The Project Gutenberg EBook of This Freedom, by A. S. M. Hutchinson

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Title: This Freedom

Author: A. S. M. Hutchinson


Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6415]
This file was first posted on December 8, 2002
Last Updated: November 8, 2016

Language: English

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Produced by Carrie Fellman and Charles Aldarondo







THIS FREEDOM

By A. S. M. Hutchinson

“With a great sum obtained I this freedom.”--ACTS xxii, 28.



CONTENTS


PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN

PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN

PART THREE--HOUSE OF CHILDREN

PART FOUR--HOUSE OF CARDS




PART ONE--HOUSE OF MEN




CHAPTER I


Rosalie’s earliest apprehension of the world was of a mysterious and
extraordinary world that revolved entirely about her father and that
entirely and completely belonged to her father. Under her father, all
males had proprietory rights in the world and dominion over it; no
females owned any part of the world or could do anything with it. All
the males in this world--her father, and Robert and Harold her brothers,
and all the other boys and men one sometimes saw--did mysterious and
extraordinary things; and all the females in this world--her mother, and
Anna and Flora and Hilda her sisters, and Ellen the cook and Gertrude
the maid--did ordinary and unexciting and generally rather tiresome
things. All the males were like story books to Rosalie: you never knew
what they were going to do next; and all the females were like lesson
books: they just went on and on and on.

Rosalie always stared at men when she saw them. Extraordinary and
wonderful creatures who could do what they liked and were always doing
mysterious and wonderful things, especially and above all her father.

Being with her father was like being with a magician or like watching
a conjuror on the stage. You never knew what he was going to do next.
Whatever he suddenly did was never surprising in the sense of being
startling, for (this cannot be emphasised too much) nothing her father
did was ever surprising to Rosalie; but it was surprising in the sense
of being absorbingly wonderful and enthralling. Even better than reading
when she first began to read, and far better than anything in the world
before the mysteries in books were discoverable, Rosalie liked to sit
and stare at her father and think how wonderful he was and wonder what
extraordinary thing he would do next. Everything belonged to him. The
whole of life was ordered with a view to what he would think about it.
The whole of life was continually thrown off its balance and whirled
into the most entrancing convulsions by sudden activities of this most
wonderful man.

Entrancing convulsions! Wonderful, wonderful father with a bull after
him! Why, that was her very earliest recollection of him! That showed
you how wonderful he was! Father, seen for the first time (as it were)
flying before a bull! Bounding wildly across a field towards her with
a bull after him! Wonderful father! Did her mother ever rush along in
front of a bull? Never. Was it possible to imagine any of the women she
knew rushing before a bull? It was not possible. To see a woman rushing
before a bull would have alarmed Rosalie for she would have felt it was
unnatural; but for her father to be bounding wildly along in front of a
bull seemed to her perfectly natural and ordinary and she was not in the
least alarmed; only, as always, enthralled.

Her father, while Rosalie watched him, was not in great danger. He came
ballooning along towards Rosalie, not running as ordinarily fit and
efficient men run, but progressing by a series of enormous leaps and
bounds, arms and legs spread-eagling, and at each leap and bound always
seeming to Rosalie to spring as high in the air as he sprung forward
over the ground. It would not have surprised Rosalie, who was then about
four, to see one of these stupendous leaps continue in a whirling flight
through mid-air and her father come hurtling over the gate and drop with
an enormous plunk at her feet like a huge dead bird, as a partridge once
had come plunk over the hedge and out of the sky when she was in a lane
adjacent to a shooting party. It would not have surprised her in the
least. Nothing her father did ever surprised Rosalie. The world was his
and the fulness thereof, and he did what he liked with it.

Arrived, however, from the bull, not as a ballooning bird out of
the sky, but as a headlong avalanche over the gate, Rosalie’s father
tottered to a felled tree trunk, and sat there heaving, and groaned
aloud, “Infernal parish; hateful parish; forsaken parish!”

Rosalie, wonderingly regarding him, said, “Mother says dinner is waiting
for you, father.”

Her mother and her sisters and the servants and the entire female
establishment of the universe seemed to Rosalie always to be waiting for
something from her father, or for her father himself, or waiting for or
upon some male other than her father. That was another of the leading
principles that Rosalie first came to know in her world. Not only were
the males, paramountly her father, able to do what they liked and always
doing wonderful and mysterious things, but everything that the females
did either had some relation to a male or was directly for, about, or on
behalf of a male.

Getting Robert off to school in the morning, for instance. That was
another early picture.

There would be Robert, eating; and there was the entire female
population of the rectory feverishly attending upon Robert while he ate.
Six females, intensely and as if their lives depended upon it, occupied
with one male. Three girls--Anna about sixteen, Flora fourteen, Hilda
twelve--and three grown women, all exhaustingly occupied in pushing out
of the house one heavy and obstinate male aged about ten! Rosalie used
to stand and watch entranced. How wonderful he was! Where did he go to
when at last he was pushed off? What happened to him? What did he do?

There he is, eating; there they are, ministering. Entrancing and
mysterious spectacle!

Robert, very solid and heavy and very heated and agitated, would be
seated at the table shoving porridge into himself against the clock.
One of his legs, unnaturally flexed backward and outward, is in the
possession of Rosalie’s mother who is on her knees mending a hole in his
stocking. The other leg, similarly contorted, is on the lap of Ellen
the cook, who with very violent tugs, as if she were lashing a box, is
lacing a boot on to it. Behind Robert is Anna, who is pressing his head
down with one hand and washing the back of his neck with the other. In
front of him across the table is Hilda, staring before her with bemused
eyes and moving lips and rapidly counting on drumming fingers. Hilda is
doing his sums for him. Beside him on his right side, apparently engaged
in throttling him, is Gertrude the maid. Gertrude the maid is trying
to tear off him a grimed collar and put on him a clean collar. Facing
Gertrude on his other side is Flora. Flora is bawling his history in his
ear.

Everybody is working for Robert; everybody is working at top speed for
him, and everybody is loudly soliciting his attention.

“Oh, do give over wriggling, master Robert!” (The boot-fastener.)

“‘Simon de Montford, Hubert de Burgh, and Peter de Roche.’ Well, say it
then, you dreadful little idiot!” (The history crammer.)

“Oh, master Robert, do please keep up!” (The collar fastener.)

“Keep down, will you!” (The neck washer.)

“Four sixes are twenty-four and six you carried thirty!” (The
arithmetician.)

“Robert, you must turn your foot further round!” (The stocking-darner.)

“‘The Barons were now incensed. The Barons were now incensed. The Barons
were now incensed.’ Say it, you ghastly little stupid!”

“Do they make you do these by fractions or by decimals?... Well, what do
you know, then?”

Entrancing spectacle!

Now the discovery is by everybody simultaneously made and simultaneously
announced that Robert is already later in starting than he has ever been
(he always was) and immediately Rosalie would become witness of the last
and most violent skirmish in this devoted attendance. Everybody rushes
around hunting for things and pushing them on to Robert and pushing
Robert, festooned with them, towards the door. Where was his cap? Where
was his satchel? Where was his lunch? Where were his books? Who had seen
his atlas? Who had seen his pencil box? Who had seen his gymnasium belt?
Was his bicycle ready? Was his coat on his bicycle? Was that button on
his coat?

With these alarums at their height and the excursions attendant on
them at their busiest, another splendid male would enter the room
and immediately there was, as Rosalie always saw, a transference of
attendance to him and a violent altercation between him and the first
splendid male. This new splendid male is Rosalie’s other brother,
Harold. Harold was eighteen and him also the entire female population
of the rectory combined to push out of the rectory every morning. Harold
was due to be pushed off half an hour later than Robert, and as he was
a greater and more splendid male than Robert (though infinitely lesser
than her father) so the place to which he was pushed off was far more
mysterious and enthralling than the place to which Robert was pushed
off. A school Rosalie could dimly understand. But a bank! Why Harold
should go to sit on a bank all day, and why he should ride on a bicycle
to Ashborough to find a bank when there were banks all around the
rectory, and even in the garden itself, Rosalie never could imagine.
Mysterious Harold! Anna had told her that men kept money in banks;
but Rosalie had never found money in a bank though she had looked; yet
banks--of all extraordinary places--were where men chose to put their
money! Mysterious men! And Harold could find these banks and find this
money though he never took a trowel or a spade and was always shiningly
clean with a very high collar and very long cuffs. Wonderful, wonderful
Harold!

Robert was due to be pushed off half an hour before Harold was due to be
pushed off, but he never was; the two splendid creatures always clashed
and there was always between them, because they clashed, a violent scene
which Rosalie would not have missed for worlds. A meeting of two males,
so utterly unlike a meeting of two females, was invariably of the most
entrancingly noisy or violent description. When ladies came to the
rectory to see her mother they sat in the drawing-room and sipped tea
and spoke in thin voices; but when men came to see her father and went
into the study, there was very loud talking and often a row. Yes, and
once in the village street, Rosalie had seen two men stand up and thump
one another with their fists and fall down and get up and thump again.
When two women, her sisters or others, quarrelled, they only shrilled,
and went on and on shrilling. It was impossible to imagine the collision
of two women producing anything so exciting and splendid as invariably
was produced by the collision of two males.

As now----

In comes Harold in great heat and hurry (as men always were) with his
splendid button boots in one hand and an immense pair of shining cuffs
in the other hand.

“Haven’t you gone yet, you lazy young brute?”

“No, I haven’t, you lazy old brute!”

Agitated feminine cries of “Robert! Robert! You are not to speak to
Harold like that.”

“Well, he spoke to me like that.”

“Yes, and I’ll do a jolly sight more than speak to you in a minute if
you don’t get out of it. Get out of it, do you hear?”

“Shan’t!”

“Robert! Robert! Harold! Harold!”

“Well, get him out of it, or he’ll be sorry for it. Why is he always
here when I’m supposed to be having my breakfast? Not a thing ready, as
usual. Look here, where I’m supposed to sit--flannel and soap! That’s
washing his filthy neck, I suppose. Filthy young brute! Why don’t you
wash your neck, pig?”

“Why do you wear girl’s boots with buttons, pig?”

Commotion. Enthralling commotion. Half the female assemblage hustle the
splendid creature Robert out of the door and down the hall and on to his
bicycle; half the female assemblage cover his retreat and block the dash
after him of the still more splendid Harold; all the female assemblage,
battle having been prevented and one splendid male despatched, combine
to minister to the requirements of the second splendid male now
demanding attention.

Busy scene. Enthralling spectacle. There he is, eating; shoving sausages
into himself against the clock just as Robert had shovelled porridge
into himself against the clock. One ministrant is sewing a button on to
his boot, another with blotting paper and hot iron is removing a stain
from his coat, divested for the purpose; one is pouring out his coffee,
another is cutting his bread, a third is watching for his newspaper by
the postman. And suddenly he whirls everything into a whirlpool just as
men, if Rosalie watches them long enough, always whirl everything into a
whirlpool.

“Oh, my goodness, the pump!”

Chorus, “The pump?”

“The bicycle pump! Has that young brute taken the bicycle pump?”

“Yes, he took it. I saw it.”

Commotion.

“Catch him across the field! Catch him across the field! Where are
my boots? Where the devil are my boots? Well, never mind the infernal
button. How am I going to get to the bank with a flat tyre? Can’t some
one catch him across the field instead of all standing there staring?”

Away they go! Rosalie, seeking a good place for the glorious spectacle,
is knocked over in the stampede for the door. Nobody minds Rosalie.
Rosalie doesn’t mind--anything to see this entrancing sight! Away they
go, flying over the meadow, shouting, scrambling, falling. Out after
them plunges Harold, shirt-sleeved, one boot half on, hobbling, leaping,
bawling. Glorious to watch him! He outruns them all; he outbellows
them all. Of course he does. He is a man. He is one of those splendid,
wonderful, mysterious creatures to whom, subject only to Rosalie’s
father, the entire world belongs. Look at him, bounding, bawling!
Wonderful, wonderful Harold!

But Robert is wonderful too. If it had been Anna or Flora or Hilda
gone off with the pump, she would have been easily caught. Not Robert.
Wonderful and mysterious Robert, wonderfully and mysteriously pedalling
at incredible speed, is not caught. The hunt dejectedly trails back. The
business of pushing Harold out of the house is devotedly resumed.

And again--enthralling spectacle--just as the reign of Robert was
terminated by the accession of Harold, so the dominion of Harold is
overthrown by the accession of father. Harold is crowded about with
ministrants. Nobody can leave him for a minute. Rosalie’s father
appears. Everybody leaves Harold simultaneously, abruptly, and as if by
magic. Rosalie’s father appears. Everybody disappears. Wonderful father!
Everybody melts away: but Harold does not melt away. Courageous
Harold! Everybody melts; only Harold is left, and Rosalie watching; and
immediately, as always, the magnificent males clash with sound and fury.

Rosalie’s father scowls upon Harold and delivers his morning greeting.
No “Good morning, dear,” as her mother would have said. “Aren’t you gone
yet?” like a bark from a kennel.

“Just going.”

Wonderful father! A moment before there had been not the remotest sign
of Harold ever going. Now Harold is very anxious to go. He is very
anxious to go but, like Robert, he will not abandon the field without
defiance of the authority next above his own. While he collects his
things he whistles. Rosalie shudders (but deliciously as one in old Rome
watching the gladiators).

“Do you see the clock, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Well, quicken yourself, sir. Quicken yourself.”

“The clock’s fast.”

“It is not fast, sir. And let me add that the clock with which you could
keep time of a morning, or of any hour in the day, would have to be an
uncommonly slow clock.”

Harold with elaborate unconcern adjusts his trouser clips. “I should
have thought that was more a matter for the Bank to complain of, if
necessary. I may be wrong, of course----”

“You may be wrong, sir, because in my experience you almost invariably
are wrong and never more so than when you lad-di-dah that you are right.
You may be wrong, but let me tell you what you may not be. You may not
be impertinent to me, sir. You may not lad-di-dah me, sir.”

“Father, I really do not see why at my age I should be hounded out of
the house like this every morning.”

