knew he must obey. Without a word, he turned and gathered up the inanimate bundle that was Gundred. In feverish haste he clambered with his burden through the window. Insatiably, terrifically, the fire raged and ravened overhead. As he went he had a last glimpse of Isabel, her face gleaming with fear, set in the strain of mortal anxiety, her white hands clenched and writhing together on the quilt. Then he was out in the darkness, with brands and lumps of burning matter falling thick about his ears, drifting down into the night, to sink at last, hissing, into the invisible sea below. Stumbling, tottering, staggering, he dragged his load. How he ever reached safety he could never have told. A hundred times it seemed as if he must fall. But he[229] struggled on vaguely, half-consciously, through a nightmare, and found himself at last on sure ground, under the shelter of the old Castle walls. Savagely he dropped his unconscious burden on a level spot, then turned to rush back for Isabel. And, at that moment, before his bloodshot eyes, the old wooden wing collapsed into a blazing hell of fire—a vomiting pyramid of sparks and flame.

The soul passes in a moment from youth to manhood, through the iron door of a great sorrow. Between past and present stands the bolted portal, and the event of half an hour has set an eternal barrier between the thing one is and the thing one was. Kingston Darnley, as soon as his dazed brain began to understand what had happened, found that he looked back at his past across the haze of fire as on a drama played by strangers. Everything had changed; on that drama a curtain of anguish had descended, and now, when it lifted, the scene had altered, and the old actors had disappeared for ever. Kingston, no less than Isabel, had passed through the furnace. Seared and burned and blackened he emerged from it, changed beyond his own recognition, with passions killed and passions kindled. Somehow, by some mysterious help, he had struggled through the agony, and come out alive; but his consciousness was dazed and bruised, his vitality crushed, his fiery interest in life turned suddenly to the grey ashes of mere endurance.

The days went by in a dreary dream. Kingston went mechanically about his duties, and saw the figure of Gundred moving at his side like something unreal and strange. There were inevitable activities[230] for him to carry through, and he discharged them steadfastly, with his numbed mind fixed on other matters. As for Gundred, not having so suffered, she found herself more alive to the matters in hand. There were condolences, inquiries to answer, arrangements to be made, restorations to be seen about. Gundred’s interest in the details of life could never lie long dormant, and when the first shock had passed with two or three days of intermittent tears, Gundred dried her eyes carefully, with a due regard to their appearance, and began to pluck up her sense of importance once more, thanking Heaven for her powers of self-control.

The fire had confined itself to the old wooden wing and the chapel, and had made no attempt to devour the stark stone walls of the Castle itself. Gundred was deeply grateful for the forbearance thus manifested by Heaven, and was soon immersed in plans for the rebuilding of the ruins. Her husband, stupefied and calm, was not yet able to give her any effectual help, and so on her unaided shoulders she triumphantly supported all the responsibilities of the case. As time passed, and her first outbreak of genuine sorrow was quelled by the flood of her new activities, Gundred even began to enjoy the importance which events had so abruptly conferred upon her. Suddenly she became more conspicuous in the public eye than ever in her life before. The tragedy of Brakelond challenged attention and pity up and down the length and breadth of England. In horror, in picturesqueness, in romance, it possessed all the titillating qualities best fitted to make it the talk of the country. And Gundred became the central figure of the picture; sympathy and admiration were concentrated on her; her courage, her coolness, her grief, her rapid resumption of self-control, were made the daily subject of laudation. Of her husband[231] nobody knew much, or cared. Her own name, her own position, made her the pivot of the drama, to say nothing of all the other causes that had tended to obscure Kingston since the catastrophe—his dazed acquiescence in events, his reluctance to enter the world of new plans in which Gundred was moving so happily. He sank into the background, and was alone with his sorrow.

Gundred was busy with designs for the new stone wing that should arise in place of the treacherous old wooden fire-trap, as soon as the ruins should have been cleared away. Kingston could be moved by nothing except the hope of finding Isabel’s relics. It was not till the third day that his wish was fulfilled. Then, buried in the densest chaos of débris, they found what remained of the dead. Gundred cried bitterly over the tragic discovery, and then, dabbing her eyes, began to meditate an epitaph that should compensate everyone for all that had been suffered. Kingston faced the piteous remains in a stupor. He could not have told what it was that he had expected the excavations to reveal, but surely nothing so crude as this mere wreckage of mortality that came to light. The fire had been merciless: a few fragments of flaky bone, the blackened crust of a skull, from which the white teeth gleamed horribly—this was all that it had left of Isabel. Kingston could never have anticipated the raw ugliness of the revelation. It stunned him anew. This black, bare globe was dreadful, filled with dreadful thoughts and associations, a monstrous burlesque of love and things lovely; its eyeless glare, its obtrusive grin, were ghastly in their mockery of life’s beauties; the glitter of two gold-crowned teeth in the lower jaw set the last fine edge on the horror, in their ironical reminder of the daily life now destroyed for ever. And yet this was Isabel—the real Isabel—or, rather,[232] it was the earthly emblem of her. That rounded shape had actually contained her, had contained the hopes, the fears, the love that had gone to make up Isabel. And now, where and what was Isabel? Only the outward form had suffered; how could the mysterious secret passions that had been the framework of her personality, how could they have any share in the ruin that had fallen on the outward manifestation of Isabel? And yet, without that outward manifestation, how could she still be Isabel? Dimly, fantastically, he tried to figure her in another shape—as another woman, as a man. The task was impossible. To his bounded human outlook, the outward form was an integral part of the real Isabel. Yet, now he was brought face to face with the obvious fact that, while the outward form had been reduced to a thing of loathing and horror, the real Isabel must still be in existence somewhere, incorrupt and incorruptible. It was unthinkable that she should have suffered the fate of her body. So he must perforce bring himself to realize that the thing he loved had had no true connection with the hair, the skin, the features that it had worn for a while. Hair and skin and features were gone; but the beloved remained—out of sight, unrecognisable, remote; yet, for all that, perfect and unalienated. Fire could not touch the heart that was Isabel, the courage, the loyalty, the devotion that were Isabel. They were still alive as ever. But where, in what far world, how to be found again, and how to be known again when found?

Kingston passed insensibly beyond the cheap materialism of orthodoxy. He could not postulate an infinite gilded space where Isabel might be eternally walking in her habit as she had lived on earth. This invincible anthropomorphism, this obstinate survival of the savage in us, by which we are all prone to imagine[233] the dead as we saw them in life, and familiar for ever by their earthly features, had now no hold on Kingston. He knew that, whenever we may meet our dead again, and wherever that may be, heart will call to heart, and soul be known again to soul; but the features that we have known and loved, the bones, the flesh, the softness, will all have passed long since into other forms of life, merged in the huge kaleidoscope of the universe. Perhaps, in circumstances less cogent, he might have conceived himself as meeting the physical Isabel years hence in some glorified state, yet recognisable to eyes that had known her on earth. The sight of her relics, however, jarred him once and for all out of the puny, materialistic dream. The blackened hideousness of them forced on his attention the irrelevance of all physical forms. For a time they may be everything, these forms and features; ultimately they go for nothing, pass utterly, are dropped, discarded, alike by the love that wore them and by the love that worshipped the spirit they clothed. No, he had done for ever with the corporeal Isabel. Weaknesses and beauties of shape were all destroyed, reduced to their native insignificance. Yet Isabel remained. But he had lost her; she had passed beyond his knowledge into dim places where, if ever she heard the cry of his soul far off, she could not make him any answer. Now and then, perhaps, she might call to him in return; in the whisper of the evening wind, in the song of a bird; but never again in the accents he had known, from the lips that he had watched; and, even so, she might call unceasingly to the hungering ears of his soul, yet never be able to make them understand whose voice it was that they heard. His deep certainty that she still lived made the separation more paradoxical, more horrible than ever to Kingston. To know that she was there, yet to call in vain; never to see her, never[234] to meet her, to be unable, through all his days, to open up any means of communication with the thing he knew to be still existing,—this was the ghastliest instance of Fate’s irony, giving so much, yet making the gift so nugatory.

Kingston began to feel that, after all, the bill sent in by the gods had fallen more heavily on him than even on Isabel. Isabel had passed through agony to glory. But he, he had another agony, longer and more incurable than hers, though less poignant; and no glory to compensate, at the end, for the gnawing persistence of his pain. The grey, sad merit of doing his drudging duty by the world for two or three more score of years—that, perhaps, lay before him; but a chilling, colourless glory was this, at once harder and less rewarding than the sudden flare of martyrdom through which Isabel had passed upwards on her way. For upwards she had gone, leaving him henceforth alone on the lower levels where they had first met. Isabel—selfish, passionate, barbarous Isabel—in one whirling moment had leapt above all the trammels of false desire and fear—had soared into the great heights of selflessness, and left far beneath her the outworn husk of her old struggling egoism. In that other state where she now went radiant, it must be another Isabel that lived and moved—a purified Isabel, stripped of many mean and selfish thoughts; an Isabel far nearer than before to the ultimate radiance towards which the whole world is inevitably tending through ages of slow purification. How should he even be able to catch up lost ground and come level with this glorified Isabel once more? And yet, again, without features—without the well-remembered features of body (without so many of the mind’s well-remembered features too)—how, even if chance should be given, was he to recognise the soul that had once been one with his own?

She had utterly outstripped him in the race. No test of his endurance could equal that test of hers—no, not if he lived decently and honestly all his days, doing the best he could with his duty through the lagging years that probably lay ahead; why, that would be nothing to compare with her ordeal, no such swift burning furnace as that through which Isabel had passed, and from which she had emerged all gold in the sunlight of her future.

Because duty and honour had seemed to call, he had sacrificed the thing he loved for the thing he had promised to love. Even in cold blood he would still have done the thing—must have done it; any other course would have been impossible, a treason, a horror. But the sacrifice had been a rending of the heart; his whole soul was strained and bleeding from the wrench—bleeding to death, he thought. And, while Isabel had won freedom for herself, he had gained nothing but a lifetime’s loneliness. Without any peddling notions of striking a bargain with the gods, he could not but feel the sarcasm of their smile. He had sold his life’s happiness—to buy a lifetime’s unhappiness and desolation. He had done what was an agony to do, in order to obtain that which would be a long agony to endure. So he looked angrily, contemptuously, on the chilly duty and self-respect which was all that his martyrdom had gained him. He hated them for what they had cost, and hated them the more for his inmost knowledge that the purchase had been inevitable. Life without Isabel! It seemed that his soul had never in all the ages imagined the possibility of such a thing, yet now he was to envisage it through every remaining day and hour of his existence. She was gone, rising on strong wings towards heaven; he remained on earth, alone for ever, he who had so helped her take her flight.

So time dragged by, and insensibly the first agony of his loneliness wore down into a calmer sorrow. Isabel’s bones were duly buried, and honoured with a neat inscription devised by Gundred, and matters gradually began to fall into a settled course once more. Kingston began to return to ordinary life, and his private grief no longer claimed his whole attention. Between himself and Gundred a barrier still rose, but he grew able to give her his help, and, bit by bit, to share once more in the superficial interest of her days. She, for her part, went bravely on her way; with more courage and on a more difficult way than she or anyone else suspected. The new wing was built; the new wing lost its raw look of novelty; gradually Isabel and her end became to Gundred little more than a vague if awful memory. She was not the kind of woman whose nerves can be thrown permanently out of gear. Self-restraint had been drilled into her blood through many generations, and she made imperturbability the test-virtue of good breeding. Only once in all her life had perfect coolness failed her, and that one momentary lapse had been the immediate cause of Isabel’s death. For a long time the knowledge of this was her secret cross. In her heart of hearts, that last awful instant had showed her that Kingston loved Isabel, that his care for his wife was mere loyalty. The sudden perception, the combination of new terrors and responsibilities had been suddenly too much for her endurance, already sapped and damaged by hidden anxieties and by the shock of the accident. Not meaning to be selfish, transported rather with the longing to be unselfish and give up her own life that her husband might save Isabel’s, she had yet, in the crisis, helplessly committed the final selfishness. She had killed Isabel. Nothing at first could quite excuse her to herself. And she knew that her husband must[237] inevitably feel as she did. This was the barrier between them—Gundred’s innocent guilt, and Kingston’s answering knowledge that she, and she alone, had been the real cause of Isabel’s death. Her weakness had cost him the happiness of his life. How could he bring himself all at once to look on the poor woman with a cordial eye? He could not but bear her a grudge—all the more bitter that he realized how unintentional had been the cowardice that had had such terrible results. He guessed, in his inmost consciousness, that Gundred—cool, practical Gundred—would have wished to be no less heroic than Isabel, would have wished to sacrifice her own life to his happiness; and this instinct only aggravated his grudge, only intensified in its first vigour his aching, bitter grief that the sacrifice had not been achieved or made unnecessary by a brief exercise of Gundred’s usual calm. Yes, the death of Isabel stood between them for a while like a sword of fire.

But Gundred was not a woman to suffer exaggerated scruples. Soon she surmounted the shock, and Bellowes’ Hypophosphates enabled her to triumph over morbid qualms. She reflected on the goodness and honesty of her intentions, set remorse in the background, and ere long was facing Kingston without any more such distressing reserves. He, meanwhile, was also growing quieter and more sane in his views. After all, no one was guilty. Everyone had acted for the best. Nature was not to be blamed. He was too fond of his wife to go on condemning her for an instant’s lapse. He saw the hysterical injustice of his grudge against her, and in time succeeded in overcoming it.

Though neither knew it, Isabel’s stormy intervention and terrible exit had tided them over the difficult preparatory stage of wedlock. Now that she was gone, they gradually settled down together in that[238] elastic bond of mutual tolerance which promises so well for permanent peace. Neither any longer expected too much from the other. Kingston grew to acquiesce in Gundred’s limitations, and rejoice in her perfections, without feeling fretted by the one or satiated by the other. He did not ask her to be an intellectual companion, to talk, allure, amuse. She was always cool and pretty to look at, always cool and pleasant in temper, an admirable hostess, housekeeper, and friend, altogether level and satisfying as a companion. He had had enough of vain searchings for the ideal. Nothing could divorce him from the memory of Isabel. He carried it with him from day to day, shrined in the depths of his heart, and through the placid duties and happinesses of his life never ceased to worship that lost part of himself, and yearn for its recovery. But on the surface he wore a face of perfect contentment, and his marriage with Gundred soon subsided into a whole-hearted alliance that was put to no strains, that stood the wear and tear of intercourse, and was felt to be quite ideal by all that had the privilege of watching it. And Gundred, now that the storm was over, gave equal allowances to her husband. The time was gone by now for high emotions and anguish. Her dim jealousy had vanished with its cause, and she no longer pined for the perfect intimacy that her nature made it impossible for her to attain. Instead of being in love with Kingston, she was now devoted to him, served him loyally and piously, made it her pride to keep him comfortable and contented. She divined in what quarter her strength lay, and took pains to cultivate all the qualities that gave her a hold on her husband. She learned life’s lesson, grew accommodating instead of exacting, prayed for him instead of preaching at him, and pressed upon his acceptance nothing that he did not[239] want. The years had worn down the sharp corners of their characters in the mill of marriage, until at last their harmony was exact and without any apparent possibility of discord.

The years glided placidly by, bringing no more great or violent developments into the lives of Kingston and Gundred. Five years after the fire at Brakelond Gundred bore a son, but otherwise little occurred to break the monotonous tenor of their days. Isabel, by now, was almost forgotten. Only Kingston retained his faithful worship of her, cherishing it secretly, far down under the loyal surface of his life, feeling that justice allowed him at least so much of compensation. From day to day he longed for her and listened unceasingly for some far-off echo of her voice. It seemed almost as if she had never been, as if she had left no relic of her existence in the world—except, perhaps, by a quaint freak of fortune, in the life of that Mrs. Restormel to whom Gundred had taken her on that fateful visit. For Mrs. Restormel, overcome with the horror of the news from Brakelond, had been so excited that her hour had come upon her unawares. Out of due time she had been delivered of her child, and a boy had made his appearance in the world only twelve hours after Isabel had quitted it. However, the Restormel baby prospered and grew strong, was christened by the family name of Ivor, and passed successfully through the vicissitudes of childhood. Otherwise, as Kingston Darnley felt, Isabel had come and gone, leaving no other trace in the world than that persistent image which her life had established in his own soul.

The restless heat of youth had died down in Kingston as in Gundred. His son was growing from boyhood towards manhood. Unnoticed the years had flowed away till almost a quarter of a century had[240] rippled by since the passing of Isabel. He himself was growing fixed and solid; grey was developing itself in his heart as in his hair. Life was very level and very comfortable and very pleasant. It was no longer stimulating. As for Gundred, the years had less effect either on her nature or on her appearance. She was one of the women who neither shrink nor swell with age. She had not grown fat; she had not grown thin. Possibly she had dried up a little. The freshness was gone from her features, though not their neat prettiness. They had grown perhaps a trifle wooden in their clear and rather hard perfection. Tiny lines had drawn themselves here and there, especially round the mouth. Otherwise her face had changed wonderfully little. The alteration was in its spirit rather than in its form. It was still strangely young for its years, but now it was far more decisive than before, older in experience, more matronly, more righteous. All her points had intensified, and now she had turned from a very pretty bride to a very pretty wife, full of responsibilities well borne, of interests, charities, benevolence. Her child, her schools, her households, her Primrose League gave abundance of occupation to her life, and more and more for her growing sense of excellence to feed on. From duty she never flinched or flagged; the consciousness of such undeviating rectitude of practice gave her manner a commanding air of self-confidence. Religion, too, tightened its hold on her. The better she felt herself becoming, the more useful and valuable, not only in herself, but as an example of conduct, the more her intimacy with Celestial Persons grew. Priggishness, self-conceit, as well as all the other grosser mental errors, were very far from the well-balanced security of her nature. The worst that an enemy could have said would be that she was a little slow to admit the possibility of any[241] limitations in herself. In earlier years she had already been calmly self-confident. Time had only justified and reinforced the calm as well as the self-confidence, so she went her methodical way, a model for all matrons, and had, in the neat garden of her life, no disorderly plots, no tangles, no weeds. It was a precise arrangement of well-kept beds—everything in its place, and no profitable herb omitted. Her husband wandered outside its borders, and roamed the shrubberies of freedom. But Gundred found all that her nature ever needed to ask in that daily round, that common task for which her character had been so perfectly fitted by time and fate.

Their life oscillated between London, Ivescar, and Brakelond. In London Gundred had her factory girls, her hospitals, her educational societies; at Brakelond there were the tenants to be looked after, the Castle and all its immense organism to be managed, the Tory Candidate to be upheld by threats of Gundred’s withdrawal of her custom from all who should so far presume upon the Ballot as to oppose him. At Ivescar there were farms, gardens, parishes to be controlled by Gundred’s masterful eye. For a masterful eye it was. Kingston slid back into himself, never regained his full vital energies, renounced interest in his career, and yielded the reins of government into his wife’s hands. As her sphere widened, and her power increased, Gundred’s unquestionable majesty increased proportionately, until the habit of ruling had grown so strong in her that no one would have presumed to doubt the wisdom or cavil at the commands of that tranquil little despot, whose voice was never raised in anger, whose orders never admitted the possibility of dispute. She arranged the lives of all around her with the serenest certainty, and indomitably shepherded her army of dependents, factory girls, tenants, and[242] servants along the path of righteous happiness. As mistress she was a success; as a hostess the same strenuous qualities, the same self-sufficiency brought her the same success. She could never hold a room by her talk, but she could now listen graciously, and disguise her complete inattention by smiles. Clever people went willingly to her houses in London and the country. Her well-dressed, pleasant presence made a becoming quiet background for their conversation, and, as a housekeeper, she was unsurpassed. She never rivalled their efforts, she never failed to make them feel both clever and comfortable. A brilliant, ambitious woman could never have won the popularity that Gundred’s calm indifference achieved. If not gay, her set was clever and solid, nor did anyone ever discern that it was only her well-bred stupidity that had had the gift of gathering it round her by sheer force of apparent colourlessness and calm.

Gundred loved the power that her position had attained, and, as time went by, Fate also was kind, and gave her that full measure of glory which had been denied to her earlier years. London had ignored the inconspicuous Miss Mortimer, unmarried, and slenderly portioned. But London showed itself very amenable to the charms of Lady Gundred Darnley, conspicuously wealthy, and with Brakelond as well as Ivescar at her back. For the old Duke faded away at last, and Gundred’s father reigned in his stead—a mild and inoffensive reign, which left all real dominion to be exercised by his daughter. For the new Duke, like his predecessor, had slid into a gentle imbecility, and now lived at Brakelond in contented seclusion; Gundred occupied the house as mistress, vigorously took up her father’s responsibilities, and was, to all intents and purposes, the tenth reigning Duchess of March and Brakelond. She never went in to dinner[243] after a Marchioness without feeling that such an order of precedence was altogether paradoxical and out of joint. For was she not herself a Duchess in everything but name?

Her constant energies overshadowed her husband in the public eye. By the side of his energetic practical wife he spent a peaceful existence very much alone, very little hampered by the more brilliant cares in which Gundred took such pleasure. She could not push him into any prominent position; he had lost, in an hour, all stir of ambition, and preferred to live on in the company of his dreams and memories and visions. Their son was his great delight, his most constant occupation. Gundred was a trifle too multifariously busy, a trifle too excellent to be a perfectly sympathetic mother. It was to his father that Jim Darnley carried all his more interesting private matters for sympathy and discussion. Kingston, as the years brought him increasing calm, found his world growing narrower, till at last it held only his son and his memory of that strange intoxicating passion which had ended on so terrific a final note at Brakelond more than twenty years ago. His heart still clung to the far-off thought of Isabel, and his life was always in some mystical sense alert to catch news of her in the shadowy lands where she might now be dwelling.

Kingston could never bring himself to feel that Isabel—the real Isabel, as distinct from the body she had worn—was dead; he knew that she still lived, somewhere, somehow; he felt it in every fibre of his life; every nerve vibrated with the knowledge that somewhere, in some remote corner of the world, that lost half of himself was still alive. As the years passed his ideas, instead of growing fainter, grew keener, more fixed, more certain. He lived in mysterious expectation of a call, the sound of a voice he should recognise,[244] some hint that Isabel had come back, that their paths through the world had crossed again. Sooner or later the call would come; it was impossible that it should not. He and Isabel were so close together; accidents like physical death could not be any permanent barrier. As the time went by he grew more and more sure that the call must come soon. Each day he hoped that the sign might be shown to-morrow, and, deep in his heart, listened in every conversation for the sound of Isabel’s voice, and looked in every face for a memory of Isabel’s. Meanwhile he lived out his placid life, friends with all, popular, suspected no longer of any eccentricities. The gentle, managing woman at his side had never any notion that her husband was cherishing such fantastic hopes. To her he had long been, in reality, a stranger, a stranger very dearly loved, and very faithfully looked after, but a stranger none the less, as are so many of us to those who love us best.

As for Isabel, if Gundred ever recalled her name now, it was with a feeling of wrath that grew steadily towards hatred. Isabel stood for the one moment in which Gundred had faltered, in which she had not been sure of herself. Isabel was a painful memory, not only as recalling that far-off period of unrest, but also as raking back into recollection that one awful instant in which Gundred’s courage had failed her—with results so disastrous for poor Isabel. Had the results not been quite so disastrous for Isabel, Gundred could better perhaps have borne the recollection. As it was, they convicted her of inadequacy, and touched her secret pride in its tender point. She pushed such horrid reflections far back in the most private cupboards of her consciousness, and hated Isabel anew whenever accident compelled her to open the locked doors and turn over those dreadful bones of her one failure.

But Gundred had great skill in ignoring all unwelcome topics; it was very rarely that she remembered her cousin, and all the dim, remote unpleasantnesses that Isabel represented. Her first year of married life now loomed down upon her out of the distant past as a confused nightmare-mirage of desert wanderings, from which her nice tact and the favour of Heaven had brought her feet at last out into the Canaan of prosperity, conjugal and social. The few brief sorrows of the past assumed gigantic proportions in the haze of memory, and Isabel was their incarnation. Gundred began to realise how directly Heaven had intervened to relieve her of her cousin’s threatening presence, and, though grateful for the service, it was to her credit that she retained humanity enough to think the means adopted unnecessarily drastic. This tenderness greatly elevated Gundred in her own eyes. She remonstrated with Heaven—not acrimoniously, indeed, but with feeling, and devoted many prayers to Isabel’s happiness in another world. But she rejoiced over Isabel’s removal from this, and nothing could have given her serenity a greater shock than any suspicion that her husband ever remembered the dead woman with tenderness or longing. However, she was protected from such perceptions as much by her own impermeability to unwelcome truths as by her husband’s perpetual skill.

He had not come so far through life, safeguarding his wife’s happiness and trying to behave decently, only to undo all the good by allowing her now to see that he regretted Isabel. The course of years had taught him to keep a shut mouth on all his aspirations. His mind was apparently thrown wide for Gundred, but Isabel’s shrine was hidden in the very holiest of holies. As Gundred roamed through his mind’s reception-rooms, comfortable and clean and[246] neatly decorated, she never had any suspicion of that locked room in the very heart of his soul’s dwelling, where the memory of Isabel was for ever worshipped. Many of us, indeed, there are that keep a secret shrine, but few of us suspect its existence in anyone else’s life. Gundred was perfectly happy in her monopoly of her husband, perfectly confident that she knew every corner of his mind. He, for his part, gave thanks for the salutary blindness which so often makes life tolerable, and continued to make his wife a visitor in the heart whose tenant was still the dead woman—the dead woman whom he daily expected to meet again, whom every hour brought nearer to the renewal of contact with himself. He had done his duty, played his part, abundantly paid Gundred all he owed and could; affection, respect, loyalty—of all these he had never failed for one moment to give her in good measure; the secret impulses of his love could not be controlled like their formal manifestations; no one could exact it; not one could expect it. His own inmost heart still yearned and cried for the return of Isabel, that return in which every day made him more firmly believe, more immediately look for.

For twenty years had Kingston Darnley awaited the call that was to come to him from Isabel. He had made no effort to anticipate, or even to summon, the voice that he desired. It seemed to him better, finer, more loyal, to do nothing, to sit patient until the course of life should bring him again into touch with what he had lost. At the appointed moment the voice[247] would reach him, and he would know it. But till that time should come, his soul revolted against the notion of going out into the devious byways of foolishness to call up the departed with necromancy or any other prevailing fad. For all such illegitimate dealings with the third-rate dead he had the strongest contempt; it would be a profanity to attempt such proceedings in relation to Isabel; wherever she was, she must be above those hireling spirits who go out in attendance on séances and circles. So for many years he maintained his resolution to be patient, and stiffened himself in disdain of cheap and common spiritualistic methods. He had no idea that people of any sense or breeding could find solace in futilities so apparent. Gundred was his standard by whom he judged all other women’s pretensions; and Gundred had, not so much a contempt as a rooted religious horror, immitigable, medieval, of magic, palmistry, psychometry—all the many names beneath which we disguise our curious longing to pry behind the veil. The very notion of such things made Gundred so piously angry that a certain reluctant, stifled belief could be guessed to underlie and inspire her denunciations. Meanwhile, however, her attitude confirmed Kingston in his, and he remained quiescent, until at last he came across Mrs. Mercer-Laporte.

Mrs. Mercer-Laporte was dining with Mrs. Mimburn when Kingston and Gundred met her, having accepted their aunt’s invitation as a solemn but displeasing bi-annual duty. Gundred made a point of never evading it; Gundred made a point of never enjoying it. Minne-Adélaïde, however, with the years, had grown less flagrant; but the change made her no less odious than before to Gundred, for her love of the illicit had now turned from matters of the flesh to the darker mysteries of occultism, clairvoyance, ghost-raising. She had[248] taken to frequenting circles, to entertaining phantoms, to wearing weird, shapeless clothes, and collecting round herself a crowd of people famous in the ‘psychic’ world. And of these Mrs. Mercer-Laporte was the fine flower, the most exalted, the most spiritual, the choicest in ways and manners.

She was almost obtrusively lady-like, tall and pale, and mild and bland, in long trailing draperies of blue. She had sweet anæmic features, and a watery eye that suffused with tears on the slightest occasion. Her hair was thin and sandy, coiled into a knob on the top of her narrow head; her mouth was large, lax, emotional; her glances soulful and celestial. She wore a quantity of mystical-looking chains and necklaces that gleamed and jingled as she languished from place to place with a certain priestly elegance. She fell to Kingston’s lot at dinner, and during the first part of the meal he felt himself truly unfortunate. At last, however, a chance word caught his attention and held it.

‘Ah, my dear Mr. Merrington,’ he heard her saying to her other neighbour in high dulcet tones—‘dear, dear Mr. Merrington, believe me, I have often had the sweetest converse with my dear dead.’ She sighed, as if in rapture, while Mr. Merrington helped himself to a cutlet in aspic. ‘They return to those that love them, Mr. Merrington,’ she went on, as soon as the cutlet had been safely landed. ‘I never feel that my dear ones have been lost. They are always near one—it only needs a suitable medium to produce them. Oh, of course, I am not talking of silly common séances. Those spirits are people one would not wish to have anything to do with; but, ah! the sweet and holy talks I have had with my own beloved ones in suitable surroundings.’

At this point, seeing Mr. Merrington more favourably[249] inclined towards the cutlet than the conversation, Kingston thought he might be allowed to take part in the talk.

‘One always feels,’ he said, ‘that from all accounts the spirits that return must be those of exceedingly weak-minded people. The messages they make so much ado about conveying are invariably such rubbish.’

Mrs. Mercer-Laporte turned the watery gleam of her smile upon him. ‘What is matter?’ she asked hierophantically. ‘Ah, Mr. Darnley, what does matter matter? Believe me, you have been unfortunate in the spirits you have met. In the innumerable vibrations of the Universe there are rays innumerable that permeate the Whole with their blessed dew, and consume in their pure radiance all the coarser manifestations of matter. You speak without that inward higher knowledge which makes us one with the Infinite, in those far Universes where the Veil of matter exists no longer, and the blessed dead are free and untrammelled by any more cares of this vulgar flesh!’ Mrs. Mercer-Laporte stopped to take breath, and in an abstraction allowed herself to be given an artichoke. Then, while she was unconsciously devouring it, Kingston took advantage of the pause in her oration to recall her to the question that interested him.

‘Then,’ he said, ‘soberly and without mistake, are you really sure that we can ever converse with our own friends in other states of existence?’

But Mrs. Mercer-Laporte made a profession of irrelevance. In her world it was the hall-mark of wisdom, the guarantee of occult knowledge to which the profane crowd can never attain. She would not have lowered her pretensions by sticking to the point.

‘Go,’ she said majestically, waving an inspired fork, ‘go to dearest Mr. Minch in Albany Road—49, Albany[250] Road, Mr. Darnley; Albany Road in Notting Hill, remember. Go to him, Mr. Darnley, and be made happy. How all of us, bound down in this sphere of matter, how we leap and burn to attain the higher levels through which for ever the blessed ones are wandering on their angel wings! Ah, rapture, rapture, Mr. Darnley! Go, go to Mr. Minch.’

Twaddling and silly as her utterances were, yet the woman was obviously sincere. Kingston had never met the type before, and now he saw that it was not quite so cheap and contemptible as he had always imagined. Predisposed by his secret longings, he prepared to lend a favourable ear, and the dulled sobriety of his middle-aged calm began to break up unexpectedly into a St. Martin’s summer of youthful enthusiasm.

‘Do?’ replied Mrs. Mercer-Laporte. ‘He draws the pearl from the Secret Lotus! He will tell you your heart’s desire. He will tell you of the sweet spirits hovering round you. He can see them all easily, and the colour of your own soul’s halo he will tell you too. Sometimes it is pink and sometimes it is blue. Mine,’ she added with pride, ‘is purple. No one but me has a purple halo, Mr. Darnley. But every one of us has a colour of our own, and dear Mr. Minch sees them distinctly and clearly, and tells you all about them, and about the dear spirits as well. And then, if there is anyone among them, anyone in the precious company of the invisible with whom you particularly wish to enter into sweet converse, Mr. Darnley, you might go on to Mr. Muddock at Hindhead. Mention my name, though, just to show that you have a reverend and faithful spirit. Mr. Muddock has the most marvellous powers. He is more than a mere psychometrist. He can actually make the dead[251] resume the garb of flesh, Mr. Darnley!’ perorated Mrs. Mercer-Laporte with awful solemnity.

Suddenly Kingston’s resolve of twenty years weakened and broke. The long odds were that this talk of spirits was the mere nonsense he had always believed it. But still there could be no possible harm in trying to find out. And if, in sober truth, Isabel were really hovering on the edge of the other world, perpetually longing to enter into communication with him again, how tragically foolish to neglect the blessed opportunity because of any stupid materialistic qualm of incredulity. After all, there might be something in it. In the avowed belief that there was nothing, and the secret trust that there might be a great deal, he resolved that he would go and see the wonderful Mr. Minch. He intimated his decision to Mrs. Mercer-Laporte. The sibyl showed much mystic rapture.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘sweet and holy, sweet and holy. The blessed ones are waiting for you, Mr. Darnley, I feel convinced of it. I almost think I see one near you now, but alas, I have not quite reached the percipient plane as yet. But do go to dear Mr. Minch, and he will tell you her name and all about her, and what she wants to say to you. I have had the strangest, most marvellous experiences myself. My own sweet sister Margaret is always hovering round me, Mr. Darnley. She died when she was only six days old, and grew up in the spirit world. I recognised her distinctly, as soon as dear Mr. Minch described her.... Golden hair, he said, tall, blue eyes, high forehead, graceful figure. Then, to make quite sure, I said, “Does your name begin with M?” and Mr. Minch asked the sweet spirit, and told me it said “Yes.” Then, of course, I knew. “Margaret,” I cried—just like that—“is it Margaret?” And it was Margaret; she had come to tell me that I must go on bravely, and everything[252] would come right. Now, wasn’t that a holy, happy experience, Mr. Darnley? Oh yes, you must go to Mr. Minch. Go to-morrow night at eight. He has a public circle then, and crowds of dear poor creatures go to him for help and comfort, and he heals them all—not only people like you and me, Mr. Darnley, but all the poor sweet cooks and housemaids.’

Kingston was not quite so strongly impressed as Mrs. Mercer-Laporte had hoped by the reappearance of the somewhat immature sister Margaret. Yet, though he derided himself for such weakness, he could no longer resist the absurd temptation to put things to the test. He was quite fixed in his determination to see Mr. Minch, if it were only to laugh at him; and filled up the rest of the evening by cross-examining Mrs. Mercer-Laporte on all the other pink and purple spirits by whom she was apparently accompanied wherever she went. Gundred, who looked on the entertainment as a tiresome duty, calling only for one’s second-best gown, was surprised to see her husband so much amused and interested. When he deliberately went across the room after dinner to sit once more by Mrs. Mercer-Laporte, Gundred was quite startled by such a display of enthusiasm. However, she quickly noticed that Mrs. Mercer-Laporte had pink eyelids and a long bony neck; her astonishment subsided into contemptuous tolerance, and then passed into a pious pity. She thought how nice it was of Kingston to be so unnecessarily kind to the poor thing, perhaps the weirdest of Aunt Minna’s weird collection of guests. Gundred called back her attention to her own behaviour, and set herself once more to giving an example of nice deportment to this mob of people who clearly had no notion what decent clothes or manners might mean.

The least touch destroys a delicate balance, and[253] Mrs. Mercer-Laporte’s rather watery personality it was that had the power, after so many years of hesitation, to decide Kingston upon taking his long-delayed plunge into spiritualistic circles. Little as he might think of Mrs. Mercer-Laporte’s own rhapsodies, they forced upon his mind the reflection that many good and presumably prudent people derive much comfort and sustenance from occult manifestations. With all allowances made for credulity, hysteria, and affectation there yet, it seemed to him suddenly, must remain an irreducible minimum of fact about the ghostly communications which make the consolation of so many sad, lonely lives. The laws that govern life and death are, when all is said and done, so dimly, so doubtfully known and guessed, that bold must be he who dares, on the supposition of impossibility, to deny continued existence and continued volition to the blessed dead. Who was to take it upon himself to say confidently that they cannot return, for reasons that we know not, under natural laws of which we have no more suspicion than had the eighteenth century of those that give us electricity? Seeing the incalculable nature of the soul, the impalpable, mysterious substance of its being, the probabilities that physical death only give it freedom were, on the whole, very great and worthy of respect. Why obstinately mock, for the sake of a few frauds and charlatans, at a deep belief, as old as humanity, which has been held, and is held to this day, by many of the wisest and holiest among men? What claim to wisdom has the stiff-necked attitude of mere negation, based on nothing but ignorant prejudice and the sceptic’s baseless notion of what may or may not be possible to a thing of whose being, and the laws that control it, he knows no more than any enthusiastic believer in apparitions? Why not, then, take the braver, more honest course of inquiring[254] for one’s self into the circumstances of the spirit-world? In any case the inquiry could do no harm; either way, one would gain certainty, instead of the present dreary and unprofitable doubt. And if Isabel’s purified soul were, after all, by some merciful freak of creation, still roaming the world in her lover’s neighbourhood, how utterly, childishly silly not to ascertain the fact and profit by it, in place of continuing deaf to that dear desired voice, out of puerile prejudice and a preconceived notion that such things could not be. Mrs. Mercer-Laporte’s enthusiasm had the effect of forcing all these arguments on Kingston with new and irresistible force. He could hold out no longer; his loneliness could afford to neglect no chances of relief; he would try what consolation the Other World had to offer.

At the very notion fresh interest in life began to animate him. Without any weak cowardice or giving way he had yet, since the tragedy of twenty years before, lost any personal interest in every-day life, its bustle and ambitions. That career into which his mother had hoped so vaguely to push him and support him by the influence of March and Brakelond, had long since faded from the foreground of his mind. When at last Lady Adela gently and imperceptibly passed away, she left her son fairly settled into the position of his wife’s husband. Concentrated on thoughts of that beautiful past, he never again plucked up any enthusiasm for the present or the future. It was not that he was afraid of them, that he had shrinkings or morbid tenderness; they simply failed to interest him any more. He retired into that small secret life of his own, and the world gradually came to look on Mr. Darnley as the pleasant but unnoticeable appendage to Lady Gundred. Comfortably vast as was his income, Brakelond, that insatiable old monster,[255] swallowed it all and gave no thanks. Despite his money, therefore, Kingston soon unconsciously held that subtly meek and subordinate place of a man whose wife it is that owns the estate and the money. He had no wish to assert himself, and even at Ivescar it was Gundred who now held the reins, and concentrated the general gaze upon herself. Now and then she deplored to their friends her husband’s apathy towards the Primrose League, but, on the whole, she had everybody’s agreement when she talked of him as ‘perfectly happy in his library among his books.’ “To be perfectly happy in one’s library among one’s books” is the blessed euphemistic privilege of the obscure rich, and Kingston acquiesced gratefully in his friends’ attitude towards his remoteness from their life and the empty clamours that seemed to fill it. Accustomed long since to his own quiet, inconspicuous path, it was with a kindling of vitality, then, that he contemplated sallying forth into the spirit world. It was a stirring of his old self, an emancipation from the obsession of Gundred’s majesty. Half ashamed, half excited, half contemptuous did Kingston set out to enter into relations with the dead.

Following Mrs. Mercer-Laporte’s recommendation he began with Mr. Muddock. But Mr. Muddock turned out to be an illiterate and frowzy prophet, too clearly calculated for the need of ‘poor sweet cooks and housemaids’ to be of much assistance in the quests of better-educated people. However, after a brief spasm of disgust, Kingston decided to continue his enterprise, and gradually found himself involved in the higher spiritualistic circles. At first he had to be content with the ordinary hireling mediums, but as time went by, and his appetite became whetted by the glimpses of apparent truth that he gathered here and there amid thick and more or less palpable frauds, he[256] began to be aware that there existed, behind the common world of second-rate believers, a sort of upper world in touch with the Beyond. To anyone with money the lower sphere of materialization was open, and the meetings of Mr. Muddock and his confrères were nightly crowded with the lonely and the bereaved, eager for a moment’s conversation with the lost beloved. But these interviews never satisfied Kingston, and, as he began to discern the higher possibilities behind, he secretly strained every nerve to enter that set of his own people which held, or proclaimed that it held, genuine and constant communication with those ‘that have passed over.’ The task was not altogether easy, and had to be cautiously ensued, for fear of waking the suspicions and the disapproval of Gundred. Kingston found himself despising himself for the cowardice of such a course, until he realized that what he was aiming at involved no sort of real disloyalty to Gundred, and that any concealment he might practise was in the interest of her peace and happiness. Satisfying himself obstinately with this rather jejune and sophistical excuse, he pursued his way, and at last found himself admitted to the upper section of the spiritualistic world.

Here at last he met men and women of his own sort, men and women of birth and breeding and intelligence, whom no cheap claptrap could convince, no vulgar jugglery deceive. And yet these people, keen and apparently sensible, believed passionately and whole-heartedly in the manifestations they evoked. Their lives were ruled by ghostly advice elicited at their meetings, their desolation consoled by almost daily conversation with their beloved dead, their doubts turned into certainty on all points by revelations from beyond the grave. They claimed impartiality, and cultivated pure enthusiasm. And if the tragedy of[257] the pitiful, unholy quest had been bitterly heart-rending among the illiterate and credulous crowds that haunted Mr. Muddock’s circles, and sustained themselves with ‘demonstrations’ and aitchless conversation with the inferior dead, far more so was it among these people of Kingston’s own world, where devotion served as conviction, and the anguish of longing was forced to masquerade as its own fulfilment. It was indeed a poignant, tragic life in which Kingston now found himself. Men and women, one and all, were gaunt and haggard of soul with their insatiable hunger. Some of them seemed philosophers, convinced that they were following on the track of a clear truth; others were manifest saints, gentle sacred souls, hopefully worshipping a Holy Grail of their own desire’s invention. Exalted, inspired, rarefied, filled with an apparent serenity of devotion, their company gave an impression of strange unearthly happiness, until the keen edge of their underlying agony was seen piercing through the superficial calm of their lives. The whole air round them was poisoned by loss and the inability to bear it. Their souls lived in a fierce, unacknowledged groping after the lost things they had loved. Men for vanished friends, women for lovers and children long dead—each had some dreadful secret craving, some inner infidelity towards the Eternal Mercy of life. There were old polished men of their world, strong intellects sapped, and keen eyes dulled in one direction only, by some hoarded passion never to be parted with, not even for the sake of happiness and peace and wisdom. There were beautiful white-haired women, sweet and gracious with much sorrow in bygone years, tired with recollections, and divorced from the heats of life, yet still held in a bitter bondage, drugging their pain with this piteous, passionate cult for the burden they had lost. Life and death had[258] combined to offer them calm and release from torment; but they would have none of any such release—clung to the ghost of their dead torment, and redoubled it by the zest with which they told themselves that they soothed it.

Into this world of insatiable emotion Kingston threw himself heartily—hopefully, too, seeing that the sincerity of his fellow-worshippers left no room for doubt, and that their enthusiastic belief seemed to give fair hope that it was justified. But soon he saw the fearful tragedy that lay beneath their enthusiasm, and realized how determined an illusion it was that they cultivated. He, too, no less than they, yearned and groped, but his nature, cooler, perhaps, than theirs, could not accept for pure gold of revelation the base ore of hysteria and fanaticism that they unwittingly but obstinately imposed upon themselves for truth. Their spirit-voices were nothing but the frustrate echoes of their own cries, cast back to them across the great gulf that separates the ignorant, unfaithful living from the free, glorified dead. Sounds and sights floated thick in their midst—honest sounds and sights, born of no trickery, indeed, but—though none dared to own it—engendered by the frantic zeal of the searchers themselves. They and none other supplied the words to which they listened in such ecstatic awe; they and none other evoked those vanished tones, those pale reflections of the well-beloved in which they took such comfort. Their very sincerity, their very rapture, only made more terrible the delusion on which they sustained themselves, the emptiness of the phantoms with which they tried to fill the lives that their own distrust had left to them desolate. Only want of faith can make death a reality. These sad, starving people, having made reality out of the shadow, now found themselves forced to create new shadows to exorcise[259] the old. They had allowed themselves to think that death had power to sunder their loves, and now, after that first self-deception, the need was fierce upon them to invent another to nullify the first, and wipe out that death to which only their weak terrors had given an objective existence. From the beginning to the end they were altogether tragic—in their sorrow, in its cause, and in the means they took to heal it. Kingston, as the meetings passed, found himself more and more aloof from their consolations, more and more cold towards the manifestations that made the comfort of their poor struggling days.

It was not here, not amid these faint voices crying what the listeners wanted to hear, not amid these dim ghosts of bygone passion that his own still living, throbbing passion could hope to come once more into contact with Isabel. He pitied his fellow-seekers, but he stood aloof from them. Sorrowing for the intensity of their false joy, he could gain from their cult no sustenance for his own hunger. His hunger was not as theirs, and the beloved fallacies that supported them could give no nourishment to him. He saw that their quest was false, their methods a mere sop flung to their own desire. Gradually Kingston withdrew himself from their company. The spiritualistic world, after all, held no solid help or conviction for him. He passed away into everyday life again, and went back to his quiet expectancy at Gundred’s side. Sooner or later the wonderful thing would happen, sooner or later the holy mystery of separation stand revealed, but no unlawful human methods could avail to hurry the processes of God. They of little faith might make for themselves a world of phantoms in which to worship a phantom; he must persevere alone, waiting patiently for what was to come. Gladly, if he could, would he have found satisfaction in the hollow solace invented[260] by his fellow-seekers, but as his nature, as his more exalted perceptions, could not allow him any such makeshift consolation, the sooner he quitted so unwholesome and unsatisfactory a life the better. At least, he had the comfort of feeling that he had left no method untried, had not neglected any possible chance. But the alley into which he had strayed had been found blind, a short cut towards the Great Nowhere. He must return into the broad, beaten track of life, and go steadfastly forward, in confidence that somewhere, some day, he should inevitably meet again his lost companion.

‘Dear Jim,’ said Gundred, ‘how happy he sounds!’ She folded up her son’s letter again, and put it deftly back into its envelope. He wrote to her once a week without fail from school, a neat, colourless letter, breathing duty and regard. To his father the boy wrote as the mood took him—careless, untidy epistles about the topic of the moment. ‘Another cup of tea, dear?’ she asked her husband, smiling at him across the table.

Kingston looked at her with the approval that her appearance never failed to challenge. A crystalline perfection always hung about her, a clear, precise faultlessness that was always cool and fresh and pleasant. Age could do nothing against her. This morning, as for a thousand mornings past, as she would be for a thousand mornings to come, she was tranquil, exquisite, satisfactory. If she did not actually sparkle, she was always in a serene glow of elegance, her clear golden hair unalterably waved and curled, her garments refreshing in their unobtrusive charm of cut and make,[261] her hands well-kept, white, delightful, flickering here and there from tea-caddy to cream-jug with a charming, housewifely preoccupation.

Kingston, with a vivid recollection of the sibylline untidiness that haunted spiritualistic circles, brought a new appreciation to bear on Gundred’s unchangeably well-bred calm of look and dress and manner. She was very restful to be with. Pure milk, after all, certainly was better, in the long run, than intoxicants.

‘Thanks, dear,’ he replied, accepting a cup of tea into which Gundred had dutifully poured the cream that he still hated as much as ever, but which twenty years’ experience of her immitigable firmness had taught him to accept without vain murmurings. ‘I think I will run down and see Jim one of these days. You come with me?’

‘Well,’ replied his wife, ‘I have such a terrible lot to crowd into these last few days before we leave town. The end of the Season is such a rush, and one does dislike to leave anything undone. Besides, you know, I think it is a pity to unsettle Jim, and I really do rather dread the motor at this time of year. The dust is too truly horrible. Nothing can keep it out of one’s hair, try as one will; and then poor Morgan has such trouble getting it out again; and one ought always to consider the servants when one can—yes?’

‘Very well, then; I will go down alone, to-day or to-morrow. Haven’t you got some sort of show on here this afternoon?’

‘Yes, dear, a Mothers’ Educational Union Meeting. They wanted to hold it here, and one feels that one should do what one can for others while one is alive.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose I shall be missed or mourned,’ said her husband; ‘so I shall just slip quietly off, and take the motor down to Eton. You can receive the[262] mothers, and so on, without me to help you. And I can have a good time with Jim.’

‘Dear little Jim!’ said Gundred, smiling affectionately. Her son was fifteen, and rather unusually large for his age. But no size, no age could ever have cured his mother of talking and thinking of him as a little child. She had all the good woman’s utter, tragic inability to understand that her child becomes a boy and a man. Her Jim was still a baby. Of the real Jim she knew nothing whatever. Their relations were sometimes strained already, and in the future the strain would become fiercer and more unceasing, through Gundred’s idea of ruling the adolescent Jim by ideas that applied to the only Jim she had ever known—the kilted, white-frocked creature of the nursery, who had passed out of existence at least ten years ago.

‘Then that is settled,’ replied Kingston happily. ‘I’ll take Jim your love, Gundred. Anything else to send him?’

The father was always giving the boy presents. Anything that took his fancy he had a habit of buying for Jim. Gundred, no less affectionate, considered such indulgence spoiling and undesirable. She did not think it quite suitable to be so lavish, and her generosity was restricted to the orthodox seasons of Christmas and the birthday.

‘My love, of course, dear,’ she replied, with a momentary primming of her lips; ‘and tell him how much I hope that he reads the little book I gave him on his birthday. Say that he will find it the greatest help. I myself have got the most wonderful comfort from it; the prayers seem to suit one so perfectly, and the hymns for each day are so uplifting and helpful.’

Kingston, secretly unsympathetic towards Gundred’s[263] habit of collecting small devotional works and showering them round upon her near relations, glided hastily away from the topic. Sincerely pious and devout herself, she made the common mistake of wishing to impose her own precise form of devotion on everyone else, and could not conceive it possible that any right-minded person should not derive as great a benefit as she did from her little pietistic volumes. To her son, in particular, she talked religion with that terrible intimate candour which the good woman feels to be so natural, and the normal man feels to be so horribly irreverent. From his mother, then, the boy shrank and hid himself, outraged in all his most intimate feelings of decency by the freedom with which she discoursed to him of God and Heaven and Good, and half a hundred secret, private matters that nothing would have induced him to discuss even with his dearest friend.

Kingston ordered the motor, glad of an opportunity for escaping Gundred’s evangelistic activities. She herself made a faint pretence at deploring her inability to accompany him.

‘I should so like to,’ she said; ‘but the mothers will expect me to be here, of course, to receive them. It would be so shocking to play them false. And the movement is such a good one. I never feel that one is in the world solely for one’s own pleasure. One belongs to others, and one’s highest joy should always be to do one’s duty by one’s neighbours—yes?’

‘It is rather a nuisance at times, don’t you find?’ asked Kingston, on whom his wife’s habit of uttering edifying little speeches on all occasions never failed to have a slightly irritating effect, even after twenty years’ experience of them.

‘But one should not consider one’s self,’ answered Gundred correctly. ‘It is a terrible thing to be selfish.[264] Besides, if God has given one special advantages, one should be glad to make use of them to make others happy. Houses and position and things like that are only precious because one can turn them to the use of others—yes? I should never like to think that I found my factory-girls and my mothers and my curates a nuisance. I look upon them as part of my duty in life. And duty is the truest pleasure.’

Kingston felt as if he were in a dream. How different was this atmosphere of tranquil platitude from the feverish, restless world of longing in which he had lately been so busy. His mind staggered at the thought that this cool, deliberate Gundred could be of one blood with the harried, lonely creatures who frequented the spirit-raiser’s in desperate craving for lost loves and silenced voices. What kin was he himself—he with his secret cult, his deep secret ambition, to this placid woman, so secure in the intimacy of her God, so sedate in the conscious enjoyment of all her duties? It was a grinning irony that held them linked; in actual fact, they were mere acquaintances, knowing nothing of each other, sympathizing in nothing, bound only by the soft amicable bonds of custom and convenience.

Breakfast was over. Gundred gathered up her letters in a tiny sheaf and rose. ‘I must go and see Motherley,’ she said, ‘about the arrangements for this afternoon. I think one ought to have iced coffee for the poor things in this hot weather, don’t you?’

Gundred could never, in any possible circumstances of rank or condition, have been induced to leave the reins of household management in the hands of those who were paid to hold them. She was one of the many women who are housekeepers from their birth. The exercise of diligent economy was very dear to her heart, and she made a merit of indulging herself in it, by[265] insisting that she attended to such matters only from a strong sense of duty. Kingston gave due weight to her question as he pondered it.

‘Yes,’ he said very gravely, ‘on the whole I really think you might allow the mothers iced coffee.’

‘I am so glad you think so, dear,’ responded Gundred with an air of relief. ‘One is so glad if ever one can give the poor things some little extra pleasure. It is quite one of the compensations of one’s life—yes?’

‘Oh, dear me, no! They are the most excellent creatures—quite rich and comfortable, most of them. They generally live in Kensington or Campden Hill, and they are all so much interested in children and education. But, of course, they don’t often get inside a house like this, so that one is anxious to do whatever one can to make it a delightful memory for them. I have got myself such a charming frock, dear, to give them another little enjoyment to remember afterwards. Really, you know, it soon comes quite easy to think of others and forget one’s self. One makes a habit of unselfishness—at least, one must try to, in one’s own small way—and God is very good about helping them who try to help themselves.’

Kingston did not take the trouble to endorse this sentiment, and Gundred did not wait for him to do so. She knew it was too sound to need any such endorsement—so obvious, indeed, that she had only thrown it out in obedience to her unvarying custom of trying to improve her husband whenever she could.

‘Well,’ she went on, after a pause, ‘I must really go about my duties now. One has so much to do. I don’t suppose I shall see you again, dear, shall I, before you start? I hope you will have a delightful day. Do take care of your poor eyes. And give my love to[266] Jim, and tell him always to change his boots when he comes in, and be sure to read his Chapter morning and evening; he will find it such a help. And say how we are looking forward to the holidays—yes?’

Kingston promised vaguely to give his wife’s messages. Then Gundred passed on her way to interview the cook, and complete arrangements for the effectual dazzling of the mothers from Kensington and Campden Hill. Left alone, her husband took refuge for a moment or two in dreamland. This life of his, orderly, decorous, colourless, with Gundred superintending its details, and seeing that its food was good and hot—this life of his was not a real life at all. It was a vapour, a phantom, having no part in the true life of his soul. His body moved on its appointed course from breakfast through the day to bed, bandying banalities with its tongue, looking out on Gundred’s world with amiable eyes; but he himself, the real man, belonged to a remoter world. In strange, far-off lands he roamed, seeking that which for a time was lost; the gorgeous, sombre mysteries of life and death were about his head, shedding a glamour of ecstasy on the secret byway that he was treading. How Gundred would stare, what pious sillinesses would she not utter, if for a moment—if only for the smallest fragment of a moment—her eyes could be unsealed to see the magic tangle of visions in which her husband was wandering, all the while that his earthly gaze was fixed on her, his earthly ears politely attentive to her talk, his earthly stomach contentedly absorbing the food that she made it her daily duty to provide. Dressed, brushed, washed, and fed, the simulacrum of her husband passed through the world at her side, but the thing she walked with was a changeling; the man she loved and looked after was the mere shell of a stranger—of a stranger whose eyes were fixed on the immensities,[267] whose ears received her words as jargon in a tongue unknown, whose whole life was passed in that world of reality whose shadows now and then are cast across this life of ours that we call real, in the glimpses of what we call a dream. Little, visible, tangible, clear was the life that Gundred thought the true; vast, illimitable, without end or beginning was that enormous infinite where the soul of Kingston ceaselessly went seeking for the lost.

‘By kind permission of the Lady Gundred Darnley, the Mothers’ Educational Union—called for short the M.E.U.—held a most enjoyable meeting at 53, Grosvenor Street. The hostess’s demeanour gave great satisfaction, and her gown was held to shed real lustre on the occasion. It was a wonderful arrangement in blue and mauve, and no other woman of her age could have worn it; but the delicacy of her colouring, the serene charm of her features, were only enhanced by it, and the mothers from Kensington and Campden Hill spent a happy hour in devising means of copying its most successful features. Meanwhile, an American spinster, of world-wide renown but unappetizing appearance, gave an interesting and exhaustive address on the proper upbringing of children; and a Bishop’s wife in voluminous black brocade, with a bonnet built of bluebells, brought up the rear with an account of how her own darlings had been triumphantly reared on a system of perfect freedom tempered by whippings administered officially by each other. A discussion followed, in which old maids and childless widows vied with the mothers in expounding the secrets of education. The Lady Gundred Darnley herself contributed a brief but very pleasant little allocution, in which she insisted on the efficacy of prayer, and attributed her own success in dealing with her dear little son entirely to her inculcation of sound religious principles.’[268] Gundred was at the height of her glory; her graciousness was delightful, her condescension so profound that neither she herself nor anyone else could guess that it was condescension at all. When the meeting had concluded in a volley of mutual compliments, and a unanimous vote of thanks had been offered to their charming hostess, she shepherded the mothers down to food with the sublimest cordiality. The iced coffee flowed like milk and honey; tea was nothing accounted of, any more than was silver in King Solomon’s time. Eclairs, sandwiches, and buns disappeared like snow in summer; of every dish Gundred felt a calm confidence that each mother present was eyeing it carefully with a view to imitation. Of all life’s duties, Gundred perhaps best loved that of setting an example to others. She felt that the Creator had specially ordained her for that end, and was never so completely and conscientiously happy as when possessed with the certainty that she was duly fulfilling His design.

But at last the meeting began to melt away, and Gundred was left alone in the large deserted room. Up and down among the little gilded chairs she roamed, pondering with complacency the success of the entertainment. In the course of her wanderings, she came into view of the great mirror that filled the space between two of the windows. She stood for a while in front of it, contemplating the perfections that it reflected. From the crown of her head to the glistering point of her shoe, she, ‘the Lady Gundred Darnley,’ the fastidious critic, had not the smallest fault to find. Her gown was an inspiration, and its fit an earthly manifestation of the ideal.

‘Really,’ said Gundred to herself, ‘God has been very good to me indeed. I declare I do not look a day over twenty-five. No one would ever believe[269] that I am forty. That is what comes of having a good conscience, and being a little careful what one eats. And it is not many women of five-and-twenty that could dare to wear a colour like this. My figure is positively girlish, and my complexion—well, one does not often see a better one, even among quite young girls.’ But at this point her meditations were interrupted by the sound of a ringing at the bell. She concluded that it must be some belated mother, who would be politely turned away by the butler. So she gave no further attention to the sound, but still stood admiring what the mirror revealed, with both hands caressing the beautiful lines of her waist. In this pleasant employment, however, she was startled by a discreet cough behind her. She wheeled hastily round.

A small elderly gentleman was approaching, ushered by the butler. Gundred summoned her presence of mind to confront this unexpected apparition. The butler, meanwhile, was murmuring an unintelligible name. The visitor peered inquiringly up at her. For he was a very minute personage, smaller even than his hostess; he had an air of patient antiquity, and his thin neck poked forward till he had the look of a very shrunken, very wise, very benevolent little old tortoise. He was dressed, too, in the quaintest clothes, that somehow suggested that they had been bought ready-made, and were mysteriously, strangely inappropriate, seeming as if their present wearer were accustomed to quite different garb, and only wore these clumsy reach-me-downs in deference to European convention. He conveyed an impression of feeling fettered and uncomfortable in them, of longing for freer and more flowing vestments.

‘I am your husband’s uncle,’ replied the stranger. ‘I have been in Japan for many years.’

Gundred instantly flashed into recognition, and warmed into a less defensive smile. She tried vehemently to remember all she had heard of this semi-mythical uncle thus abruptly brought back into the land of the living.

‘Ah yes,’ she answered genially, ‘you have been there for a very long time, I know. I quite envy you. Such a wonderful little people, the Japanese—yes? And have you come to settle down at home again?’

‘My home,’ answered the little old man, in accents that betrayed a certain loss of familiarity with the English language—‘my home is still out there.’ He waved his hand vaguely, indicating the East. ‘But I was brought over for some business. I had not meant to come here. My kinship with your husband has been broken by fifty years of time, and twelve thousand miles of space. Why should I think he could be anything but a stranger? But lately I have heard him calling. There is something that he wants, something that he wishes to know. I have heard him incessantly calling. And so I came. Perhaps I can give him an answer. Is he here, your husband?’

‘Something that my husband wants, something that he has been asking for?’ repeated Gundred in a stupor. Kingston had no wishes that were not also hers. His whole life, she knew, was an open book to her. And, even if it had not been, how could this strange apparition have heard her husband’s voice? For one wild moment Gundred imagined her husband[271] baying his ambitions to the moon, or ululating to the universe from the middle of Grosvenor Square. Otherwise how could his voice have penetrated to the ears of this mysterious old man?

‘A wish,’ he said, speaking slowly in his faint, sad tones—‘a wish has a life of its own. It has wings, and flies to all the four quarters of the air. It only needs the opened eye to see it in its flight, the opened ear to receive it. I have seen many strange things in the air. I am a very old man now. And I heard your husband’s longing, and I came to see if I could give him any help. I am on my way. I can only be here an hour or two. Your husband will soon be here again. I may wait for him?’

All Gundred’s inquiries could elicit no more definite information. The old man merely repeated his statement, and asked to be allowed to await Kingston’s return. Baffled, interested, acutely puzzled, Gundred must needs leave the riddle of his mission unsolved, and take refuge in the customary platitudes about the charm of Oriental life. And thus it happened that when Kingston returned at last, dusty and hot, from his expedition, he found his wife sitting amid the gilded disorder of the drawing-room, engaged in a difficult dialogue with a stranger.

That this was the long-lost uncle Kingston was soon brought to realize, and heard with unmitigated amazement that the Abbot, or Bishop, or whatever his rank might be, had come in answer to some imagined call. The old man had a fantastic charm. His air of frail antiquity, the wistfulness of his voice, the very incongruousness of his clothes gave him a fascination not easy to describe. He was someone out of an alien life, a visitor from the world beyond Kingston’s ken. A flavour of mysterious knowledge hung about his[272] wandering glances, his soft, quiet, hesitating speech, his gentle, deprecatory manner; those misty eyes of his had the wonder and the wisdom of eyes that have pierced far into the hidden depths. His present surroundings, his present garments had a sharp and crying inappropriateness, yet, though in his air and build there was no obvious majesty, the comparison was all to the disadvantage of the surroundings and the garments. Even Gundred’s luxurious and splendid room seemed to grow tawdry and vulgar by contrast with this unimposing little figure in its midst. The manner of his irruption, too, into modern London life, as well as the announcement of his equally abrupt departure, increased the air of fantasy that hung round him. Flashing by out of another life, flashing on into another life, this grotesque little old tortoise was to spare them an hour on his road through the immensities. Kingston had no sense of kinship as he talked with this new-found uncle—hardly, indeed, any sense of talking with a fellow human being. The visitor was too clearly a dweller in strange worlds, belonged, in all his words and ways, too obviously to another sphere of existence. As for Gundred, her faint horror at entertaining a confessed Buddhist was tempered by the discovery that the Buddhist was an Abbot or a Bishop—at all events, held some conspicuous position in the heathen hierarchy. And even a heathen Bishop was clearly better than a heathen who was not a Bishop of any kind. She soon, however, thought it necessary to vindicate her superiority by attempting to convert the pagan prelate. After one effort, brief though bold, she was forced to desist. Mild, shrinkingly meek, the new uncle yet showed a certain confident command of spiritual weapons too mighty for his niece’s resisting powers.

‘Why, oh, why,’ said Gundred with seraphic sweetness,[273] when the Bishop had let drop some pleasant little sentiment—‘why are you not a Christian, dear uncle? Surely you must love the truth—yes?’

Kingston felt hot with horror, but the visitor showed no discomposure at this sudden outburst of proselytising energy.

‘Yes,’ he replied, in a gentle, hesitating voice—‘yes, I love the truth. We all love the truth when we see it, I think. But I love a whole truth better than a half truth. When a man is reading the Book of Life by the light of the sun, you would not expect him to go back and read it in a cave by even the brightest of lamps? You have very bright lamps; I have the sun.’

Gundred collected all her forces for a theological argument such as her soul loved.

‘But what is the point exactly of being a Buddhist, uncle?’ she inquired, determined to fire the first shot.

However, the Bishop had not broken his journey through space in order to indulge in feminine polemics. He smiled demurely.

‘For one thing, niece,’ he answered slowly, ‘we are not required or permitted by our Faith to believe that two-thirds of the world are doomed inevitably to burn in fire for all eternity—as you, I understand, are bound to believe, by all your many different varieties of Christianity. Now that, dear niece, would be, I am sure, a very great comfort to your tender nature.’

Gundred was on the point of making a dignified rejoinder, to the effect that one does not talk of such things, or think of them, but hopes for the best. However, she felt a hostile influence compressing her words. A strange force was over her, compelling silence. In another minute she found that she could hold the field no longer. Wishing with all her heart to stay, she yet found herself mysteriously forced to rise and make her excuses. The uncle received her explanations[274] gently, and gave her thanks for the hospitable reception that she had extended to a stranger. He would not see her again, for in a few moments he must be on his way again. But though it might be long before they met again, he would tender her his blessing. Accepting the tribute with graceful reserve, Gundred passed reluctantly out of the room.