“You are hounded out, as you elegantly express it, because morning after
morning, owing to your disgustingly slothful habits, you clash with me,
sir. My breakfast is delayed because you clash with me, and the house
is delayed because you clash with me, and the whole parish is delayed
because you clash with me.”

“Perhaps you’re not aware that Robert clashes with me.”

“Dash Robert! Are you going or are you not going?”

He goes.

“Bring back the paper.”

He brings it back.

Wonderful father!

Rosalie’s father gives a tug at the bell cord that would have dislocated
the neck of a horse. The cord comes away in his hand. He hurls it across
the room.

Glorious father!

There was a most frightful storm one night and Rosalie, in Anna’s bed
with Flora crowded in also and Hilda shivering in her nightgown beside
them, too young to be frightened but with her sister’s fright beginning
to communicate itself to her, said, “Ask father to go and stop it.”

“Fool!” cried Flora. “How could father stop the storm?”

Why not?




CHAPTER II


Flora’s sharp and astounding reply to that question of Rosalie’s
was recalled by Rosalie, with hurt surprise at Flora’s sharpness and
ignorance, when, shortly afterwards, she found in a book a man who
could, and actually did, stop a storm. This was a man called Prospero in
a book called “The Tempest.”

She was never--that Rosalie--the conventional wonder-child of fiction
who reads before ten all that its author probably never read before
thirty; but she could read when she was six and she read widely and
curiously, choosing her entertainment, from her father’s bookshelves,
solely by the method of reading every book that had pictures.

There was but one picture to “The Tempest,” a frontispiece, but it
sufficed, and at the period when Rosalie believed the ownership of
the world to be vested in her father and under him in all males, “The
Tempest,” because it reflected that condition, was the greatest joy of
all the joys the bookshelves discovered to her. She read it over and
over again. It presented life exactly as life presented itself to the
round eyes of Rosalie: all males doing always noisy and violent and
important and enthralling things, with Prospero, her father, by far the
most important of all; and women scarcely appearing and doing only
what the men told them to do. Miranda’s appearances in the story were
indifferently skipped by Rosalie; the noisy action and language in the
wreck, and the noisy action and language of the drunkards in the wood
were what she liked, and all the magic arts of Prospero were what she
thoroughly appreciated and understood. That was life as she knew it.

Rosalie’s father, when Rosalie thought the world belonged to him and
revolved about him, was tall and cleanshaven and of complexion a dark
and burning red. When he was excited or angry his face used to burn as
the embers in the study fire burned when Rosalie pressed the bellows
against them. He had thick black eyebrows and a most powerful nose. His
nose jutted from his face like a projection from a cliff beneath a clump
of bushes. He had been at Cambridge and he was most ferociously fond of
Cambridge. One of the most fearful scenes Rosalie ever witnessed was on
one boat-race day when Harold appeared with a piece of Oxford ribbon in
his buttonhole. It was at breakfast, the family for some reason or other
most unusually all taking breakfast together. Rosalie’s father
first jocularly bantered Harold on his choice of colour, and
everybody--anxious as always to please and placate the owner of the
world--laughed with father against Harold. But Harold did not laugh.
Harold smouldered resentment and defiance, and out of his smouldering
began to maintain “from what chaps had said” that Oxford was altogether
and in every way a much better place than Cambridge. In every branch of
athletics there were better athletes, growled Harold, at Oxford.

Rosalie has been watching the embers in her father’s face glowing to
dark-red heat. Everybody had been watching them except Harold who,
though addressing his father, had been mumbling “what chaps had said” to
his plate.

“Athletes!” cried Rosalie’s father suddenly in a very terrible voice.
“Athletes! And what about scholars, sir?”

Harold informed his plate that he wasn’t talking about scholars.

Rosalie’s father raised a marmalade jar and thumped it down upon the
table so that it cracked. “Then what the dickens right have you to talk
at all, sir? How dare you try to compare Oxford with Cambridge when you
know no more about either than you know of Jupiter or Mars? Athletes!”
 He went off into record of University contests, cricket scores, running
times, football scores, as if his whole life had been devoted to
collecting them. They all showed Cambridge first and Oxford beaten and
he hurled each one at Harold’s head with a thundering, “What about that,
sir?” after it. He leapt to scholarship and reeled off scholarships and
scholars and schools, and professors and endowments and prize men, as
if he had been an educational year-book gifted with speech and with
particularly loud and violent speech. He spoke of the colleges of
Cambridge, and with every college and every particular glory of every
college demanded of the unfortunate Harold, “What have you got in Oxford
against that, sir?”

It was awful. It was far more frightening than the night of the storm.
Nobody ate. Nobody drank. Everybody shuddered and tried by every means
to avoid catching father’s rolling eye and thereby attracting the
direct blast of the tempest. Rosalie, who of course, being a completely
negligible quantity in the rectory, is not included in the everybody,
simply stared, more awed and enthralled than ever before. And with much
reason. As he declaimed of the glories of the colleges of Cambridge
there was perceptible in her father’s voice a most curious crack or
break. It became more noticeable and more frequent. He suddenly and most
astoundingly cried out, “Cambridge! Cambridge!” and threw his arms out
before him on the table, and buried his head on them, and sobbed out,
“Cambridge! My youth! My youth! My God, my God, my youth!”

Somehow or other they all slipped out of the room and left him
there,--all except Rosalie who remained in her high chair staring upon
her father, and upon his shoulders that heaved up and down, and upon the
coffee from an overturned cup that oozed slowly along the tablecloth.

Extraordinary father!

Rosalie’s father had been a wrangler and one of the brilliant men of his
year at Cambridge. All manner of brilliance was expected for him and of
him. He unexpectedly went into the Church and as unexpectedly married.

His bride was the daughter of a clergyman, a widower, who kept a small
private school in Devonshire. She helped her father to run the school
(an impoverished business which, begun exclusively for the “sons of
gentlemen,” had slid down into paying court to tradesmen in order to get
the sons of tradesmen) and she maintained him in the very indifferent
health he suffered. Harold Aubyn, the brilliant wrangler with the
brilliant future, who had begun his brilliance by unexpectedly entering
the Church, and continued it by unexpectedly marrying while on a holiday
in the little Devonshire town where he had gone to ponder his future (a
little unbalanced by the unpremeditated plunge into Holy Orders) further
continued his brilliance by unexpectedly finding himself the assistant
master in his father-in-law’s second-rate and failing school. The
daughter would not leave her father; the suitor would not leave his
darling; the brilliant young wrangler who at Cambridge used to dream of
waking to find himself famous awoke instead to find himself six years
buried in a now third-rate and moribund school in a moribund Devonshire
town. He had a father-in-law now permanent invalid, bedridden. He had
four children and another, Robert, on the way.

It was his father-in-law’s death that awoke him; and he awoke
characteristically. The old man dead! Come, that was one burden lifted,
one shackle removed! The school finally went smash at the same time.
Never mind! Another burden gone! Another shackle lifted! Dash the
school! How he hated the school! How he loathed and detested the lumping
boys! How he loathed and abominated teaching them simple arithmetic (he
the wrangler!) and history that was a string of dates, and geography
that was a string of capes and bays, and Latin as far as the
conjugations (he the wrangler!) how he loathed and abominated it! Now a
fresh start! Hurrah!

That was like Rosalie’s father--in those days. That way blew the cold
fit and the hot fit--then.

The magnificent fresh start after the magnificent escape from the morass
of the moribund father-in-law and the moribund school and the moribund
Devonshire town proved to be but a stagger down into morass heavier and
more devastating of ambition. He always jumped blindly and wildly into
things. Blindly and wildly into the Church, blindly and wildly into
marriage, blindly and wildly into the school, blindly and wildly, one
might say, into fatherhood on a lavish scale. Blindly and wildly--the
magnificent fresh start--into the rectory in which Rosalie was born.

It was “a bit in the wilds” (of Suffolk); “a bit of a tight fit” (L200 a
year) and a bit or two or three other drawbacks; but it was thousands
of miles from Devonshire and from the school and schooling, that was the
great thing; and it was a jolly big rectory with a ripping big
garden; and above all and beyond everything it was just going to be a
jumping-off place while he looked around for something suitable to his
talents and while he got in touch again with his old friends of the
brilliant years.

It was just going to be a jumping-off place, but he never jumped off
from it; a place from which to look around for something suitable, but
instead he sunk in it up to his chin; a place from which to get in touch
again with his friends of the brilliant years, but his friends were all
doing brilliant things and much too busy at their brilliance to open up
with one who had missed fire.

The parish of St. Mary’s, Ibbotsfield, had an enormous rectory, falling
to pieces; an enormous church, crumbling away; an enormous area, purely
agricultural; and a cure of a very few hundred agricultural souls,
enormously-scattered. Years and years before, prior to railways, prior
to mechanical reapers and thrashers, and prior to everything that took
men to cities or whirled them and their produce farther in an hour than
they ever could have gone in a week, Ibbotsfield and its surrounding
villages and hamlets were a reproach to the moral conditions of the
day in that they had no sufficiently enormous church. Well-intentioned
persons removed this reproach, adding in their zeal an enormous rectory;
and the time they chose for their beneficent and lavish action was
precisely the time when Ibbotsfield, through its principal land-owners,
was stoutly rejecting the monstrous idea of encouraging a stinking,
roaring, dangerous railway in their direction, and combining together by
all means in their power to keep the roaring, dangerous atrocity as far
away from them as possible.

It thus, and by like influences, happened that, whereas one generation
of the devoutly intentioned sat stolidly under the reproach of an
enormous and thickly populated area without a church, later generations
with the same stolidity sat under the reproach of an enormous church,
an enormous rectory and an infinitesimal stipend, in an area which a man
might walk all day without meeting any other man.

But the devout of the day, not having to live in this rectory or preach
in this church or laboriously trudge about this area, did not unduly
worry themselves with this reproach.

That was (in his turn) the lookout of the Rev. Harold Aubyn--also his
outlook.

He is to be imagined, in those days when Rosalie first came to know him
and to think of him as Prospero, as a terribly lonely man. He stalked
fatiguingly about the countryside in search of his parishioners, and his
parishioners were suspicious of him and disliked his fierce, thrusting
nose, and he returned from them embittered with them and hating them. He
genuinely longed to be friendly with them and on terms of Hail, fellow,
well met, with them; but they exasperated him because they could not
meet him either on his own quick intellectual level or upon his own
quick and very sensitive emotional level. They could not respond to his
humour and they could not respond, in the way he thought they ought to
respond, to his sympathy.

He once found a man--a farm labourer--who in conversation disclosed a
surprising interest in the traces of early and mediaeval habitation
of the country. The discovery delighted him. In the catalogue of a
secondhand bookseller of Ipswich he noticed the “Excursions in the
County of Suffolk,” two volumes for three shillings, and he wrote and
had them posted to the man. For days he eagerly looked in the post
for the grateful and delighted letter that in similar circumstances he
himself would have written. He composed in his mind the phrases of the
letter and warmed in spirit over anticipation of reading them. No letter
arrived.

When he came into the rectory from visiting he was always asking, “Has
that man Bolas from Hailsham called?” Bolas never called. He furiously
began to loathe Bolas. He was furious with himself for having “lowered
himself” to Bolas. Bolas in his ignorance no doubt thought the books
were a cheap charity of cast-off lumber. Uncouth clod! Stupid clod!
Uncouth parish! Hateful, loathsome parish! For weeks he kept away from
Hailsham and the possible vicinity of Bolas. One day he met him. Bolas
passed with no more than a “Good day, Mr. Aubyn.” He could have killed
the man. He swung round and pushed his dark face and jutty nose into the
face of Bolas. “Did you ever get some books I sent you?”

“Ou, ay, to be sure, they books----”

He rushed with savage strides away from the man. All the way home he
savagely said to himself, aloud, keeping time to it with his feet,
“Uncouth clod, ill-mannered clod, horrible, hateful place! Uncouth
clods, hateful clods, horrible, hateful place!”

That was his attitude to his parishioners. They could not come up to
the level of his sensibilities; he could not get down to the level of
theirs.

With the few gentle families that composed the society of Ibbotsfield he
was little better accommodated. They led contented, well-ordered lives,
busy about their gardens, busy about their duties, busy about their
amusements. His life was ill-ordered and he was never busy about
anything: he was always either neglecting what had to be done or doing
it, late, with a ferocious and exhausting energy that caused him to
groan over it and detest it while he did it. In the general level of his
life he was below the standard of his neighbours and knew that he was
below it; in the sudden bounds and flights of his intellect and of his
imagination he was immeasurably above the intel-lects of his neighbours
and knew that he was immeasurably above them. Therefore, and in both
moods, he commonly hated and despised them. “Fools, fools! Unread,
pompous, petty!”

At the rectory, among his family, he seemed to himself to be surrounded
by incompetent women and herds of children.

He was a terribly lonely man when Rosalie first came to know him and
thought of him as Prospero. He is to be imagined in those days as a
fierce, flying, futile figure scudding about on the face of the parish
and in the vast gaunt spaces of the rectory, with his burning face and
his jutting nose, trying to get away from people, hungering to meet
sympathetic people; trying to get way from himself, hungering after the
things that his self had lost. In his young manhood he was known for
moods of intense reserve alternated by fits of tremendous gaiety and
boisterous high spirits. (“A fresh start! Hurrah!” when release from the
school came. “What does anything matter? Now we’re really off at last!
Hurrah! Hurrah!”) In his set manhood, when Rosalie knew him, there were
substituted for the fits of boisterous spirits, paroxysms of violent
outburst against his lot. “Infernal parish! Hateful parish! Forsaken
parish!” after the ignominy of flight before the bull. “Blow the dinner!
Dash the dinner! Blow the dinner!” after wrestling a soggy steak from
his pocket and hurling it half a mile through the air. These and that
single but terrible occasion of “Cambridge! Cambridge! My youth! My God,
my God, my youth!”

A terribly lonely man.




CHAPTER III


The Aubyn family occupied only a portion of the enormous rectory. There
was a whole floor upstairs, and there were several rooms on the ground
and first floors, that were never used, were unfurnished except for odds
and ends of lumber left behind by the previous vicar, and were never
entered. Rosalie once explored them all, systematically though very
fearfully, and also very excitedly. She was searching for some one, for
two people.

In the household she knew her father and her mother, her brothers and
sisters and the servants; but there were two mysterious inhabitants of
whom she often heard but whom she never saw and never could find. It
used to frighten her sometimes, lying awake at night, or creeping about
the house of an evening, to think of those two mysterious people hidden
away somewhere and perhaps likely to pounce on her out of the dark. What
did they eat? Where did they live? What did they do? What were they?

One of these two eerie and invisible people was heard of from her
father. Several times Rosalie had heard him, when talking to persons
not of the family, speak of “my wife.” The other eerie and invisible
creature was heard of from her mother: “My husband.”

Where were they? Of all the mysterious things which Rosalie used to
wonder over in those days, this undiscoverable “wife” and “husband” were
the most mysterious of all, and more mysterious than ever after that
day on which, walking on tiptoe for fear of coming upon them suddenly,
holding her breath and pausing in fearful apprehension before entering
the untenanted rooms upstairs, she explored the whole house in search of
them. She got to know all sorts of little odds and ends about them; that
the wife felt the cold very much, for instance, for she had heard her
father say so; and that the husband did not like mutton, for her mother
told that to Mr. Grant the butcher: and she was often hot on their
tracks for she had heard her father say, “My wife is upstairs” and had
rushed upstairs and searched; and her mother say, “My husband is in the
garden,” and had run into the garden and hunted. But all these clues
only deepened the mystery. They were never to be found.

It was mysterious.

Then one day the wife (she heard) fell ill, and through her great
concern about that--for she was profoundly interested in these people
and used to feel awfully sorry for them, hidden away like that perhaps
with no fire and nothing to eat but mutton--the mystery was explained.

With the family she was going towards church one Sunday morning and
she heard her father tell a lady that “my wife” was not very well
that morning and couldn’t come. Rosalie during the service prayed very
earnestly for the wife’s recovery and took the opportunity of praying
also that she might be permitted to see the wife “if she is not very
frightening, O Lord, and the husband too, if possible, for Jesus
Christ’s sake, amen.”

And at lunch, having thought of nothing else all the morning, there was
suddenly shot out of her the question, “Father, is your wife any better
now?”

Rosalie commonly never spoke at all at meals; and as to speaking to her
father, though it is obvious she must have had some sort of intercourse
with him, this famous question (a standing joke in the house for
years) was the single direct speech of those early years she ever could
remember. She spoke to her father when she was bidden to speak in the
form of messages, generally about meals being ready, or relative to
shopping commissions he had been asked to execute; but he was far too
wonderful, powerful and mysterious for conversation with him on her
own initiative. “Father, is your wife any better now?” stood out in her
later recollection, alone and lonelily startling.

There was from all the company an astounded stare and astounded gasp;
all the table sitting with astounded eyes, forks suspended in mid-air,
mouths half open in astonishment, and Rosalie sitting in her high chair
wonderingly regarding their wonderment. What were they staring at?

There was then an enormous howl of laughter, led by Rosalie’s father,
and repeated, and louder than before, because it was so very unusual
for the family to be laughing in accord with father. Gertrude, the
maid, fled hysterically from the room and laughter howled back from the
kitchen.

Rosalie’s father said, “You’d better go and ask your mother.” Her mother
had stayed in bed that day with a chill.

Robert “undid” Rosalie--a wooden rod with a fixed knob at one end went
through the arms of her high chair and was fastened by a removable knob
at the other end--and Rosalie slid down very gravely, and with their
laughter still echoing trod upstairs to her mother’s bedside and related
what she had been told to ask, and, on inquiry, why she had asked it. “I
only said ‘Father, is your wife any better now?’” and on further inquiry
explained her long searching after the undiscoverable pair.

Rosalie’s mother laughed also then, but had a sudden wetness in her
eyes. She put her arms about Rosalie and pressed her to her bosom and
cried, “Oh, my poor darling!” and explained the tremendous mystery. Wife
and husband, Rosalie’s mother explained, were the names used by other
people for her father and her mother. A man and a woman loved one
another very, very dearly (“as I loved your dear father”) and then they
lived together in a dear house of their own and then God gave them dear
little children of their own to live with them, said Rosalie’s mother.

This thoroughly satisfied Rosalie and completely entranced her,
especially about the presentation of the dear little children. She would
have supposed that naturally it thoroughly satisfied Anna and Harold
and Flora and the others; and the point of interest rests here, that
Rosalie’s mother also believed that this explanation of marriage and
procreation completely satisfied Anna at sixteen and Harold in the Bank
at eighteen. She never gave them any other explanation of the phenomenon
of birth; and it is to be supposed that, just as she instructed them
that God sent the dear little children, so she believed that God, at the
right time, in some mysterious way, communicated the matter to them in
greater detail. Years and years afterwards, Flora told Rosalie that
when Rosalie was born all the children were sent away to stay with a
neighbour and not allowed to return till Rosalie’s mother, downstairs,
was able to show them the dear little sister that God had surprisingly
delivered at the house, as it were in a parcel.

One is given pain by a state of affairs so monstrous; but one suffers
that pain proudly because one belongs, proudly, to a day in which
nothing but stark truth may go from mother to child, not even fairy
stories, not even Bible stories. Rosalie’s mother is gone and her kind
is no more, and in the graces and the manners of this day’s generation
one perceives, proudly, the inestimable benefits of the passing of her
kind. Lamentable specimen of her kind, she had no interests other than
her home and her husband and her children and the pleasures and the
treasures and the friends of her husband and her children. She belonged
to that dark age when duty towards others was the guiding principle of
moral life; she came only to the threshold of this enlightened age in
which duty to oneself is known to be the paramount and first and last
consideration of life as it should be lived.

Rosalie’s mother, whose name had been Anna Escott, kept at the bottom of
a drawer five most exquisite little miniatures. They were in a case of
faded blue plush, and they had been in that case and at the bottom of
one drawer or another ever since the girl Anna Escott, aged twenty, had
placed them in the case, then exquisitely blue and new and soft, and
given up painting miniatures forever, in order to devote her whole time
to looking after her invalid father and the failing preparatory school
that was his livelihood.

Rosalie was herself nearly thirty when she first saw the miniatures. She
was come back to the rectory from the pursuits that then occupied her to
visit, rather impatiently and rather vexedly, her mother on what proved
to be her death bed. She was tidying her mother’s drawers, impatient
with the amazing collection of rubbish they contained and hating herself
for being impatient, while her mother, on the bed, patiently watched
her; and she came upon the case and opened it and stared in astonishment
and admiration at the beauty of the five miniatures.

She asked her mother and her mother told her she had painted them. “I
used to do that when I was a girl,” said Rosalie’s mother.

All Rosalie’s impatience was drowned and utterly engulfed in a most
dreadful flood of emotion. She set down the case on the bed and flung
herself on her knees beside her mother and clasped her arms about her.

“Oh, mother, mother! Oh, beloved little mother!” But that is out of its
place.

Yes, that girl Anna Escott, who had an exquisite talent, and all sorts
of fond dreams of its development, gave it up wholly and entirely and
forever when her mother died and her father said, “I would like you,
Anna dear, to give up your painting and come and look after me and the
school now.”

Anna said, “Of course I will, Papa. It’s my duty. Of course I will.”

Girls did that, and parents and husbands asked them to do that, in the
days when Rosalie’s mother was a girl.

Rosalie’s mother gave away everything, first to her father, then to
her husband, then to her children. She believed the whole of the Bible,
literally, as it is written, from the first word of Genesis to the last
word of Revelations. She taught it as literal, final and initial
truth to all her children, and one knows how wickedly wrong it is now
considered to teach children that the Bible-stories are true. She taught
them the whole of the Bible from books called “Line Upon Line,” and “The
Child’s Bible,” and in stories of her own making, and from the Bible
itself. Regrettably, the ignorantly imposed-upon children loved it! Till
each child was eight she taught them everything at her knee. All the
nursery rhymes, and all the Bible, and reading out of “Step by Step,”
 and then “Reading Without Tears,” and then, in advancing series, the
“Royal Readers,” and writing, first holding their hands, and then--first
in pencil and afterwards with pens having three huge blobs to teach you
how to place your fingers properly--in copybooks graded from enormous
lines which had brick-red covers to astoundingly narrow little lines
enclosing pious and moral maxims which had severe grey covers; and the
multiplication tables and then simple arithmetic; and General Knowledge
out of “The Child’s Guide to Knowledge,” which asked you “What is
sago?” and required you to reply by heart, “Sago is a dried, granulated
substance prepared from the pith of several different palms.” “Where are
these palms found?” “These palms are found in the East Indies.”

Likewise history out of Mrs. Markham and “Little Arthur”; also, at a
ridiculously early age, how to tell the time and how to know the coinage
of the realm and its values; also, whether girl or boy, the making
of kettle-holders by threading brightly coloured wools through little
squares of canvas; also very many pieces of poetry: “Oft had I heard of
Lucy Grey,” and “It was the Schooner Hesperus” and hymns--also learnt
by heart and sung while Rosalie’s mother played the piano--“We are but
little children weak,” and “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”

All these things were taught at her knee to each child in turn by
Rosalie’s mother, and each was taught out of the self-same books,
miraculously preserved by Rosalie’s mother; the backs of most of them
carefully stitched and re-stitched, and marked all through by the dates
of each child’s daily lesson, written in pencil by Rosalie’s mother. The
dates ranged from 1869 when Harold was being taught and when the books
were fresh and clean, and Rosalie’s mother fresh and ardent with her
first-born, to 1884, when Rosalie was being taught, and the books
very old and thumbed and most terribly crowded with pencil marks, and
Rosalie’s mother no longer fresh but rather worn, but teaching as fondly
and earnestly as ever, because it was her duty. Literally at the knee of
Rosalie’s mother these things were taught. On her knee with one of her
arms about you for the Bible teaching; and standing at her knee, hands
behind you, for the teaching of most of the rest. Yes, that was the
early education, and the manner of the education, of Rosalie and of her
brothers and sisters, and one perceives with indignation the spectacle
of a mother wasting her time like that and wasting her children’s time
like that.

Rosalie’s mother did everything in the house and she was always doing
something in the house--for somebody else. She never rested and she
was always worried. Her brows were always wrinkled with the feverish
concentration of one anxiously doing one thing while anxiously thinking
of another thing waiting to be done. She had a driven and a hunted look.

Now Rosalie’s father had a driving and a hunting look.

Rosalie’s father in his youth threw away everything. Rosalie’s mother
throughout the whole of her life gave away everything. Rosalie’s father
was a tragic figure dwelling in a house of bondage; but he was at least
a tragic king, ruling his house and venting his griefs upon his house.
Rosalie’s mother was a tragic figure and she was a tragic slave in the
house of bondage. The life of Rosalie’s father was a tragedy, but a
tragedy in some measure relieved because he knew it was a tragedy and
could wave his arms and shout and smash things and hurl beefsteaks
through the air because of the tragedy of it. But the life of Rosalie’s
mother was an infinitely deeper tragedy because she never knew or
suspected that it was a tragedy.

Still, that is so often the difference between the tragedy of a woman
and the tragedy of a man.




CHAPTER IV


The very great difference between her father and her mother maintained
in Rosalie that early perception of the wondrousness of her father. She
loved her mother, but in the atmosphere surrounding her mother there was
often flurry and worry and there was nothing whatever in her mother to
mystify and entrance by sudden and violent eruptions of the miraculous.
She did not love her father for he was entirely too remote and awe-ful
for love, but he entranced her with his marvellousness. This maintained
in her also her perception of the altogether greater superiority of all
males over all females.

Rosalie came into her family rather like a new little girl first
entering a boarding school. When she was about four, and first beginning
to realise herself, the next in age to her was Robert, who not only was
at the immense distance of ten, but was of the male sex and therefore
had a controlling interest in the world. Then was Hilda who was twelve,
then Flora fourteen, then Anna towering away in sixteen, and then Harold
utterly removed in the enormous heights of eighteen, second only to
Rosalie’s father in ownership of the world and often awfully disputing
that supreme ownership.

So they were all immeasurably older than Rosalie; and they were not only
immeasurably older but, which counted for much more, they all had their
fixed and recognised places in their world just as girls of several
terms’ experience have their recognised places in their school, and for
Rosalie there seemed to be no place at all, just as for new girls there
is no place. Her brothers and sisters all had their fixed and recognised
places, their interests, their occupations, their friendships: they
all knew their own places and each other’s places; they had learnt
to respect and admit each other’s places; they knew the weight of one
another’s hand in those places; they were accustomed to one another;
they tolerated one another.

It was all very strange and wonderful and mysterious to Rosalie.

She was, as it were, pitchforked into this established and regulated
order and to find a place for her was like trying to fit a new spoke
into a revolving wheel. It cannot be done; and with Rosalie it could
not be done. The established wheel went on revolving in its established
orbit and the new spoke, which was Rosalie, lay outside and watched
it revolve. Intrusions within the circumference of the wheel commonly
resulted in a sharp knock from one of the spokes. No one was in any
degree unkind to Rosalie, but there was no proper place for her and
everybody’s will was in authority over her will. She rather got in the
way. To be with her was not to enjoy her company or to enjoy battle with
her and the putting of her company to flight. To be with her was to have
to look after her, and in the community of the rectory, every member,
when Rosalie came, was fully occupied in look-ing after itself and
defending itself from the predatory excursions of any other member.

What happened was that in time, just as a slight and negligible body
cannot be in the sphere of a powerful motion without being affected by
it, so Rosalie began to move sympathetically to the wheel but on her own
axis. She moved round with the wheel but she was not of the wheel and
she never became really incorporated with the wheel. The spokes were
revolving with incredible rapidity when she first, began to notice them
and they always remained relatively faster. There she was, sitting and
watching and wondering; and the twig grows as it is bent or as it is
left to bend. She looked on and absorbed things; and the first and by
far the deepest of her settled perceptions was that, though she was
subject to all powers, all girls and women were themselves subject to
the power of all boys and men.