Kingston faced round eagerly towards the visitor. What strange message was it that had come to him through such unexpected lips? Was the whole story a fairy-tale? How could his secret wishes and longings have reached the notice of this stranger twelve thousand miles across the sea? Surely the soul has no system of wireless telegraphy? Kingston had a sudden uneasy recollection of telepathy, and the vast range of possibilities that it opened up. He fell silent, awaiting his uncle’s next word.

The little old man sat huddled in his chair, gazing straight before him. The withered claw-like hands were fastened one over the other; the pale mysterious eyes were fixed on things very far away.

‘Bound on the wheel,’ he said at last, ‘bound again and again on the wheel of false desire.’

‘The fire of passion,’ replied the pale tired voice, ‘is a thing old as all life. Because of some strong passion, born many ages since, you now suffer the pangs of loss and separation. It is no new thing, this pain of yours. It rests with you now, my son, whether you will carry it on with you along the road, as you brought it with you into this stage of your journey.’

Astonishment, intense and paralytic, possessed the younger man as these evidences of insight into his own most secret feelings dropped so prosaically, so unemotionally from the lips of this worn old wanderer. But even astonishment yielded to the keen wonder[275] aroused by the possibility that the words revealed. He demanded further revelations from his uncle.

‘Over all the fields of existence the opened eye can wander,’ replied the other. ‘I can see whence you have come, and in what dark places you are now wandering. Because of the help that I hoped I could give you, I have come here to-night. You are suffering the penalty of bygone folly, you are chained in the bond of a bad Karma. You have loved something, and you think now you have lost it. Worst of all, you long to recover it, you long to rivet round you again the fetters of desire and sorrow. Many and many are they that come to me, crying for the sound or the touch of some beloved dead. Women calling across the abysses to their dead children, their lovers, their husbands; men clamouring for reunion with the women they have loved. This life of yours, too, here in the West, is filled with the cry of those who seek what they have lost. ‘Give us back our dead,’ they say; ‘let us touch them, hear them, speak to them again.’ In hopes of this evil miracle your churches are crowded, your charlatans grow rich, your Heaven finds believers. A place to meet the dead again! Weak and foolish, weak and foolish, not to know that love is sorrow, and that the dead we loved stand for the heaviest grief of our lives.’

‘But then,’ answered Kingston, ‘what is love? Why do we feel it, if it is such a weak and foolish passion?’

‘What is love? It is the ghost of your own dead lives recalled to life again. What are we but the agglomeration of innumerable previous personalities? All our feelings are dim echoes of a hundred million fragmentary feelings that have lived before in the innumerable dead, who are dust of the ages. What is it that gives us the keen joy that we take in some piece of[276] music, in some corner of landscape? It is the harmony of countless memories that are awakened in us out of all our dead existences by the sound we hear, or the sight we see. Otherwise, it could mean nothing to us, if this life were our first, if we had no previous existence to build on. All life is memory made incarnate. All love is a recognition.’

‘Then you are talking of reincarnation,’ answered Kingston; ‘what has love to do with that?’

‘Reincarnation?’ said the other. ‘There is no such thing. Reincarnation would mean that the same You goes on into body after body, like one wine poured on from bottle into bottle. Think for a moment what it is that is You. What is your true personality? Is it the thing that has fears and foolish desires and dislikes? Or is it the secret higher thing that stands behind the common everyday self of you? It is not that everyday You which is indestructible. The You of your bodily loves and hates dies with your body, should be wiped out utterly and vanish; it is the real You that continues through all the ages, until at last it is made one with the Radiance from which it sprang. Your wishes and fears must not live after you; none of the many details that have gone to the making of you survive, but only the total that they make up. On the slate of life your qualities are set down and added together. Then bodily death wipes out the items, and only the result of the addition remains. That is Karma—the character you build up for yourself through the ages. And yet, if you will, you can perpetuate in some degree the evanescent passions of your earthly life. That is what so many long to do. Immortality, to them, means an infinite prolongation of bodily and emotional enjoyment. They cannot sunder their notion of heaven from their idea of their own earthly personality. In heaven they think they must carry their[277] earthly tastes, their earthly limbs unaltered. They imagine that without the limbs and the earthly tastes they will somehow cease to be themselves. They believe that these limbs and those tastes are themselves, and they want to enjoy them unchanged through eternity. They do not understand that desire is sorrow, and that to carry on the passions and the pleasures of earthly life is also to carry on the agonies and disappointments of earthly life. But in perfect happiness there can be no pain. Perfect happiness has no part in the earthly passing personality of man, for in the corporeal pleasures of that personality pain is always close at the side of pleasure. The Real Self suffers no pain; only the phantom self it is that suffers; you, and all like you, are forsaking the true for the false. You are seeking to prolong the sorrow instead of taking the opportunity of release.’

‘Your chance is now with you; through many ages you had been firmly bound on the wheel of desire, loving from life to life with a fire of anguish that grew with feeding. For of all the phantom joys love is the greatest and the most delusive. Love is an accumulation of memories from bygone loves, increasing by indulgence, from life to life, until at last the burden of pain is too great to be borne. You, Kingston, in this present person of yours, have suffered the incarnation of a very ancient deadly love. How else can you account for the mystic rapture, the violent, inexplicable sense of recognition which makes the essence of a tyrannous love? It is soul crying suddenly out to a soul loved long since and lost. It is the meeting of two selves that have grown together through a myriad years, separated by the gulfs of bodily deaths, but always certain to meet again, drawn irresistibly together by the clamour of mutual desire.’

‘Ah,’ replied Kingston, ‘if only one could be so certain of that meeting again! But when, and where, and how?’

‘Unhappy question! You that have been freed are eager to enter again into bondage. If that bondage is the keenest of all earthly pleasure, yet recognise that it is the pleasure of the phantasmal bodily self. It has no part with the perfect knowledge, except in so far as it is divorced from the earthly self. And even in this world, though of all pleasures the keenest, it is also of all agonies the keenest. You would suffer the pains of hell, I know, to gain the joys of that fancied heaven. Wisdom and clear sight have not come to you yet. You must make yourself yet another hell of sorrow before you can hope to attain the great emancipation. As it is, you do not even desire emancipation. Emancipation sounds cheerless to you—lonely, sterile, monotonous. Yet some day, at some point on your pilgrimage, desire will so fade in you that you will be able to understand how it is that perfect peace knows nothing of monotony, and that the agonies of passion do not prove that its joys are real or holy or satisfactory.’

‘Hell is nothing more than the dominion of passion that we establish over our lives—of passion and all the hellish torments that passion engenders. We make our own hells by dwelling obstinately in the world of false desire. If we felt the only true desire, the desire of those things that are real, then there would at once be no more pain, and our state would be heaven. Desire is hell. And that hell we build and stoke and kindle for ourselves—go on kindling from life to life, in our fancy that the fire we endure contains the ultimate pleasure our souls can taste. It is no capricious Personality above that sends us anguish[279] and misery. Everything we suffer follows automatically from some action of our own in this or some bygone phase that our marred memories can no longer recall. Here in the West you do not understand how this can be, though in your heart of hearts you know that it is. But in the older, wiser East men have learned to train their recollection until it is as easy to recall the sorrows of a bygone life as those of yesterday or the day before; for time is a thing that has no real existence in the infinite life of the soul. You, because of that old tie, knew the woman, and loved her and lost her. Because of that fire of false desire that you had fed in yourself for so many existences, you suffered anew the hell of your own making—the hell of loss and loneliness. But kill such false desires, and you kill the false miseries of this life that men think real. You stand at a point where you might strike upwards towards the heaven of peace; the curse of your love had nearly wrought out its completion, and passed away. But by nourishing as you do the fever of longing for the dead, you are binding yourself anew with the chains that were beginning to weaken and drop.’

‘I don’t want to hear all this,’ replied Kingston impatiently. ‘If you know so much, tell me when and where I shall be able to find what I have lost. Shall I find it in this life? Shall I know it when I have found it? Remember how it passed away from me. You seem to understand all that happened, so tell me whether the change will affect our knowledge of each other.’

‘In one tremendous moment the woman rose far above all the false desires in which she had bred herself. She gave her life for the truth. She sacrificed utterly that false self of hers which was the thing that your false self had so loved through the ages. And for her great merit it must be that she must reap great rewards,—not[280] rewards apportioned by a personal providence, but rewards that spring naturally out of her action. She has shaken herself free of the links that bound her to you. The Buddha enwombed in every mortal Karma has torn away many of the veils that shrouded him in that woman’s heart. Because, in her last moment she loved the true better than the false, and followed rather the higher love that led upwards than the lower love which would have kept her at your side—therefore she is released. The streams are sundered at last on the rock of parting. That bondage of hers has passed away—weak and erring and desirous, perhaps, she still may be—faulty and human, but at least that one chain of desire which held her is snapped and broken utterly. You go hunting for her through all the fields of your earthly life, and she, in an instant, she was cured of all vain longings. Therefore between you there is a gulf fixed for ever. You, in the days of your meeting, will know her and desire her, but she will not know you; she will be free of you for ever, and your recognition will wake in her no answering recognition, and thus of her merit will be doubled your damnation.’

‘I’ll take the risk of that,’ cried Kingston, wanting to smile at these august fantasies; but the low, husky voice, the faint tremulous manner filled with age and mystery and wisdom compelled his reverent attention. ‘I don’t care whether she knows me or not when we meet again, so long as I know her. The sundered streams must meet again somehow. As long as I feel that I have met her again, I can be perfectly happy. That is all I ask.’

‘The soul lies to itself,’ answered the old man sadly. ‘Festering sorrow you will have in this, and you know it. For all lust, whether of the body or the soul, is sorrow. It cannot be otherwise, for sorrow and lust[281] are two words for the one great falsehood that pervades this visible world of phantoms.’

‘Tell me,’ interrupted Kingston, jesting uneasily to hide his earnestness, ‘as you have told me so much—can you tell me in what shape I shall find her, if find her I ever shall? Surely what she did will have brought her greater beauty than ever, if what you say is true, that our rewards are automatically developed out of our actions? As for knowing her, on your theory that all love is memory, of course I shall know her, whether she has gone beyond knowing me herself or not. I shall feel it in my blood when we meet again, overwhelmingly, fiercely, as I suppose I must have known her from the first, when she reappeared for a month or two in my life, twenty years ago. But can you say what form the result of her beautiful actions will take this time? Will she be a queen or a beggar?’ Kingston laughed, trying to lighten the impression of his eagerness. But the old man sighed.

‘Sorrow, thick and thick, are you calling down upon yourself,’ he said, ‘the bitterness of vain longing, doubled and redoubled. How can I tell you when and where you may meet again? Wander from magic incantation to incantation, strengthening your disappointment as you strengthen your longing. And—at the end, that meeting which shall be only on one side. Dread that reunion, dread that rediscovery of the lost. You will not find the lost again; you will find only the new, more beautiful thing into which her own beautiful action has transformed that which seemed lost. For merit plays its part in change, inward and outward. Through what endless trials had the holy lady Yasodhara to come before her high spotless Karma brought her at last to the side of the Blessed One Himself. Through all the ages she had lived on, ever higher and holier, before she could[282] attain the end. And why should that which wore a woman’s shape continue still a woman, in its glorification? It was the man’s courage that showed. Can you be certain that what she was is not now a man—a man, perhaps, weak and earthly, but, after all, a man, by virtue of that one instant in which all woman’s weaknesses died in her, and only the bravery held firm. Life is freer, bolder, wider for a man; should not the free, bold soul pass on into a more fitting frame, where its opportunities will be greater and its trammels fewer? But why look forward into the great darkness of desire? Her Karma may even yet have dreadful sorrows to work out, yet from one sorrow, at least, it is now free. But I had come to you to-night because, after all my many years of life and much questioning, it has come to me to see farther than many across the fields of life, and sometimes to hear voices that other ears are not opened to hear. So I heard the crying voice of your hunger growing fierce in its loneliness, and I saw its sorrow deepening down the road of the future, and it seemed to me that perhaps I might give you help in loosening the bonds that bind you to the wheel of false desire. But now I know once more, as all life has taught me, that it is given to none to help his neighbour. Heaven and Hell we make for ourselves, sometimes thinking Hell is Heaven, and Heaven Hell, and no man can unseal our eyes or divert our course. So you must go on your way, Kingston, and I on mine, neither seeing what the other sees, strangers speaking unintelligible tongues. And it will be long before you see what I have grown to see. And yet, in the distance of time, that day will come, and you will be healed of all your sorrows. But now, in this life of yours, for a test and a hell and a torment will be the gratification of your longing when it comes. As a trial and a condemnation of you and yours will it[283] come, suddenly, with disaster and despair, and the possessing of it will bring an anguish bitterer than any that has gone before, for that is the unchanging law of Desire. So I have brought you my message and my vain warning. The force of your craving will bring about its own accomplishment, as, sooner or later, all longing must bring about its accomplishment, and, at the same time, its penalty. For a terrible moment you will see your wish made flesh again, then all will pass away into darkness, and your last state, through your own action, will be worse than the first.’

Kingston might, in saner circumstances, have smiled at denunciations so fantastic. But the little old man, so quiet yet so earnest, had a strange inexplicable dominance. He might not be believed, but he must at any rate be respected. In all he said there was a deep passion of earnestness, wistful and solemn, that gave the wizened little figure in the outrageous European clothes something of the prophet’s tragic grandeur. Now, his mission being discharged, the visitor arose to start once more on his way. Kingston, in the feeling that he had no real part in this earthly world, could make no effort to detain him. Nor would any effort have succeeded. As he had come, abruptly, unannounced, so he would go, abruptly, without mitigating gradation of farewells.

‘Very far apart are we two,’ he said, with a whimsical smile of his dried lips. ‘We speak in different languages, across a barrier of worlds. Yet one day we shall draw together, and our hearts be made kin again. And now I must go. Say good-bye for me to your wife. Out of our passions we make whips for our own backs, and there are other passions besides that of love for others. She too, your wife, must pay the penalty that she has appointed for herself, and out[284] of her fancied strength shall come the great weakness that shall impose on her, and you, and all, that punishment which wisdom would have helped you to avoid. None is good but he who does not know it.’

Kingston was not paying close attention. His mind was fixed on the hope thus made so definite, if perilous, of reunion with Isabel. He foresaw a second meeting, a second recognition, even though it might be one-sided. In the rapture of his hope he laughed at risks, and would face all the vague punishments foretold by the old man without a moment’s fear or hesitation, for the chance of setting eyes again, for however short a time, on the love that he had lost. In that hour the fires of youth flamed high in his heart, and he cared nothing what bitter waters might quench them once more in the end. In a dream he escorted the old man to the door, and watched him pass gently away into the void from which he had so suddenly emerged. Into the crowd of moving figures in the street the old man passed, and melted like a phantom. It was with almost the feeling of having been asleep and strangely dreamed that Kingston went back to the drawing-room, and found himself once more in the prosaic calm world where Gundred sat in a perpetual atmosphere of duty and terrestrial activities. When she returned to her husband with many questions as to the Bishop’s message, plans, and present whereabouts, Kingston could almost have believed that the last hour had been wiped out of his life, or, rather, had never formed a part of it. Her arrival made the whole episode so remote and so fantastic to look back upon that he could scarcely feel that it had really occurred at all. She was so practical, so busy, so matter-of-fact; visions and abstractions could not breathe in her neighbourhood, grew faint, vague, unreal, until the earthly life in[285] which she moved appeared to be the only one with which sensible people could ever have to reckon. She had the not uncommon gift of making the invisible seem non-existent.

Kingston made haste to forget, as far as possible, the ominous prophecies that had descended on him, and in a rush of final activities the Season drew to an end. Gundred was beginning to turn her thoughts towards Brakelond, and as soon as the Eton and Harrow match was over, she decreed that they must take their flight thither. She had many duties to discharge there in a very short time, for, after little more than a fortnight, other duties would call them all northward to Ivescar for the hecatombs of the Twelfth. Meanwhile at Brakelond there was a new school to be opened, a Church Bazaar to be patronized, a Primrose League Fête presided over, and a horrid Radical fishmonger to be deprived of custom, with a stately autograph exposition of his crimes by the Lady Gundred Darnley. There were also a few lighter tasks, and especially a long-standing engagement to dine with the Hoope-Arkwrights. The Hoope-Arkwrights were new people of great wealth, who had bought the old house of the Restormels, beautified it regardless of expense, and ever since had been angling for the friendship of ‘the Castle.’ By Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright’s untiring benevolence towards bazaars, Gundred had at last been brought to accept an invitation to dine at Restormel. ‘Poor things,’ she said, ‘one should always give pleasure when one can, and really it will be quite enough to ask them to tea one day.’ Accordingly she had promised the Hoope-Arkwrights[286] the favour of her presence, and graciously arranged her plans to fit in with the date of their festival. At the Eton and Harrow she shone resplendent in her favourite shades of mauve, to the devouring wrath of other mothers, who, in spite of artificial aids, only succeeded in looking their full forty or fifty. She scanned the gowns and yawned over the play, and paraded proudly about on the arm of Jim, imagining him to be delighted with the occasion, rather than in a cold sweat of horror at every moment, lest anyone else should hear the comments that his mother sent forth in her cool penetrating tones. Then, having discharged her duty by her son and the match, she drove back to Grosvenor Street and turned her thoughts to departure. Kingston would run down to Brakelond in the motor. Gundred enlarged on her longing to accompany him, but declared that duty imperiously called upon her to accompany the household by train, to see that the journey was made satisfactorily, without any loss of luggage, or extravagance, or indecorum of conduct. Accordingly, on the appointed day, the Lady Gundred Darnley might have been seen amid pyramids of parcels and stacks of trunks, taking her Hegira at the head of an army of retainers. As for Kingston, he had yet another day or so in town, and then must follow his wife down to the West so as not to disappoint those ‘poor Hoope-Arkwright people’ of the glory that had been promised them.

The weather was settled, and he anticipated a successful run. He was tired of London. There was heavy over him a sense of things about to happen. Matters seemed coming to a head. What his foreboding meant he could not tell; he had put the old uncle’s vague prophecies far away at the back of his consciousness, and attributed the oppression that crushed his spirits with a weight of impending catastrophe[287] entirely to the influences of the thunderous weather and the air of London, stale and exhausted by the season. It was with relief that he got into the car on a radiant morning, and set out on his flight from the sultry city.

But the day’s journey was not prosperously made. The roads were dusty, the wind was baffling, the car went peevishly and ill. Panting heavily along, the machine traversed the beautiful heaths and uplands that lie to the west of London. Kingston had meant to break his journey far on the way. It was necessary that he should arrive at Brakelond in good time on the morrow, seeing that this festivity over which Gundred so fussed was due to take place that evening. And so, the distance down to the West being great, Kingston had planned to spend the necessarily intervening night at Salisbury, so as to give himself ample time to make the rest of the journey. However, after the long, unsatisfactory day of delays, a downright catastrophe at last brought him to a standstill, no farther advanced upon his pilgrimage than Basingstoke. In that once placid but now assertive little metropolis, hallowed at once by the memories of Mad Margaret and of Elizabeth Bennet, Kingston found himself forced to make his rest that night. He gave orders for an early start on the morrow, then wandered out from the grim desolation peculiar to English country hotels into the streets and market-place. Roaming from alley to alley, he contrasted old with new, and beneath the walls of the old Assembly Rooms, bent his mind to see the famous Ball where Darcy first sighted his destiny. Soon, within the old room above, barnlike now and desolate, ghostly lights were shining, and the tinkle of long-dead music was blending with the rhythmical tumult of many feet. Brilliant and entrancing, Elizabeth came[288] and went, up and down the dance; Mary posed and minced, Kitty and Lydia were agog for partners. As the stranger outside stood and recalled that immortal scene, the visible world around him faded quickly away, and again he understood how much more real may be that which has no earthly existence than that which earthly hands may touch and earthly eyes examine. Streets and walls of Basingstoke, hideous clock-tower and town-hall—it was not that they were real; they were phantoms of an ugly hour; reality, for evermore, was that little town which never was and never will be, where dwelt those men and women that never lived on earth, and yet must live eternally—those men and women so far more vivid and lasting than the ghosts amid whom we live; those real men and women whose voices must ring on perennially down the ages, giving joy and satisfaction to generation after generation, until the English language has passed with Nineveh and Babylon into the limbo of things forgotten.

Sombre hucksters, clerks, shopkeepers moved up and down the dingy roadway. To Kingston, by now, they were but vapours; the street had changed, and its population was of old friends, bright and clearly recognised. Here strutted Wickham and Denny through the dusk, red-coated and raffish, in attendance on the giggling Lydia; and ‘stuffy Uncle Phillips, breathing port wine,’ came lumbering paunchily towards his doorway. Here, where a modern Emporium had faded away, giving place to the neat-fronted little shop of bygone days, shone the shoe-roses that were to dance at Netherfield, and the bonnet that Lydia bought because it was ‘not so very ugly.’ Farther on, again, the pretentious hotel where Kingston was to spend his night had melted into vacancy. In its place stood the long, rambling inn, whitened, clean and simple, with its pillared portico[289] and its hospitable entrance. And whose lumbering chariot was it that stood there at the door, whose high turban and commanding beak loomed out of its deep, cavernous recesses? Surely, surely there was Lady Catherine angrily demanding the road to Longbourne, and insisting that the morrow’s weather must certainly be fine? And now Mr. Bingley rode along on his black horse, blue coat and all; Charlotte Lucas stepped briskly by on an errand; Darcy came escorting the effusive Caroline to the shop; last of all appeared the centre of the vision—the world, rather, where all those visions had been born and made real—the deceptively meek and mild little maiden with the twinkling eyes; the demure and inconspicuous spinster in whom dwelt the keenest spirit that ever spoke in English, or looked out for English ‘follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies.’ Round-cheeked, prematurely capped, sedate, Miss Austen pattered on her road. It was with a sudden cold shock that her passing called back Kingston into the world of to-day. Gone again was the real Basingstoke in a flash, and all the real people that had dwelt there—gone like the sudden wreckage of a dream. Now there stretched before his eyes only the crude and banal sordor of the prosaic modern town. Jude the Obscure, and Sue, and beastly Arabella had violently usurped the place of Bingley and Darcy and adorable Elizabeth. Everything was changed to ugliness and squalor. Kingston, chilled and saddened, returned to the hotel which once more stood on the site of that old inn where the Misses Bennet had eaten their nuncheon.

In the morning, when the time came for Kingston to set off once more on his journey, even the bustling streets of to-day had a cheerfulness of their own. The sun was shining brilliantly, the motor had recovered its good humour, everything looked solid and practical[290] and businesslike and wholesome. The vision of the twilight had passed. Jane Austen was once more dust of Winchester Cathedral, and the butchers and bakers and grocers who stood by their shop-doors and counters were now the sole occupants of the little town; the mystic walls had melted into modern brick and stucco, the ghosts had faded back into the world they came from. And yet, as Kingston went on his way, he knew that in a hundred years or less the case would be reversed again, as he had seen it reversed in the dusk of the previous evening. For ultimate reality conquers ephemeral, apparent reality, and the butchers and the bakers and the grocers would long since have passed away, and become indistinguishable drift again of the earth, with no memory to say that they had ever worn flesh at all; but Bingley and Darcy and Elizabeth would still be there, eternally young, unforgotten and unforgettable. For what death can touch the life invisible? Reality lives on for ever; it is only the composite, the visible, the tangible, that can break up in change, and pass, and disappear. The solid is the only phantom.

On and on through the tranquil glory of the day and the country the motor sped willingly upon its course, put to its highest pressure of flight, that the whole distance might be accomplished in as little time as might be. To-day it ungrudgingly gave its best energies to travelling cheerfully, indefatigably, briskly. Through sleepy little towns it hummed and whirred; along deep lanes, and under the shadow of great ancient forests. Then by degrees the way became more open. The road wound on, over stretch after stretch of purple moorland, dotted here and there with sparse pines or hollies that had watched the hunting of William the Norman; over vast tracts of heather and sedge, over hill and valley of the wide country. By now the clear freshness[291] of morning had given way to the leaden glare of midday. The air was thick and dull with heat, and banked clouds indistinguishably crowded the dome of heaven, only occasionally permitting a pale sun to pierce the haze. The sky had no longer any colour; an indeterminate brassy heat pervaded it, and its farthest distance melted sullenly into the livid profundities of the landscape, till there was no horizon, only one vague vapour filling the uttermost parts of the world.

Kingston drove on unregarding. The road was clear and uneventful; his mind, released from the motorist’s incessant agony as to hens, inexperienced dogs, defiant children, and deaf old women who abruptly cross at corners, was left free to occupy itself with the wonder suggested by his visit of the night before to shadowland. What, after all, was this reality that all men think of? He himself, at once solid and evanescent, of what was he built? Of what were all his neighbours built? Where was the permanent element in them? Flesh and body and bones must go; following the logical sequence, he saw that resemblances must go, recognitions, and the consequent reintegration of bygone personal passions. So far that mysterious old man from the East had been right. These superficial passions belong to the superficial Self, and must pass away when the superficial Self resolves itself once more into the elements of which it had originally been composed; but behind all this, above all this, there must needs be some immortal part, some real Self that could recognise the eternal reality in the creations of an old maid’s vanished brain, and understand that the invisible has a very solid and a very vital existence. As he thought the matter through, the sense of physical personality began to melt away. Gradually he grew into comprehension of the fact that[292] the He of everyday life, the He that has wants, angers, hungers, thirst—the He, in fact, that everyone imagines to be the enduring, everlasting entity, that all men crave and agonize to believe immortal, has really, in the everlasting truth of things, no genuine existence whatever. The only He that could pass on into immortality was the mysterious something behind, the indestructible Thought that could call the body and all its manifestations into being, and then, when tired, dismiss the body again into corruption and go forward on its road. Unable, of course, fully to dissever his consciousness from the consciousness of physical existence, his mind, in the absorbed immobility of his limbs, found itself more and more nearly able to face the fact that its personality had nothing to do with the earthly Kingston Darnley. The earthly Kingston Darnley, the thing that wore clothes, and ate, and drank, and was cold if naked, and cross if hungry, and angry if denied its wishes—that was a mere accident, built of earthly accidents like itself, no more capable of immortality than the food it wanted or the clothes that made so large a part of what it called its existence. As they, in an hour or a year, must dissolve and pass back into their constituent elements so must that phantasmal Self of his resolve itself, in the course of a few seasons more, into its constituent elements again, and die for ever with the death of its own desires. Only the inner, secret Self must go for ever forward upon the upward way, untouched by all the shifting changes which that earthly, ghostly Self might suffer. And Isabel, the lost thing for which he was searching, what was she, and to which Self did she belong—the real or the phantom Self? Was she the creation of his higher or his lower desires? And if he was to find her, as now he felt a growing certainty that he must, what would she be? Into what form[293] would the splendour of her last moment have transferred her? And now he began to remember more vividly the old man’s warning. With what peril of agony and disappointment was fraught his quest, its realization and attainment? By the attainment of one’s keenest desire comes that anguish of disappointment which is fierce in proportion to the fierceness of the desires that called it into being. Desire, by satisfying itself, begets desire, and so, with each fresh craving and its gratification, the chain of suffering grows heavier and stronger, binding the soul more and more fast prisoner in the bondage of pain. For a moment he saw this clearly, understood that only in freedom from the hungers of the lower self can spring that freedom from sorrow which is the ultimate end of all human ambition, the goal of all humanity’s highest hopes, here and in the hereafter. Then his vision clouded, and the lower self intruded its presence once more. His mind dwelt on the achievement of his quest, the long-delayed reunion with the thing that had been lost. Even had he willed to escape, he remembered now that in a moment of what had then been mere fantasy he had plighted his troth to Isabel far down the future. Now, though she might perhaps be free, he was tightly bound—at once by his pledge as by his desires. Perhaps, in so far as his desires had forcibly purged themselves from grossness, the grossness of his bondage might be softened. But a slave he needs must be to the craving which he had so fomented by indulgence through so many desirous years. A dim fear began to fall like a veil across the radiance of his anticipation. Now he understood that reunion with Isabel could not be quite what he had thought and longed for. There must be some change, and with that change must come suffering. He had said, in the ardour of his desideration, that he would take all risks of sorrow. Now[294] he first felt that the risks might well be heavy, and the sorrow sooner or later inevitable. A sense of foreboding filled him. What he wanted that he should have, and with his satisfaction must come that grief of dust and ashes which always makes the gratification of one desire the prelude of its yet bitterer successor, even as the drunkard’s satisfaction of his craving only means the renewal of a redoubled, more insatiable craving on the morrow. His desire should achieve its end, and with that achievement find only the beginning of another desire and a keener pain. A vague, mysterious fear of the path which he had set himself to tread now dominated all his thoughts. It had seemed to lead into such bright places. But now shadows lay thick across it, and its way stretched down towards the abysses. He began to dread the road on which he had so deliberately set his course ever since that violent sorrow of twenty years before. He was suddenly afraid of that future for which he had so long been craving, and shrank from the fulfilment of his longer, eager quest.

Without delay or misadventure, the motor covered the distances with untiring appetite as fast as they unfolded themselves, further and further into blue horizon after blue horizon. Brakelond was nearing; Kingston might soon expect to see its mysterious mass dominating the lesser hills and woods. There was now but one steep barrier of hills to surmount—a slow, straight climb of three miles or more to the summit of a ridge—and thence the road would drop straight over easy declivities to the last brief levels that would still separate the traveller from his destination. Already the hill stretched ahead of Kingston. Before him, with the appalling directness of those eternal Roman roads, the white ribbon stretched taut and stern, away and away to the crown of the pass.[295] Kingston set the motor to breast the long rise with all its might, for there was no time to waste. His calculations had run things very fine. He had only another hour or so to get home, wash, dress, and be ready to accompany Gundred on her mission of condescension. If he failed, he knew well the neat reproaches that would meet him, the mild sighings, the pathetic resignation so much harder to bear than any objurgations. He pushed the motor to its utmost exertions.

The acclivity was now climbing over open moorland. Away to right and left fell the slopes of the hill towards the rich levels far beneath. Evening was shedding its glamour over the country, and all the details of the way were transfigured by the magic of twilight. Straight ahead, over the edge of the pass, the sun was setting in a splendour of scarlet that spread a solid beam of fire from pole to pole, beneath the solid purple of the cloud-banks that rolled and towered up towards the zenith. The air beneath was a-quiver with fire, and the earth was kindled to a fierce and lucent tone of violet, hot, yet solemn, mysterious, almost tragic in the breathless stillness of the evening. Against the glare beyond, the climbing road shone cold and ghastly under the unbroken cloud-masses overhead, grey as a rain-washed bone by contrast with the amethyst of the earth and the sudden furious glory of the sky. Leading up over darkness to that scarlet furnace in the west, it might have been the very way to Hell. Terrible ghosts might be mounting its straight, still stretch. As the motor gradually rolled up its slopes, Kingston saw that there was indeed a wayfarer upon the road. Far away as yet, hardly discernible, a black speck was nearing the summit of the pass. A quick, fantastic terror suddenly seized on Kingston; he shrank from overtaking the wanderer, from passing him, from seeing his face. Even from afar that solitary[296] figure had a malign influence. It was some ominous and evil thing, that remote point of darkness on the ghostly pallor of the road. The moments, as they throbbed by, seemed big with terrible events about to be born. A dreadful hush of expectation filled the world. And still the motor climbed pitilessly, gaining on the pedestrian so far ahead. Kingston encouraged his foolish instincts so as the better to laugh at them. It was this strange evening that had given him such a start—this strange evening, filled with an immemorial, awful loneliness. This light was mysterious and haunting—the deep sombre purples of the moorland, the grim, cold whiteness of the road—and then, at the end of the gloom, that abrupt, ferocious glare beyond, that terrifying blaze of the sunset between the two rims of darkness above and beneath. The whole effect was unearthly, almost crushing. And the world seemed holding its breath; nothing stirred, no leaf, no zephyr; the cry of no bird could be discerned, and even the dry susurrence of the heather-bells was stilled in the blank immobility of the atmosphere. And through the uncanny hush the throbs and pantings of the motor broke obtrusively, like the agonies of some great monster in travail, intensifying by contrast the vast loneliness of the silence. And there, arriving at the crown of the pass, moved on the one sign of life that occurred anywhere in the desolate prospect. That sign of life added a strangely jarring, menacing note.