Up to the age of eighteen, six years represents an enormous gulf in the
relative ages of brothers and sisters. You have only to figure it out in
the case of Rosalie to realise how far behind she was always left, and
why, though one of a family of six, she occupied a position outside the
group and was a watcher of them rather than a sharer with them. She was
four when Robert the next above her was ten, which is a baby against a
sturdy and well-developed giant; when she was eight Robert was fourteen,
which is a greater gulf than the first; when she was twelve Robert was
eighteen which, from eighteen’s point of view, is as the difference
between an aged man and an infant; and when she was sixteen Robert was
twenty-two, which is a schoolgirl against one of the oldest and most
experienced periods of life. She came in as a new little girl in a big
school; when she had been there eight years--counting from four, when
first she was conscious of arrival--she was still relatively the same:
there she was, twelve, with Robert eighteen and the others twenty,
twenty-two, twenty-four and twenty-six.

But there she is at eight when she had had four years’ experience from
the day of first seeing her father leaping before the bull and thinking
it was perfectly natural that he should leap before the bull. She had
learnt a tremendous lot in that second four years. She knew at eight
that the world did not belong to her father and that on that night of
the storm Flora was right to call her a fool for believing that he could
stop the storm. She knew he was not nearly so wonderful as she used
to think he was; but he was still enormously wonderful and, which she
thought rather curious, she began to see that he rather liked showing
her how wonderful he was. He could sharpen a pencil wonderfully, and he
could eat a herring wonderfully. The thing discovered was that he
was very proud of how wonderfully he could sharpen a pencil or eat a
herring. Strange father!

“Who sharpened that pencil? Your mother? H’nf! I should think so! No
woman can sharpen a pencil. Now look at me. Watch. I hold it in my left
hand, see? Arm supported against my body. Now look how I cut at it.
Bold, strong strokes, see? No niggling at it as if a mouse was nibbling
it; long, bold sweeps, slashes. See! Look at that. Ah, drat! That’s
because I was holding it down for you to see. Watch again. There! There,
that’s the way to sharpen a pencil. Look at that. Do you see that long,
firm point? See how clean and long those strokes are? That’s the way to
sharpen a pencil. Show that to your mother.”

He was as pleased with himself and as proud as if he had turned the
pencil into gold.

Funny father!

Or how to eat a herring.

“Herrings! Well, a herring is one of the most delicious fish, if it’s
eaten properly. There’s a right way to eat a herring and a wrong way.
Now watch me and I’ll show you how to eat a herring. Rosalie, watch.”

“Rosalie, dear,” (from her mother) “watch while your father shows you
how to eat a herring.”

All eyes on father demonstrating how to eat a herring!

And Rosalie used to notice this about the watching eyes. Her mother’s
eyes--most anxiously and nervously upon the operation, as if watching a
thing she would soon be called upon to perform and would not be able to
perform; the eyes of Robert (14) sulkily; of Flora (18) admiringly (it
was getting to be a complaint in the family circle that Flora “sucked
up” to father); the eyes of Anna (20) wearily; the eyes of Harold (22)
contemptuously.

The herrings (a very frequent dish at the rectory, so much cheaper than
meat) came headless to the table. First father nipped off the tail with
a firm, neat stroke. Then he deftly slit the herring down the stomach.
It fell into two exact perfectly divided halves. Then he lifted out the
backbone, not one scrap of flesh adhering to it, and laid it on the
side of his plate. Then four firm pressures of his knife and the little
lateral bones were exactly removed and exactly laid on the backbone.
Next a precise insertion of his fork and out came the silvery strip
known to Rosalie as “the swimming thing” and was laid in its turn upon
the bones, exactly, neatly, as if it were a game of spillikins. “Now
pepper. Plenty of pepper for the roe, you see. There. Now.”

And in about six mouthfuls father’s plate would be as clean as when it
was brought in, decorated rather than marred by the exquisitely neat
pile of the backbone, the tail, the little bones, and the silvery
swimming thing. “There! Delicious! That’s the way to eat a herring”;
and he would direct a glance at the plate of Rosalie’s mother. Rosalie’s
mother made a herring into the most frightful mess it was possible to
imagine. She spent the whole of her time in removing bones from her
mouth; and her plate, when she was half-way though, looked to contain
the mangled remains of about two dozen herrings. “Very few women know
how to eat a herring,” Rosalie’s father would say.

Wonderful father! How to sharpen a pencil, how to eat a herring, how to
do up a parcel, how to undo a parcel, how to cut your finger nails, how
to sit with regard to the light when you wrote or read, how to tie a
knot, how to untie a knot. Clever father, natty father!

Yes, still enormously wonderful father; but also rather strangely proud
of being wonderful father. Rosalie now was constantly being struck
by that. It began to give her rather a funny sensation. She couldn’t
describe the sensation or interpret it, but it was a feeling, when
father was glowing with pride over one of these things he did so
wonderfully well--a feeling of being rather uncomfortable, shy,
ashamed--something like that. She contracted the habit when father
beamed and glowed and looked around for applause of giving a sudden
little blink.

And it was the same in regard to Robert and the same in regard to
Harold. Robert at the height of his exhibitions of his wonderfulness
caused the funny feeling and the blink in her; and Harold at the height
of his exhibitions of his wonderfulness caused the funny feeling and the
blink in her. And the wonderfulness of Robert was always being shown off
by Robert, and the wonderfulness of Harold was always being shown off by
Harold. Men liked showing off how wonderful they were....

When Rosalie was about nine, she one day was permitted to have Lily
Waters in to tea with her. Lily Waters was the Doctor’s little girl,
also nine. For a great treat they had tea together out of Rosalie’s
doll’s tea service in the room called the schoolroom. Robert came home
unusually early from school and came into the schoolroom and began to
do wonderful things before the two little girls. He spoke in a very loud
voice while he did them. He stood on a footstool on his head and clapped
his boots together. He held his breath for seventy-five seconds by the
clock. He took off his coat and made Lily and Rosalie tie a piece of
string around his biceps and then he jerked up his arm and snapped the
string. Wonderful Robert! Lily screamed with delight and clapped her
hands, and the more she screamed and clapped, the louder Robert talked.
He did still more wonderful things. He held a cork to the flame of a
match and then blacked his nose and blacked a moustache with the cork.
He did a most frightfully daring and dangerous thing. He produced the
stump of a cigarette from his pocket and lit it and blew smoke through
his nose. Wonderful Robert! Lily went into ecstasies of delight. Rosalie
also went into ecstasies but also strongly experienced that funny
feeling. While Robert held his breath till his eyes bulged and till his
face was crimson, and while he danced about with his nose blacked, and
while he held the cigarette in his fingers and puffed smoke through his
nose--while he did these things Rosalie glanced at Lily (squealing) and
felt that funny feeling of being rather shy, uncomfortable, ashamed;
something like that; and blinked. Wonderful though Robert was, she felt
somehow rather glad when at last he went.

And just the same with Harold. At supper one night, Rosalie’s father not
being present, Harold talked and talked and talked about a call he had
paid at the house of some ladies in Ashborough. Wonderful Harold, to pay
a call all by himself! It appeared that he had been the only man there,
and when Rosalie’s mother said, “I wonder you didn’t feel shy, Harold,”
 he said with a funny sort of “Haw” sound in his voice, “Not in the
least. Haw! Why on earth should I feel shy? Haw.” He had evidently very
much entertained the party. The more he talked about it the more Rosalie
noticed the funny “Haw.” “They must have been very glad you came,”
 Rosalie’s mother said.

Harold put the first and second fingers of his right hand on his collar
and gave it a pull up. “I rather--haw--think they were,” Harold said.
“Haw.”

Rosalie gave that blink.

Years afterwards, when she was grown up, a grown man boastfully
said something in her presence, and in a flash were recalled father
dissecting a herring, Robert holding his breath till he nearly burst,
Harold hitching up his collar and with the “haw” sound saying, “I rather
think they were.” In a flash those childhood scenes, and instantly with
them interpretation of the funny feeling and the blink that they had
caused: they had been the rooting in her of a new perception added to
the impregnably rooted impression of the wonder and power of men,--the
perception that men knew they were wonderful and powerful and liked to
show off how wonderful and powerful they were.

They were superior creatures but they were apt to be rather
make-you-blinky creatures; that was the new perception.

On the day after her eighth birthday, the birthday itself being a
treat and a holiday, Rosalie began to do lessons with Hilda. Hilda, at
sixteen, had “finished her education” as had Anna and Flora at the same
age. Harold, who had been a boarder at a Grammar School, had stayed
there till he was eighteen; and Robert, ultimately, continued at
Helmsbury Grammar School till he was eighteen. It was apparent--and it
was another manifestation of the greater importance of males--that boys
had more education to finish, or were permitted longer to finish it,
than girls.

The school at which Anna, Flora and Hilda thus in the eight years
between leaving their mother’s knee at eight and completing their
education at sixteen, learnt everything it was possible to know, was
kept by two very thin ladies called (ungrammatically) the Miss Pockets.
The Miss Pockets were daughters of the former vicar of St. Mary’s and
inhabitant of the rectory, and on their father dying and Mr. Aubyn
coming, they established themselves in a prim villa near-by and did what
they called “took in pupils.” They were very thin, they had very long
thin noses, they were always very cold, and from the sharp end of the
long thin nose of the elder Miss Pocket there always depended, much
fascinating Rosalie, a shining bead of moisture.

Rosalie’s chief recollection of the Miss Pockets was of being constantly
met by them as she approached the age of eight, and of them always, on
these occasions, fondling icy hands about her neck and saying to her
father or her mother, “And when will our new little pupil be coming to
us?”

But no direct reply was ever given to this question, either by Rosalie’s
mother, who was always made to look uncomfortable when it was asked by
the Miss Pockets, or by Rosalie’s father who always seemed to jut out
his nose at it and make the Miss Pockets look thinner and colder than
ever.

On the morning of her eighth birthday, Rosalie received from the Miss
Pockets by post an illuminated text provided with a piece of red cord
for hanging on the wall and inquiring, rather abruptly,

“Who Hath Believed Our Report?”

Rosalie thought at first this was a plaintive question directly from
the Miss Pockets in their capacity as school-teachers and therefore
as licensed makers of reports; but immediately afterwards saw “Isaiah”
 printed under it in discreet characters--

“Who Hath Believed our Report? --Isaiah.”

and concluded that it was Isaiah who had believed it. On the back was
written in the tall, thin handwriting of the Miss Pockets, “To our
dear little pupil Rosalie, on her eighth birthday, from Agnes and Lydia
Pocket.”

In the afternoon, the Miss Pockets called at the rectory and there was
evidently some high mystery about their visit. Rosalie was in the study
looking for a drawing pin wherewith to affix her illuminated card to the
wall. Hilda ran in. “The Miss Pockets. Where’s father? Come out,” and
Rosalie was hurriedly run out and shut into the dining-room, leaving the
vindication of Isaiah in the matter of the report on the table. Opening
the door to a chink, Rosalie saw the Miss Pockets, shivering, the
permanent decoration on the nose of the elder Miss Pocket very
conspicuous and agitatedly swinging, ushered into the study, and
presently her father follow his jutty nose into the study after them,
and very shortly after that the Miss Pockets driven out as it were by
the jutty nose and looking thinner and colder than ever before.
Miss Lydia Pocket, who had lost the appendage to her nose and looked
curiously undressed and indelicate without it, was saying feebly, “But
it was understood. We always thought it was understood.”

They shuddered away; and when Rosalie went into the study immediately
afterwards to recover her card, there was upon the word Isaiah, as
though somebody had literally thrown doubt upon his belief of the
report, a large damp spot.

On the following day, Rosalie began lessons with Hilda.




CHAPTER V


The lessons with Hilda period lasted till Rosalie was twelve. “Take her
off your mother’s hands. That’s what you’ve left school for,” was her
father’s instruction to Hilda; and so there was Rosalie, put out from
her mother’s knee to the schoolroom like a small new ship out from the
haven to the bay; and there was that small mind of hers come in to the
company of Hilda and of Flora and of Anna with the obsession that men
were infinitely more important and much more wonderful than women. She
knew now that the world did not belong to men in the literal sense, but
belonged, as her mother had instructed her, to God; but she knew with
the abundant evidence of all that went on about her that everything in
the world was done for men and that women were largely occupied in
doing it; and she knew, from the same testimony, that men were much more
interesting to watch than women, rather in the way that dogs were much
more interesting than cats. Men, like dogs, were much more satisfactory:
that was it. Her mind was throwing out feelers towards the wonders of
the world and this was the feeler that was most developed. She came
to her sisters very highly sensitive to the difference between men and
women. And her sisters showed her the difference.

Anna was twenty then. Anna had “finished her education” four years ago.
She had left school “to help your mother in the house”; and when Flora,
two years later, finished her education and left school for the same
purpose, she found Anna grooved in the business of helping her mother in
the house and she was not in the least anxious to help Anna out of the
grooves and herself become imbedded in them.

This annoyed Anna.

Rosalie used to hear Anna say to Flora a dozen times a day, “I really
don’t see why you should be the one to do nothing but amuse yourself all
day long. I really don’t.”

Flora used to say, “Well, you’ve always done it”--whatever the duty in
dispute might be--“so why on earth should I?”

Then either Anna’s face would give a twitch and she would walk out of
the room, or her face would get very red and there would be a row.

Or sometimes Flora to Anna’s “I really don’t see why--” would say
enticingly, “Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then ask the Pope,” and Flora would give a mocking laugh and run away
out of the reach of Anna’s fury.

The sting in this was that Anna was suspected of having Roman Catholic
tendencies.

Flora was very pretty and had a gay, bold way. Anna was not pretty. She
had a great habit of compressing her lips, especially in encounters with
Flora, and somehow her face gave the impression that her lips always
were compressed. That was the expression it normally had; it was only
when Rosalie saw Anna actually compress her lips that she realised they
had not been compressed before. It was as though she was always annoyed
about something and then, when she compressed her lips, a little more
annoyed than usual. She had also a permanent affliction which much
puzzled Rosalie. Young men friends of Harold’s frequently called at the
rectory, and one afternoon, when two of them called, Anna was the only
one at home to entertain them (except Rosalie). Flora and Hilda rushed
into the drawing-room, directly they came in, and shortly afterwards
Rosalie saw Anna come out. Anna stood in the hall quite a long time with
her lips compressed, and then went into the dining-room and sat down,
but almost at once got up again and went back into the drawing-room, and
Rosalie heard Flora call out, “You can’t join in now, Anna. You can’t
join in now. We’re in the middle of it.” Shrieks of laughter were going
on. When the young men went, Flora and Hilda, who had their hats on,
walked away with them. Anna was left at the door. When the girls came
back Anna said to Flora, “I do think you might have told me you’d
arranged to go with them to see it.”

Flora said, “Oh, darling, I thought the Pope had told you.”

They had the worst row Rosalie had ever heard them have. Anna did not
come down to supper. After supper, when Rosalie was in the room with
only Harold and her father and mother, her mother spoke of the scene
there had been between Anna and Flora and it was then that Rosalie heard
for the first time of Anna’s most strange affliction. Harold said, “Of
course, the fact of the matter is that ever since Flora left school,
Anna’s had her nose put out of joint.”

Rosalie felt most awfully sorry for Anna. Often after that she used to
stare at Anna’s nose and the more so because there was nothing visible
the matter with it. Anna’s nose was a singularly long and straight nose;
now if it had been Flora’s nose that was out of joint!--for Flora’s nose
turned up in a very odd way. Rosalie slept in Anna’s room and that same
night, Anna’s disjointed nose and every other part of her face and head
being covered with the clothes when Rosalie went up to bed, Rosalie,
unable to sleep for curiosity and sympathy, got out of bed and lit the
candle and went across to look at Anna’s nose, and very gently felt it
with her finger. Absolutely nothing amiss to be seen or felt! But the
lashes of Anna’s eyes were wet and there were stains of tears upon the
upper side of the mysterious nose. It was true, then, for obviously it
hurt. And yet no sign!

Rosalie got back into bed feeling of her own nose rather anxiously.

Rosalie used formerly to sleep in Hilda’s room and Flora with Anna, but
she was changed one day by her sisters (without being consulted or
given any reason) and the new arrangement was continued. Anna was very
devotional. She used to say enormously long prayers night and morning.
She prayed in the middle of the night also, Rosalie used to think at
first, awakened and hearing her voice, but later found out that Anna
was talking in her sleep, a thing that was mysterious to Rosalie and
frightening. The room of Flora and Hilda, adjoined Anna’s and often at
night, when Rosalie was awakened by Anna undressing and lay watching her
at her immense prayers, the chattering voices of Flora and Hilda could
be heard through the wall and shrieks of high laughter. At that, Anna’s
shoulders used to shudder beneath her nightgown and she used to twist
herself lower on her knees. For some reason this also used rather to
frighten Rosalie.

Sometimes, but very seldom, Flora and Hilda used to quarrel; sometimes,
and more often, Hilda and Anna; nearly every day, as it seemed to
Rosalie, Anna and Flora. Rosalie got to dislike these quarrels very
much. They went on and on and on; that was the disturbing unpleasantness
of them. The parties to them would sit in a room and simply keep it
up forever, not arguing all the time, but between long pauses suddenly
coming out with things at one another; or they wouldn’t speak to one
another sometimes for days together, and all sorts of small enterprises
of Rosalie’s were interfered with by these ruptures of relations.
Innumerable things in Rosalie’s life seemed to her to depend on the
mutual good will of two quarrellers; many books, some old toys, walks,
combined games with Carlo who was Anna’s and Rover who was Flora’s;
innumerable delights with such seemed to be unexpectedly stopped because
of “Oh, no, if you prefer to be with Anna you can stay with Anna”; or,
“Oh, no. If you like Flora’s paints so much you can use Flora’s brushes;
these are my brushes.” A quarrel would in any case produce a strained
atmosphere in which everything became unnatural and this strained
atmosphere went on and on and on.

And the thing that Rosalie noticed was the complete difference between
these quarrels of her sisters and the quarrels between Harold and
Robert. Robert was rising between the years of fourteen and eighteen in
those days and Harold between twenty-two and twenty-six. Most violent
quarrels sometimes sprung up between them but they were physically
violent, that was the point, and after swift and appalling fury, and
terrible kicks from Robert and horrifying thumps from Harold they were
astonishingly soon over and done with and forgotten. On one awful day,
Rosalie saw Robert and Harold rolling on the floor together. Robert
bumped Harold’s head three most frightful bumps on the floor and said
between his teeth, “There! There! There!” Harold twisted himself up and
hurled Robert half across the room and then rushed at him and punched
him with punches that made Robert go, “Ur! Ur! Ur!”

Rosalie, at her age, ought to have cried with grief and dismay or to
have run away screaming; but instead she only watched with awe. With
terrified awe, as with the terrified awe that an encounter of tigers or
of elephants at the Zoo might arouse; but with awe and no sort of grief
as her sole emotion. Men were different. There it was again! They
did these fearful things, and these fearful things were much more
satisfactory to behold, not nearly so disturbing and aggravating to
watch, as the interminable bickerings of the quarrels of her sisters.

Her brothers’ quarrels were entirely different in all their aspects. In
the quarrels of her sisters, one or the other invariably cried if the
bickering went far enough. These two men, though Robert especially might
have been excused for bellowing, just solidly and only, with fearful
gasps, thumped and clutched and strove. Not a tear! Her sisters’
quarrels were always carried by one or the other to her mother or her
father. How extraordinarily different Robert and Harold! Their sole
anxiety was that neither father nor mother should be told! If any
one threatened to tell, the two, sinking their private heat, would
immediately band together against the talebearer. Extraordinary men! To
that particularly ferocious struggle that has been described, Anna
and Hilda had been attracted by the din, when Robert, overpowered, was
receiving terrible chastisement, and with cries and prayers had somehow
separated them. Behold, the very first coherent thing these two men did
was, while they still panted and glared upon one another, to unite in a
mutual threat.

“And look out you don’t go telling father or mother,” panted Harold to
the girls.

“Yes, mind you jolly well don’t,” panted Robert.

Anna said she certainly would.

Both the extraordinary creatures unitedly rounded on Anna. It might have
been thought that the battle had been, not between them, but between
them and the sisters who had saved them one from another. Astounding
men!

And most astounding of all to Rosalie was that at supper, little
more than an hour later, Harold and Robert presented themselves as
on exceptionally good terms of friendship. They talked and laughed
together. They had a long exchange of views about some football teams.
Harold laid down the law about the principle of four three-quarters in
Rugby football instead of three and Robert listened as to an oracle.
They had not been so friendly for weeks. And an hour before-! Yes, men
were different.

And Rosalie found that her sisters, too, knew how different and how
superior men were. Flora and Hilda seemed to Rosalie always to be
talking about men. Flora used to come into the schoolroom while Rosalie
was at her lessons and talk to Hilda. Rosalie was very fond of her
lessons and Hilda was an uncommonly good teacher and took a great
interest in leading Rosalie along the paths she had herself so recently
followed. But directly Flora came in, Hilda’s interest was entirely
diverted to what Flora had to say and to what she had to say to Flora,
and it was always about men,--boys or men. Rosalie would at once be put
to learning passages or working out exercises and Flora and Hilda would
go over to the window and talk. They talked mostly in whispers with
their heads close together; they laughed a good deal; they showed one
another letters. Often they came over to the table and wrote letters.
And they used to look up from their whisperings and say, “Go on with
your lessons, Rosalie.”

But it was very difficult to go on while they whispered and laughed
and it was also very troublesome to have Hilda’s most interesting
explanations suddenly cut short by the entrance of Flora. Rosalie began
to have the habit of saying “Oh, dear!” and going “Tchk!” with her
tongue when Flora came in. Also restlessly to say “Oh, dear!” and go
“Tchk!” when the whisperings and the laughing about men went on and
distracted her attention while she tried to do her exercises.

A new aspect of men began to grow out of this. Rosalie began to feel
rather aggrieved against boys and ten. They interfered.

And this went further. Just as boys and men spoilt lessons so they
began to spoil walks. While Hilda attended the Miss Pockets’ school and
Rosalie was taught by her mother, it was always her mother with whom
Rosalie took walks. Anna “never cared to go out” and Flora, whose
position in the house was more like that of Harold and Robert, did much
as she liked, and “dragging Rosalie about for walks” as she expressed
it, was not one of the things she liked. Rosalie therefore went out with
her mother until Hilda took her off her mother’s hands, when the taking
off included not only education but exercise. At the beginning, Hilda
showed herself as enthusiastic and as entertaining a walker as she
was teacher. She was ready for jolly scrambles through woods and over
fields, she was as keen as Rosalie on damming little watercourses, and
exploring woodland tracts, and other similar delights, and she had a
most splendid knowledge of the names of plants and flowers and birds
and insects and delighted to tell them to Rosalie. Rosalie had loved the
walks with her mother, always holding her dear hand, but she loved much
more, though in a different way, the walks with Hilda.

Then men began, in Rosalie’s private phrase, to “ruin” the walks.

First Flora took to joining the walks and she and Hilda talked and
talked together and always, as it seemed, about men, and Rosalie
just trailed along with them, their heads miles above hers and their
conversation equally out of her reach. But even that was not so bad as
it became. At least there were only her sisters and sometimes they
did talk to her, or sometimes one or other would break off from their
chatter and cry “Oh, poor Rosalie! We’ve not been taking the least
notice of you, have we? Now, what would you like to do?” And perhaps
they would run races, or perhaps explore, or perhaps tell her a story,
and Rosalie’s spirits would come bursting out from their dulness and all
would be splendid.

Not so when on the walks men, from being talked of, began to be met.

There were at Robert’s Grammar School certain young men who were in
no way connected with the school but were the “private pupils” of the
headmaster and were reading for the universities. One day Hilda started
for the walk in her church hat and Flora also in her church hat and her
church gloves. They walked very fast; Rosalie could hardly keep up. And
then at a corner of a lane they suddenly started to walk very slowly
indeed, and suddenly again at a stile, two of these young men were met.

The young men raised their hats much farther than Rosalie had ever seen
a man raise his hat and one of them said, “Well, you have come then?”

Flora said, “Well, we just happened to be strolling along this way.”
 Then she said, “You needn’t imagine we came to see you!” which Rosalie
thought very rude; but the young men seemed to like it and all of them
laughed a great deal.

Presently they all started to walk together, Hilda and Flora in the
middle and one of the young men on either side. The walk lasted much
later than the walks usually lasted and the whole way Rosalie trailed
along behind; and on the whole afternoon the only words addressed to
Rosalie by her sisters came just as, the young men hav-ing taken their
leave a mile away, they were turning in at the rectory gate. Flora then
said, “Rosalie, darling, don’t tell mother or father or any one that we
met any one.” And Hilda said, “Yes, remember, Rosalie, you’re not to say
anything about that.”

After that, the young men were met, and the four walked, and Rosalie
trailed, nearly every day.

One of these young men was called Mr. Chalton and the other Mr. Ricks.
Like all men, and even more so, they were splendid and wonderful. They
had silver cigarette cases and smoked a lot, and they wore most handsome
waistcoats and ties, and some of their conversation that came back to
Rosalie, trailing behind, was of very wonderful and exciting things they
had done or were going to do. Mr. Holland, the headmaster of the Grammar
School, was the terror of Robert’s life, but it appeared that Mr.
Chalton and Mr. Ricks were not in the least afraid of Mr. Holland, and
they talked a great deal of what they would do to him if he ever tried
to interfere with them and a great deal of what they did do in the
way of utterly disregarding him. They were undeniably splendid and
wonderful, but they utterly ruined Rosalie’s walks and they greatly
intensified Rosalie’s new feelings towards men and boys,--that men and
boys were a great nuisance and spoilt things.

Time went along. Other young men were met. In the holidays, quite
a number of young men came for their vacations to their homes in
Ibbotsfield and the surrounding district. Certain of these, unlike
the Grammar School private pupils, called openly at the rectory on one
pretext or another, but they were nevertheless also met secretly by
Flora and Hilda, ruined the walks precisely as Messrs. Chalton and Ricks
had first ruined them, and were on no account to be mentioned by Rosalie
to her father or mother.

The reason for this secrecy was never explained to Rosalie and the
secrecy oppressed Rosalie. It took not only the form of being a thing
she was not able to tell to her mother, and Rosalie was in the habit of
telling everything she did to her mother, but it took also the form
of mysterious and vaguely alarming perils during the walks. An immense
watchfulness was kept up against chance encounters with people. One of
the party would often cry, “Look! Who’s this?” and the young men
would separate from the girls and appear as if they were walking by
themselves. Sometimes they would break right away and run off and not
be met again. Very often Rosalie would be sent on ahead to a turning and
told to come back at once if anybody was to be seen and then would be
examined as to who the person was. Sometimes she was posted to keep
watch while the girls and the young men slipped off somewhere, over
a gate or into a barn. She got to know by sometimes rushing in with
warnings that Flora and Hilda on these occasions smoked the young men’s
cigarettes. Then when they got home, they would rush up to their room
and wash their teeth and put scent on themselves. And invariably when
the young men took their leave at the end of a walk there would be long
and close whisperings in which were always to be heard the words, “Well,
say you were--” or “Look here, we’ll say we were--” and generally, “Go
away, Rosalie. There’s nothing for you to listen to.”

It all had the effect of making Rosalie feel unhappy and rather
frightened. She sometimes asked, “Why mustn’t I say anything to mother?”
 She was always told, and only told, “Because father doesn’t like us
meeting men.”

No reason why father should not like them meeting men was ever given,
and Rosalie, ceaselessly disturbed by the concealment, could never
imagine what the reason could be. There could be no reason that she
could imagine; and she was thus immensely taken aback when one evening
at supper her father made a most surprising statement: “The girls have
no chance of ever meeting men in this infernal place.”

Amazing!