And then to Kingston’s cherished feelings of mystic awe was abruptly added another. That figure far up on the grey road was no stranger. He knew it well, had known it from time immemorial—known it and yet feared it. The instinct came upon him with a crash, like the sudden recognition of something dreadful that leaps into a nightmare. It was no qualm; it was a certainty. He knew that when he should have[297] reached the summit of the ridge he would look back at the wayfarer’s face and see—what, he could not tell, but something, at all events, that he had known for years. The feeling grew on him, and grew and grew, until at last a devouring curiosity annihilated his previous dread. He abandoned himself to the influences of the wizard twilight, and allowed himself to nurse these fantasies which daylight could not have conceived, nor his daylight self been brought to tolerate. Now, however, by the poised, watchful dusk, their power was strengthened and made momentarily heavier. Overwhelming impulses of acquaintanceship seized Kingston. Who could it be that had so enthralled his attention even from afar? And now they were close upon the mystery. It wore a man’s figure, lithe and tall, in a dark knickerbocker suit. Suddenly it turned at the noise of their coming, and looked round. Kingston had one instant of suspense, then fell headlong into an abyss of self-contempt. He had so cosseted his absurdities that he had come at last to believe in them. Why, this wanderer was simply a respectable young gentleman of one-and-twenty or so, whom he had never set eyes on in his life before. He was good-looking, too—brilliantly good-looking, with fine features, a beautifully springy form, and splendid grey eyes, but a total stranger none the less. Kingston felt a pang of disappointment; but though on the surface he knew that he had never seen the boy before, yet a dim instinct within him still obstinately insisted that this was no first meeting. The instinct would not be cried down by perverse facts; it clamoured for recognition, and gradually the former acute feeling of curiosity and acquaintance began to rise again in Kingston. He felt sure he must already have seen the boy somewhere, though he could not recall a single feature. Probably he had caught a glimpse of him in[298] London, and his subconscious mind had photographed the glimpse upon his memory. On a sudden irresistible impulse, he slowed the motor on its course, and as he passed the wayfarer, leaned out towards him.

‘We seem to be going the same way,’ he shouted above the outraged bellowings of the machine. ‘Can’t I give you a lift?’

The other looked up in surprise. Seen at such close quarters, he was more handsome than ever.

‘Oh, thank you,’ he answered after a pause. ‘Thanks very much. But I am very nearly at my destination.’

Refusal spoke clearly in his tones, and as he replied Kingston felt again the same overpowering certainty that this was an acquaintance of long standing. Everything seemed violently, vividly familiar, yet nothing, no inflection, no feature, could he track down to its place in his memory. Besides, if his instinct had been true, surely the stranger must have shared it, and the offer of a lift would have led, as it was intended to do, towards a mutual recognition. But the boy evidently had no such feeling of acquaintance, and had declined the suggestion without the faintest hint that he had ever seen the motorist before. The whole coil must be a web of mere fancy. Kingston released the machine, which bounded gladly on, leaving the wayfarer behind in the shadow of the hill. Another instant, and they were on the summit. A blinding glory dazzled Kingston’s eyes. The whole atmosphere was one shimmering ripple of light. Beneath his feet, dim in the vibrating gold, lay the last two miles of level and plain. Indistinguishable, though close at hand among its woods, lay the redecorated house of the Restormels, where he was to dine that evening. And there, beyond, infinitely remote amid the vaporous radiance, rose Brakelond, far above the[299] world, silhouetted in shades of purple against the devastating glare of the sunset. Wonderfully magical, wonderfully mystical in the last fires of the evening, seemed that fantastic vision of the Castle, fit haunt of old dead passions and splendours, the glowing casket of half a thousand memories, gorgeous, palpitating, terrible. For an instant he paused on the summit of the hill, gazing at that crown of wonder against the flaming west; then he gave the straining motor its head, and plunged downwards on the final stage of his journey. Soon, as he approached it, the Castle lost its mystery, grew solid, looming, earthly. Kingston suddenly realized that there, high up in her great vaulted room, its Lady Gundred was sitting in front of her mirror, having her hair done, and wondering whether her husband would arrive in time for dinner. The motor rushed fiercely up the last steep stages of the Castle hill, passed under the machicolated gateway, and came noisily to rest in the shadow of the Erechtheion. Kingston, thoroughly restored by now to prose and sanity, leaped hastily out, and went to his room to get ready.

Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright was a large, short woman, genial and comfortable, always anxious to give pleasure and make herself popular. Her husband had made a great deal of money some years since in ways that were characterized by his friends as energetic, and by his enemies as shady. However, nothing very definite had ever been said against him, so that the charitable could avail themselves, uncontaminated, of his wealth, and make a merit of their willingness to tolerate its owner. In himself, he was a quiet and obscure little[300] man, who left the ordering of daily existence entirely in the hands of his wife; and she, without vulgarity or snobbishness, had a passion for being liked, for being surrounded by pleased, approving people. In the neighbourhood of Brakelond she had already achieved general favour; she was everywhere hailed as a ‘dear good woman’; the lavish appointments of the house, the excellence of the cook and cellar, accomplished only less than her own real kindliness, and the surrounding families all ended by accepting the new-comer with a good grace, until at last only Brakelond held itself aloof. And now even Brakelond was about to surrender. Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright, however devoid of sycophantic feelings, could not but feel that the occasion was a great one. Lady Gundred Darnley, virtual Duchess of March and Brakelond, was very much the sovereign of the county, no less by position than by choice, and her first ceremonial appearance at the Hoope-Arkwright’s board was beyond question an event of the highest importance. Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright had ordered her best dinner, donned her best gown and her heartiest smile; she was genuinely happy, and meant that the festival should be a complete success. Gundred, at this moment driving towards the house in a blessed glow of conscious benevolence, could not feel the favour of her visit more than did Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright.

‘Joe dear,’ said the gratified hostess to her husband, as they stood together in the empty drawing-room before the arrival of their guests—‘Joe dear, you will take Lady Gundred, of course. Remember what an interest she has in the schools and Church bazaars. And don’t talk about the Duke, whatever you do. She does not like it. There is nothing—well, positively wrong with the poor Duke, but still, one says as little about him as one can.’

Mr. Hoope-Arkwright promised obedience. His wife looked around her with complacency, surveying all the rich perfections of the room. ‘I do think she will find the place improved,’ she remarked.

The Hoope-Arkwrights’ treatment of the old house that they had bought from the ruined Restormels had been drastic, though reverent. They had altered everything, and sternly pretended to have altered nothing, after the habit of new-comers who have passed from the first crude stage, of destruction, unto the second crude stage, of imitation. All the old quaintnesses and beauties had been left, but they had all been elaborated, done up, polished, painted, exaggerated, until they hardly knew themselves, and wore the uneasy look of things that had been put up yesterday for effect. The old house was now like the stage-setting of an old house; everything wore the painful flamboyancy, the assertive archaism of the theatre, neat, shining, obtrusive as a new pin. The armoured figures on the stairs and in the long oaken hall now carried electric lamps in their mailed fists, and this combination of practical modern contrivance with respect for antiquity was not only typical of all the other improvements but also a ceaseless matter of pride to the new owners of Restormel. Their complacence and their contrivance were equally characteristic. The same spirit pervaded the house and made it spick and span, bristling with expensive conveniences from attic to cellar. The long parlour in which Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright now stood in expectation of her guests was a great low room panelled in oak, with leaded casements of dim glass. At least, this is what it had been. Now it had Art-Nouveau windows with cushioned seats, and a broad white cornice, behind whose rim lurked electric lights in plutocratic abundance, shedding a pale, diffused glare, as of a ghostly day. The[302] scene they shone on was no longer ancient, but ‘antique.’

Everything was overdone; everything was in that strenuous good taste which is the worst taste of all. The oaken settles, so carved, so polished, were blatantly unconvincing in their very eagerness to convince; oaken tables here and there carried silver photograph-frames and silver bowls of roses. In their devout attempt to preserve inviolate the antiquity of the house, the Hoope-Arkwrights had scorned the introduction of a carpet, and the expanse of the floor was now an artificial skating-rink of parquet, so new and glossy that it might have served as a mirror, over whose surface were scattered a few desolate islets of rug that slid treacherously away beneath unwary feet, carrying their victim in a helpless slide across the room. Under the tables sat monstrous great green china cats, painted all over with little roses in patterns and ribbons. Their emerald eyes of glass glared grimly forth from each lair, and their presence added a neat note of modern art to the pristine simplicity of the other decorations.

As Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright gazed approvingly around, the door opened, and two young men came in. One was short and pleasant and plump—clearly the son of the house; the other was slender, tall, and dark, of remarkable beauty, both of feature and build. His hostess welcomed him warmly.

‘I do hope you are not tired after that long walk, Mr. Restormel,’ she said; ‘I am sure you will be glad of your dinner. The air does give one an appetite, doesn’t it? I have only walked as far as the garden to-day, but I declare I feel as famished as a wolf.’

The kind lady screwed up her comfortable features into fanciful imitation of a famished wolf. The young man smiled.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t often get tired with walking. And then think what I had to look forward to at the end of it.’

‘Ah yes,’ she replied with some feeling. ‘I am afraid we are dreadfully thoughtless, Mr. Restormel. It must be dreadful for you to come back here and find a lot of new people kicking about in your own house, as it were; I do hope you’ll try not to think about it. When Jack told me how he had met you at Oxford, and who you were, and all about you, I declare I felt quite shy and uncomfortable at the thought of asking you to pay us a visit. And to arrive just to-night, too, when we have got a sort of little dinner-party too. I am sure you must find it very trying.’

The handsome boy smiled down at her again. She was evidently in anxiety that he should be happy and set at his ease, though her methods lacked subtlety. He accepted her sympathy, but diverted her conversation.

‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘we come and go, all of us, and it never does to bother about what one cannot help. Anyhow, I am sure Restormel never had jollier, kinder people in it than it has now. Tell me, Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright, who is coming to dinner to-night?’

‘What, has not Jack told you?’ cried the hostess, with a little inflection of pride, turning to her son. ‘Well, there are Sir Nigel Pope and his new second wife, and the Martin Massingers with two sisters, and the Archdeacon and Mrs. Widge, who are staying with them, and the Lemmingtons, and the Goddards, and the Pooles—yes, and the Darnleys—from Brakelond, you know, Lady Gundred and her husband.’

‘Oh, Lady Gundred. Of course I have heard all[304] about them. My mother used to see a good deal of her at one time, before the place was sold.’

‘Oh yes, how stupid I am! I am always forgetting that you know all the people about far better than we do, though only by hearsay, most of them. Yes, of course you know about dear Lady Gundred. You will be next her at dinner, on the other side from my husband. What a comfort! You will be able to talk to her about old times. I am afraid you will be in starvation corner, by the way, Mr. Restormel, but I thought—even before I remembered that you knew her—that you would not mind that if you were next to dear Lady Gundred.’

‘You must remember,’ answered young Restormel, ‘that the place was sold when I was only six months old, so I cannot feel that I have any very intimate acquaintance with Lady Gundred. Tell me some more about her; what is she like?’

‘The sweetest and best of women, Mr. Restormel. And so pretty. Quite extraordinary, for she must be—what?—well over thirty, certainly, and yet she looks quite like a young girl still. Fair, you know, with a delightful complexion and lovely golden hair, and that kind of beautiful little figure which never alters. Yes, she must certainly be over thirty. She has got a son who can’t be less than fifteen. Jack, surely Jim Darnley is quite fifteen?’

Young Hoope-Arkwright glanced up from the photograph-book with which he was beguiling the time.

‘There you are. And his mother looks like his sister still. He is the dearest boy, Jim Darnley—the simplest, most unaffected creature. And, of course, he will be Duke of March and Brakelond one of these days, when his grandfather dies. They are sure to revive the title for him. But he might be just anybody,[305] and his mother the same. I have always wondered why she does not make her husband take her own name. But no; she is such a really good woman that she thinks a wife ought always to stick to her husband’s name. That shows you what she is. And such a worker of all good kind works, indefatigable among the poor and the sick—for ever sending out soup and boots and blankets, you know. Her life is quite made up of kindnesses. They very, very seldom dine out, the Darnleys, in the country, so that you are lucky to meet them here like this to-night. Her husband is a very nice man too. I am sure you will like them both immensely. But of course she is the most interesting of the two.’

At this point the other guests began to arrive, and Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright was forced to abandon her dialogue with young Restormel. She introduced him rather perfunctorily to one or two of the new arrivals, taking pains to slur over his name until she should have the opportunity of explaining his identity quietly to them at dinner or afterwards; then she turned to her hospitable duties, and Jack Hoope-Arkwright carried off his friend into one of the windows, where they stood laughing and talking together while the guests gradually gathered. Then, after a few moments, Ivor Restormel and his host came back towards the hearth to look at some photograph or ornament that stood on the primitive oak table that stood close by, and thus it was that they were once more close at the hostess’s side when at last, in a significant pause, the butler re-entered. His appearance suggested an archbishop of sporting tendencies, and he evidently cultivated a nice sense of drama. His voice boomed sonorous as he announced:

Minute but majestic, the Lady Gundred Darnley proceeded up the room, panoplied in perfections, and giving exactly the proper amount of smiles, of exactly the proper kind, in exactly the proper way, to all the proper people. At her heels came Kingston, but nobody cared to look twice at him. Lady Gundred was the star of the evening; as she entered, she had the double consciousness of not only conferring great pleasure, but of conferring it in the handsomest and most ungrudging manner. For in the plenitude of her generosity she had decided that it was her duty not to fob off poor, kind Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright’s dinner with one of her second-best frocks; and now she reaped the reward of her efforts in the general gaze of delight that greeted her appearance in one of her smartest gowns, looking incredibly crisp and young in a beautifully-built harmony of pale blue and pale gold. The frock set the crown upon the favour of her coming. It was, indeed, very rarely that the Darnleys dined out in the neighbourhood of Brakelond, and therefore Gundred was the more ready to emphasize the approval that her coming was to bestow on Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright in the eyes of all the county. Dear woman, how good she had been about that bazaar! how loyally she had turned away her Liberal gardeners! She well deserved not only to be dined with, but to be dined with in one of one’s decent gowns. And then one might ask her to tea at Brakelond, and show her the pictures. Gundred showed herself sweet and kind in the highest degree, as Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright made her welcome. Her manner always had a tranquil friendliness and a grace so instinct with placidity that only the most discerning could have discerned her underlying pride, in her demeanour’s very negation of pride. Here and there, perhaps, an acute onlooker might guess that her gentleness was founded on an[307] intense arrogance unsuspected even by its possessor, on a self-esteem so tremendous as to have passed beyond all hint of self-assertion into a Nirvana of apparent unself-consciousness. An ingenious friend in London, indeed, had once said that, though Gundred’s manner and signature unfailingly wore the proper style of ‘Gundred Darnley,’ yet that, reading between the lines, both of manner and signature, one could always see that it really ran, ‘Gundred March and Brakelond.’ However, her pride was far too cardinal a point of doctrine to be made the theme of declamation; Gundred never obtruded it, never lowered its dignity by insisting on it, never allowed it to make her offensive, except in minute and subtle ways. Now, as she pressed Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright’s hand and commended her kindness, the hostess felt that never had she met anyone so pleasant and cordial and delightfully unaffected.

Then Gundred raised her eyes and looked round her to see who else might be in the room. She saw Sir Nigel, saw the Lemmingtons, saw the Archdeacon and his wife; she was glad that Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright had chosen such unexceptionable people to be witnesses of Brakelond’s condescension. Then her gaze moved on. The next moment she saw somebody whom instantly, inexplicably, she disliked as she had never before disliked anyone at first sight. Cool and gracious, Gundred was the last person in the world to feel unusual emotions; but now, as she looked at a tall dark young man—a boy of about twenty, he seemed, remarkably beautiful and attractive—her soul started proudly away in a flurry of instinctive repulsion. He was unpleasant, that good-looking youth, altogether unpleasant and odious. She had no notion why this feeling swept so completely across her mood; it took entire possession of her. Quickly she[308] averted her eyes, and glanced round the uneventful circle of the other guests. They, for their part, quite unsuspicious of Lady Gundred’s sudden outburst of dislike, were concentrating their admiration on the calm grace of her manner, so exquisitely civilized and concise. Passions must always be very far from that serene pleasantness of demeanour. And meanwhile Gundred was busy thinking how displeasing that young man was, while with soft smiles she responded to Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright’s compliments. But suddenly the hostess became conscious of someone at her side. She turned towards the handsome dark boy, and before Gundred could see what was to happen, had brought him forward. ‘Let me introduce you to Lady Gundred Darnley,’ she said. The young man made a motion as if to put out his hand. Gundred instantly responded by taking that cruel revenge which is always in a woman’s power on such occasions. She ignored the hand, gave a glacial little smile and a glacial little bow. The young man seemed slightly astonished at this chill, and his eyes met hers for a moment. They were splendid eyes, those of his—cool, deep, grey, kindly. They glanced with wonder into the ice of Gundred’s stare, and in that moment she felt his gaze intolerable, saw things that she mysteriously hated and dreaded in those grey depths. For once in her life Gundred’s composure was faintly ruffled. She dropped her glance, and faintly blushed with annoyance. This is what one got by being generous and dining with presumptuous people like the Hoope-Arkwrights. Under her calm, imperturbably smiling exterior Gundred was gravely annoyed. She moved backwards, away from this unwelcome introduction. Her movement produced a change in the arrangement of the crowd. Kingston stepped forward, and came into sight of the tall, slender figure with which his wife[309] had seemed to be talking. Already he had had a strong conviction that he knew the back; now that he saw the face, he recognised the wayfarer whom he had passed on his road that afternoon. And once again, tyrannous, overwhelming, came the certainty of old acquaintance. Before, however, he could start a conversation, dinner was announced, and Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright began to marshal her guests in procession. Gundred hailed the release with joy, and passed out with gentle majesty at the head of the cortège.

What, then, was her indignation when, having settled herself at her host’s right, delicately removed her gloves, unfolded her napkin, untied the little bundle of pastry faggots that lay before her knotted up with blue ribbon, she turned towards her other neighbour, and discovered that he was no other than the strange, beautiful young man for whom she had conceived so unusually sudden a dislike. She hated strong emotions, and very rarely indulged them, but this one was beyond her control—a matter of instinct. In the first flash of revelation, she felt convinced that this beautiful boy was a corrupter of youth, a contemner of religion, everything that was bad and horrible; she plumed herself immediately on the nice discernment that enabled a Christian woman to divine such things, and made a virtue of the hostility she harboured. Talk to such a creature she would not. She turned quickly upon her host, and initiated the usual introductory conversation on the beauty of the table decorations.

The dinner-table was of a piece with the rest of the restored house. It was so aggressively old as to be obviously new. It was of that ancient oak which is for ever modern; and, in deference to primitive simplicity, it wore no cloth. Glass and silver gleamed down its long narrow stretch, and in the middle ranged a hedge of roses and orchids embowered in[310] ferns. Electric light was not permitted to mar its harmony with any suggestion of modernity. Candles in plain old silver candlesticks illuminated the table and its guests, shedding a soft and discreet glamour of pink from beneath their shades of crimson paper. Gundred commented amiably on the beautiful effect attained.

Mr. Hoope-Arkwright, who left such details to his wife and the decorators, made what reply he could, and the conversation flowed placidly along the lines that Gundred loved, developing in the way that showed her social aptitudes at their best.

‘My wife says that electric light does not do for a dinner-table,’ explained Mr. Hoope-Arkwright. ‘Too harsh a light it sheds, she tells me. I don’t understand such things myself, but everyone says the candles and their pink shades are very becoming.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Gundred; ‘one always likes a soft gentle light. And so clever of dear Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright not to have a tablecloth. All the glass and silver shows up so well. Such wonderful taste she has.’

‘Well, I always like a tablecloth myself, you know—seems cleaner, somehow; but Maggie says it is not the thing in a house like this.’

‘Such a delightful house—yes? And I do think you and dear Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright have been so tactful about it—altering nothing, as it were, and yet improving everything, and making it so comfortable. It was very different in the poor Restormels’ time. I can remember what it was like then.’

Mr. Hoope-Arkwright saw that she had not grasped her other neighbour’s identity, and as personal explanations are not easy unless one has the tact to shout them, so that their object may have no suspicion who is meant, he preferred to turn the conversation into other channels. ‘Are you fond of flowers, Lady Gundred?’ he asked.

In such temperate dialogues Gundred particularly shone. She was especially valuable in London for her power of flowing endlessly and amiably on about matters which could never possibly interest or stimulate anybody, or arouse difficulties of any sort. She was felt to be a thoroughly safe guest. So Mr. Hoope-Arkwright’s question gave her a most favourable opportunity for the display of her favourite qualities, and she seized upon the topic with joy.

‘Oh yes,’ she answered; ‘I have always been devoted to flowers. Such a comfort they are—yes? Quiet friends, I always say. One could not live without them.’

‘Roses, now—do you care particularly for roses?’ pursued Mr. Hoope-Arkwright.

‘Oh, the queen of flowers,’ she made haste to reply. ‘But, do you know, I can never quite care for a rose that has no scent. There is something unnatural about it—no? But these of yours are perfectly lovely, and how sweet! Do you find the soil good for them here?’

‘Well, as to that I can hardly tell you. I leave such matters to my wife and the gardener. But they are fine fellows, as you say.’

‘Quite like little pink cabbages—yes? Only so very, very beautiful, of course. How one loves a rose! And they go so well with the orchids too. So nice to be able to grow orchids.’

‘Yes, they do run into money, orchids do. You would be astonished at the prices some of them fetch.’

Gundred thought this a vulgar ostentation, and assumed her mildly pious air. ‘And I dare say, after all, not half so beautiful as many a dear little flower of the hedgerows?’ she replied. ‘Money means so little—yes? I often feel that one’s greatest pleasures are those which cost us least. The lovely lights on the[312] hills, the roseate hues of early dawn—these are the joys which no money can buy. How thankful one ought to be to Heaven for giving us all these healthy pleasures—yes?’

Neither Mr. Hoope-Arkwright nor Gundred herself had any exhaustive experience of early dawn and its roseate hues. But the sentiment was improving and laudable. The host, however, was inclined to be prosaic.

‘Well,’ he answered, ‘one need not sniff at money, either, Lady Gundred. Where would one be without it?’

‘Ah, where indeed?’ sighed Gundred; ‘and yet one never has enough. But one always likes to feel that there is something higher than money, Mr. Hoope-Arkwright—yes? Money can give you all these beautiful flowers, and this delightful house, but can money give happiness, Mr. Hoope-Arkwright?’

‘Not a tender, loving heart, Mr. Hoope-Arkwright. Not a childlike faith and simplicity,’ replied Gundred pathetically. ‘And without these what is life? Our only real happiness lies in doing what one can for others. And that, I always feel, is the most real and precious use of money—yes?’

Mr. Hoope-Arkwright’s most characteristic activities had hitherto lain rather in doing others than in doing things for them. Also, he had very different views on the use of money from those so correctly enunciated by Gundred. So he preserved a discreet silence on the point, and listened unprotesting while she proceeded to enlarge on the more idyllically beautiful possibilities of life. He inserted ‘Ah yes,’ and ‘Ah no,’ at intervals into the interstices of her remarks, and cast about for an early opportunity of taking refuge with[313] his other neighbour. Mr. Hoope-Arkwright did not really share his wife’s hospitable instincts, and he did not care two straws about Lady Gundred Darnley—or, for that matter, about Lady Anybody Anything. ‘To do the civil’ he saw to be his duty, but the moment that dinner was half over and his duty duly discharged, he meant to indemnify himself for his endurance of this dull, pretty woman and her boring platitudes by having a good time with his other partner, Sir Nigel Pope’s second wife, a young woman of a gay and kindred spirit. Accordingly, when the roast peacock had arrived, he seized his moment with great promptitude.

‘Now, that is what I call quite poetic,’ he exclaimed, when Gundred had finished by saying that she thought a good, useful life was like some fragrant flower. ‘What do you think, Lady Pope?’

Lady Pope made a prompt, flashing reply, and in another moment was engaged in a warm duologue with her host; Gundred was left out in the cold. She felt a certain annoyance at being dropped like this. Her self-complacence would not, of course, let her know that she had been dropped. She knew that she had been giving poor dear Mr. Hoope-Arkwright one of the pleasantest half-hours of his life—a little uplifting talk with a really refined woman—but still it was just a trifle tiresome that he should have so very keen a sense of duty. Evidently it was only the strictest sense of duty that had made him change partners so precisely at the halfway house of the meal; but Gundred would have been better pleased if he had not allowed his sense of duty to be quite so minute and intrusive. Very proper and right, of course, yet almost too scrupulously right and proper to be altogether tactful. Then it suddenly occurred to her that she in turn ought to talk to her horror on the other[314] side. No, that she would not. Duty and right themselves should not compel her. She stared stonily before her, eating the peacock with wrathful and mincing precision. She would hear no preliminaries on her right. She gazed straight out across the table. Far off she saw her husband looking at her. Watchful interest and curiosity filled his expression as he glanced from her neighbour to herself. Perhaps he was wondering why she was not talking to him. Duty clearly commanded her to. But for once in her life correct, decorous Gundred would be deaf to the call which she usually heard and obeyed so sedulously. She nibbled at a pastry faggot, and kept a stern silence. Her neighbour made two attempts at conversation, but she answered so coldly as to nip them both in the bud. Then, abruptly, her attention was caught and riveted. The pink candle-shade in front of her was tilting to one side, threatening every moment to take fire. She looked anxiously round to her host for help, but he was by now far too deeply engaged with Lady Pope. Gundred gazed in annoyance at the paper shade. Surely it was beginning to smoulder? Ever since the catastrophe at Brakelond Gundred had disliked fire hardly less than the burned child, and now her untutored desires would have prompted her to get up and move away. But she had the martyr-like courage of her breeding and conventions. She sat there in suspense, smiling, calm, and altogether smooth to look at. However, there was no need, after all, to feel so helpless. She must inevitably appeal to the young man on her right. Speech had become a necessity, though always a distasteful one. Besides, after all, how absurd to let even so strong an instinct make one uncivil! Gundred fought down her reluctance bravely, and turned to her neighbour.

‘Do you think,’ she asked firmly, though in a low,[315] rather strained voice, ‘that you could lower that shade a little? Do you see, I believe it will catch fire in a moment—yes?’

No answer followed her appeal. In astonishment she repeated it, and raised her eyes to her enemy’s face. She was astounded by what she saw there. She herself had been put out, even alarmed for a minute by the imminent fate of the candle-shade; but her neighbour’s gaze was fixed on the point of peril in a set white pallor of pure terror. Never in her life had she seen such an agony of dread on any human countenance. The young man, so beautiful, so lithe, so strong, was a monstrous coward. His face was rigid with fear, his eyes staring horribly. The sight was indecent in its nude revelation of weakness. In an instant all Gundred’s courage came back to her, and at the same moment her hatred for her neighbour was mitigated by a cold ferocity of contempt. He was still evil and hateful, but now he was contemptible also. He, a man, to be so terrified of a little burning candle-shade! At that same moment the shade tilted further, caught, and flamed. Gundred was conscious that her neighbour’s hands clenched upon his chair in a convulsive jerk of fright. Calmly, firmly she reached forth her arm, and crushed the blazing paper into a blackened flake. Servants came running to sweep up the ashes, and Mr. Hoope-Arkwright confounded himself in apologies for his neglect. Gundred showed herself perfectly amiable to her host, but on her other neighbour she would have no mercy.

‘I saw it was going to catch,’ she said gently, ‘and I asked Mr.—this gentleman, to put it out. But he cannot have heard me, I think.’ She included both men in her remarks, and spoke in soft, far-reaching tones that could not escape their attention. Mr. Hoope-Arkwright made some polite rejoinder, gave[316] her a few compliments, then went back to his dialogue with Lady Pope. Gundred, reinstated in her own self-esteem, turned to see what effect her cut had had upon the coward. Had he winced beneath the lash? Yes, evidently he had. Gundred was justly pleased. Heaven had made her the instrument of his well-merited punishment. And now he was trying to make excuses. She would listen, so as the better to slight them. She offered a coldly acquiescent air as he began to speak.

‘I am sorry,’ he said in a slow, hesitating voice, hardly yet restored to equanimity. ‘I am afraid I heard you perfectly.’

Gundred would see no courage in the confession. It was mere effrontery. ‘Yes?’ she replied. There was a pause. ‘Yes?’ repeated Gundred cruelly, demanding an answer.

The young man went on, speaking with difficulty. Gundred felt a keen joy in thus dragging the coward through a confession of his cowardice. To be a man and a coward—that was not punishment enough. He should also know what a woman thought of him.

‘I ... well, the long and the short of it is, I can’t face fire,’ continued the hesitating, painful voice.

‘You would not make a good soldier—no?’ rejoined Gundred, with a pinched little smile.

‘Oh, in that way I hope I should be all right. It is flame and smoke and burning that I cannot face. All my life I have had the fear. I suppose everyone has a secret horror in their lives. Fire is mine. I have suffered from it always. You don’t know what it is. It is something far worse than fear. I am not really afraid of the fire. I knew how ridiculously harmless that little burning shade would be, but it was the fire, the flame that made me—well, made me almost sick with a shrinking—a sort of supernatural repulsion that I cannot explain.’

‘How very unfortunate!’ answered Gundred, deliberately cool and incredulous in tone. ‘It must be so very inconvenient—yes? People are sadly apt to misunderstand, don’t you find?’

The young man, however, was a worm only in his tendency to turn. He flushed, seeing clearly the hard malice of her mood. ‘Very few, thank Heaven,’ he answered, ‘have ever had the opportunity of misunderstanding. You have been especially unlucky, and so have I.’

‘I must, obviously,’ he went on. ‘You see, one bears one’s secret horror, whatever it may be, quite alone, telling nobody about it. But sometimes, once or twice in one’s life, some cursed accident drags it to the surface, and the horror becomes too bad to bear, and an outsider gets a glimpse of it. I have been unfortunate in the moment of my accident, and in the person who saw it, and there is no more to be said: that is all.’

The young man, the coward, the unmentionable, seemed actually to be snubbing the brave, the serene, the faultless Lady Gundred Darnley. This must instantly be put a stop to.

‘One does not like to believe that any man can have a fear too bad to bear—no?’ inquired Gundred, very gently and softly, as if asking for the sake of information.

The victim had clearly had enough of this persecution. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘when one comes to think of it, I suppose you are yourself more or less responsible for my fears, if anyone is.’

‘I?’ she questioned in amazement, as if the very suggestion were an insolent piece of irreverence.

The young man was not abashed, however, and proceeded to make his position good.

‘You had a ghastly fire at Brakelond many years ago,’ he answered. ‘Somebody was burnt—a cousin of yours, I think. Well, that fire was a great shock to my mother, and upset her dreadfully. I was the result, and I am the incarnation of her terrors.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said; ‘but I did not quite catch your name before dinner. But from what you have just said, are you—surely you must be——’

‘I am Ivor Restormel,’ said the enemy. ‘I was born about twelve hours after your fire at Brakelond. So you cannot wonder that I carry the traces of it in my life, as it were. And so, you see, I was right: you are in some way responsible for my dread of fire. Wasn’t it a careless servant who set light to the old wooden wing of Brakelond? Well, if it had not been for that careless servant, I should not have had any dread or shrinking from fire.’

‘Really,’ said Gundred, hardly heeding him, ‘this is wonderfully interesting. Then you are poor dear Mary Restormel’s son? I used to know your mother so well in the days before you were born. And then the place was sold, of course, to these Hoope-Arkwrights, and I never saw much of poor dear Mary again. But how very strange to meet you here—yes?’

Gundred was always faithful to her traditions and her memories. The stranger came immediately into the hallowed circle of Gundred’s own class, and no longer suffered the condemnation of the outsider. In her heart of hearts, Gundred, perhaps, would never surmount her first mysterious sense of repulsion; but anger, disdain, reproof must at once be very much modified in the case of a person who now stood revealed[319] as no longer an unhallowed, nameless member of the Hoope-Arkwright world, but as poor dear Mary Restormel’s son, with the right divine to Gundred’s sympathetic loyalty. Her strong and dutiful esprit de corps even prompted her to something resembling an apology.

‘Of course I had no notion who you were,’ she said. ‘What you tell me is a perfect explanation. How very dreadful for you, though! But I quite understand your feeling—a simple instinct. Yet, of course, until one knew who you were, it did seem a little strange—yes?’

‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘one is always meeting odd things in life. I only wish I had escaped that particular oddity. However, I do all I can to get the better of it, and in a way I have succeeded. I can face flame more than I could, though it still gives me the same supernatural creepy feeling. What I have suffered, too, in seeing women smoke is more than I can express.’

‘Not at all a nice habit, I think,’ replied Gundred. ‘Somehow, it never seems appropriate or ladylike—no?’