Rosalie’s father had been abusing Ibbotsfield and everything that
pertained to Ibbotsfield. Some question of expenses had started him. He
was storming in his wild way, addressing himself to Rosalie’s mother
but haranguing at large to all, everybody sitting in silence and with
oppressed faces, avoiding looking at one another and avoiding especially
the eyes of father. They were literally ground down with poverty,
Rosalie’s father was saying. He didn’t know what was going to happen to
them all. “It’s all this place, this infernal, buried-alive place. The
girls ought to be moving about and seeing people. How can they? Very
well. My mind’s made up. There’s my brother Tom in India. He could
have one of the girls. There’s your sister Mrs. Pounce in London. She’s
Rosalie’s godmother. What’s she ever done for Rosalie? Very well. My
mind’s made up. I shall write to Tom and I shall write to Belle. I shall
tell them how we are situated. It’s humiliating to have to tell them but
what’s humiliation? I’m accustomed to humiliation. Ever since we came
here, I have eaten the bread and drunk the water of humiliation. Now the
children are growing up to share it. What can they do in this loathsome
and forsaken and miserable place? What chance have the girls got? Can
you tell me that?”

He glared at Rosalie’s mother. It was clear that he regarded her as to
blame. Rosalie thought that her dear mother must be to blame. Her mother
looked so beaten and frightened. There was glistening in her eyes.
Rosalie’s heart felt utterly desolated for her mother. She wished
like anything she could say something for her dear mother. Then most
amazingly the chance to say something came.

“Can you tell me that?” cried Rosalie’s father. “What chance have the
girls of ever meeting men in this infernal place?”

Rosalie burst out, “Oh, but father, nearly every day--”

“Rosalie, don’t interrupt!” cried Flora very sharply.

“Rosalie, be quiet!” cried Hilda.

Father glared and then went on and on.

It was the beginning of a chain of most startling upheavals. It was
also, and the upheavals were also, a new manifestation to Rosalie of
the all-importance of men. After supper, in the first place, Flora and
Hilda, taking Rosalie very severely to task for her perilous outburst,
explained to her that the men they met were not the kind of men that
father meant they ought to meet. It was necessary, it was essential,
they explained, for every girl to meet men she could marry. That was
what every girl had to do. Men--surely you understand that, Rosalie--had
all the money and everything and met girls and asked them to marry.
Those men sometimes met on walks, you little stupid, were too young and
had no money yet. “There, that’s enough,” they explained. “Anyhow, we
shan’t be meeting them much more. One of us is probably going to India;
you heard what father said, didn’t you?... Well, of course you can’t
understand properly. You will when you’re grown up. Surely that’s quite
enough for you to understand at present.... How can a woman live if she
doesn’t marry, stupid? She must have money to live and it is men who
have the money.... Well, of course they do because they earn it; look
at Harold; and Robert will have money when he’s a little older.... Well,
how can women? Now, I said that’s enough and it is enough.”

It was enough and most satisfactorily enough for one purpose. It was
the first explanation of men as a race apart from women that Rosalie had
ever received and it precisely bore out all that she had conceived about
them. It affirmed her perception of the wonder and greatness of men as
compared with women. It intensified that perception.

Wonderful men! Marvellous and most fortunate men!

And then the chain of most startling upheavals began. Father wrote to
Uncle Tom in India. Father wrote to Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce,
in London. What he wrote was not to be known by Rosalie, outside the
rectory wheel. The others knew, for father, with enormous pride at his
wonderful epistolatory style in his voice, was heard reading the
letter to them. But the others, of course, knew also what Rosalie never
realised, the grinding poverty of the rectory. She knew no other life
than the herrings, the makeshifts, and the general shabbiness of
the rectory. It was not till long afterwards that, looking back, she
realised the pinching and the screwing that served--almost--to make ends
meet.

So father wrote. India was far, London was near. Aunt Belle’s reply
came while the letter to Uncle Tom was still upon the sea. Such a reply!
Wonderful father to win such a reply from Aunt Belle! “You see what it
is to be able to write a telling and forceful letter!” cried father.
Such an exciting reply! Aunt Belle was coming on a visit “to talk it
over and see what she could do.”

Aunt Belle came.




CHAPTER VI


Oh, a red carpet, a red carpet for Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, to come
into the story! And if at the end of the red carpet there could be an
“At Home” in the splendid drawing-room of Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce,
at Pilchester Square, Notting Hill, an At Home with about sixty-five
ladies crammed into it, all of them wives of most successful and
well-off men, mostly retired from the Indian Army and the Indian Civil
Service, and all of them chattering ecstatically, and nibbling, and
pluming themselves, and tinkling their teacups, and Aunt Belle, Mrs.
Pyke Pounce, enthroned in their midst, and owning everything and seeming
to own her five and sixty guests, and chattering and nibbling and
pluming and tinkling more ecstatically than any; and then if there could
come into them beautiful cousin Laetitia (when about fifteen) with sleek
black hair beautifully ribboned behind, and with pale, fine brow, and
wearing the sweetest white frock, and if she could move delightfully
about among her mother’s guests, and then play the sweetest little
trifle on the pianoforte to the delighted murmurs of the five and sixty
guests of her mother (“She’s under Pflunk. The great Pflunk!”); and then
if there could come in from the City Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce,
R.E., (retired) now director of several highly important companies, and
if Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E., could stand on the hearthrug
with his massy jowl and his determined stomach, and grunt, and rattle
the money in his pockets, and grunt again; and if then there could
come in the new parlour maid of Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, with her
tallness and her deftness and her slight, very slight, insolence of
air, and all the five and sixty gazing upon her as haughty but envious
patricians gazing upon a slave, and when she had gone swishing out if
Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, could tell all the sixty and five of
her tallness, her deftness and her slight, very slight, insolence of
manner----

Oh, if there could be this and these and a fine red carpet, how exactly
and how fittingly would Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, step upon the
scene!

“Dear thing!” That was Rosalie’s portrait and thought of her in long
after years. Dear thing! The drawing-room of her crowded triumphs is now
the shabby drawing-room of a second-rate boarding house; the jolly horse
bus she used so commandingly to stop in the Holland Park Avenue and so
regally to enter (whip-waving driver, cap-touching conductor) long
has given place to a thundering motor saloon that stops wheresoever it
listeth and wherein Aunt Belles and old-clothes women fight to hang by a
strap.

Dear thing! Her ownership of five and sixty guests is exchanged for
ownership of not more than seven and fifty inches of cold earth in
Brompton Cemetery. She is passed and Uncle Pyke, Colonel Pyke Pounce,
R.E., is grunted past to lay himself beside her. They are passed.
Up-reared upon her and upon him is a stupendous granite chunk (in a
way not unlike Uncle Pyke on his hearthrug) erected by their sorrowing
daughter. She is passed; she came into Rosalie’s life and Rosalie
crossed her life and she never forgave Rosalie.

Dear thing! Lie lightly on her, stones!

She came to the rectory “to talk it over and see what can be done” for
a week’s visit, and she stepped out of the cab, all the family assembled
to greet her, a new and most surprising figure such as Rosalie had never
seen before. She was dressed in startling fashions of a most wonderful
richness, and she had immense plumes in her hat that nodded when she
moved and trembled when she stood still, and she was herself either
always nodding with glittering animation or straightening her back and
quivering as if straining at a leash and just about to burst it and go
off. She was like Rosalie’s mother and yet not a bit like her. She was
older and yet terribly brisker and stronger. Those were the days when
frosted Christmas cards were of the artistic marvels of the age, and
Aunt Belle beside Rosalie’s mother somehow made Rosalie think of a
frosted card beside one of the plain cards. When Rosalie’s mother was in
a room you often might not know she was there; but when Aunt Belle was
in a room there seemed to be no one there except Aunt Belle. She began
to talk, in a voice as high as the house, while she was still descending
from the cab on her arrival, and the only time Rosalie ever saw her not
talking was during service in Church on Sunday, when she was alternately
glittering or whispering or else bending down so extraordinarily low
that Rosalie thought she was going to lie prone upon the floor.

Dear thing! She was so kind to Rosalie and so kind to them all, and
yet----And yet they all, except Rosalie who was too small (then) to
appreciate the resented quality in Aunt Belle’s kindness, and Rosalie’s
mother who was too gentle to resent anything, and yet they all, save
Rosalie and her mother, loathed and abominated Aunt Belle. It was her
way of doing things. She gave kind gifts, but it was the way she gave
them. She admired everything and everybody in the rectory, but it was
the way she admired. She said most kind and affectionate things, but it
was her way of saying them.

“Why, how very nice indeed!” That was her insistent comment upon
everything in the rectory. But the tone was, “How very nice indeed--for
you.”

That was the trouble. That was what made Harold (who at twenty-six
was getting very like his father) hurl about a thousand miles over the
garden wall the three apples Aunt Belle gave him as his share of the
“very best apples from the Army and Navy Stores” which she brought down
with other “goodies” for “the dear children”; and made, him grit his
teeth after she had been in the house two days and cry, “Dash her! Poor
relations; that’s how she treats us! I’m dashed if I’m a poor relation.
I’m earning three pound ten a week at the Bank and I bet that appalling
old Uncle Pyke didn’t get it or anything like it at my age!”

Dear thing! “She meant it kindly.” That was the sweet apologetic excuse
with which Rosalie’s mother followed the track of the storms Aunt Belle
aroused and with which she sought to abate them. “She means it kindly.
She means it kindly, dear.”

It should be Aunt Belle’s epitaph. It ought to be graven upon that
granite chunk in Brompton Cemetery. “She meant it kindly!”

Issuing from the cab, Aunt Belle began by kissing Rosalie’s mother in
a most astonishing series of kisses that whizzed from cheek to cheek so
that it was a miracle to Rosalie that the two noses did not collide and
her dear mother’s be knocked right off; and then most enthusiastically
kissed all the family, applying to each the phrase with which she began
on Harold “Well, well, so this is Harold!” (As if it were the most
astounding and unexpected thing in the world that it was Harold.) “So
this is Harold! Why, what a great big clever fellow, and what a comfort
to your dear mother, I am sure!” And then gazed rapturously upon the
house and said to Rosalie’s mother and to them all, “Well, well, what a
very, very nice house, to be sure!”

(“For you!”)

She meant it kindly. Her manner of talking about herself and about her
possessions was not that of bragging or of conscious superiority;
it was, to the whole rectory family, and to all poorer than herself
wherever she met them, that of one entertaining a party of children--of
a kind lady telling stories to a group of round-eyed infants. When she
first had tea on the afternoon of her arrival, she gazed upon the silver
teapot as it was carried in and exclaimed, “Well, well, what a very,
very handsome teapot! And hot-water jug to match! How very, very nice!
Now how ever do you think I keep my water hot at tea? I have a very
nice service all in silver gilt! It looks just like gold! And there’s
a kettle to match with a spirit flame under it. The maid brings in the
kettle boiling and we just light the spirit with a match and there it is
gently boiling all the time!”

Dusk drew in and the lamps were lit. “Lamps!” ecstatically exclaimed
Aunt Belle! “How nice! And Hilda keeps the lamps clean, does she? What a
dear, helpful girl and how very, very bright and nice they are! Now what
do you think? In my house, everywhere, even in the kitchen, we’ve got
this new electric light! Your kind uncle Pyke had it put in for me.
Installed, as they call it. Now, just fancy, all you have is a little
brass knob by each door, and you just touch a little switch, and there’s
your light! No matches, no trouble, just click! and there you are.
Of course it was very expensive, but your Uncle Pyke insisted upon my
having it. He always will insist upon my having everything of the best.”

Dear thing! The echo of her ceaseless tongue brings her exactly to
life again--glittering, chattering, pluming, presenting, praising--her
servants! her house! her parties! her friends! her daughter! her
husband!--Oh, yes, a red carpet! a red carpet for Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke
Pounce, to come into the story, and so (at the end of her visit) into
Rosalie’s life like this:

“And Rosalie is going away to school! To a boarding school in London
where there will be ever so many very nice playmates of her own age, and
such romps, and such good wholesome food, and such nice, kind, clever
mistresses! Why, what a lucky, lucky girl! There, Rosalie, what do you
think of that? You are my godchild, and I and your kind uncle Pyke are
going to send you to school and pay for your education because of course
we are well off and can afford it and your dear mother and father can’t.
There! Now isn’t that delightful? Come and give me a nice kiss then. The
dear child!”

Tremendous moment! Supernal upheaval! First and greatest upheaval of the
chain of upheavals! Rosalie was to go away to school!

That was at the rectory breakfast table on the last morning of the
visit, and that was Aunt Belle, Mrs. Pyke Pounce, coming into Rosalie’s
life. “Come and give me a kiss then”; that was kind, kind Aunt Belle,
inviting acknowledgment of her kindness and the kindness of Uncle Pyke
(with a cheque) and the kindness of Cousin Laetitia (with a box of
beautiful cast-off clothes that would do beautifully for Rosalie’s
school outfit). “The dear child!” That was Aunt Belle’s acknowledgment
of Rosalie’s most dutiful and most affectionate and most delighted kiss.
(Most amazed and excited and rather fearful Rosalie! Going to school!
Going away to a boarding school in London!)

“The dear child!” Such a warm and loving kiss from Rosalie! And time
was to prove it the kiss of Judas! Yes, in a few years, “I’ve done
everything for you!” Aunt Belle was to cry. “Everything! And this is the
return I get!”




CHAPTER VII


Next, in its turn, and exactly a fortnight before the beginning of the
term at which Rosalie was to join the boarding school in London, came
the letter from Uncle Tom in India, and with it the beginning of the
second upheaval in the chain of upheavals.

All of this upheaval was very bewildering to Rosalie. She never
understood it properly. At the beginning it had nothing at all to do
with Anna, and yet Anna from the very first reading of Uncle Tom’s
letter--All that Rosalie understood of it was this.

First the letter came. Tremendous excitement! Father in wild excitement,
Flora and Hilda in frantic excitement, everyone in highest excitement.
Father read the letter aloud at breakfast to Rosalie’s mother and to the
girls. Such a splendid letter, said father. Really, Tom was a splendid
fellow, said father. He had wronged Tom. He had thought Tom selfish in
his wealthy indifference. By Jove, Tom wasn’t. “By Jove, the way Tom
wrote almost brought tears to your eyes. Listen to this. Listen, mother.
Listen, you girls.”

Uncle Tom, said the letter, would by all means, old man, have one of the
girls. He’d no idea that things were so bad with you. Poor old man! Why
didn’t you tell us before? He was sending home a small draft to Field
and Company, his bankers, to help towards the girl’s outfit and her
passage money. “‘Which girl shall you send?’ you ask. Well, it’s no
good asking us, old man. You must decide that for yourselves. She’ll be
abundantly welcome, whichever it is, and we can promise her a jolly good
time. We are at Simla most of the year. If you want my advice which girl
to send, send the pretti--”

Father stopped reading.

Rosalie was staring at Anna. Anna’s face, which had been pale, suddenly
went crimson. The suddenness and the violence of it was extraordinary.
One moment she had been pale. In the next, she was burning red. It was
exactly as if a crimson paint had suddenly been dashed over the whole
of her face. It was extraordinary. Whatever was it? That nose of hers,
perhaps? a sudden frightful twinge like Rosalie once had had a sudden
most awful jump in a tooth? But Anna didn’t say anything and no one
but Rosalie seemed to notice it. They were all intent upon father. So
intent! Flora’s eyes were simply shining!

And Flora’s eyes soon after that were shining more than ever. She was
wild with excitement. Rosalie heard the news just before tea. Flora was
going to India to Uncle Tom!

“Oh,” cried Flora, “I’m so excited I simply don’t know what to do with
myself!” It was all arranged. Father had settled it. She was to go in
about six weeks’ time. Very shortly she was to go up to London with
father and buy heaps of clothes and all sorts of things. They were going
to stay at a hotel. “Not with Aunt Belle, thank goodness!” said Flora.
“At a hotel! Fancy that!” Mother wasn’t going and Flora was glad mother
wasn’t going. She would have a much better time with father. Father had
decided everything. He had decided that mother couldn’t leave him in the
rectory with all the housekeeping to look after, and the change would do
him good, and Aunt Belle would be able to help with the shopping. They
were going to see some theatres and all kinds of things and were going
to have a most splendid time and then, soon afterwards--India! “Oh I
shall go mad with excitement in a minute!” cried Flora.

The next thing was in the evening. Rosalie, searching for her mother
to ask her something, could not find her. She went into her mother’s
bedroom and there was the most surprising thing. There was Anna on
her knees by her mother and her head on her mother’s lap and Anna was
sobbing; and she was crying in her sobs, “But it’s my right! I’m the
eldest. It’s my right!”

Rosalie stood there, unnoticed, amazed. Whatever was it?

Rosalie’s mother stroked Anna’s head and spoke very softly, “My darling!
My darling!” She said, “My darling, your father has decided. Your father
knows best. Men always know best, my darling.”

“It’s my right, mother. It’s my right. It’s always Flora. Oh, why should
it always be Flora?”

“Dear Anna. Poor Anna. You must be reasonable, dear Anna. We women must
always be reasonable. Don’t you see that your father thinks of me? He
thinks my eldest girl--my dear eldest girl--ought to stay at home to
look after her mother. It’s on my account, dear Anna. He thinks of me.”

“Oh, mother, what’s the good of telling me that? A lot he thinks of
you or ever has! Why is he going up to London with Flora when it’s your
place to go? A lot he thinks of you! You say we must be reasonable. You
can be. You’ve been unselfish all your life. I can’t be. Not in this.
I’ve never had a pleasure in my life; I’ve never had a chance; I’ve
never had anything done for me. Ever since I can remember it’s always
been Flora, Flora, Flora. Now there’s this. I’m getting on, mother. I’m
nearly twenty-four. What have I got to look forward to? Flora’s younger,
Flora’s different. She’ll have lots of chances of enjoying herself. This
is my right. It’s my right, mother.”

“My dear Anna. My eldest girl. My first dear, sweet girlie. How could I
do without you? How happy we’ve been. How happy we will be.”

Rosalie crept away.

After a time, Flora and her father went away on the great visit to
London. They were to be away over two Sundays. A clergyman was coming
from Ashborough to take service at the church. Rosalie’s father went off
in spirits as high and youthful as the spirits of Flora. For days before
he was quite a different man. Everybody was asked to choose a present
which he would bring back. Everybody chose with much excitement and
chaffing except Anna, who said she could not think of anything. At
meals, father kept on saying how he wished he could regularly make a
point of getting up to town for a bit, it made all the difference being
able to get away from this infernal place for a bit. When herrings were
on the table, he actually came round and did her herring for Rosalie’s
mother and Rosalie’s mother was able to eat the whole of it and said how
delicious it was and how clever father was.

It was all splendid. Rosalie had never known such a jolly spirit in the
house. The only thing that spoilt Rosalie’s happiness in the new jolly
spirit was the nights in Anna’s room. Anna was most frightening to
Rosalie. She prayed now longer than ever, her shoulders moving beneath
her nightgown as if she was shuddering all the time she prayed. And at
night she talked more than ever in her sleep; also she used to get out
of bed at night and walk about the room and talk aloud to herself. It
was frightening.

Then Flora and father were in London and tremendous long letters came
from Flora to her mother and to all: they were buying heaps of dresses
and underclothes and white drill coats and skirts and a riding habit and
goodness knows what all. “A regular trousseau!” wrote Flora with
about seventeen marks of exclamation after the word. And all they were
seeing--they had been to the Lyceum Theatre and seen Mr. Henry Irving
and Miss Ellen Terry and to the Savoy and seen “The Mikado.” Every
moment of the day was taken up and half the night. Oh, this was a change
from Ibbotsfield!

Anna would never listen to the letters. When they were read out, she
either would put her fingers in her ears or go out of the room. And yet,
curiously, she often later in the day would say in a funny constricted
voice, “Let me see Flora’s letter. Give it to me, will you please?” And
would take it away and read it by herself.

Anna was stranger and stranger in her manner and in her behaviour at
night. Rosalie came quite to dread the nights. Anna began to pray out
loud. She used to pray over and over again the same thing: “It’s not
that I’m jealous, O Lord. O purge my heart of jealousy. It is that I see
what could be and what ought to be for me and what never will be for me.
I’ve nothing to look forward to, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. It
is hard for women. O God, thou knowest how hard it is for women.”

It was frightening.

Then came the second Sunday of the absence in London. In the night of
Saturday, Rosalie was again awakened by the sounds of Anna and again
heard her praying and again heard “It is hard for women. O God, thou
knowest how hard it is for women.”

She had heard it so often! Anna seemed to have stopped praying. There
was a light in the room and Rosalie saw that Anna, on her knees, had her
head and arms thrown forward on the bed more as if she were asleep than
praying. “It is hard for women.” Rosalie had heard Anna say that so
often. And she was going to be a woman one day. And she had always known
that men were the important and wonderful people of the world. Now Anna
said that for women it was hard and that God knew it was hard. Why?
She peered across again. Anna certainly had done her prayers. She said,
“Anna. Anna. Why is it hard for women?”

Anna started to her knees and turned her body round. “Rosalie! Why are
you awake? You’ve no right to be awake.”

“No, but I am. I woke up. Anna, why is it hard for women?”

“You weren’t meant to hear. You couldn’t understand.”

“But I would like to know, Anna.”

Anna got up and came across to Rosalie’s bed; and by her manner, and by
her voice, and by the tall white figure she was, frightened Rosalie. She
said, “Go to sleep. You can sleep. Why don’t you when you can? One day
perhaps you’ll be like me and can’t.”

It reminded Rosalie of “Sleep on now and take your rest” in the Bible,
and frightened her. Anna said, “It’s hard for women because men can do
what they like but women can’t.” She turned away. She stood still and
said with her back to Rosalie, “I’ve got a longing here.” Her hands were
clasped and she brought them up and struck them against her breast with
a thud. “And I always have had and I always will have. Here. Burning.
Aching. And when you’ve got a longing like that you must--you must--”
 Then she said very violently, “I hate men. I hate them. I hate them.”
 Then she went very quickly to the candlestick on the dressing table and
fumbled with it to blow it out, and it fell on the ground and broke and
the room was black.

The next day was Sunday. Anna said she would not go to Church as she had
a headache. Rosalie had been invited to spend the day with the little
girl of Colonel and Mrs. Measures and she had lunch and tea there and
then came home. The path from the gate to the house was bounded by a
thick hedge. On the right was the rectory paddock and through the hedge
Rosalie saw that something very strange was going on in the paddock.
Away in the corner where there was a little copse with a pond in the
middle was a crowd of people, some men from the village and her mother
and Robert and some others. Whatever was it? While she peered, Harold
came running out of the group towards the house. His coat was off,
and his waistcoat; and his shirt and trousers looked funny and he ran
funnily. He came near Rosalie and she saw that he was dripping wet.
Had he fallen in the pond? Then two men came round from the back of the
house carrying something, and Harold ran to them and they all ran with
the thing to the pond. It looked like the door of the shed they were
carrying. Rosalie scrambled through the hedge and ran towards the pond.
Some one called out “Here’s Rosalie.” Hilda came out from among the
people and waved her arms and called out, “Go back! Go back! You’re not
to come here, Rosalie! You’re not to come here!” Rosalie stood still.

People were stooping. They had the door on the ground and Harold and
a man were stooping and walking backwards over the door, carrying
something. Presently there was more stooping, and then Harold and Robert
and three men were carrying the door between them and walking as if
the door were very heavy. Whatever was happening? Hilda came running to
Rosalie. She was crying. “Rosalie, you’re to keep away. You’re not to
come into the house yet. I’ll tell you when you can come. Go and stay in
the garden till I tell you.”

Rosalie wandered about by the drive. Whatever was the matter? Robert
appeared with his bicycle. Harold came out after him. “Go to Ashborough
station with it, you understand. See the station master. Tell him
it must be sent off at once. Tell him what has happened.” Robert was
sniffling and nodding. Away went Robert, bending over the handle bar of
his bicycle, riding furiously.

Evening began to come on. Rosalie was wandering at the back by the
stables when Hilda came out through the kitchen door. “Rosalie, I’ve
been looking for you. Rosalie, Anna is--dead.”

They went in through the kitchen. On the big kitchen clothes rail before
the fire were clothes of Anna’s. They were muddy and sopping wet and
steam was rising off them.

Rosalie ran to her mother to cry.

“Ran to her mother to cry.” That’s a thing not to pass over without a
stop. Lucky, lucky Rosalie to have one to whom to take her grief! You
can imagine her small heart’s twistings by those days of sorrow, of
terrifying and mysterious and dreadful things that the child never could
clearly have understood; of grief, of mourning; of atmosphere most
eerie made of whispers, of tiptoe treading, of shrouded windows, of
conversations, as of conspirators, shut off with “Not in front of
Rosalie.” “Hush, not now. Here’s Rosalie.”

Yes, twisting stuff that; but in that “ran to her mother to cry”
 something that much more dreadfully twists the heart than those. Those
were for Rosalie--they are for all--but frets upon the sands of time
that each most kind expunging day, flowing from dawn to sunset like a
tide, heals and obliterates. There are no common griefs, and death’s a
common grief, that can be drawn above that tide’s highwater mark. But
there’s that sentence: “Rosalie ran to her mother to cry.” That’s of the
aching voids of life, deep-seated like a cancer, that no tide reaches.
That twists the heart to hear it because--O happy Rosalie!--the aching
thing in life is not having where you can take your weariness. Your
successes, your triumphs, there are a hundred eyes to shine with yours
in those. Oh, it is the defeats you want where to tell--some one you can
take the defeats to, the failures, the lost things; the lamps that are
gone out, the hopes that are ashes, the springs that spring no more,
the secret sordid things that eat you up, that hedge you all about, that
draw you down. Those! To have some one to tell those to! Yes, there’s a
thought that comes with living: Let who may receive a man’s triumphs; to
whom a soul can take its defeats, that one has the imprint of Godhood.
They walk near God.

Awfully frightening days followed for Rosalie. There wasn’t a room that
wasn’t dark and frightening with all the blinds down, and wasn’t a voice
that wasn’t dark and frightening, all in whispers; and then came this
that closed them and that was like a finger pressed right down on
Rosalie.

There was that Rosalie in the church at the funeral service. She sat
at the inner end of the pew with Hilda beside her. The coffin had stood
before the altar all night, with the lamps lit all night, and Rosalie
believed her father had stayed with it all night. He was struck right
down by what had happened, Rosalie’s father. She had heard him, when
Anna lay on the bed, and he crouched beside her, crying out loud, “I
hated my lot! O God, I was blind to this my child that shared my lot!”

Well, there was that Rosalie in the pew beside Hilda, and while she
waited for her father to begin (ever and ever so long he was upon his
knees at the altar, his back to them) while she waited she turned back
the leaves of her prayer book from the burial service and noticed with
a curious interest the correctness of the order in which the special
services came. There, in its order, was the complete record of life.
Rosalie must have had an imagination and she must have had budding then
what was a strong characteristic of her afterwards,--a very orderly
mind. She appreciated the correctness of the order of the services and
she turned them over one by one and could imagine it, like a story:
that record of a life. First the service of Baptism; you were born
and baptised. Then the Catechism; you were a child and learnt your
catechism. Then the Order of Confirmation; you were getting older and
were confirmed. Then the marriage service; you were married. Then the
Order for the Visitation of the Sick: you were growing old and you were
ill. Then the Burial Service; you died. Born, brought up, growing up,
married, ill, dead. Yes, it was like a story. Rosalie turned on. The
next service was called The Churching of Women. It was new to Rosalie.
She had never noticed it before. “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty
God of His goodness to give you safe deliverance...” Rosalie had heard
the word deliverance used in the Bible in connection with death. She
thought this must be a service special to the burial of a woman--of
Anna. She read the small print. “The woman at the usual time after her
delivery shall come into the church decently apparelled....” Decently
apparelled? Anna was in one of those nightgowns in which Rosalie so
often had seen her praying. “... and there shall kneel down in some
convenient place.” Kneel down? How could she?...

There came upon the book while Rosalie pondered it the long,
black-gloved forefinger of Hilda. It turned back the thin leaves to the
burial service and then pushed over one or two of the thin leaves and
indicated certain places. Then Hilda’s new black hat was touching her
own new black hat, and Hilda whispered, “Where it says ‘brother’ and
‘his’ father will say ‘sister’ and ‘her.’ It’s written for men, do you
see?”

Always for men! Even in the prayer book!