‘Oh, it is not that I mind, but the possibilities are so horrible. A man wears rough tweeds and things. No spark could settle on them. But think of the innumerable frills and fluffs and films that a woman has floating all round her nowadays. A chance spark, and the dropping of a red cigarette-end, and—ah! it doesn’t bear thinking of.’

He broke off, shuddering, and Gundred could see that at the bare notion of such a catastrophe the old white, shivering terror had laid hold of him. She had heard before of these strange, inherited passions, prenatal, ineradicable, but this was the first instance[320] she had ever met with, and it filled her with interest now that she realized that its victim was a man of her own order, and as such, of course, not to be classed in the common rank of cowards. Her subconscious fear and dislike of Ivor Restormel still held their place in her mind, but they had retired to the background of her thought for the moment, leaving room for the curiosity that his identity and his idiosyncrasy aroused.

‘So very dreadful,’ she murmured, ‘for your poor mother. I had not realized that dear Mary had been so much upset by that awful fire. You know, Mr. Restormel, I feel as if we were quite old friends, you and I. As you say, I cannot help feeling, after all, that we have got some of the responsibility to bear for the odd feelings that you have inherited. You have had quite a distressing legacy from those old wooden rooms at Brakelond—yes?’

Laudably, deliberately friendly, Gundred raised her neat smile to meet Ivor Restormel’s gaze. He was looking at her full, with his deep grey eyes, true and honest, and altogether pleasant. Yet, as she met their glance, suddenly the instinctive hostility surged up into Gundred’s mind with redoubled strength. Fear and dislike seized her. She could not bear that glance, could not tolerate her neighbour’s presence. She turned away her head with a sensation of almost terrified hostility. What was this imperious repulsion that now held her—the first emotion that had ever threatened to pass the limits of her self-control? She could not understand it; never before had she felt anything even remotely resembling this blind, paradoxical dislike. Perhaps, years since, her bitter memories of Isabel had been tinged with the same unreasoning horror, but those far-off qualms had been faint and colourless compared with the vehement feeling now aroused in her by this beautiful and harmless[321] stranger. She stiffened herself to show a firm front; self-contempt began to stir in her. Why, had it come to this, that she, Lady Gundred Darnley, the model of deportment and nice tact, now wished publicly to violate her own code, to be rude and inconsiderate to a person who on all counts, as being unobjectionable, a fellow-guest, and an equal, claimed her consideration and her courtesy? Such a lapse could never be permitted. She must fight down this folly, and be kind to Ivor Restormel through the rest of this nightmare meal. Then she would leave the house as soon as she could, and pray Heaven that she might never set eyes on him again.

Ivor Restormel saw something strange in her manner, but took no heed. He did not in the least care what Lady Gundred Darnley might choose to think of him. He felt confident that he could in no way have offended her; further than that his interest in her attitude did not go. The secret dislikes of one’s acquaintances are incalculable. It is both hopeless and useless to take such things into one’s consideration. One can but watch one’s own behaviour to keep it clear of offence, and then leave the rest to Providence.

‘Brakelond must be wonderfully beautiful,’ continued Ivor Restormel, amiably manufacturing conversation in the pause made by Gundred’s sudden lapse into silence, ‘judging by the view of it from here. I have never seen anything so fairy-like and splendid. I suppose you have rebuilt the burnt part long ago? All wood, you say it was? Yes, I have heard so much of that old wing that I feel as if I knew it well, every step and winding of it. Ugh! what a ghastly death-trap!’ Again he shuddered at his vivid recollections of a place he had never seen.

Any criticism on her family or its possessions always roused Gundred to polite animosity. Now the feeling[322] came to her rescue, and armed her against this dreadful young man who seemed so pleasant and innocuous.

‘It was very interesting and wonderful,’ she answered reprovingly. ‘We all loved it. But, of course, wood is always rather a peril—yes? Oak panelling is most delightful, but one cannot help feeling it a responsibility.’

‘I hate the very idea of it,’ replied the other with fervour. ‘Why, whenever I think of those wooden rooms at Brakelond, I can smell that horrible cold, old, acrid smell of a burnt-out ruin—the horrible smell of charred wood, which gets into one’s nostrils and one’s throat. Sometimes in my life I have had to meet that smell, and whenever I get a whiff of it, I always have a vision of the wing at Brakelond, all wrecked and blackened and fallen in, haunted by the dreadful acid fumes of stale fire and smoke.’

Gundred might have protested further against the quite uncalled-for vigour of Ivor Restormel’s memory, but at that moment Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright was making efforts to capture her attention from behind a bower of odontoglossums. She smiled her acquiescence, made some indifferent remark to her neighbour, and rose to head the departing procession. Thank Heaven, the ordeal was over, and she had come out of it safely, without any more loss of self-respect than was involved in the conception of so incalculable an instinct of hostility. Gundred felt her self-complacency returning. She knew that it does not matter what sentiments one may entertain, so long as one gives no sign of entertaining them. One’s private blemishes are one’s own private concern alone, provided that one does not let one’s clothes slip down and reveal them to the world.

Her husband, meanwhile, at the other end of the table had proved but a tame and uninteresting companion to Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright. His attention[323] throughout the meal had been fixed at every possible moment on Gundred’s right-hand partner. For whole long minutes he scanned that keen, handsome face. Where had he seen it before? Why did he find it so very much more attractive than even its own intrinsic beauty warranted? He stared at it, analyzed it, dissected its features. No, collectively and separately they were quite new to him. He grew more and more confident that he had never met the young fellow before; otherwise he must have remembered him. It was not a face to be forgotten. No, he had never seen it before. And yet the imperious conviction grew and deepened in him that that face was worn by no stranger—that he and the boy at the end of the table were in some mysterious way the oldest of intimate friends. Many years before he had felt the same passion of recognition when he at last understood what it was he felt for Isabel; now the same haunting sense of old acquaintance returned to him, and held him in a firm and inexorable grip. As soon as the women had all left the room, he carried round his glass, and settled himself decisively at Ivor Restormel’s side, thereby upsetting all the post-prandial arrangements, which had been meant to make him the prey of more interesting and conspicuous men among the guests.

‘We met on the road this afternoon, I think,’ said Kingston; ‘or, rather, I passed you. You refused to accept a lift.’

‘It was awfully good of you,’ he replied. ‘I have never been offered a lift by a motor before. But, you see, I was so close to Restormel, it would hardly have been worth while.’

‘Are you staying here?’ inquired Kingston, more and more strongly drawn to this new acquaintance.

‘Yes; Jack Hoope-Arkwright is a great friend of[324] mine. We are at Oxford together. And, besides, I belong here in a sort of way. The place used to be my people’s. I am Ivor Restormel.’

The name instantly brought back to Kingston’s mind that deadly accident which had eventually been the secondary cause of Isabel’s death. He shuddered. But the link of recollection thus forged seemed to bind him more closely to young Restormel. The boy had an inexplicably strong fascination. He was pleasant, he was good-looking, he was well built; but there was something else. He was more attractive than all these good qualities could have made him. Kingston took an increasing pleasure in hearing him speak.

‘I remember all about you,’ answered the older man. ‘My wife used to know your mother well. It was my wife you have been sitting next to. Perhaps she told you how she used to know your people.’

Kingston knew Gundred’s devoted loyalty to all old friends and neighbours, and was anxious to impress Ivor Restormel’s identity upon her, foreseeing that it would incline her favourably to his sudden plan of seeing as much as possible of the young fellow.

‘Yes, Lady Gundred soon recognised who I was. But I am afraid she was a little disappointed in me. I think I could see it.’

Kingston was slightly alarmed. He knew Gundred’s prejudices of old—soft and mild as milk; hard, ineluctable as iron.

‘Oh, nonsense!’ he replied, with more anxiety than the occasion appeared to warrant. ‘My wife is always a little cool and non-committal when she meets people for the first time. You will soon get accustomed to her.’

It never occurred to him that he was apparently explaining his wife, more or less apologetically, to a[325] total stranger. Ivor Restormel was puzzled. His beauty had already made him many sudden friends, had immensely helped him on his way through life, predisposing everyone in his favour; but it had never yet kindled such a fire of zeal as seemed to be developing in Mr. Darnley. He was inclined to be cautious in acceptance, and during the rest of the meal gave careful, quiet answers to Kingston’s advances. But Kingston had not the faintest interest in the boy’s beauty, nor, precisely, in the boy himself. It was the acquaintance, the old friend in him, that Kingston divined so keenly, and was eager to investigate more fully. The vehement attraction that he felt towards Ivor Restormel was something, so to speak, impersonal, something quite unconnected with the boy’s pleasant manners or agreeable face. It was an attraction towards something deep and hidden in the young fellow’s personality, and the attraction grew stronger and clearer with every minute of their dialogue.

At last the time came to go into the drawing-room. The men rose, and drifted in knots towards the door. Kingston, as he went, retained possession of young Restormel, despite the evident anxiety of Mr. Hoope-Arkwright and Sir Nigel to have a word with Lady Gundred’s husband.

‘Look here,’ he said. ‘How long are you staying with the Hoope-Arkwrights? Come over to Brakelond, will you? Come over to-morrow. I should like you to see the place.’

Ivor Restormel accepted the unexpected invitation with thanks. Jack Hoope-Arkwright, following in their wake, wondered at the precipitate friendliness of Mr. Darnley. Such sudden hospitality was by no means in the traditions of Brakelond. A long preliminary purification was generally necessary before Lady Gundred considered her friends well tested[326] enough to be invited to the Castle. And here was Ivor Restormel, after half an hour’s acquaintance, not only asked, but pressed to come, and to come as soon as possible. Times were changing indeed. It had taken the Hoope-Arkwrights three years to know the Darnleys, and eight to be dined with by them.

The rest of the evening passed without event. Gundred, however, gradually grew displeased with her surroundings. At first she had duly been throned on the best sofa, and listened to in silent admiration while she pronounced on the weather, the decadence of decorum in the servants’ hall, and the proper management of cooks. But ere long Lady Pope, whom, in her mind, Gundred characterized as a pushing young person, had begun to cut in frivolously, irreverently, with jokes and stories. Gundred, who had a faint instinct that all wit was more or less vulgar, did her best to repress these interruptions; but her efforts were vain, and soon even her devout hostess was listening and laughing at Lady Pope’s sallies. Lady Gundred was left rather out of the picture, and her authoritative comments on cooks began to lose their hold on the general attention. Then when the men appeared it was even worse. Lady Pope became the centre of a court; even those who came to make their dutiful obeisance to Lady Gundred passed hastily on, after a few pallid words about the weather, to join the cheerful crowd round the younger woman. Then games were played, largely at Lady Pope’s instigation; and Gundred, who would have disliked any proposal that sprung from one whom she now felt herself compelled to regard, however disdainfully, as a rival, had, further, personal reasons for disapproving this development. For she sang; and she expected, accordingly, to be asked to sing. Her music was waiting outside to be fetched; it would have been obviously[327] proper of Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright to press her most important guest to perform. But apparently everyone preferred the thoughtless gaiety of this unprofitable evening to hearing Lady Gundred discoursing Chaminade in her neat and well-drilled little flute of a voice, which, as her friends said in extenuation, was so truly wonderful for a woman of forty.

Finally, to add to all these annoyances, she saw her husband neglecting everyone else in the room to talk to that young man for whom she had conceived such a repulsion. She would rather, even, have seen him spending the time in attendance on that forward Lady Pope. But Kingston was so distressingly friendly. Actuated by many collaborating motives, Gundred made haste to ask for her carriage, and showed every sign of imminent departure, much to the distress of hospitable Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright. Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright felt that the evening had not been altogether satisfactory since dinner. Lady Pope had evidently shone excessively; and the light of Lady Gundred Darnley had been thereby most unjustly dimmed. It grew plain that Lady Gundred was a little put out. Gaiety and dignity were hard to combine. Lady Pope offered the gaiety; Lady Gundred the dignity. And the two ambitions were irreconcilable; for it was already clear that Lady Gundred could not amuse—certainly not while Lady Pope was of the party. Grievously did Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright regret that she had infused the gay and sparkling element of the young woman into what she had meant to be the serene if soporific delights of a dinner made illustrious by the presence of March and Brakelond. But it was now too late for regret, and no entreaties could soften Lady Gundred’s determination to go.

‘Thanks so much,’ said Gundred sweetly. ‘Such a delightful evening. We have enjoyed ourselves so[328] much. But we must really think of the horses. Good-night, Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright. Good-night—good-night—good-night.’

Scattering bows and farewell condescension like a queen, the Lady Gundred Darnley moved towards the hall. Kingston obediently followed her, and soon the door of the brougham was shut upon them, and they were off. Gundred smoothed out her flounce with a certain pettishness unusual to her calm temperament.

‘A dreadful house,’ she said decisively, ‘so horribly rich and new—and the most vulgar and trying people. One wonders how even the Hoope-Arkwrights contrive to collect such a crew. Surely, Kingston, I could not have heard you asking one of them to come to Brakelond? Just as we were leaving. It must have been my fancy, of course.’ She was sitting very upright, rigid with rectitude, her pale lips compressed, her pale eyes gleaming scornfully. Kingston felt like a guilty child.

‘Only young Restormel,’ he said. ‘You will like him, Gundred. I am sure you will like him immensely. He is one of the most attractive people I have ever met. After all, he is an old neighbour of yours, not like the Hoope-Arkwrights and the rest of their friends. I made him promise to come over to-morrow. And then, later on, he might come to stay with us for a bit. I should like you to see more of him, Gundred. He will be someone for you to help and befriend.’

A very long silence, leaden and ominous, filled the brougham. Then Gundred spoke, in a bland, deliberate low voice.

Her husband felt himself annihilated. This, from Gundred, was very heavy rebuke. He made no answer, and they drove on to Brakelond without another word.

Gundred, however, was too good a wife to make useless difficulties. As her husband had invited this young man, this young man must clearly be endured. After all, the visit would soon be over, and she herself need not put in more than a bare appearance. To tell the truth, she was not quite easy as to her own attitude in the matter. It could not be altogether right to conceive such violent antipathies, and she was painfully surprised to find herself entertaining such a feeling. She told herself that there could be no smoke without fire, and that sooner or later her infallible female instinct would be found justified. But until it should be so found justified, she was far too conscientiously good a woman to be happy in the indulgence of an unreasonable hatred. Accordingly, she deliberately suppressed her annoyance, and made it her penance to receive Ivor Restormel on the morrow with her usual quiet grace. The effort brought its own reward; dislike him mysteriously, instinctively, she still did and always would, but there was no longer the uncomfortable vehemence about the feeling. She could tolerate him, though she could not make him welcome.

Ivor Restormel walked over in the afternoon. Gundred gave him tea and then left him to her husband’s care, on the plea of a post to catch. Kingston took his guest into the new wing that had been built on the promontory after the fire, and proceeded to question him and talk to him more exhaustively than had been possible the night before amid the exigencies of a party, no matter how scandalously disregarded. There was no beginning about their friendship, it seemed to Kingston, no breaking of new ground. It was simply the picking up of a dropped thread where[330] it had fallen. The feeling was strange and almost uncanny, the more so that it was evidently not shared by Ivor Restormel. He received his host’s overtures with diffidence, seemed ill at ease, at a loss to understand the warmth of his treatment. Mr. Darnley was nothing more to him than a chance acquaintance of the night before. As the dialogue went forward, too, the visitor’s uneasiness became more and more marked. His face took on a strange look of strain and anxiety; in his speech could be heard from time to time that note of abstraction which can be heard in a voice whose owner is trying hard to keep up a conversation, while his mind is fixed far away on the contemplation of unpleasant private matters. Kingston watched the expression of his guest’s eyes, the curious hunted fear that his whole manner began to suggest, and again experienced more strongly than ever the mysterious feeling of having seen that manner, that strained expression, somewhere before. His memory must be playing him the maddest tricks; for he could have sworn that this boy was well known to him in every detail of face and disposition; yet by now it was clearly proved—as clearly proved, at least, as anything in this world could ever be—that the two had never met, and never even set eyes on each other before. But Kingston still hoped against hope that a chance discovery in the dialogue might reveal some hint or glimpse of a former meeting, however brief, partial, trifling. Thus, and thus alone, could his instinct be justified.

But, as the conversation went forward, the visitor’s uneasiness grew keener and more unsettling. At last it could no longer be controlled.

‘I should awfully like to see some more of the Castle,’ he said. ‘You said something last night about showing me the pictures.’

But the boy’s evident wish to move was too interesting to be gratified. Kingston saw it, could not understand it, meant to understand it.

‘Oh, there will be heaps of time,’ he replied. ‘You must come over again some afternoon. But it takes at least a day to see the Castle thoroughly. We may just as well stay here peacefully. Really, these are the most comfortable rooms in the whole building, although they are quite modern.’

‘Modern, are they?’ answered young Restormel. It was a silly answer, and betrayed the inattention of his mind. For the rooms were too obviously modern for any comment on the fact to be other than fatuous.

Ivor Restormel leapt to his feet. His anxiety culminated, seemed mysteriously confirmed. His eyes were filled with a horror he was trying to conceal. ‘Surely,’ he stammered, ‘these are not the rooms that were restored after the——’

‘I thought so; I knew they must be,’ replied Ivor Restormel with forced calm. ‘And they have not got rid of the smell yet. I noticed it as soon as I got inside.’

‘The smell! What smell?’ asked his host, amused by this odd notion of his visitor’s, and sniffing about for the aroma of dead rats.

‘The smell of fire,’ said Ivor Restormel, speaking in a low voice, as of a thing too dreadful to be talked of in normal tones. ‘The whole place is full of the smell of fire. Don’t you notice it, Mr. Darnley? I suppose nothing can be on fire now? No; it is the stale old smell of a fire that has been out for a long time—the sharp, beastly smell of charred wood and[332] burnt stone. I know it so well.’ He shivered against his will.

Kingston was startled at this strange new development. He had heard nothing of Ivor Restormel’s hidden horror. Gundred had disliked the whole subject too much to tattle about it. Kingston was astounded at the sudden fantastic anxiety of his guest, the perturbation of his manners, his evident discomposure. So vivid was Ivor Restormel’s apprehension that it even impressed itself on Kingston. The host inhaled the air sharply. There was not the faintest suggestion of fire or smoke. The room was sleepily fragrant with potpourri from the old perforated jade censer on the corner table. Otherwise there was nothing in the air. And yet it was evident that Ivor Restormel was dodging some secret terror that was almost on the point of breaking covert and declaring itself.

‘You have got a most wonderful imagination,’ said Kingston at last. ‘There is no smell of fire here. On my word, there isn’t. There couldn’t be. The fire was put out twenty years ago, hang it all! The smell of it could not very well be hanging about here still.’

Then, lamely, hesitatingly, he explained the reasons why the memories of the catastrophe at Brakelond had become so closely involved with his own life, and what a troublesome legacy it had left him through the shock that his mother had suffered. Kingston was more and more stirred.

‘I never heard anything more extraordinary,’ he replied. ‘Suggestion, I suppose it must be. And this room makes you feel uncomfortable even now, I can see, and you manage to smell fire where there[333] has been no fire for twenty years. And yet you have no more recollections?’

‘Recollections? I don’t quite know what there could be for me to recollect.’

‘Well, to tell you the truth, when I first saw you on the road, I had a vague and yet a very strong feeling that you and I have met before, and known each other quite well. I imagine that was all a mistake? See if you can’t remember any previous meeting between us, though. It would be interesting if you could, for my instinct was quite extraordinarily clear on the point, though my memory seems to say accurately and definitely that I had never seen your face till I passed you in the car yesterday afternoon.’

Ivor Restormel shook his head positively, and made haste to answer in the negative. The question did not interest him in the least. The one feeling of which he was conscious was his tyrannous need of getting away from those serene and pleasant modern rooms, which, to his excited fancy, seemed full of horrid ghosts.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I am pretty well certain we can never have met before. I was brought up abroad, you see, by my mother, after they sold Restormel. And the last two or three years I have been living at Oxford. I have not been to London or anywhere where we could have met. No—no.... I say, I am a most awful idiot to-day. I can’t imagine what has come over me,’ he cried abruptly. ‘But this jolly room of yours—well, it feels to me horribly uncanny. You say there is no fire, and of course there isn’t; yet the smell is in my nostrils and my throat all the time, choking and stifling me. Did you ever hear such rot? Do you mind if we go out in the garden or somewhere? I’m not often taken like this, please believe me. I have never felt anything like this in my life. I told you how I hate and dread fire, though I have never suffered[334] from it; but nothing has ever given me such an awful impression of fire as I feel here to-day.’

He had been standing ever since he rose from his chair, or walking uneasily from end to end of the room. Now he stood in front of his host, gazing at him with eyes which, for all his tongue’s pretence at ease, were filled with a haunting dread. Kingston was deeply moved by the spectacle of this fighting terror before him. The terror moved his pity, the courage of its victim moved his admiration. And, behind everything else lay the curiosity that this manifestation woke in him. But he could no longer disregard his visitor’s eagerness to be gone elsewhere. He rose from the window-seat.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I cannot understand it. Yes, let us go, if you wish. We might take a turn in the garden. I would not have brought you in here if I had had the slightest idea that you feel like this. But I never could have believed that such a stretch of imagination was possible.’ Kingston broke off, studying the controlled fear in the young man’s face. Then he abruptly began again. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘do tell me exactly what it is you see and feel that gets on your nerves so. I cannot understand it.’

Ivor Restormel glanced round the room. Under Gundred’s supervision it had been rebuilt in a cool and placid modern style. Everything in it was pretty, graceful, harmonious. The walls were panelled in white; flowers were standing about in tall blue glasses. The big windows admitted shafts of soft afternoon light through their drawn white blinds, and the whole impression was one of fragrant, comfortable peace.

‘You will think me more of an ass than you do already,’ he replied. ‘I suppose it must be my mother’s stories that account for it. But, besides the awful smell of burning here, I seem to see a horrible wreckage of charred ruins. Oh, I can see these walls and all the jolly decorations. And yet, somehow, when I look again they are not there any longer. There is only the shell of some other building, something all fallen in and blistered and blackened with fire. Great heaps of ashes and bleached rubbish are piled high between what is left of the walls. The whole place is choking with the stale fumes of smoke. And the rooms are open to the grey sky far overhead; and grey drifts of rain come dashing in from time to time on the smouldering masses.’

Kingston watched his visitor’s face with an amazement that bereft him of words.

‘By God!’ he said slowly, wondering where his thoughts would lead him in the next few minutes. ‘By God! you describe it exactly as if you had been here twenty years ago.’

Ivor Restormel shook his head fiercely, as if trying to shake off some horrid, persistent memory.

‘I feel as if I had,’ he replied suddenly. ‘I feel just as if I had been here twenty years ago, worse luck. The moment I came into the room I saw it all. I felt—oh, well, I felt that I must have been here in the ruins ever so long ago, and had the worst time here that anyone ever had—as if I had been tied by the leg here, somehow, and pinned down in damnable terror and pain.’

‘Come along out of it,’ said Kingston quietly, after a pause. He dared not trust himself to say more. An idea had been born in his brain—born, or called once more to life?—an idea so wild, so fantastic, that he hardly dared to entertain it. And yet, in the depths[336] of his heart, he knew that it was the truth. In silence he led the way towards the Castle, while his visitor tried to impress upon his unheeding ears a dozen apologies for the gross and idiotic folly of which his nerves had made him guilty.

As soon as he was out of the fateful room all his self-possession seemed to have returned, and he could not account for the sudden vertigo of terror that had haunted him there. What had come over him he could not imagine. Mr. Darnley must certainly think him the most confounded idiot. What must Mr. Darnley think of anyone who could let himself be made such a rude, mannerless idiot of by a sort of hysterical schoolgirl qualm? The whole thing was too asinine for words. He had no excuse to make.

And all the time Mr. Darnley said nothing, heard nothing of his guest’s protestations. This beautiful nervous boy had no interest for Kingston Darnley; he did not care what he said or felt or looked like. But the terror that haunted Ivor Restormel was not his; the mysterious attraction that filled him was not his own. Somewhere, deep down in his being, lived Something that had felt that terror, Something that exercised that attraction over Kingston, Something that called to Kingston as an old friend. And that Something, Kingston knew it, heard it calling to him imperiously out of the eternal past. It was the Something that had once carried the name and shape of Isabel. There was no mistaking it. Now at last Kingston understood what it was that had gripped him yesterday on the road, what inexplicable summons of old friendship. The dead had come back to him after many years. But clothed in alien flesh, forming part of a new personality, shut off from recognition by the barriers of the body. For in this boy lived only the one fragmentary recollection of the final catastrophe.[337] Nothing in Kingston’s soul, no call of ancient kinship, no appeal to bygone pledges, could penetrate to the ears of that secret self. The dead had come back, known to him, but incapable of knowing him again. How could he wake memory in that changed thing which had returned, at once the same, and yet so different, in its freedom from that bond which once had made them one, and now, still as strong as ever in the hold it had over himself, had broken and fallen away for ever from the other soul it had gripped? Kingston looked at his visitor with a feeling that drew near to hatred. This stranger held the thing he still loved. The body and the shape of it was an irrelevant, a maddening accident; it was the secret thing that Kingston called to, the secret thing that was prevented from hearing by this new personality in which it had clothed itself. Kingston felt a sharp grudge against Ivor Restormel, his body, his brain, his beauty. That body, that brain, that beauty made the locked casket that imprisoned the living dead. And yet, inasmuch as Ivor Restormel was the shrine of that lost passion, he was, on the other hand, ineffably precious and sacred. He could not be let go. The boy himself was less than nothing; but what he held was more than everything.

Ivor Restormel thought his host justifiably offended, and tried to mitigate the effect of his own silly rudeness. But his pleasant chatter fell on unheeding ears, and he began to think that he had alienated Mr. Darnley beyond reconciliation. And no wonder. Who could be expected to put up with a puling idiot like that? Ivor Restormel mentally kicked himself, and felt that he would gladly have vindicated his character by returning into those haunted rooms. Without having any special wish to please either of the Darnleys, he was one of those people who always[338] like to be popular, and grow faintly unhappy when they fail to make a favourable impression. He did all he could to mollify his host, and was distressed, though not surprised, to find all his efforts fall flat. In ordinary circumstances he would not have minded so much; but now he felt that he really owed Mr. Darnley some extra pleasantness, if only to make up for having just made so egregious an ass of himself. He tried his level best to set matters right; but for a long time he got no answer—or at most an absent-minded monosyllable. Kingston was not yet equal to conversing with this tiresome young interloper who had come between himself and the dead, while, at the same time, revealing at last to him the return of the lost. They walked in silence up and down the garden together, while Gundred watched them from an upper window, disliking the visitor as much as ever, and wondering when in the world he would begin to think about going.

‘Wanted to see the pictures, didn’t you?’ said Kingston abruptly at last, cutting, regardless, into something that the other was saying.

Ivor Restormel felt more and more out of place. Evidently he would do well to say good-bye. However, he could not escape from this civility of his host, however perfunctory. So he followed Kingston as he strode into the Castle, paying no attention to the boy at his heels. Gradually Kingston was beginning to recover his composure and face the inevitable. This wonderful secret certainty of his must be cherished and acted on, though already he began to taste something of the pain that had been foretold him, from incessant yearning knowledge of a thing that could not recognise him in turn, and could never recognise him again. The door between them was of locked iron—a vain agony to beat against. And yet it was not an[339] agony that he could spare himself, for, though the door was of locked iron for ever, yet behind it dwelt the thing he had sought for so long. He saw now the irony of his fate. But nothing could divert its course. Ivor Restormel found his host growing calmer and more courteous again. Soon he was even cordial, and the tension of the situation seemed at an end. The two men passed through the picture-gallery, giving a share of attention to every picture, though each, in reality, was busy with his own thoughts, Ivor feeling the satisfaction of successful effort, and Kingston foreboding the anguish of an effort that could never be successful. At last they had gone the length of the gallery, and stood before the old panel of Queen Isabel.

‘Here is the She-wolf,’ said Kingston pleasantly. ‘Don’t you think she looks her name? Isabel of France and England.’

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘An evil lady, I suppose? It is curious what a horror I have of the very name. Isabel—it seems to stand to me for everything I hate most in the world, fire included. I must have some beastly memory somewhere connected with the name of Isabel, but I cannot lay my hands upon it.’

The little artless admission roused Kingston to the highest point of excitement. He must penetrate to the secret haunt of that soul which had such clear flashes of recognition. The task must not be hopeless. He turned almost savagely upon his guest.

‘Restormel,’ he said, ‘what do you mean by that? For God’s sake, think—think hard, and tell me what you mean by that. Think, man, think.’

The vehemence of his attack, however, had no effect upon the younger man. Kingston had hoped that by its sheer sudden intensity it must inevitably strike a chord of memory, must inevitably rouse up the sleeping[340] soul with its cry of eagerness. But it failed—failed utterly, and his mood fell back baffled.

‘I’d tell you if I could,’ protested Ivor. ‘But, upon my soul, I can’t. It is just another of my idiotic crazes. I wish I had not told you now. It only makes one seem more of an ass than one did before. Anyhow, I think I must be getting back to Restormel, Mr. Darnley. Thanks so much for letting me come over. I have awfully enjoyed seeing the Castle. Will you say good-bye for me to Lady Gundred?’

‘Look here,’ said Kingston, suddenly kindled to anxiety by this threat of departure—‘look here. What are you going to do, Restormel, when you leave the Hoope-Arkwrights? I mean, what are your plans in life?’

‘Mine? Oh, well, I hardly know. I have got to make some money somehow. There isn’t a penny-piece for us to live on. I shall have to be a clerk, or something of the kind, I imagine. My mother sent me to Oxford because she wanted me to make my living by teaching. But it does not seem that there is much chance of that nowadays. The world swarms with tutors and masters.’

Kingston saw his chance. It was unthinkable that this recovered joy of his life should be allowed to pass away again immediately, leaving him in the darkness that he had endured for twenty years. He could not bear the thought of parting with Ivor Restormel. The very notion was a pain.

‘But look here,’ he said abruptly, ‘why not come to us and be my secretary, and do tutor to my son Jim, perhaps, in the holidays? I am sure we should all get on capitally together, and, honestly, I don’t think that you could easily pick up anything much better. And we’d do our best for you. What do you say?’

Ivor, confounded at this sudden proposition, the[341] last thing that he had expected after his behaviour of that afternoon, lost himself in thanks and self-depreciation. Kingston would hear of no such hesitations.

‘We might just as well settle it now,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to consider much, or think over—that is, if you really care to try this kind of work. You know about us, and we know about you; and, so far as we are concerned, I don’t see that anything could possibly have fallen out more conveniently.’

‘But I—do you think I should be able to do what you want?’ asked Ivor Restormel. ‘Remember, please, I have never attempted anything of the sort before. You may not find me what you like, after all.’

‘One knows that sort of thing as well at the end of five minutes, very often, as at the end of five years. I am quite certain that you are exactly the sort of fellow we want. I knew it the first moment we met. So don’t make any more difficulties or apologies, but just say that you will come to us.’

‘But of course, if you really think—well, I shall be delighted, of course.’

‘That’s right. And there’s no particular reason for putting things off, is there? So come to us as soon as you can. To-morrow, or the day after. You won’t want to stay much longer with those Hoope-Arkwright people. And I should like you to get accustomed to us and the place before we go off to my place in Yorkshire and our son Jim comes home.’

And so, after a few more faint demurrings, Ivor Restormel, bewildered and dazed by the rapid development of events, found himself pledged to take up his residence at Brakelond with the least possible delay. Matters being thus settled to Kingston’s satisfaction, he allowed his visitor to depart, and then began to brace himself to the task of breaking his latest plan to Gundred.

The good wife neither raves nor flouts. But, if she be good enough, she has the power of being quite wonderfully disagreeable in a mild and dutiful manner. Gundred had never countered Kingston with any ill-bred vehemence, but by now he knew that on occasions she could don a pious resignation inexpressibly hard to bear. Some such display, he was afraid, might greet his announcement, for, to his experienced eye, it was already plain that she did not approve of Ivor Restormel. Her sweetness to him had had a certain glacial tone which Kingston well knew. He anticipated that she might make difficulties.

But events were moving too rapidly for Gundred’s orderly habit of mind. She was too much taken aback when she heard the arrangement that her husband had made to offer any coherent or valid opposition. A vague passion of wrath possessed her, and her anger lost half its efficacy with all its usual crushing calm. For Gundred, the imperturbably gentle and correct, so far forgot herself as to combat Kingston’s plan with violent obloquy. Never before had he seen her unreasonable, or hysterically bellicose; and the unusual spectacle, so far from compelling his sympathy, only hardened his decision by its contrast with her usual well-regulated temper. Had a glimpse of the past been vouchsafed to him, after all these years, that he should now forego the agonizing joy of it, simply because his wife chose to abandon herself to a groundless antipathy against a young man, a perfect stranger, in whom she, of all people, could certainly not discern that inmost inhabitant whose presence gave him so strong a claim on Kingston? No, her foolishness justified him in disregarding her opposition.