And it was because of men that Anna had drowned herself in the pond.
Over and over again Rosalie had thought of that, wondering upon it,
shuddering at the thought of men because of it. How she came to know
that Anna had not died as ordinary people die, but had drowned herself
in the pond she never could remember. No one told her. Rosalie
was twelve then but the others were all so much older, and were so
accustomed to treating Rosalie as so very much younger, that the pain
and mystery of poor Anna’s death was outstandingly of the class of
things that were kept within the established wheel of the rectory by
“Not in front of Rosalie,” or “Hush, here’s Rosalie.”

The effect was that when Rosalie somehow found out, she felt it to be
a guilty knowledge. She was not supposed to know and she felt she ought
not to have known. And sharing, but secretly, the others’ knowledge that
Anna had drowned herself in the pond, she supposed that they equally
shared with her her knowledge of why poor Anna had drowned herself in
the pond--because of men. She overheard many conversations that assured
her in this belief. “Some man we knew nothing about,” the conversation
used to say. “What else could it have been? Hush, here’s Rosalie.”
 And again, after they had all been out of the house to attend what was
called the inquest, “You heard what the coroner said--that there was
almost invariably something to do with a man in these cases. Poor Anna!
Poor darling Anna. If she had only told us. What else could it have
been? Harold, hush! Not in front of Rosalie!”

Of course it was nothing else. It was that. It was men. Anna had said
so. “I hate men. I hate them.” Yes, men had done this to Anna.

Her mind went violently, as it were with a violent clutch of both her
hands, as of one in horrible dark, clutching at means of light, to the
thought that next week she was to be away at school--to be right away
and in the safe middle of lots and lots of girls, and only girls. She
had a frightening, a shuddering, at the thought of men who caused these
terrible things to be done, who mysteriously and horribly somehow had
done this thing to Anna.

The long, black finger poked at the page again. “There. ‘This our
brother.’ Father will say ‘This our sister.’ Do you see, Rosalie? This
our sister.”

A shower of tears sprang out of Rosalie’s eyes and pattered upon the
page.

She wiped them. She set her teeth. A new and most awful concern
possessed her. ‘This our sister.’ Would father remember? When he came
to brother would he remember to say sister? And when ‘his’ would he
remember to say ‘her?’ She searched for the places. A most frightful
agitation seized her that father would forget. What would happen if he
forgot?

And at the very first place father did forget!

They were come from the church to the grave. They were grouped about
that most terrible and frightening pit. Rosalie was clutching her
mother’s dear hand, and in her other hand held her prayer book. There
it was, the first place for the change. Brokenly her father’s voice came
out upon the air, and at his very first word--the fatal word--Rosalie
caught her breath in sharp and agonized dismay.

“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of
misery....”

She called out--she could not help it--“Father!”

Her mother’s hand, squeezing hers, restrained her.

The broken voice went on “... cometh up and is cut down like a flower.”

She heaved relief. No one had noticed it. It was all right. No one else
had heard the terrible mistake. It was all right. But it was very wrong.
Above all other places this was the place that should have been changed.
Woman... that is full of misery. How could it ever be Man? Anna, in
almost her last words, had said it. “It is hard for women” and that
God knew it was hard for them--“O God, thou knowest how hard it is for
women.”

In the next week she went away to school.




PART TWO--HOUSE OF WOMEN

CHAPTER I


What anybody can have nobody wants; but what only one person can have
there’s a queue to get.

This is an elementary principle of the frailty of human nature, and
knowledge of it, and experience of its mighty truth, used to cause,
during the three holiday periods of the year, a standing advertisement
to appear on the front page of the Morning Post.

“High-class Ladies’ School for the Daughters of Gentlemen of the
Professions has UNEXPECTED VACANCY for ONE ONLY pupil at reduced
terms--Mrs. Impact, Oakwood House School, St. John’s Wood, London.”

ONE ONLY pupil! That was the magic touch.

The very first words addressed to Rosalie by a fellow boarder at Oakwood
House were from a short, sharp-featured girl of her own age, which then
was twelve, who said to her sharply, “You’re a One Only. I can see you
are. Aren’t you a One Only?”

“Well, I’m by myself,” said Rosalie, not understanding but most anxious
to say the right thing.

“Stupid, you’re not,” said the sharp girl, “because I’m with you. Did
your mother see the advertisement in the Morning Post? The advertisement
of this school?”

It happened that Rosalie knew her mother had seen it for Aunt Belle had
shown it to her and to them all. “One of the very best schools,”
 Aunt Belle had said. “You see, it’s only quite by chance there was a
vacancy.”

“Yes, she did,” said Rosalie.

“She’s the cat’s grandmother,” said the sharp girl. “Never say ‘she’ for
a person’s name. Well, if your mother saw the advertisement then you
are a One Only at reduced terms, and I knew you were directly I saw you.
Now, tell me. Don’t blink--unless of course you’re an idiot; all idiots
blink. Tell me. Was that dress made for you or was it cut down?”

“It was my cousin Laetitia’s,” said Rosalie.

“Of course it was,” returned the sharp girl very triumphantly. “Every
One Only’s clothes are cut down for her. Poopers! Do you know what a
pooper is? A pooper is half a poop and half a pauper. Every One Only’s
a pooper. Well, now you know what you are. You see that girl over there.
Do you know what she is?”

Rosalie said she did not.

“She’s a Red Indian.”

“Is she?” said Rosalie, much surprised, for the girl did not look in the
least like a Red Indian.

“Ask her,” said the sharp girl. “Do you know what I am?”

Rosalie shook her head.

“Answer,” said the sharp girl.

“No, I don’t,” said Rosalie.

“I’m a Sultan,” said the sharp girl. “All the nice girls are Sultans and
the school belongs to them. Do I look nice?”

“Very,” said Rosalie, though she did not think so.

“Then why didn’t you know I was a Sultan? The school belongs to the
Sultans. The One Onlys and the Red Indians are interlopers, especially
the One Onlys. Always shudder when you see a Sultan. Shudder now.”

Rosalie wriggled her shoulders.

“Again, poop.”

Rosalie repeated the wriggle.

“Vanish, poop,” said the sharp girl, and herself sprung away with
mysterious crouching bounds, her head thrust forward, looking very like
Gagool, the witch, in King Solomon’s Mines; and was seen by Rosalie to
pounce upon another small girl who was probably a One Only and, from her
forlorn aspect, certainly a sad and desolated new.

One Onlys, Red Indians, Sultans. They were the three castes into which
the girls divided themselves: One Onlys the poopers brought by the
advertisement; Red Indians the daughters of parents resident in India;
Sultans the proud creatures who paid full fees and took their title from
the nickname of the headmistress--the Sultana. This Oakwood House School
in which Rosalie now found herself was one of those very big old houses
with a spacious, walled-in garden that probably was occupied in the
Fifties somewhere, when St. John’s Wood was out in the country, by a
wealthy old City merchant who rode in to business two or three times
a week, never dreaming that one day London was going to stretch miles
beyond St. John’s Wood, and his imposing residence go dropping down the
scale of fashion eventually to become a school for young ladies who on
their crocodile walks would huddle, giggling, along the kerbstone while
the dangerous traffic roared up and down the Maida Vale highway.

Those crocodiles! There was a news agent’s shop just opposite where the
crocodile used to cross when it went out every morning, and one of the
great excitements of the walk was to get around the corner and see what
the newspaper bills had to tell. There were about forty girls at the
school--a crocodile twenty files long--and on the days of sensational
events the news from the placards used to come flashing back in
emotional little screams from the head of the crocodile, gazing with
goggling eyes, to the tail of the crocodile pressing deliriously up
behind. “The Maybrick Case”; “Jack the Ripper Again”; “Death of the Duke
of Clarence”; “Loss of H.M.S. Victoria”; Rosalie never afterwards could
hear those terrific things referred to without recalling instantly the
convulsions of the crocodile and experiencing within her own bosom the
tumults that contributed their share to the convulsions. She was in the
writhing tail of the crocodile when “Jack the Ripper Again” caused it
almost to swoon, and she was in its weeping head when “Death of the Duke
of Clarence” and “Loss of H.M.S. Victoria” struck its orderly coils into
a tangled and hysterical knot.

Mrs. Impact, who kept this school, was a massive and frightening figure
of doom who wore always upon her head, and was suspected of sleeping
in, a strange erection having the appearance of a straw beehive. She was
called the Sultana and her appearance and her habits seemed to Rosalie
precisely the appearance and habits that would belong to a sultana. The
Sultana appeared virtually never among the girls. The direction of the
discipline and education of the pupils was in the hands of the chief of
the Sultana’s staff of badly paid and much intimidated mistresses. This
chief of staff, by name Miss Ough, but called the Vizier, appeared
from and disappeared into the quarters occupied by the Sultana, and was
popularly supposed to be kept there in a dungeon. If you were near
the door through which the Vizier passed from public gaze there was
unquestionably to be heard shortly afterwards a metallic clank. This was
the portal of the Vizier’s dungeon being closed upon her and was very
shuddering to hear. The Vizier, moreover, like one long incarcerated,
was skeletonized of form, cadaverous and sallow of countenance, and grew
upon her face, as all right prisoners in royal custody grow, a thick
covering of greyish down.

A second known inhabitant of the Sultana’s quarters was Mr. Ponders, her
butler, who sometimes slid into the classrooms in a very eerie way with
messages and whom Rosalie came to know strangely well; a third, but he
did not exactly live in the awful regions, was the Sultana’s husband.
The Sultana’s husband lived in two rooms over the stable. From the front
classroom windows he was to be seen every morning disappearing through
the front gates at about eleven o’clock; very shiny top hat; very tight
tail coat; very tight grey trousers; very tight yellow gloves;
very tight grey-yellow moustache; very tight pasty face; curiously
constricted, jerky gait as though his boots, too, were very tight.
Precisely the sort of chronic, half-tipsy hanger-on one used to see
in billiard rooms or eating cloves in West End bars. By association of
ideas with the orientalism of Sultana he was called by the girls the
Bashibazook.

Junior to Miss Ough, the vizier, were four or five other mistresses, all
known by nicknames. Children are exactly like savages in their horrible
sharpness at picking out physical peculiarities and labelling by them.
One would imagine these governesses, judged by their nicknames, a
deplorable collection of oddities. Actually they must have been a
presentable enough and a capable enough set of spinsters, though
sicklied o’er by the pale cast of indifferent personalities,
indifferently housed, indifferently fed, indifferently paid; all
anaemic, all without any prospects whatsoever, all dominated by and
domineered over by the masterful personality of the Sultana.

Only one of them contributed to the life of Rosalie and this was
“Keggo,” Miss Keggs, who taught mathematics. This Keggo was rather like
Anna in appearance, Rosalie thought, and was most popular of all the
mistresses with the girls, partly because of her bright moments in which
she was a human creature and an entertaining creature; partly because
of her curiously supine periods in which she would be utterly listless,
allow her class to do anything they liked provided they kept perfectly
quiet, and would make no attempt whatsoever to correct idleness or to
impart the lesson of the hour. Miss Keggs had been known to knock over
the inkpot on her desk and sit and watch the ink dripping in a pool
on to the floor without making the least attempt even to upstand the
vessel. No one knew why Keggo had these moods. But it was known that for
her to come into class looking rather flushed was a sign foreshadowing
them.

She appeared to take a fancy to Rosalie from the first, and Rosalie to
her, probably by reason of the fancied resemblance to Anna. She invited
Rosalie to her room and Rosalie loved to go there because the One Onlys
were in a very weak and humble minority in Rosalie’s first term and
were rather hunted by the Sultans who were then particularly strong in
numbers and rich in apparel, in pocket money, and in friends. The poor
little One Onlys led rather abashed lives and they had no chance at all
around the playroom fire where the Sultans stretched their elegant legs
and warmed their shapely toes.

One evening in her first few weeks Rosalie had to take an exercise up
to Miss Keggs, and Miss Keggs’s room was warm, and Miss Keggs like
Anna, and Rosalie lingered and was invited to linger; after that Rosalie
sought and invented reasons for going up to Miss Keggs’s room and Miss
Keggs would nearly always say, “Well, you may stay a little, Rosalie, as
you’re here.”

Miss Keggs’s room was right at the top of the house where were also the
servants’ room and the room shared by Miss Downer and Miss Frost. It was
a long, narrow room with sloping ceiling and the window high up in the
ceiling. In the winter it was warmed with a small oil stove which smelt
terribly when you first went in but to the smell of which you almost at
once got accustomed. It was curious to Rosalie that even in summer when
there was no oil stove there was nearly always a very strong smell
in Miss Keggs’s room. Miss Keggs used eau de Cologne for bathing her
forehead and temples on account of the very bad headaches from which
she said she suffered and the smell was like eau de Cologne but with an
unpleasantly harsh strong tang in it, like bad eau de Cologne, Rosalie
used to think. However, you almost at once got accustomed to that also.
These headaches of Miss Keggs were a symptom of the very bad health from
which she suffered, and on the occasions of Rosalie’s visits to her
room Miss Keggs was very communicative about her ill health. It was the
reason, she told Rosalie, why, alone of all the mistresses, she had a
room to herself instead of sharing one. The Sultana had granted her that
privilege, provided she would use this remote and rather poky attic,
because it was so essential she should be quiet and undisturbed.

“Don’t you have any medicine, Miss Keggs?” said the small Rosalie,
in one part genuinely sympathetic and in the other eager to discuss
anything that would prolong her stay by the warm oil stove.

“Nothing does me any good,” said Miss Keggs wearily. After a minute
she added, “But I really am feeling very bad to-night. Mr. Ponders very
kindly gives me some medicine that relieves my bad attacks. I wonder,
Rosalie, if you could find your way down to Mr. Ponders and give him
this medicine bottle and ask him if he could very kindly oblige me with
a little of my medicine?”

“Oh, I’m sure I could, Miss Keggs,” cried Rosalie, delighted at the
opportunity of doing a service.

Miss Keggs became extraordinarily animated with the feverish animation
of one who, having made up her mind after hesitation, furiously tramples
hesitation under foot.

“Go right downstairs,” directed Miss Keggs, “right down below the hall
into the basement. You know the basement stairs?” She proceeded with her
directions, detailing them most exactly. She accompanied Rosalie to the
door and when Rosalie was a little down the passage sharply called her
back. “And, Rosalie! If you