As for Gundred, she lost her head, lost it completely, in the complete surprise that overwhelmed her. Imagining that a meal or so at Brakelond would mark[343] the extent of her husband’s ridiculous fancy for the boy against whom her instinct so urgently warned her, she had been content to allow matters their course, considering resistance unnecessary. And now, while she acquiesced, matters had suddenly grown to such a pitch that resistance was no longer possible. The situation had passed beyond her control. At first she could hardly believe that Kingston really meant to disregard her hostility. Hitherto, through all their married life, husband and wife had never seriously clashed. A quiet tolerance towards each other’s plans had marked their relations. In fact, neither had really been sufficiently excited over the other’s actions ever to make a fuss. They trusted each other, and lived in the amity of confident indifference. Ideal as their union had been, though, it had been the union of two parts, not fused, but cemented; now at last, after twenty years, surged up the hot water of opposition, and in the moment of trial the cement revealed itself by melting. At a touch the two lives fell apart, and were separate once more. The revelation was a shock to Gundred.

‘Kingston,’ she cried, ‘I tell you, I distrust that young man. I cannot think what you mean by proposing to have him in the house. The very moment I set eyes on him I felt that there was something wrong about him. A woman’s instinct is never mistaken, Kingston.’

‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, Gundred,’ answered her husband. ‘Have you anything definite to say? If so, say it, by all means, and we’ll think no more of the matter. But if you have not, don’t dishonour yourself by making scenes and abusing a young fellow of whom you know nothing but what is perfectly good.’

‘And Jim?’ replied Gundred, taken at a disadvantage, and stripped in an instant of the lovely calm that[344] usually clothed her like a Paquin frock—‘my Jim? Am I to see my only child, Kingston, handed over to the company of a man against whom I have the very strongest feelings of fear and horror? Kingston, I tell you I look on that young man with positive fear and horror. Have I ever said anything like this before about anyone else? Do you think I am mad enough and unchristian enough to take prejudices like this without a reason? But it is stronger than I am, this feeling. It is so strong that I feel it would be wicked to disregard it. It is Heaven’s warning to us all. I know that it speaks the truth, Kingston; don’t be so obstinate.’

Knowing in his secret heart what secret tie it was that bound him to the occupant of Ivor Restormel’s personality, Kingston could not but feel it strange and impressive that Gundred should have conceived so violent and instinctive animosity against the young fellow. Could it be a blind feeling of jealousy, recrudescent from the past? Anyhow, it was the very devil and all of an inconvenience. And, as no sort of wrong was meditated to Gundred, as no sort of wrong was possible, Kingston saw clearly that her unreasonableness not only allowed him, but enjoined him, in her own interests, to take a firm way of dealing with these hysterical passions. Had she been cool and staid as usual, he would have found the situation much more difficult to cope with; as it was, her dishevelled zeal gave him the advantage, and enabled him to assume the high position of one who has right and reason on his side.

‘Hang it all, Gundred,’ he protested. ‘What a piece of work to make about nothing! One would have thought you would have been only too glad to help an old neighbour’s son. You are generally so keen to do what you can for people. Do try and get[345] over these absurd fancies. Do you suppose I am not just as anxious as you are that Jim shall be kept out of undesirable hands? Come, you don’t think me a fool, I hope? You don’t imagine that I should pick out a scoundrel for a whim? I tell you, I like this young fellow; I like him more than I can say. He attracts me strongly; I am sure we shall find him a great addition.’

Gundred looked up at him with righteous wrath in her eyes. ‘He must have bewitched you,’ she said, devoutly and sincerely. ‘The Forces of Evil sometimes have the most awful power. Oh, Kingston, listen to me. Be wise, and repent in time. Oh, I never thought it would come to this. Why, why did we ever dine with those dreadful people?’

‘Gundred, you are either hysterical or medieval. And in either case, really one cannot argue with you. I have never seen you like this before. Poor boy! can you soberly think him an emissary of the devil?’ Kingston laughed.

But Gundred, among many other antiquated notions in which she took pride, retained a most steadfast belief in the bodily existence of Satan. To be old-fashioned in manners, mind, morals—in everything but clothes—was her especial glory. In London she claimed to be conspicuous by her old-world excellencies. When she met, or heard—for they did not frequent her set—of other Dukes’ wives and daughters who were frivolous and freethinking and modern, Gundred took pride in asserting the obvious fact that she was not as they, that she continued to give a rare and beautiful example of pristine decorum to her order. Her friends might find the spectacle dull, but they could never deny that it was edifying. And among the old-fashioned adornments with which she persisted in decking her habit of mind, her belief in the Powers[346] of evil, of witchcraft and possession, were given not the least important place. She described herself complacently as an old-fashioned Christian, and never passed a palmist’s placard in Bond Street without feeling that the law ought to have more scruples about allowing a witch to live. Now, accordingly, she primmed her lips fiercely at Kingston’s scepticism.

‘All I know is,’ she answered, ‘that these warnings are sent us for our good, and that the Powers of Evil are for ever round us, seeking whom they may devour. Kingston, will you, or will you not, pay attention to what I say?’

By this time her truculent attitude had dissipated her husband’s last lingering scruples. Looked at very minutely, very casuistically, perhaps it was not perfectly fair to force upon Gundred someone she disliked, simply because he himself desired to keep watch and communion with the precious personality that dwelt within the object of her hostility, and probably was the unknown cause of it. But nothing of all this could Gundred possibly know, for one thing; and, for another, her attitude had become so grotesquely exaggerated and defiant that no husband of any sense or spirit could be justified in giving way to it. Why, the situation was preposterous and transpontine to an intolerable degree. His own sudden fantastic instinct had been strange and grotesque enough, in all conscience; but Gundred’s fury of opposition lent yet a further touch of grotesqueness which removed the whole episode into the domain of mystical melodrama. Why, they might be living in a novel of Lytton or Mortimer Collins, instead of in a very comfortable and orderly present into which had suddenly flashed a gleam of romance out of an equally comfortable and orderly past. Kingston would not recognise his own instinct as anything abnormal, and was bent on keeping[347] all suggestion of the abnormal out of his human relations. The prenatal memory, he knew, was not only a fact, but a fact—at any rate, in the East, where memory and its training are better understood than over here—of no uncommon occurrence. There was nothing strange in the fact that in this boy of twenty, there should still be lurking some fragmentary elements of the woman whose martyrdom and courage he reincarnated. Kingston would not decorate the situation with any romantic glamour; it was a plain, indisputable occurrence, and his whole life should insist on treating it as a matter of course. In his violent resolve to keep the young fellow close at hand there was no sentiment, no idiotic feeling of attachment for the young man himself, or any objectionable nonsense of that kind. The young fellow was of no account at all. Kingston’s wish to secure his continued presence must be put down simply prosaically, solely, to his recognition of the fact that in the boy’s personality the lost Isabel sometimes spoke again, and therefore his company was doubly and trebly desirable; but only for what it conveyed, not in the least for what it was. And, all this being so, Kingston was the more irritated by the instinctive knowledge of the truth that Gundred’s absurd behaviour seemed to hint at, the more bent on resenting it, ignoring it, and, by determination in his own way, crushing out the signs of resistance that she was so vehemently showing.

‘Oh, let’s have no more of this, Gundred,’ he exclaimed. ‘You do not know what you are saying. I am exceedingly sorry to annoy you, but you know you would despise yourself and me if I gave way to such ridiculous nightmares. You will see things quite differently to-morrow. Do try and look at the matter more sensibly.’

‘Man sends sense,’ cried Gundred, ‘and God sends instincts. Listen to God, Kingston, or you will be sorry for it.’

‘There is no coping with religious exaltation,’ he answered coldly, with a weary feeling that this woman at his side was quite alien to him in all her thoughts and ways.

Gundred rose. ‘If that is what you call it,’ she replied, with more of her habitual dignity, ‘I think there is no more to be said.’

‘Yes,’ answered Kingston. ‘I settled it all up with him this afternoon.’

‘And you absolutely refuse to give me what I ask for?’ went on Gundred, returning now, after the heat of the conflict, to the impressive calm of her usual manner. She was preparing a new attack.

‘My dear Gundred,’ answered her husband, more gently now that he saw her more amenable, and therefore more worthy of consideration, ‘I will gladly spend the rest of my life doing what you wish, as long as you ask me for things I can in decency do.’

‘Ah,’ replied Gundred, ‘that is what people always say. They will do everything in the world to please one, except the only thing one asks them for. That is never reasonable or right.’

‘Well, it certainly was not in this case, now, was it, Gundred—honestly, now, was it? You asked me to throw this wretched young man over, to break my promise to him, to upset all his plans, to cast him adrift again after I had offered him our help. And why? All simply because you had been bored at the[349] Hoope-Arkwrights’ tedious dinner, and eaten something which disagreed with you, and made you look on all the world with a bilious, peevish eye, and on your luckless dinner-neighbour in particular. For that is what it all comes to, you know; that is what your wonderful edifice of instincts and suspicions and righteous qualms is founded on.’

‘Yes; you may sneer,’ answered Gundred coolly, regaining her supremacy with her self-control. ‘It is always very easy to sneer. Well, I see that you must have your way; you will not listen to me. Somehow, I feel that there is something in the boy that stands between us—something that has been between us, somehow, for a long time, though we did not know it, and has now come to life again, or wakened up and set to work moving us apart. That may be my fancy, perhaps. I know I am upset. I am surprised and shocked. I expected better, happier things of you, Kingston. But this I will say, that if you won’t listen to what you call my foolish instincts, you will be very sorry for it some day. God will certainly punish you for disregarding the clear message that He sent you through me. And this obstinacy of yours will bring its own penalty in time. I know it. I know what you are doing is altogether wrong. And, as your wife, I shall put up with it. But day and night I shall pray God to remove this dreadful thing from our home. I shall pray that something may open your eyes.’

Kingston smiled uneasily, to disguise the impression that her appeal was making on his mood. ‘My dear Gundred,’ he said. ‘Pray by all means. The prayers of a good woman can never bring harm or pain.’

‘Not even if you love the harm? Not even if you are wedded to the harm?’ asked Gundred. ‘Perhaps they might divorce you from the harm, and then that separation might be painful.’

‘Oh, don’t talk as if you meant to put poison in poor Ivor Restormel’s soup,’ cried Kingston, to relieve the tension of the situation. He did not, however, in his own conscience feel altogether easy. The more bent was he, therefore, on laughing down his wife’s denunciations.

‘God chooses His own instruments for His own purposes,’ answered Gundred earnestly. Then she rose, her demeanour filled with tranquil decision, with a stern majesty of protest that stirred again a twinge of remorse in her husband’s heart. Was it she that was foolish, or was it he that was selfish? After all, no sort of harm was planned against her, no disloyalty of any kind, no cooling of affection. If here and there a boy’s chance words contained the spirit of a long-dead woman, well, what was that to Gundred—especially as she could never know it? And his indulgence in the secret pleasure of those words could give no reasonable pain to her. And yet, so long as they did give her pain, did it very much matter whether the pain were reasonable or not, as far as the inflictor’s innocence or guilt was concerned? For what pain in the world is reasonable, if one looks far into the causes and the future of things? Kingston made haste to conclude that his actions could not possibly be expected to have reference to any silly feelings of Gundred’s that might engender pain in her, as the result of their own incalculable developments. Perhaps he made himself too many excuses, defended himself too vehemently, was in too great haste to declare himself convinced by his own arguments. He accepted Gundred’s last words without any symptom of yielding.

And she who, up to the last moment, had never thought that her big guns could be fired without effect, was left helpless, defeated, plunged in the bathos of the situation.

‘Good-night,’ she said, quietly disguising the black bruise that her heart had sustained.

Had Kingston suspected it, he might, perhaps, have softened. But Gundred by now was once more the cool, self-righteous little faultless person he had always known. Her serene rectitude of voice and manner annoyed him.

‘Good-night,’ he answered with equal coolness. Husband and wife went to their several rooms, after the first real quarrel of their married life. Innocently, ignorantly, Ivor Restormel had come between them—or, rather, the Thing that lived again in him had stirred again, as Gundred had divined, to intervene, as once before, between the two stranger-souls who, in the flesh, were contented husband and wife.

The interloper was established between Kingston and Gundred, and the purely formal nature of their marriage might have been clear even to themselves. They fell apart without wrench or difficulty, and on Gundred a heavy sense of loneliness settled like a cloud. She it was that suffered most from the separation, for she had not her husband’s compensations. All these years she had lived in the happiness of what she believed to be perfect intimacy with Kingston, sharing his hopes, his wishes, his thoughts; now, in a flash, she was made to guess that she had merely shared the outer aspects of his life, that the fancied beautiful completeness of their union was merely the band of tolerance strengthened through the long years by custom. Now that the elasticity of the tie that bound them was put to too great a stretch, it flew asunder, and, in the rebound,[352] struck Gundred a stinging blow. It was not, of course, to be expected of her that she should realize the situation clearly, or face the true state of the case with any perspicacious candour. All she felt was felt dimly, instinctively, half-consciously; not even to herself would she admit what she felt, or analyze the solitude that seemed gathering round her. But very vaguely, in the introduction of Ivor Restormel, she understood that she herself must somehow have failed—could not be quite all to her husband that she had imagined herself, must at some point have fallen short of the perfect wife’s proper performance. This uncomfortable perception, which caught her in her tenderest spot, she made haste to burke and bury in the depths of her consciousness. But its ghost occasionally walked; and, though she did the best for herself by insisting daily on her husband’s unjustifiable cruelty and the blackness of the influences that had seduced him, yet she could never wholly escape that faint instinct of failure which was the one thing that her efficiency-worshipping nature most passionately dreaded.

The days went by in a strain that was wholly absurd, but also wholly unpleasant. Examining things in the light of healthy, normal experience, Gundred could not even tell herself that she had a grievance. She still feared and disliked the presence of Ivor Restormel, with a fear which no reason could account for, but which no reason could dispel. But in every way the boy was perfectly harmless and even pleasant. Gundred, in her heart of hearts had expected that her instinct would immediately be justified on closer acquaintance by discovering that Ivor Restormel took drugs, or read French novels, or had a tendency to gambling and kleptomania. She watched him carefully, in public and in private, secretly and openly,[353] hoping that some such development might force her husband to recognise the soundness of her intuitions, and get rid of the undesirable immigrant. However, none of these idiosyncrasies could be brought to light, observe she never so minutely. The boy was just an ordinary, nice, healthy boy; there was nothing vague or mysterious or neurotic about him; his personality had no strong colours anywhere, was altogether mild, unformed, healthy in its growth. And yet Gundred, recognising all this, could not help shrinking from him, shrinking from him more eagerly day by day, with a vigour of feeling not by any means wholly attributable to her anger against Kingston for disobeying her wishes in this matter. Among the weak points of her character a lack of honesty could not always be counted; she frankly acknowledged to herself that no fault could be found with Ivor Restormel. Good, kind, companionable, nice-minded, he appeared to be everything that she herself, by all the rules of her code, should most warmly have liked and approved. This only made it the odder, therefore, that she should feel against him so unconquerable a secret dislike. Gundred almost felt as if it were not the boy himself that she disliked, but some deep corner of his character which she seemed to have known and dreaded for many years. She divined in him a lurking enmity of which his own innocent and sunny nature was altogether unconscious. But Gundred pulled herself up short at this point, and refused to indulge in any such vain fantasies. People, it is well known, do not contain these dual personalities; if Gundred dreaded this boy, who, to all seeming, was everything sane and wholesome, her feeling could have nothing to do with any nonsensical superstition, but would certainly—if not sooner, then later—be disastrously shown to have been founded on fact, by the discovery of its object’s[354] carefully hidden iniquity. Gundred, as the days went by, withdrew herself more and more wholly from her husband’s life. Now she no longer took even a formal share in it. She stood outside and watched for her opportunity to strike at the intruder. That neither Kingston nor Gundred any longer felt how completely they were removed from each other in itself revealed the secret weakness which all these years had underlain the smooth, firm surface of their relations. Each, it appeared, could do perfectly well without the other, and only feel the separation as a matter for indignant pride.

The interloper, meanwhile, was quite unconscious of the hidden passions that were seething round him. Ivor Restormel had a happy temperament that only looked for the best in everything. Reasons and explanations did not interest him, nor had he much subtlety to discern any animosity that did not take the form of a blow in the eye. So long as he was not made to enter the smoke-haunted rooms of Brakelond he was inclined simply and wholly to enjoy himself. What it all meant he had no idea, nor what he had done to attract so smooth and pleasant a life as seemed to be opening out before him. Occasionally he had a very faint suspicion that Lady Gundred, for some reason, did not entirely approve of him. But, then, she was always so mild and remote in manner, so it must only be his fancy; after all, he had done absolutely nothing to annoy her; and, anyway, what was the good of bothering? So he took the pleasures that the gods provided, without question or cavil, and began to enjoy the surroundings to which he had been so suddenly, so unexpectedly, transplanted. He had inherited a love of beauty, comfort, calm; the change from a penurious life spent between a third-rate Oxford college and a dingy little house in the Banbury Road, among people[355] no less distasteful than the lives they led—the change from all this to the large serenity of Brakelond was restful and delicious in the extreme. Here voices were never raised in queribund tones; here all the little difficulties of life were kept in oblivion, and existence went on oiled wheels along a gentle, placid course. Lady Gundred might be a little chilly and undemonstrative, but, at any rate, she was always smooth; she never fussed or grew peevish, was never worried about the details of housekeeping. Ivor Restormel loved the unquestioning quiet of his new life. As for his host, well, there he was altogether baffled.

Mr. Darnley seemed at once indifferent and enthusiastic about his new secretary. At one moment he would talk eagerly, almost affectionately; and then, again, he would be perfectly indefinite and tame in tone. Ivor could not make it out at all; did Mr. Darnley like him or not? Surely he must—surely he must even have taken a strange, violent fancy to him. Otherwise, why should Mr. Darnley have made such rapid advances; why should he have been so anxious to get him over to Brakelond; why should he have been in such haste to offer him the secretaryship, and so keen that he should take it? All these things were proof of liking, if anything in the world could ever be. Yet Ivor Restormel could never feel wholly satisfied, after all, that his host had any personal feeling for him. In himself he even seemed to bore Mr. Darnley. Ivor was quite acute enough to see before long that Mr. Darnley took very little interest in him personally. And this made the whole relation incalculably strange. Why saddle yourself, why go out of your way to saddle yourself with a person for whom you do not intrinsically care two straws? Ivor began to think that he even noticed a certain animosity sometimes in his host’s attitude towards him. It almost[356] seemed as if by talking in his own person, of his own concerns, that he was annoying and disappointing Mr. Darnley. What could this mean? Mr. Darnley appeared to be always watching him, always listening for some chance word from him. And then, all of a sudden, Mr. Darnley’s interest would kindle and flame. Warmth would come into his manner, and Ivor would get the sensation of being acutely liked. And then, in a moment, perhaps, his talk would wander outside the range of its listener’s interest. Mr. Darnley would shake his head with a sort of desperate irritation, the light would die out of his eyes, and his demeanour become cold, and sometimes even savage. Evidently the talker must have somehow cheated him, must have ceased to say the things he wished to hear. But what were those things? Ivor Restormel spurred himself to unaccustomed subtlety; he disliked this sensation of being, as it were, only spasmodically and vicariously cultivated. His face and manners generally made him friends without difficulty; he was piqued by their apparent failure to give him any victory over a man whom they had seemed to lead so unresistingly captive at first sight.

Ivor exerted himself to ensure Mr. Darnley’s approval, and carefully marked the moments which held his employer’s enthusiasm and the subjects that provoked it. Apparently, though, any talk of his own life and ideas was of no interest, or very little, to Mr. Darnley. And how can one capture people’s friendship if they are obviously bored by everything that concerns one’s self? No; not quite everything. Ivor soon found that any talk about his particular private weaknesses was always sure to rouse Mr. Darnley to a subdued, secret fury of eagerness. As soon as Ivor dropped any chance apologetic word about the terrors that he had so strangely inherited, and as long as he[357] continued telling of them, so long, and so long only, did Mr. Darnley seem to have an interest and a liking for him—an interest wonderfully keen, a liking deep and strong. And then, if he took advantage of this evident friendship to go on to other matters, then the evident friendship would immediately chill off and vanish into an annoyed indifference. Mr. Darnley could not be touched by conversation on any other topic. But that one topic was always sure of the most instant success; it had only to hint its presence in the dialogue for Mr. Darnley’s whole zeal to leap to the alert. Mr. Darnley even seemed to be always watching for its appearance, and, what was strange and even exasperating, would put up with hours of Ivor’s conversation in the obvious hope that sooner or later the one matter of interest would crop up into the talk. It is annoying to find one’s company cherished only for the sake of conversation on one particular subject, and Ivor began deliberately to avoid the topic, as much from hurt vanity as from personal pride.

Then the situation developed even more oddly, for Mr. Darnley would hardly let the boy out of his sight. He must be always at his side, always putting up with what clearly failed to interest him, in the persistent hope that as the delay grew longer and more wearisome, so the reappearance of the one interesting topic must be coming nearer and growing surer. He clung to Ivor’s company, although it plainly had no intrinsic value for him, anxious not to lose a moment of it, for fear the moment of true speech should come and pass without his knowledge. Ivor, sweet-natured as he was, showed his resentment at the topsy-turvy situation by talking persistently of things that concerned himself, his daily life, or his employer’s. And it was even amusing, had it not been rather humiliating, to notice how Mr. Darnley chafed beneath the interminable[358] ordeal, yet would not lose an instant of it, lest in that instant the thing he was looking for so passionately should poke its head up and vanish again unnoticed. But Ivor, for sheer pride, would indulge him but seldom. Besides, it happened that the one thing which Kingston wished to hear was also, naturally enough, the one thing that Ivor least wished to tell. For the boy was acutely ashamed of those idiotic instincts of terror with which his premature birth had left him. The one thing worse than those terrors themselves was the humiliation of acknowledging them. So he was doubly reluctant to gratify the morbid curiosity of the older man.

Kingston, in fact, was paying very heavily for the indulgence of his long desire. The situation, to him, was one persistent agony of expectation, always straining, always being disappointed. Now at last he understood the punishment that he had earned. For, by his own wish, he was doomed to call, and call for ever, to something that could never hear. The dead was free, but the living was still bound, was more tightly bound than ever in that bond of desire which is at once the pet pleasure and the dreadful agony of all who enter it. And a dreary agony it was; Isabel was there, within his reach almost, but for ever beyond his reach. No cry could rouse her, no appeal restore her personality to life. And yet, mysteriously but certainly, she was there once more; once more clothed in flesh, once more gazing out of human eyes and speaking with a human voice. Nevertheless, for all the good he could have of his prayer’s gratification, she might still have been dead bones and dust of the earth. For she could not hear him, could not recognise him, and the irony of her deaf, blind presence at his side was a torment far more keen than all the long years of her absence. He ravened and battered against the[359] iron wall of her unconsciousness, and for ever was beaten back, sickened, bruised and bleeding from the violence—the eternally fruitless violence—of his effort to stir her recollection. Her memory slept for ever in the dead past; only the immortal part of her still lived, and was incurably deaf to any human call. She did not hear him, she could not hear him; never, never, all down the ages could she hear him again. The irremediable separation was only made more ghastly, more appalling, by the tantalizing proximity of her. He could see her, hear her, know her well. And all the knowledge was not only profitless, but an aggravation of his misery. He saw now what a fool he had been to tie himself anew in the bondage of desire; an eternal parting would have been far less painful, far less maddeningly cruel, than this grim and nugatory reunion.

Again and again he battled fiercely to win the recognition that he knew in his heart of hearts to be for ever beyond his reach. He was incessantly trying to lead Ivor Restormel into some discussion of his secret terrors, hoping that so Isabel’s voice might speak once more, and possibly, in time, Isabel’s self be aroused again. But the task was hard, and Ivor reluctant to be made the mouthpiece of that inmost self of his whose identity—whose very existence, even—he never suspected. And then it was that Kingston found himself hating the boy. The boy stood between himself and Isabel; for ever must stand between himself and Isabel. And yet the boy contained the secret treasure—was, in a worldly sense, the secret treasure; he could not have the one for a neighbour without putting up with the presence of the other, without keeping the boy for ever at his side, and tolerating endlessly the revelations of the boy’s uninteresting personality. Kingston approved of the young fellow well enough in himself;[360] he was amiable, kind, pleasant to look at and talk to. In ordinary circumstances Kingston would have liked him and never thought twice about him. Now, however, his liking was complicated by a resentment that at times deepened into something like hate. The boy was keeping so much from him. It was not the boy’s fault, of course, yet that did not make the situation any easier to bear. He alternately liked and disliked him with a vigour for which the boy’s own personality was entirely innocent.

He was always laying traps for him, watching him, trying to stir up the spirit that possessed him. Gladly would Kingston have pierced between Ivor and the secret thing that inhabited him. The one he valued not at all, or only as containing the other which he now valued above everything in the world, for ever beyond his reach though it was. He resented the boy’s body, his beauty, his young developing nature which, sooner or later, might be expected to conquer those old dim memories and achieve the ultimate death of the Isabel he had known those twenty years before. If he could have set free the sleeping soul he would gladly have seen its new body break up and die. He hated that new body, which made so impermeable a wall between himself and the vanished thing he had so vainly found again. He looked on Ivor Restormel as an unarmed burglar might look on an impregnable safe in which lies the diamond of his ambition. The safe is precious and desirable because of the diamond inside, but, in so far as it makes the diamond impregnable, is doubly detestable for the very fact that the diamond is inside. And in Kingston’s case the problem was even crueller; for the burglar may, with long labour, break the safe and attain the diamond. Kingston, in breaking the safe, would by the same action cause the diamond to vanish once more. As[361] things stood, the safety—at all events, the continued proximity—of the diamond depended entirely on the continued security and inviolate condition of the safe.

He began soon, in his difficulty, to read up the countless Oriental cases of prenatal memory. There, in the East, souls that have been parted by bodily death are reunited in another shape, and know each other and are happy. There the great facts of life, of that shadowy fallacy that we call death, are clearly known and understood. But here we are still driven by phantom fears, and troubled by that which has no real existence except in our own weakened imaginations. Our memories are too closely trammelled by false teaching, too little practised and experienced, to pass intact across the blank interval of physical death. At the best it is only an occasional glimpse we carry on into another life, and even so those glimpses come but rarely, and fade as our earthly life advances to maturity again. More people have these glimpses, it is true, than ever dare to acknowledge them; but they are little understood and never fairly made use of. It is to the East we must go to see how little account the trained soul makes of physical death. There, through innumerable ages, the light has been seen, and memory has been educated from hour to hour and from day to day until at last the soul finds it as easy to recall the events of a hundred years ago as those of last night or this morning. Kingston studied the many cases that the Eastern Gospel gives us, and which Western science is just beginning to discern anew. Always he hoped against hope that they would give him some key to unlock the house of memory. Yes, the mortal body is just that—a house of memory, a jerry-built house at best. But the lock is stern and stark. What key is there, what jemmy,[362] what crowbar, that can prevail on the lock that guards the house of memories, can prevail, at least, without wrecking the house and letting the memories go free once more?

Kingston had no hope that he could find such a key. The old Eastern stories showed the glorified free memory as the possession only of the free glorified soul that has escaped the bondage of desire. When desire has passed away, then the uncontaminated soul knows no barrier of time or space. But in the kingdom of desire are all the burning pains and limitations which desire provides to scourge its devotees in the very moment of their seeming satisfaction. To eyes desirous, life is narrowed to a thing of the moment; it is only from the high places of enlightenment that the opened eye of the Real Self can wander over all the fields of existence, and see the nullity of death, the eternity of truth and holiness, from bodily life to bodily life, until at last the great goal is gained. Kingston saw himself helpless now in the grip of the passion he had invoked. Nothing could satisfy it, nothing could release him from it. Nothing but the death of his body, and even that release seemed now to his awakening intelligence to be but problematical. He began to wonder what could be the end of this fantastic tangle. Days went by, and he found himself more tightly chained to the agony of his perpetual disappointment in Ivor Restormel, more cruelly hungry for the satisfaction which lay for ever in his sight and beyond his reach, more and more fiercely stung by the misery that he himself had brought upon himself.

He grew into a sense of drifting towards a catastrophe; the strain, the torment could not be prolonged indefinitely without the sudden snap of his endurance. Some thunderclap of fate must break up the dreadful[363] stagnation of this nightmare. As the time passed, and his efforts brought him no nearer to fulfilment, made it increasingly plain that he could never come any nearer to fulfilment, he felt the growing imminence of doom. This companion who was no companion, his desire had evoked It from the shadows, soon It must go back into the shadows from which he had called It, having first accomplished fully the punishment of his selfishness. He watched the human Ivor Restormel with a curious consciousness of watching a thing unearthly, a thing moving amid darkness towards a great darkness not so very far away. This boy, so much alive, so content with life, was not in reality alive at all. He was just a shadow, a faint film of personality, by comparison with the old living thing that lurked in him. Vague and indeterminate as his own character was, he was the penalty, made incarnate, of Kingston’s own selfishness; he was the eidolon of the past projected into the present in order to tantalize and damn the soul that had desired it. Built of clouds, he must pass back ere long, swiftly, tragically into cloudland, and that reality behind the clouds, that living fragment far down in the shadowy personality of the boy, must pass onwards again on its upward way—that strange immortal essence which once had been Isabel. And this foreknowledge of the end, this sensation of drifting daily more and more hurriedly towards something terrible, impelled him to cherish with a more and more eager passion this presence that had been vouchsafed to him, however incomplete, however unsatisfying he might find it.

Each hour brought him nearer now to the last that should ever be. He bent himself sternly, in the lessening time that was his, to the desperate task of awakening recollection in a soul where recollection slept for ever. Less and less did he see or think of[364] Ivor Restormel, more and more ardently, more and more despairingly, of the thing that dwelt in Ivor Restormel, the thing that soon must leave its habitation to pass elsewhere again. He sought the boy’s presence more and more persistently, would never spare him out of his sight, exacted more and more of his conversation. And all the while he was caring less and less for the boy, his words, or his utterance. Now that he had found out what it was that had attracted him to the boy, he was ceasing to see the boy himself at all, to hear his earthly voice. All Kingston’s attention was fixed on the glimpses that he could hope to get of the secret presence he divined, his ears were open only to those occasional flashes of memory that spoke in Ivor Restormel out of that remote past beyond the grave. He must make the dreadful most of the short time that was left him. It was but little he could hope to make, but the time, he felt, was running rapidly out towards its end.

Gundred saw everything. Gundred understood nothing. That her husband grew keener and keener to monopolize Ivor Restormel she saw, and righteous anger became fiercer within her. That Kingston should so slight her company as obviously and vehemently to prefer that of a person against whom she had most solemnly warned him, was matter enough and to spare for just wrath. Gundred grew colder and colder in manner, lived more and more aloof, felt stronger and stronger in her consciousness of justified dread. That Kingston clung every moment to the side of his secretary she noticed; that, in reality, he did not care two straws about his secretary she could hardly be expected to discern. The plain and sufficing fact was that he never seemed happy, never at his ease, unless Ivor Restormel were with him, and even then he very rarely seemed perfectly[365] satisfied either. Gundred saw that there was something unusual and mysterious about this friendship that in some ways scarcely seemed a friendship at all, yet made such tremendous claims on time and company.

Gundred, scanning the situation from her retirement, came deliberately to the conclusion that Kingston’s evident infatuation was the result of some malign influence. Nothing else could account for his restless attraction towards Ivor Restormel, combined so frequently with obvious boredom and annoyance when in his company; nothing could so completely explain the apparent innocuousness of Ivor himself, as compared with the instinct of repulsion that Gundred always felt towards him, and felt more fanatically from day to day. Gundred knew that she was not capable of unjust or disorderly feelings. And, if she disliked people, it meant that they deserved to be disliked. And if no reason for such a dislike could be discovered anywhere in Ivor Restormel’s personality, well, that only made it more clear that Gundred’s infallible instinct was founded on her perception in him of some evil supernatural influence, possessing him and working through him. The idea grew and fermented in her brain, and heroic remedies began to suggest themselves. No one, in these dreadful latter days, could seriously doubt that the Evil One was abroad. What more credible than that he should have picked out for attack a soul like her husband’s, which Gundred knew to be weak in doctrine, and saw to be not impeccable in practice? Gundred grew in the certainty that, whether Ivor Restormel knew it or no, he was filled with unhallowed powers that were exerting a wicked force on the man whom he had so uncannily attracted from the first.

All her life’s course had led Gundred along placid,[366] sunny ways, and her nature, through those years, had revealed only the peace and serenity of true refinement. And now, at last, at the touch of this righteous jealousy, there began to stir in her the fierce old blood of Queen Isabel, the stern harsh passions of the Mortimers. The fanatic stirred in its long sleep, and Gundred felt herself inspired to lead a domestic crusade against the Powers of Darkness. At any cost her husband must be saved. In old days an Earl of March had, by his laudable zeal in persecution, elicited commendatory letters from Queen Mary. His spirit now awoke in Gundred, and she realized in herself the strength to act mightily in a noble cause.

In every way this undesirable intruder, who seemed so amiable and pleasant and desirable, was having the most untoward effect on Kingston’s mind and morals. Had he not caused a hitherto blameless and obedient husband to revolt against his wife’s righteous dominion after twenty years of harmony, and to cast her wishes defiantly beneath his feet? And now it became obvious that Kingston was suffering in other ways. She saw him to be a dabbler in things best left alone, in things unhallowed, Satanic, dreadful. Of his attendance on spirit-circles Gundred luckily knew nothing, otherwise, in her determination to be old-fashioned by contrast with the hysterical occultism that now obtains, she would probably have wished to call in an exorcist. But even in his reading he had strayed into improper paths. The strangest things he was now for ever studying—Eastern books and mystical fantasies of the most unsettling description. The weirdest of these he made a point of reading to Ivor Restormel, and Gundred, who generally insisted on being by, noticed that he seemed to read eagerly, challengingly, as if in momentary expectation that the matter would elicit some answering flash of some[367] kind or another from the boy. It never did, and the readings, therefore, always broke off short with a shrug of disappointment and even of disgust; but Gundred divined a soul in peril from the very attempt he made. It was surely an incantation he was practising, an invocation to the mysterious evil thing that haunted Ivor Restormel. She presented a bold front to such dangers, and would not be kept away from the readings.

Kingston one Sunday evening seemed absorbed in his dubious books, while Gundred sat at her knitting, an employment by which she piously signalized the Sabbath. All through the week she did fine needlework, but on Sunday she put away her embroideries and conscientiously knitted comforters for the Deep-sea Fishermen. But suddenly Kingston looked up from his page, and began to read in a curious tone of watchful defiance, addressing his secretary, who was inoffensively engaged with a newspaper. ‘Listen to this, Ivor,’ he began, ‘listen to this, and tell me what you think of it.’ Gundred, in her observant silence, noted that her opinion was not asked, and her wrath grew greater and more righteous, chalking up yet another item to the Evil One’s account. ‘“Once upon a time,”’ read Kingston, ‘“many thousands of years ago, there came a great Buddha to a city in India. He was a great and glorious Buddha, but the time is so very far away now that even his name has passed into Nirvana, and cannot be recalled. But all the people in the city wrought their hardest to do him honour. From the King and his nobles downward everyone gave his richest silks and rugs to line the road of the Holy One’s arrival, and in all their land there was not a widow or a little child so poor that they had not some bright pebble or piece of cloth to do their small homage to the Incarnate Perfection. Only one shepherd lad,[368] from the jungle beyond, had nothing to give. He was young and strong and very beautiful, and his whole soul cried out in worship of the Buddha. The most splendid jewel in the world, the most priceless tapestry and cloth of gold, he would not have thought good enough for the honouring of the Holy One; and yet he had nothing, no treasure, however humble, that he could throw beneath the blessed feet. He, that would have given half the world, had not so much as a handful of painted shells. So his heart was very heavy within him, and sadly did he draw near to the city on the appointed day. And on his road there met him a maiden, lovely and gracious, that wore in her hair a flower. But this was such a flower as the boy had never seen before. It was altogether radiant and heavenly, splendid beyond the imagination of man to conceive. It grew in a cluster of seven blooms, and the fragrance of it filled the jungle. If he could only have this wonderful thing to offer to the Heavenly Visitor, then, indeed, thought the boy, he would at least have done no dishonour to the Light that his heart honoured above all else on earth. ‘Maiden,’ he said, ‘for what price will you sell me the flower that you wear in your hair?’ And she answered that for a very great price she would sell him two blossoms from the cluster. And once again his heart was daunted, for the price she asked was more than anything that he could hope to get together in a long laborious life. He shook his head. ‘I had desired,’ he replied, ‘to do fitting honour to the Holy One, but I see now that that hope is beyond me.’ Then the maiden took the blossom from her hair and held it out towards him, for her eyes were opened. ‘My Lord,’ she answered to the peasant lad, ‘my sight is unsealed, and I can see. Very many years hence—a thousand years hence—I see that you, in the fullness of[369] time, even you yourself shall become a revealed Buddha here on earth. Take this flower of mine, then, without money and without price, but promise me only that in that far day I may stand at your right hand and be near you in your glory.’ And the boy smiled and gave her his word. So after all he had his offering to lay before the Blessed One, and his heart was satisfied. And the maiden went her way through life, and on through the many deaths that lay beyond. And he also, the peasant lad, died in the ripeness of his age, and lived and died through many generations, advancing always on the upward road. And at length the time was accomplished, and the maiden’s prophecy fulfilled. For the peasant lad became the Spotless One, the Buddha Sakhya-Muni, High and Holy, altogether Blessed and Perfect, the Best Friend of All the World. And in that day, the maiden found herself again, and came at last to her reward. For she was the Lady Yasodhara, his wife, the first of all the sacred women that trod the happy way and entered into light....”’

Kingston ceased, his voice filled with interrogation, pausing eagerly for Ivor’s opinion, hoping against hope that that opinion might be more illuminating than he felt it would be. Again and again had he tried to kindle that dormant consciousness with scenes like this, always keenly hoping that they would touch some chord of understanding far down in the hidden depths of the boy’s dual personality. But the hope was never to be fulfilled; he knew it was never to be fulfilled, yet each fresh disappointment was sharper and more wounding than the last. Kingston paused for a comment on the story. None came. After a pause he demanded one.

The boy looked up; his attention, though formally[370] yielded to Kingston’s reading, had, in reality, been surreptitiously concentrated on the sporting column of the paper he held in his hand.

‘What did I think of it?’ he repeated a trifle vaguely. ‘Oh, not half bad. Quite a decent bit of writing. But awful rot, sir, of course.’

Kingston vibrated with acute annoyance. Thus, for the thousandth time, the gate of possibilities had been slammed brutally in his face by the uninteresting shadowy, rudimentary soul that shared Ivor Restormel’s body with that wonderful immortal dead. He gazed at the boy with positive hatred in his eyes. In a spasm of irritation Kingston turned towards his wife.

‘And you, Gundred,’ he inquired, ‘what do you think of it? Evidently Ivor hasn’t the faintest notion what it is all about. It says nothing to him. Does it say anything to you?’

‘Very dreadful and unchristian,’ said Gundred firmly, but mildly. ‘I wonder you can bear to read such things. I am sure it cannot be good for Mr. Restormel to hear them.’

Kingston might talk if he pleased of ‘Ivor,’ Gundred pointed her disapproval by adhering rigidly to the formal mode of address, and would never accord her enemy the favour of any more friendly appellation.

‘Mr. Restormel,’ she repeated decisively, ‘could not be expected to see anything in such irreverent nonsense.’

Kingston could not trust himself to answer her, nor to make any further remark on the abysmal stupidity of the boy who stood so perpetually between him and the memory of Isabel. Hurriedly turning over the pages, he began to read that most wonderful scene in history, the second meeting of the triumphant Buddha with Yasodhara his wife, after those many years of[371] parting and glorification. Both the world’s great Buddha stories contain the tragedy of a woman; but the tale of the Indian Princess, widowed through long earthly years of the man she loved, and then, in the end, reunited with the Perfected Incarnation of Holiness, is even more tremendous, if less physically poignant, than that of the Mother who stood on Calvary. Mystical, majestic, splendid, is the crowning moment in the life of Yasodhara, and Kingston read the words that relate it with a passionate sense of the truth that they convey. Then he fell silent.

‘Very pretty, dear,’ said Gundred. ‘Would you pick up my wool for me? Thanks. But I do think one might find something more profitable to read on Sundays. I think one ought to make Sunday different somehow, from other days, and not read novels and things like that. One should only read real things on Sundays—yes?’

She slipped into sight the volume with which she occasionally beguiled the devout labours of her knitting. With a gentle little air of excellence she laid it down again unostentatiously, but so that the gilt lettering showed along its cover. It was the ‘Life of Bishop Boffatt,’ by Three Nieces, with a ‘Foreword’ from Archdeacon Widge.

All this clearly indicated that Gundred’s interference was urgently needed in the cause of holiness. Day by day she watched the situation, feeling more and more certain that her mission was the rescue of her husband. He, meanwhile, bore hourly, with increasing pain, the tantalizing torments of his paradoxical proximity to the thing he had so long looked for[372] and now had found in vain. Ivor Restormel wondered at his good fortune, and only occasionally noticed the crochets of Kingston and Gundred. Of the two, Gundred had by far the more tactful temperament. Her dislike, now fast verging towards religious horror, was not to be discerned except by an eye far more keen than Ivor Restormel’s. A serene gravity, a cool calm were so much the dominant characteristics of her nature that the exaggeration of her gravity, the additional chill in her calm passed unnoticed by one so little practised in observation. The restless eagerness of Kingston was more plain and more distressing. Ivor Restormel sometimes wondered what it was that he did or failed to do that so roused disappointment and annoyance in this friend who never really seemed a friend, and yet had gratuitously done so much for him. However, he was not of a temper to let such matters oppress him. He put them behind him, and disregarded any tension that he might ever be inclined to discern in his relations with his employer or his employer’s wife.

So the days passed unsatisfactorily by, until the time came for the family’s removal to Ivescar. Deep in his heart Kingston had a dim hope that the sight of Ivescar might once more rekindle a flash of memory in the boy. It was with trembling anxiety that he watched the first impressions that Ivor received from his first sight of the Yorkshire moors. Would the veil lift again, for even the briefest glance from the soul that dwelt behind? Brakelond had roused the sleeping personality in the boy; surely it was only to be expected that Ivescar, where so much had happened, could do no less? And Ivor gratified Kingston’s hope up to a certain point—only, as before, in doing so to rouse a keener desire. For from the first sight he instinctively loved the mountain-country, entered into[373] its charm, appreciated the solemn majesty of it. He felt, he said, as if he had known it all his life, as if he and the hills were friends of long standing. And Kingston, hearing this, listened with quiet face but with a heart agonized in suspense. The door seemed to be drawing ajar for a greater revelation. The very next moment might bring some recognition. Kingston would not admit to himself the hopelessness of his hope. Eagerly he waited for what the boy might say next. And the door opened no further, but closed again as fast as ever. Never again could that hidden consciousness of Ivor’s wake to know itself. The expectation that it ever would was groundless, tormenting, delusive as all the pleasures held out by false desire. Kingston suffered more than ever, as each fresh disappointment grew more painful than the last, though more and more surely anticipated. The boy knew nothing; no veil could be lifted from his eyes; he enjoyed his surroundings simply, boyishly, without any sense of deep memories out of which they were built.

And then, into the midst of these unhappy combinations was precipitated the new element of Jim Darnley’s presence. Jim Darnley at fifteen was unfeignedly glad to find a companion not so very much ahead of him in years. Ivor Restormel was young for his age; Jim Darnley, as an only son, was inclined to be older than his; and the instant fellowship that was established between the two set the last seal on Gundred’s righteous indignation. Kingston did not care whom or what the earthly Ivor Restormel might care for, so long as his company might still hold out hopes of glimpses from the past. Moreover, he was glad that Jim should have a companion, and should, by taking so comfortable a fancy to him, justify his father in the choice of a secretary. As a man, and as a man already preoccupied[374] with other matters, he had no sort of inclination to be jealous of his son’s friendships. With Gundred, however, the case was altogether different. She loved her only child with the fierce and almost savage affection often felt by a woman who cannot understand the object of that affection. Naturally the fact was the last thing that she would allow her soul to face, but in the jealousy with which she regarded all new factors in his life might be read her unacknowledged fear that her intimacy with him might not be as strong as she made a point of believing it to be. She was one of those women who are by nature more mother than wife, and in the fullness of uneventful years had insensibly come to transfer a good deal of her old urgent passion for Kingston to the child that she had borne him. In connection with Gundred, mild and cool, ferocity and passion are words that sound oddly, and yet, under the suave mildness, the dispassionate decorum of her manner, her feelings for her son had a certain definite passion, and even ferocity. That the boy never knew it was the misfortune of his mother’s training; she would not betray the fact of her love, and had no thought that by so betraying it she might be able to supplement, in his eyes, the deficiencies of her understanding.

For Gundred was incapable of any true companionship with her son. He admired her, he loved her distantly and diffidently, but he shrank from her, and had nothing intimate or warm to say. That she was not conscious of this flaw in their relation may be called the compensating mercy of that weakness in herself which had developed that flaw. She was by now almost entirely devoid of intuitive intelligence. Or, rather, perhaps, she had so diligently trained herself that, in the long course of time, she had drilled her mind out of any faint tendency to perceive and analyze that[375] it may ever have possessed. Her sense of decency commanded her to live entirely on the surface of things; prying into secret motives and feelings she considered vulgar and indecent. Accordingly, if lip-kisses were properly exchanged, and superficial affection reigned, she made a point of considering that the soul-relations thus symbolized must be eminently satisfactory. She looked no further than the symbol, and disliked the idea that kisses and terms of endearment may, after all, not stand for the love whose emblems they are—may even, at a pinch, be used to disguise the lack of that love. And yet her hidden, shamefaced jealousy may be taken to have been the last flickering phantom of the natural woman’s insight into domestic relations. All his life she had grudged her son his friendships, gently nipped them with the frost of her criticism, sedulously taught him to find fault and be captious.

The education had borne no fruit in Jim, except a bitter one for Gundred. His nature was too warm and sunny to have any real communion with his mother’s frosts, and as soon as he found that she always had something coldly unpleasant to say of everyone he liked, he had responded, not by discarding his friends, but by drawing farther and farther away from his mother. With the merciless clear-sightedness of the young, so vivid, if so limited, he had judged his mother by her own precepts long since, and found her wanting. She endlessly preached the loveliest morality, the tenderest forbearance towards all the world, the most sedulous avoidance of harsh or censorious comment. And yet she was always sure to pick some fatal flaw in all his friends, to discover and expose some blemish, to insist on some fault or weakness. And the very fact that her criticisms were always more or less just militated, in the end, against her influence. For Jim[376] found that he liked his friends more than he disliked their failings, and, taking their side accordingly, he gradually came to look upon his mother’s unerring eye for other people’s shortcomings as the worst enemy of his own happiness. Thus pitiably, by the exaggeration of her own virtues, through the keenness of her own maternal love, Gundred laid up for herself inevitable disappointment in regard to the one thing that her heart desired, and innocently prepared for herself a dark version of the mother’s tragedy. By now Jim had his friends and his life to himself; outside that precinct, walled and guarded, stood his mother, alone, too proud to admit that she stood outside, too wilfully blind to see the unbroken wall that fronted her, and, in any case, too proud to clamour for admittance.

But the friendship that immediately arose between Jim and Ivor Restormel was to Gundred as a sudden light of revelation, laying bare the fact of her exclusion from her son’s life. Characteristically, even to herself, she would not admit what she saw, but attributed the novel pain to her anxiety for Jim’s welfare. That Jim should have friends of his own age had been grudgingly conceded as an odious necessity, to be cavilled at and snubbed, but impossible to deny. Now, however, that the pernicious influence that had so mysteriously gripped her husband threatened to enthral her son as well, Gundred told herself that all her maternal duties, no less than her conjugal, commanded her to take the field against the powers of darkness. Her jealousy masqueraded as pure motherly zeal, and its very bitterness was masked from her own sight by the disguise of duty. Her feeling, too, was intensified by the failure of all her usual weapons to discredit Ivor Restormel in the eyes of his new friend. Jim generally sat and answered her in submissive[377] affirmatives, while she gently dissected his friends and pointed out how entirely unworthy they all were of approval, though not, of course, of pity; now, however, he could not even give her criticism the courtesy of apparent acquiescence.

He rose up in defence of Ivor, instead of, as usual, listening pleasantly and then going his own way undeterred—a course which long experience had taught him was the wisest, especially as his mother was quite unable to notice that her advice was disregarded, if only her advice had been politely received. In vain she pointed out to him that Ivor Restormel’s mind was cheap and crude; that his orthodoxy was tepid, his manners unnecessarily enthusiastic, his whole deportment lacking in finish and refinement. Jim could not listen in respectful silence; he protested, he pleaded. He had become all of a sudden disloyal and treacherous to his mother. Gundred regarded all opposition from her son as unfilial, and could not conceive the possibility of his having any right to hold an opinion at variance with hers. She claimed to provide him with all his thoughts, henceforth and for ever, on the ground of having in the distant past provided him with a body to hold them. That her son was an individual she could never recognise, and on the rare occasions of his overt revolt, felt the indignant astonishment of Balaam when he discovered that his ass had a voice of its own. Accordingly, if Jim now opposed her criticisms, it was only a treason and a sin engendered in him by this evil spirit that had captured him, and every word that he said in Ivor’s favour only served to deepen his mother’s feeling that she was certainly called upon to rid her son and her husband of this threatening danger that had already produced such dire results in the disaffection of her nearest and dearest.

‘I cannot have you running about the hills all day[378] with Mr. Restormel, dear,’ said Gundred blandly, but with decision.

‘But why not, mother?’ protested Jim, who, in normal circumstances would probably have said, ‘No, mother,’ and gone all the same, Gundred never knowing.

‘Because I say not, dear,’ replied Gundred inadequately. ‘You must let mother be the best judge of your companions, dear. Mother knows best—yes?’

‘I say, you know, I think it is awfully hard lines. Ivor is the best fellow going. You don’t know him, mother.’

‘Don’t call him Ivor, Jim,’ reproved Gundred. ‘It is not respectful. He is older than you. And that is another reason why I do not like to see you wasting your time with him. He is not good company for you.’

Having nothing definite to allege, Gundred, of course, found it necessary to become sibylline and pompous.

‘You must trust mother, dear,’ she answered. ‘There are many things you are too young to know. It is enough for you to remember that mother does not wish you to see too much of Mr. Restormel. You must avoid him as much as possible—though, of course, without being rude and unkind.’

But Gundred’s solemn implication of mysterious knowledge had been played off so frequently that it had long since lost its effect. Jim knew well that it only concealed her invariable jealousy.

‘No,’ he said; ‘I am awfully fond of old Ivor. I don’t see why I should make myself nasty to him. Father likes him no end.’

‘You should always do what mother wishes, without asking questions,’ she rejoined. ‘And what father may do is no concern of yours. Your father may be taken in like everybody else. But you ought to think it a privilege to obey your mother. Think of what you owe her—yes?’

Like many women, Gundred believed that, having engendered a child, entirely without regard for that problematical child’s wishes, must necessarily give her a lifelong claim on his gratitude. Like many women, she insisted on the debt, everywhere and always, until, by ceaseless demands, she had come near to exhausting the supply. Accordingly the conference continued for a while, unsatisfactorily. Jim for once had lost his grip on that lamentable diplomacy which an unwise mother’s exactions so early engrain into her children. He could no longer even acquiesce. He became warm in Ivor’s defence, and, with every word, Gundred felt more certainly that his disloyalty was the crime of the evil force that possessed him. That force must unquestionably be combated and dispossessed. And soon she found that she was incapable of coping with Jim. Worse, she could not even have recourse to the secular arm in the person of her husband, for her husband was equally under this incalculable diabolical sway. She grew more angry in her demands as the demands were refused. And Jim, flushed with opposition, verged on rudeness, would not be brought to promise the abandonment of his new friend, and treated his mother’s ultimatum with ominous cheerfulness.

‘You would not like to have to choose between Mr. Restormel and mother, would you—no?’ suggested Gundred with the supreme imprudence of excitement. And this weapon, too, had lost its efficacy with too frequent use. Jim had heard it too often now to retain any illusion as to its dramatic value.

He was very uncomfortable, though, as he answered: ‘Oh, rot, mother; you know that is impossible. I wish you would not say such things. You don’t want to make me out a beast to you, do you, just because I don’t want to be a beast to Ivor? It’s all rot finding fault with him, you know. He is a jolly good fellow, and father would not have got him here if he had not liked him too. So he must be all right, anyway.’

With a fatal lack of tact, Gundred went off on a side issue, and began protesting against the unnecessary crudeness of her son’s language—a crudeness which she made haste to attribute to Ivor’s degrading influence.

‘Well,’ replied Jim, ‘if there is nothing else to say against poor old Ivor than that! He isn’t the first person in the world who has said “rot,” and I don’t imagine he will be the last.’ And on that hit he rose and made his escape, despite his mother’s attempts to restrain him with loving arms, and exact, by kisses, a more satisfactory termination to the dialogue.

Gundred was left alone, feeling solitude as she had very rarely felt it in her life before. This intruder had destroyed the harmony of her home, had blighted her relations with her submissive subjects, had sapped loyalty, filial piety and honour in the hearts of all who owed her duty. This influence was altogether evil, and must be defeated without loss of another day. It was a blessed work this that Heaven had appointed her to do, and it must be done briskly, whole-heartedly, without any lookings-back from the plough, or weaknesses of any kind. Gundred began to revolve measures, and plans at last grew definite in her mind. She faced her course of action boldly. Ivor must be got rid of—somehow, anyhow. Qui veut la fin, veut les moyens.

And at this point she suddenly grew frightened.[381] This road that she was treading, into what grim and stony places would it lead her? Gundred, for the first time in her life, began to feel afraid of herself. The intense fire of the righteous passion that consumed her, well, it was alarming, although it was so righteous. So righteous? A very faint flicker of hesitation dawned in Gundred’s mind. Was this passion of hers so righteous? It was carrying her, she felt, toward actions that sooner or later might be dark and dreadful; all the more important, then, to make sure beforehand that it was an inspiration of Heaven, not, by any chance, a temptation from Hell. Hitherto Gundred had never doubted that the Almighty had created her for a shining instance of the soul which is temptation-proof; now, however, she began to waver in her belief that she, alone of mortal beings, was set above the wiles of evil. After all, she was human; it was just barely imaginable that this uplifting ardour that she felt might proceed from the Powers of darkness rather than from those of light. That anger and hatred are often laudable she knew well, but this anger and hatred of hers were so devastating, so tyrannous that she could not, in all candour, feel herself absolutely certain of their celestial origin. She felt, as she pondered the matter, that she was indeed showing proper conscientiousness, an almost unworthy tenderness towards that Amalekite of an enemy; but the question was so important, so much hung on it, that no labour could be wasted in making sure as to the rights and wrongs of the case.

After all, though, would the Almighty have allowed her to entertain such passions if He had not meant her to indulge them? Yet even the greatest saints had been tempted by the devil. Indeed, the greater the saint the greater the temptation. The problem was nice, and required careful weighing. In any other case[382] she would readily have conceded that such a passion might have been inspired without the connivance of the Almighty; in her own she was so perfectly, though so humbly, convinced that she lived and spoke as the mouthpiece of Heaven itself that she could hardly conceive it possible but that any feeling she nourished must, of necessity, be just and holy, through the very fact that it was she, the Lady Gundred Darnley, who had engendered and developed it. However, a pious doubt now besieged her, and she dutifully cast about in her mind for means to solve this riddle that her scrupulous sense of right had set before her. Until this was decided, she felt that it would be unfair to proceed to extremities even against Ivor Restormel. But how to decide it?

Prayer, Gundred felt, was the only obvious method. The Almighty must be asked to declare as to the sanctity of the crusade that she was meditating. Gundred, filled with the consciousness of holiness, would, nevertheless, go to Heaven to have that consciousness confirmed. In all ways she was clean and blameless, worthy of the celestial attention. She looked doubtfully for a moment at the little fair curls that lay on her dressing-table. But after all, they could not really be called a fraud on the Almighty, for were they not built up out of her own hoarded combings? And, for the rest, there was no other spot of deceit or frailty anywhere in her. So she knelt in confidence, and prayed. If her hatred for Ivor Restormel were wicked, would God give a sign by causing it to die immediately? On the other hand, if it continued to thrive in her heart, she would take its persistence as a sign that it was very pleasing in the sight of Heaven, and might be pursued to its ultimate extremities. She laboured the point once more, so that Heaven could not possibly fail to grasp[383] it. If to-morrow she still hated Ivor Restormel, she would understand that her hatred was pious and profitable; if she should awake feeling filled with love and pity for him, then she must believe that her previous inspiration had been a temptation of the Evil One. Filled with a sense of imminent revelation, Gundred went to bed, and could hardly sleep for anxiety as to the morrow, and the sentiments that the morrow would show forth.

It was late when she woke from tardy and troubled dreams. Over her soul for a minute or two there brooded a heavy weight of mystery. Something wonderful was immediately to happen. But for a moment she could not discern what it was. Then she remembered her prayer, and fell to scanning her morning’s feelings for its answer. The revelation was at hand. But it would only burst upon her fully when she had come face to face with her imagined enemy. In a ferment of anxiety she had herself dressed, then hurried downstairs, her colour perceptibly heightened and her demeanour almost ruffled by the tense anxiety of her expectation. Into the morning-room she hastened, eager to find Ivor Restormel. There he was; she paused upon the threshold watching him, and waiting for the miraculous guidance that Heaven would certainly vouchsafe. Had her feelings for him changed during the night? In a flash of satisfaction the answer came, admitting no further question or cavil.

For she hated him as much as ever. Yes, certainly as much as ever—even more, perhaps. And nothing could so clearly prove, after her prayers, that her hatred was pleasing to the Almighty. If it had been evil, He would, of course, have annulled it, according to request. God evidently meant her to hate Ivor Restormel, and to doubt any more would be nothing short of wicked infidelity. Triumphant in perfect[384] satisfaction, in self-complacency restored and enhanced by this prodigious proof of God’s approval, Gundred addressed herself quietly to everyday life once more. Strengthened in her Heaven-sent attitude of mind, she advanced towards the breakfast-table with an added majesty of calm, and scattered greetings with a fair assumption of benevolence. With the answer to her prayer a sense of rest had come upon her and made it easier for her to be kind even to Ivor Restormel. She found the others of her party busy discussing some new and interesting point. Jim made haste to enlighten her.

‘The Rovers are going down Long Kern this morning, mother,’ he exclaimed. ‘And Ivor says he is going with them. I am awfully keen to go, too. Don’t you think I might?’

Gundred instantly avenged herself for the suffering that her son’s perverse disloyalty had been so long inflicting upon her.

‘Most certainly not,’ she replied. ‘I have a perfect horror of such places. You would not wish him to go, Kingston—no?’

‘There can’t be any danger,’ replied Kingston; ‘they will have efficient ropes and things. And Weston says there are the most wonderful caves at the bottom.’

‘Are you really going, Mr. Restormel?’ asked Gundred, without paying further heed to Jim’s protests or Jim’s disappointment. She saw in a second how brilliantly God had answered her prayers for help. Long Kern was a small but deadly rift in the limestone of the hill above, which dropped three hundred feet of narrow shaft sheer down to unfathomable caverns below. Gundred saw clearly that the whole problem of her life was to be solved by a miracle. For Heaven may make a miracle out of any particularly happy[385] coincidence. And what coincidence could possibly be more happy, more miraculous than this? For God clearly meant to destroy Ivor Restormel underground.

Ivor, meanwhile, declared that he was eagerly looking forward to the exploration. The Rovers, about a dozen of them, were to make the descent at midday, and meant to stay in the caves down below until they had unravelled, as far as possible, the labyrinth of their passages. As for precautions and methods, they were to use rope-ladders and guiding wires, so that no real risk of any sort could be anticipated.

Gundred listened with a wise smile. She knew better. Ivor Restormel might take as many precautions as he pleased; nothing could avail him against the combined weight of Gundred’s prayers and Heaven’s attention to them. This scheme of his was quite obviously the direct inspiration of the Powers above, working in Ivor to his destruction, as they had worked so many years ago for the fatal hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Egypt. Gundred blandly acquiesced, and lent an unusually pleasant countenance to the young man’s exposition of his plans. As he was so evidently doomed, she might fairly relax the righteousness of her wrath against him. Even for one merciful moment she thought of interposing, of saving Ivor’s life by deprecating his scheme. But the moment passed—she saw how irreverent it would be to counter Heaven’s design. And to oppose Ivor’s plan would necessarily be to oppose Heaven’s also. So Gundred piously resigned everything into God’s hands, and stood aside to let matters take their course.

Jim, meanwhile, was pressing her with pleas that he also might be allowed to join the party. His father, too, did not seem disinclined to grant his request. Gundred returned briskly to the immediate present.[386] No, no; this complicating element must on no account be introduced. She could trust Heaven to look after Ivor Restormel when once he was inside Long Kern, but she was not at all inclined to trust It to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty, when it came to arranging the rock-fall or the sudden rush of water which she anticipated with a certain holy complacency. All Ivor’s companions would almost certainly perish with him. On no account, then, must her own precious child run any risk of being included in the Evil One’s condemnation. She looked at Jim, so eager, so young, so brilliant.

There was nothing in the world her hidden nature loved so hungrily. By comparison even her great love for Kingston was very much a matter of pride and habit. But Jim was her own, of her own body, of her own blood, the crowning achievement of her life, the visible evidence of Heaven’s approval. In himself he was altogether lovely and delightful. And beyond all that again, beyond his own personal qualities, he stood to Gundred for the other thing she most venerated and cherished in the world—the glory of March and Brakelond. When he grew up he was to resume his mother’s name, and unite the resplendency of the Mortimers with the money of the Darnleys; and then, when her father died, it was an open secret that the dignities of the House would be revived in the person of her son. Gundred felt that through her own wifely and motherly virtues she had been privileged to support the banner of March and Brakelond. It was because she had always been so humble, so devout, that such an honour had been vouchsafed her, and her son was doubly precious in her eyes, not only in himself, but as the Duke of her own providing, who should continue, from his high place, to set an example of Evangelical piety to the people of England. She shuddered[387] at the thought of allowing her jewel to run into danger, and made haste to make it very certain to Jim that in no circumstances would he be allowed to share Ivor’s descent of Long Kern.

‘You don’t want to get wet and cold right down there in the horrid dark—no?’ concluded Gundred ingratiatingly.

‘But it won’t be wet,’ protested the boy. ‘Father has had the stream dammed about two hundred yards above the hole. Otherwise they would not have been able to go down at all. They would all have been drowned. The water is very high just now, after the rain. But, as it is, it will be quite dry down in the caves.’

But Gundred, strong in her private foresight of Heaven’s intentions, could not be swayed from her decision. Kingston was forced into the contest, and found himself compelled, for the sake of peace and dignity, to endorse his wife’s prohibition. Jim subsided at last, flushed with resentful disappointment. Gundred, meantime, was eating her egg dispassionately, with her usual seraphic tranquillity, while her heart was filled with strange, conflicting feelings. She looked across at Ivor Restormel with secret curiosity. She knew that he was doomed, and in the last moments could not stifle a certain pity which struck her as being faintly irreligious and painfully human. But he was so young and so beautiful, however evil and pernicious. To die down there in the eternal darkness, caught like a rat in a trap by the vengeance of Heaven, that was a pitiable fate. That it would assuredly descend Gundred could no longer entertain a doubt, and, when she remembered that it was her own prayers that had jogged Heaven into this intervention, she felt a dim pricking of remorse. During the few hours that remained she would be kind to the predestined victim.[388] Ivor was pleasantly surprised by the suavity with which Lady Gundred offered him a second cup of tea.

‘Do have some more,’ pleaded Gundred; ‘you will want to be properly prepared for this wonderful expedition of yours. Shall I tell them to make you up a little lunch?’

In her heart of hearts she knew that he would never need lunch on earth again, and her economical temper grieved to think of the hard-boiled eggs and the cress sandwiches that would be wasted if her offer were accepted. But, as he could not be expected to know how profitless Heaven intended to make any packets of lunch that she might provide, she felt that the kindness must in common decency be offered.

Ivor, however, replied that he hoped to be back at Ivescar in plenty of time for tea, and that he would not trouble about food till then. Gundred smiled and sighed to think how tragically he was mistaken. Her feelings were firm and rigid. Long thought and long anxiety had crystallized now into a mystic ecstasy of certainty. In the previous weeks she had known sore vacillations and distresses. But now the friendly Powers had made everything plain once more. Until this morning she had felt a certain weakness and need of earthly counsel; as a sound Evangelical Protestant, she had, of course, a proper pious horror of the priesthood and the confessional; and yet there had been times when she would have liked to pour forth her troubles to a fellow-creature. Had she consulted a doctor rather than a priest, he might have told her that an idée fixe is not the healthiest companion for a woman of self-contained and secret nature, and that the previous generations of March and Brakelond, feeble-minded or eccentric, held out a special prospect of disaster when such an idée fixe was cherished by herself. However, by now, the time for warnings and[389] advice was past. Gundred was fully possessed by the mania that had arisen so naturally from her devout habits and her weak mind, wrought on by jealousy and by a tyrannous consciousness of being herself the chosen of Heaven. Now she faced what she foresaw to be the punishment of her enemy, with the cold calm of Jael. She was glad that Heaven had taken the affair so promptly into its own hands.

Once before, her Celestial Ally, she remembered, had intervened by a miracle to relieve her from the perilous presence of Isabel Darrell. Now the same prodigy of favour was to be repeated in a different form, and who was she to carp at the tender mercies of the Almighty? With folded hands and placid heart she sat by to let matters take their appointed way. Nothing in all the world would so utterly have horrified her as the statement that she desired the death of Ivor Restormel. She repeated to herself again and again that she wanted nothing of the sort, but had perfect trust in the wisdom of the All-wise. She had no desires of any kind; nothing but pure faith. And to wish for anyone’s death, how very abominable and unchristian and unwomanly! Far, far from her gentle mind was any such truculent passion; the utmost that she would own to herself was that she would find it impossible to grieve when Heaven had taken her enemy to its mercy. And, as for altering the course of events, that was clearly out of the question. She could only await what Heaven should send. She now forgot that she herself, as it were, had given Heaven a nudge in the matter. She deliberately disclaimed all responsibility, and plumed herself on the mildness and resignation that her conduct showed. Stiff and calm in what by now was nothing short of monomania, the unfortunate woman sat and smiled, as her own damnation passed onwards to its accomplishment.

Meanwhile, however, her husband was making a suggestion. She came back out of her dream to hear it.

‘Why shouldn’t you and I and Jim go up to Long Kern and watch them go down?’ he said, anxious to indemnify Jim as far as possible for the disappointment which his mother had inflicted. As soon as Gundred understood the proposition she gasped. This seemed almost too heavy a trial for her to bear. Then she suddenly understood that this was the sanctifying sacrifice that Heaven demanded of her. She must stand by and watch the fulfilment of her prayers so as to make the intervention of Heaven complete and holy. She signified her assent.

‘But we must be back in time for lunch, dear,’ she conditioned, living her dual life as ever, one-half of her personality dwelling perpetually in dining-rooms and drawing-rooms, while the other soared into the high domains of religious frenzy. Then, breakfast being over, she rose and went her way mechanically upon her household duties, pending the awful consummation of her destiny, at which she was so soon to assist.

At the appointed time she was ready for the start. The others were waiting for her in the hall, and they proceeded silently up towards the hills. Jim was too excited to talk much; a scheme that demanded all his attention was budding in his brain; Gundred, by now, was moving in a remote world far above earthly speech, in communion with the invisible. Ivor himself vaguely discerned some strange exaltation beneath the restraint of Gundred’s mood, and was reluctant to intrude his conversation. And Kingston himself was so sick and tired of his long struggle to achieve the impossible recognition that he had not the heart nor the temper to say much to the perverse human individuality that intervened so bitterly between him and the eternal memory it contained. So they surmounted the long[391] ridges of limestone, and came out at last upon the stretches of moor above that undulated gently upward towards the steep skirt of the Simonstone. The air that morning was clean and pure, filled with a white light and a bracing virility of tone; much rain had fallen in the last two days, and the atmosphere was moist and brilliant in colouring; great snowy ranges of cloud went sailing gloriously across the wet azure of Heaven, and the great mountain above towered high overhead in soft masses of brown and purplish green, while before them the moorland rolled away in waves of rust-coloured velvet, to where it suddenly ceased, in a sharp line that seemed the rim of the world, beneath which, far below, lay the broad valley and the plain-lands. The surface of the fell had folds and dimples and crests, but in the huge monotony of the expanse it appeared a waved sea of colour. Down the little gullies ran here and there a stream, riotous after the rains of over-night; here and there in the levels lay a small peat-pool that glittered like a forgotten silver shield among the sedges. And then they came at last to a deeper, steeper cañon, which soon broke off in a blind hollow, ringed in by precipitous banks of heather. And here it was that the stream which filled the channel disappeared. Long Kern was impressive in its very unimpressiveness. It was but a short and narrow slit between two masses of flat white limestone, and across the orifice a fallen boulder made a bridge. Hardly two yards intervened between the one lip and the other. And in that space yawned a solid shaft of black night. Sheer down and down fell the water that filled the chasm, three hundred feet and more, to the rayless labyrinth of caverns that made the heart of the mountain. Coming suddenly across this rift in the moorland one would at first have thought it nothing, a drop, perhaps of a fathom or so. It[392] was terribly inconspicuous and prosaic. Then, stepping along the rocky bridge that crossed it, one might be struck with a suggestion of its possibilities, and, throwing a rock into the darkness, might hear, after a long pause, the crashing rumble of its impact far below, as it bounded and dashed from ledge to ledge and side to side of the gulf, till it sent faintly up to the listener’s ear its last remote thunderous echoes from the black lake three hundred feet below, where the dim roar reverberated along the walls and ramifications of the cavern.

On the brink the party paused. Ordinarily the place was lonely and desolate, but to-day there were signs of occupation and activities. Beams were stretched across the narrow gulf, and coils of rope were lying ready. The Rovers were scattered about, making their preparations for the descent. They were a club of professional men from the neighbouring large manufacturing towns, who amused themselves by exploring the recesses of the caves that honeycombed the Simonstone. On many previous occasions Kingston had made their efforts easier. And to-day, for the exploration of Long Kern, he had given them indispensable help by having the rain-swollen stream dammed off. The bed of the river was now nearly dry, and the water diverted into another channel. Otherwise, as Jim had said, the descent would have been impossible. The Rovers were very grateful, accordingly, for this spirited collaboration, and gave the Darnleys a warm welcome. To all four they extended an offer to make the descent, and when it appeared that Ivor Restormel was the only one who would accept their invitation, they showed a little disappointment. With Jim especially they pled to accompany them, tantalizing him cruelly, and were only made to desist at last by the unequivocal firmness[393] of Lady Gundred’s hostility towards the proposal. And so they set about the last preparations. Gaily talking and laughing among themselves, they proceeded to the fastening of ropes and the final arrangements for the descent.

Suddenly Gundred could bear the ordeal no longer. The matter-of-fact, innocent cheerfulness of it all was too much for her, with her terrible secret foreknowledge. She knew that Heaven had doomed every one of those happy people, so as to make sure of Ivor Restormel. Of course, he alone might fall, or strangle, or have a stone dropped on his head. But, on the whole, it was far more likely, far more in accordance with Scriptural precedent, that guilty and innocent should all perish together. So much the worse for the innocent! Her mystic exaltation did not go the length of protesting against their fatal plan at the eleventh hour, but it was not quite firm and faithful enough to bear the grim spectacle unmoved. She turned hastily and moved away up the empty bed of the stream, leaving Jim and her husband to watch the descent. From the bend in the river-bed she turned to take a last look at her enemy. He was still chattering and smiling with his friends, adapting the rope, adjusting satchels and packages. Kingston was saying something at which they both laughed. Then Gundred, very sick and heavy at heart, in spite of her sense of sacred ecstasy, turned the corner and was out of sight of the pothole.

Kingston eyed the narrow gulf of darkness with unspoken dread. Now, at the last moment, he disliked Ivor’s determination to share the descent. He hated the idea of watching the boy disappear into that night below. It seemed too symbolic of that eternal night into which the restored memory must one day pass again. And yet, the granting of his own importunate[394] desire, what had it brought him except the bitterness of a yet fiercer, more insatiable desire? For a while he would even be glad to have rest from his tormenting, baffling intimacy with the secret thing that could never hear the cry of his voice. Let the boy go down, then, into the darkness, carrying with him that wonderful mystical thing that he enshrined. Kingston’s fingers were raw and bleeding, his whole soul broken and agonized with long fruitless plucking and battering at the locked doors of that shrine. Let it go, then, for half an hour, and leave him at peace. As it had returned to him once before, out of the greater darkness of the grave, so, in the course of a few moments, it would come back to light again from the darkness of the pit, and all his torments would be renewed, growing ever keener and fiercer towards the dim end that he dared not try to foresee. The knowledge of doom was black and heavy upon him as he watched the boy preparing for his disappearance, and, in the concentration of his bitter mood, he hardly heard the voice of Jim, now once more raised in eager pleading to be allowed the joy of the descent.

Gundred meanwhile was wandering on in a stupor, not thinking, not daring to think. The whole of life seemed to her to be hanging in suspense. The next half-hour was to vindicate her righteousness and make dreadfully manifest the majesty of Heaven. Her brain oscillated in coma, and she was no longer conscious of any pain or any feeling at all. Everything passed from her mind except the actual physical pleasure of the moment, the keen freshness of the air, the lovely colours of life, the myriad little voices that haunted the world. Then suddenly they were all merged in one vehement, rushing murmur. She looked down. She had arrived at the dam that diverted the stream.

A bank of turf and stones had been built, and against its barrier the brown water surged and ravened angrily, in a froth of white bubbles and spume, eager to take its old way down into the pothole and the caverns below. Disappointed, however, of its hope, it must needs go foaming and scolding along an unaccustomed course, over green grasses, drenched and streaming in its current, and down a slope of rush and sedge. Soothed unconsciously by its hum, Gundred sat down and idly watched the raging swirl of the water. It was well that the stream had been thus firmly held back and diverted, for a huge mass of water it was that made it so turbulent. After two days’ rain on the Simonstone, all the waters of the mountain were in flood, and the Long Kern should naturally have been filled with a roaring spate. Suddenly Gundred’s human consciousness was vaguely aware of an alteration. Something seemed to be shifting, the noise of the fretted torrent changing its note. Then she saw a filament of water percolating. As she watched, it widened. The dam was not strong enough to bear the surging wrath behind it. The dam was breaking; Gundred awoke with a violent start. She rose and turned impulsively towards the pothole—on the point of running, of shrieking a warning, of doing something helpful or human. Then, in an instant, she understood that she could do nothing—understood what it was that Heaven had achieved for her. Her prayer had been answered. She must give thanks, and stand aside.

Firmly, decidedly, with head carried high, and the fanatic’s mad light in her eyes, Gundred turned away from the stream and walked swiftly home across the moor. What came after was the work of Heaven. Heaven must take full responsibility. Heaven had broken the dam; Heaven might easily have ordained[396] that the descent should not yet have commenced. Gundred had done nothing. Heaven had done it all. She could only go quietly home and trust in the wise mercies of Providence. In an hour or so she would hear what had happened.

But, though she did not know it, the strain on her endurance was fearfully heavy. She found her mind perpetually wandering back to the Long Kern, wondering in an agony whether the explorers had already embarked on their adventure when that roaring volume of brown water had swept thunderously down upon them—wondering whereabouts in that perilous chasm it had caught them, what it must feel like to be so suddenly, so fearfully battered out of life, and swept away into the abysses of the Underworld. Her brain was a sickening chaos. Fire and water, fire and water; the two great moments of her life had come to her through fire and water. Through the roaring waters of that broken dam she vaguely remembered the roaring fires of Brakelond. Isabel—Isabel—in a way, had given her life for Gundred; and Gundred?—Gundred, after many years, had, in a way, stood by and watched the taking of other lives. Dimly, instinctively, she could not refrain from comparing the two catastrophes, from feeling a blind, illogical sense that they stood in some mystic relation to each other. And so, alone, she came at last to Ivescar.

Her training stood her in good stead, and enabled her to go subconsciously through the routine duties of her day. She did not put off lunch when her husband failed to return, but ate it in solitary state, and heartily—recognising that it was always her duty to sustain her body. Her soul, however, was very far away. In her inmost heart she knew that Ivor Restormel was dead. She did not dare to face the knowledge and understand it, but it was there, gnawing, persistent. She[397] steeled herself to bear the terrible news that Jim and Kingston must soon be bringing back. And lunch must be kept hot for them. As the hours went by and brought no certainty to end her growing suspense, the pandemonium of clamouring voices in Gundred’s brain grew louder, more confused, more frightening. She seemed on the very edge of something very horrible—she, the favourite, the chosen, the glorified of Heaven. Something very horrible was surging into sight. In another moment she would see it. Terror—mysterious, ghastly—seized and gripped her. Then in the silence she heard approaching footsteps. The Horror was at hand. Gundred rose, pale and trembling, exerting all her forces, even in this last moment, to preserve the outward decorum of her demeanour. The door opened, and her husband came into the room. She stared at him in dumb dread. For a moment he could command no words. In silence his eyes met hers. His voice was low and husky and shattered, when at last he had gathered strength to speak.

She interrupted him. Now, in the fulfilment of her destiny, a dreadful courage flowed back to her.

He was too busy with his own grief to notice that she seemed prepared for what she was about to hear.

‘The dam,’ he answered—‘the dam. It broke. It burst as soon as they had gone down.’

Gundred clasped her hands tightly to prevent their trembling from being observed. She spoke as if in a dream.

‘And Ivor,’ she asked, unconsciously using the Christian name—‘Ivor, is he safe?’

‘Safe?’ he cried—‘safe? Ivor is dead. They are[398] all dead. I waited till they had got the bodies up. The flood soon subsided, and the men were able to get down and find the bodies. That is why I waited.’

Gundred moaned. The reality was more crushing than she had ever feared. God had granted her desire, but in a terrific way, and its granting brought her small joy. She almost ceased to feel holy.

‘Oh, Kingston,’ she murmured.... ‘Kingston, how awful! Too shocking to think of—too shocking to think of.’ She shook her head, covering her eyes as if to shut out the vision of those wretched adventurers caught and swept away by the flood which her prayers had loosed upon them. In that moment she felt a murderess. And the sanctity of the murder faded from her mind. Then she turned to the one spot of comfort in the whole disaster. What a merciful interposition of Heaven it was that had prevented her from allowing Jim to make the descent. That preservation in itself showed the special favour of the Almighty. He had set her son apart from the catastrophe that He had ordained. Her voice was calmer as she uncovered her face and spoke again.

‘And Jim?’ she asked. ‘What have you done with him? I do pray he did not see this dreadful sight. Poor little Jim! What an awful shock it would have been!’ Then she caught her husband’s eye, and paused in sudden terror of what she saw there.... ‘Kingston?’ she cried. He could give no answer. ‘Kingston?’ she repeated sharply, her voice rising to a shrill note of anxiety. ‘Kingston, what is it?’

‘Jim went down with the others,’ said her husband in a low, colourless tone. ‘He wanted so much to go. I said he might. Jim went down with the others.’

‘Then how did you succeed in saving him?’ she gasped. ‘How was it he was not drowned with the[399] others? Kingston, how did you succeed in saving him?’

‘I did not,’ answered Kingston very quietly. ‘Jim is drowned. They are bringing back his body now with the others.’

‘No,’ said Gundred, in a fearful stupefaction of calm—‘no, it is not possible. Jim is not dead. God must have saved him. It is not possible.’ Then her quiet cracked like glass. ‘Kingston,’ she screamed, ‘say it is not possible. Jim is safe.’

The father shook his head. ‘Jim is drowned,’ he repeated. ‘Drowned with the others.’

A deadly silence fell between them. Gundred pressed both hands to her head. The brain inside was a fiery wheel of agony, blinding her with the coruscations of its anguish. Then at last her hands sank to her sides and she looked up. Her face was fixed and ghastly, her voice unnaturally stolid as she spoke.

‘There!’ said Gundred very slowly and deliberately. ‘That is what comes of disobeying one’s mother!’ Then she broke abruptly into peal on peal of high laughter. Shrieking with horrible merriment, she fell back upon the sofa, rocking to and fro in the convulsion of her madness. Kingston dropped into a chair, and hid his head in his hands. It seemed as if that fearful noise would never cease. And yet he could see nothing, hear nothing. He was alone for ever in the black darkness. Everything was gone. And still Gundred sat and laughed.

[1]

Telegrams:
‘Scholarly, London.’

41 and 43 Maddox Street,
Bond Street, London, W.,
January, 1907.

Mr. Edward Arnold’s
List of New Books.

MEMORIES.

By Major-General SIR OWEN TUDOR BURNE, G.C.I.E., K.C.S.I.

Demy 8vo. With Illustrations. 15s. net.

Sir Owen Burne joined the 20th Regiment (now the Lancashire Fusiliers) in 1855. He came in for the end of the Crimean War and served throughout the Indian Mutiny, receiving two steps in rank for gallantry in the field. Not long afterwards he became Military Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Hugh Rose. He was Private Secretary to Lord Mayo until his assassination, and made a personal report on that tragic event to the Queen. Later he became Secretary in the Political and Secret Department of the India Office. He was also Private Secretary to Lord Lytton, when Viceroy, and served ten years as a member of the Council of India.

An interesting chapter of Sir Owen’s reminiscences deals with the year 1873, when, as Political A.D.C. to the Secretary of State for India, he assisted Sir Henry Rawlinson in taking charge of the Shah of Persia during his visit to England. Copious extracts are given from His Majesty’s diary, which has come into Sir Owen’s hands.

The book is a lively record of a distinguished career, freely interspersed with amusing stories, and illustrated with photographs of some noteworthy groups.

LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.

Dealing with such Problems of Existence as the origin of life, spirit and matter, free will, determinism and morality, and the sense of sin, Mr. Pearson lays down as postulates for a theory which philosophy and religion may be able to accept, and which science need not reject—(1) the existence of a Deity; (2) the immortality of man; and (3) a Divine scheme of evolution of which we form part, and which, as expressing the purpose of the Deity, proceeds under the sway of an inflexible order. The author’s method is well calculated to appeal to the general reader, though some of his conclusions as to the past and future of humanity differ considerably from popularly received opinions on the subject.

These brilliant essays possess an exceptional interest at the present moment when Liberal and Radical principles bulk so largely in the political arena. The six main subjects of Professor MacCunn’s volume are Bentham and his Philosophy of Reform, the Utilitarian Optimism of John Stuart Mill, the Commercial Radicalism of Cobden, the Anti-Democratic Radicalism of Thomas Carlyle, the Religious Radicalism of Joseph Mazzini, and the Political Idealism of T. H. Green.

This is an exceedingly interesting series of letters on the political and social situation in India, China, Japan, and the Far East generally.

Being a Sketch of a Winter’s Trip to some of the Unknown Waters of the Upper Nile.

The object of the expedition described in this book was to survey the Musha and Boma plateaux, which lie between the River Akobo and Lake Rudolf. It was organized by Mr. W. N. McMillan, an experienced American traveller, and was remarkably successful, though the fact that one of the caravans marched thirty-eight days on half-rations, largely through a country flooded by incessant rain, shows that the excursion was very far from being altogether a picnic. Mounts Ungwala and Naita were ascended, and hundreds of square miles of previously unexplored country were surveyed and mapped. The accounts of the abundance of game will make the sportsman’s mouth water.

A considerable amount of the description of scenery and life on the Nile and Sobat is extracted from the journal of Mrs. McMillan, who accompanied her husband. Many of the illustrations are from drawings made on the spot by Mr. Jessen, cartographer of the expedition.

In the course of a prolonged residence at Zanzibar as consular representative of Germany, Dr. Brode became intimately acquainted with the celebrated adventurer Tippoo Tib, and succeeded in inducing him to write the story of his life. This he did, in Swaheli, using Arabic characters, which Dr. Brode transcribed for translation into German. The material thus supplied by Tippoo Tib has been expanded by Dr. Brode into a remarkable picture of Africa before and during its transition into the hands of the white man.

Author of ‘Customs and Lore of Modern Greece,’ ‘Feda, and other Poems,’ ‘The Unknown Madonna,’ ‘Ballads of the Fleet,’ etc.

In this masterly work Sir Rennell Rodd deals with a curiously interesting and fascinating subject which has never been treated of in English, though a few scanty notices of the period may be found. It is gratifying to know that the British School in Athens has of late turned its attention to the Byzantine and Frankish remains in the Morea. Meanwhile this book will fill a great blank in the historical knowledge of most people.

This is an important contribution to the study of Thucydides. Having attributed the causes of the Peloponnesian War almost entirely to commercial factors, Mr. Cornford shows how Thucydides, free from modern ideas of causation, unfolds the tragedy of Athens, led by Fortune at Pylos, by the Hybris and Infatuation of Cleon and Alcibiades, to the Nemesis of Syracuse. The book will be found interesting by all students of history. All passages from Greek authors are quoted in English in the text, which can be understood without reference to the Greek in the footnotes.

This is an entirely new translation abridged from the Greek. Although primarily intended for the use of schools, it should be found acceptable by the general reader.

Like its predecessor, this book is not only a mine of interesting and amusing sketches of life among the poor, but, in its more serious aspect, a remarkable and most valuable corrective of many widely prevalent and erroneous views about the habits of thought and ethics of the poorer classes.

Author of ‘Reminiscences of the Course, the Camp, and the Chase,’ ‘A Fishing Catechism,’ and ‘A Shooting Catechism.’

This, the third of Colonel Meysey-Thompson’s invaluable handbooks, will appeal to hunting men as strongly as the previous volumes did to lovers of rod and gun. The information given is absolutely practical, the result of forty years’ experience, and is largely conveyed in the form of Question and Answer. The arrangement is especially calculated to facilitate easy reference.

In this little book Lady Bell has entered upon a new branch of literature. It is not a novel, but a description of the industrial and social condition of the ironworkers of the North Country.

Being HENRI DE TOURVILLE’S ‘Histoire de la Formation Particulariste,’ translated by M. G. Loch.

The articles which are here presented in the form of a volume were contributed by the author to the French periodical La Science Sociale over a period of six years ending in February, 1903. His death occurred within a few days of his completing the work. M. de Tourville, after showing that the transformation of the communal into the particularist family took place in Scandinavia, and was largely due to the peculiar geographical character of the Western slope, traces the development of modern Europe from the action of the particularist type of society upon the fabric of Roman civilization.

This fresh instalment of Sir Herbert Maxwell’s delightful ‘Memories of the Months’ will be welcomed by lovers of his descriptions of country life.

To this, the third, edition of these attractive letters, Mr. Bernard Holland has added a large number of new letters, which were not included in the second edition, having been found or contributed since the date of its publication. The book is now in its final and complete form.

There are very few persons living whose knowledge of English Society is, literally, so extensive and peculiar as Lady Dorothy Nevill’s, and fewer still whose recollections of a period extending from the day of the postchaise to that of the motor-car are as graphic and entertaining as hers. In the course of her life she has met almost every distinguished representative of literature, politics and art, and about many of them she has anecdotes to tell which have never before been made public. She has much to say of her intimate friends of an earlier day—Disraeli, the second Duke of Wellington, Bernal Osborne, Lord Ellenborough, and a dozen others—while a multitude of more modern personages pass in procession across her light-hearted pages. A reproduction of a recent crayon portrait by M. Cayron is given as frontispiece.

The phrase ‘a charmed life’ is hackneyed, but it may be used with peculiar appropriateness to describe Colonel Robertson’s military career. ‘The history of my nose alone,’ says the cheery old soldier in his Preface, ‘would fill a chapter,’ and, indeed, not only his nose, but his whole body, seem to have spent their time in, at all events, running a risk of being seriously damaged in every possible way. The book, in fact, is simply full of fine confused fighting and hair-breadth escapes.

Joining the 31st Regiment in 1842, Colonel Robertson took part in the Sutlej Campaign from Moodkee to Sobraon. He was in the Crimea, and throughout the Mutiny he commanded a regiment of Light Cavalry, doing repeatedly the most gallant service. The incidents of life in Ireland and the Ionian Islands during the intervals of peace are worthy of ‘Charles O’Malley,’ and are described with something of Lever’s raciness of touch.

The author, after serving nearly two and a half years in the South African War, was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Orange River Colony Repatriation Department, and subsequently Assistant Director of Relief under the Government. His information is thus not only first-hand but unique. The book is illustrated with some extremely interesting photographs.

The late Mr. Haskett Smith was a well-known authority on the Holy Land, and in this book he personally conducts a typical party of English tourists to some of the more important sites hallowed by tradition.

The change of Government, with the consequent variety of political topics, very greatly enhances the attraction of this new volume of cartoons by ‘Sir F. C. G.’ If the increased acerbity of political relations is found to be slightly reflected in these later cartoons, the many fresh and interesting studies are no less happily handled than those produced under the Conservative régime.

THE SUNDERED STREAMS.
By REGINALD FARRER,
Author of ‘The Garden of Asia’ and ‘The House of Shadows.’

BENEDICT KAVANAGH.
By GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM,
Author of ‘The Seething Pot’ and ‘Hyacinth.’

An Account of the First Mission sent by the American Government to the King of Kings.

Commissioner To Abyssinia, 1903-1904; American Consul-General; Fellow of the American Geographical Society; Soci dou Felibrige.

The object of this American Mission to the Emperor Menelik was to negotiate a commercial treaty. The Mission was extremely well received, and the expedition appears to have been a complete success. The picture drawn by Mr. Skinner of the Abyssinians and their ruler is an exceedingly agreeable one; and his notes on this land of grave faces, elaborate courtesy, classic tone, and Biblical civilization, its history, politics, language, literature, religion, and trade, are full of interest; there are also some valuable hints on the organization and equipment of a caravan.

During the last few years Tibet, wrapped through the centuries in mystery, has been effectively ‘opened up’ to the gaze of the Western world, and already the reader has at his disposal an enormous mass of information on the country and its inhabitants. But there is in Western Tibet a region which is still comparatively little known, which is especially sacred to the Hindu and Buddhist, and in which curious myths and still more curious manners abound; and it is of this portion of the British Borderland, its government, and the religion and customs of its peoples, that Mr. Sherring writes.

The book contains a thrilling account by Dr. T. G. Longstaff, M.B., F.R.G.S., of an attempt to climb Gurla Mandhata, the highest mountain in Western Tibet, with two Swiss guides.

LETTERS OF GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L., LL.D., Hon. Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.

Dr. Birkbeck Hill’s ‘Letters’ form, with a few connecting links written by his daughter, an autobiography whose charm lies in its intimate portrayal of a character which was, in its curious intensity, at once learned, tender, and humorous. He wrote as he talked, and his talk was famous for its fund of anecdote, of humour, of deep poetic feeling, of vigorous literary criticism, and no less vigorous political sentiment. As an Oxford undergraduate, he was one of the founders, together with Mr. Swinburne, Prof. A. V. Dicey, and Mr. James Bryce, of the Old Mortality Club. He was intimately connected also with the Pre-Raphaelites. At college, at home, on the Continent, or in America, everywhere he writes with the pen of one who observes everything, and who could fit all he saw that was new into his vast knowledge of the past. His editions of ‘Boswell’s Johnson,’ of ‘Johnson’s Letters,’ and ‘The Lives of the Poets’ have passed into classical works. But that his writings were not exclusively Johnsonian is abundantly shown by such books as the Letters of Hume, Swift, General Gordon, and Rossetti, as well as by his ‘Life of Sir Rowland Hill,’ his ‘History of Harvard University,’ and various collections of essays.

Associate and Lecturer of Newnham College, Cambridge; Author of ‘Friends of the Olden Time,’ ‘Theodore of Studium,’ etc.

This series of actual Letters written to an actual Godchild on the subject of Confirmation is intended for parents and teachers who either feel that some of the instruction to be derived from the Catechism is obscured by archaism of style and thought, or who desire something in the way of a supplement to the Catechism. It is not intended to take the place of works of formal religious instruction.

Sometime Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of Latin in the University Of Cambridge.

These translations were originally printed for private circulation in the autumn of 1884, a few months before the author’s death. They were never published, and for years past the price asked for the book second-hand has been high. It has therefore been decided, with the consent of Munro’s representatives, to reprint the work, so that those who are interested in Latin Verse and in Munro may acquire a copy at a reasonable price.

Sir Arthur Clay, Bart., says of this book: ‘I have had a good deal of experience of “relief” work, and I have never yet come across a book upon the subject of the “poor” which shows such true insight and such a grasp of reality in describing the life, habits, and mental attitude of our poorer fellow-citizens.... The whole book is not only admirable from a common-sense point of view, but it is extremely pleasant and interesting to read, and has the great charm of humour.’

Principal of University College, Bristol; Author of ‘The Springs of Conduct,’ ‘Habit and Instinct,’ etc.

For this edition, Professor Lloyd Morgan has entirely rewritten, and very considerably enlarged, his well-known work on this important subject. He has, in fact, practically made a new book of it.

Author of ‘Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes,’ ‘Ballads of the Boer War,’ ‘Misrepresentative Men,’ ‘Fiscal Ballads,’ ‘Verse and Worse,’ Etc.

Admirers of Captain Graham’s ingenious and sarcastic verse will welcome this fresh instalment, which contains, among the ‘other verses,’ a number of ‘Poetic Paraphrases’ and ‘Open Letters’ to popular authors.

The four stories which make up this delightful children’s book are entitled ‘Luck-Child,’ ‘The Princess and the Ordinary Little Girl,’ ‘Professor Green,’ and ‘A Position of Trust.’

This is a charming collection of forty-three French and German songs for children translated and adapted by Capt. Graham and Mrs. Newmarch. It includes nine songs arranged by J. Brahms for the children of Robert and Clara Schumann.

Professor of Dermatology at King’s College; Physician to the Skin Departments, King’s College and the Great Northern Central Hospitals.

This book is designed especially to meet the needs of those who have to treat the commoner skin diseases. While giving short descriptions of the rarer forms, the chief attention is bestowed on those more frequently met with. The diagnostic features of the various eruptions are dealt with in detail, in order that they may give help in determining the lines of treatment. The more recent work in clinical pathology, both microscopical and chemical, is for the first time brought into use in an English text-book. The book is freely illustrated with original photographs.

THE CHEMICAL INVESTIGATION OF GASTRIC AND INTESTINAL DISEASES BY THE AID OF TEST MEALS.

This book opens with a description of the method of obtaining gastric contents, and the estimation of the capacity of the stomach. The various Test Meals employed in diagnosis are next described. The macroscopical examination of the gastric contents and conclusions to be drawn on inspection are discussed, and a short description of the microscopical appearances follows. The chemical analysis of the gastric contents is then given. The Organic Diseases of the Stomach are all separately described, with specimen cases of analysis to illustrate them. The Functional Diseases of the Stomach, which are more frequently met with in ordinary practice than the Organic Diseases, are also very fully given. The chemical methods employed in the investigation of Intestinal Diseases are then described with great fulness, four types of Test Meals being given.

‘To acquire the necessary dexterity to examine a patient systematically so as to overlook nothing, to recognise and put in its proper place the particular pathological condition found, and finally, but chiefly, to treat both the patient and the local abnormality successfully, seem to me the three most important objects of a course of study at a special hospital. This book, which is founded on lectures given at the Throat Hospital with these objects in view, is now published in the hope of helping those who are either attending or have attended a short course of study at special departments or special Hospitals for Diseases of the Throat and Nose....’

Physician To Out-Patients at the Westminster Hospital, and Joint Lecturer on Medicine in the Medical School; Physician To the Royal National Orthopædic Hospital; Assistant Physician to the Italian Hospital.

This book, which is intended for the use of senior students and practitioners, to supplement the ordinary text-books, discusses the most modern methods of diagnosis of Diseases of the Nervous System. The substance of the work, which is illustrated by original diagrams and clinical photographs, nearly 200 in number, was originally delivered in lecture form to students at the Westminster Hospital and to certain post-graduate audiences in London and elsewhere. The subject of Nervous Diseases is approached from the point of view of the practical physician, and the diagnostic facts are illustrated, as far as possible, by clinical cases.

Assistant Obstetric Physician and Lecturer to Pupil Midwives at the London Hospital; Examiner to the Central Midwives Board.

This book is intended to supply the pupil midwife with all that is necessary to meet the requirements of the Central Midwives Board, and to be a practical handbook for the certificated midwife.

Associate Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers; Associate of the City and Guilds of London Institute.

The scope of this book is intended to be such as to cover approximately the range of reading in alternating current machinery and apparatus considered by the author as desirable for a student of general engineering in his last year—as, for example, a candidate for the Mechanical Sciences Tripos at Cambridge.

This work is a practical text-book of Applied Hydraulics, in which complete technical theories and all useful calculations for the erection of hydraulic plant are presented. It is not a purely descriptive work designed merely for popular use, nor is it an abstruse treatise suitable only for engineers versed in higher mathematics. The book is well illustrated, and is full of Arithmetical Examples fully worked out. In these examples, no knowledge is assumed beyond that of simple arithmetic and the elements of geometry.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sundered Streams: The History of a Memory That Had No Full Stops

THE
SUNDERED STREAMS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

Transcriber’s Notes:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE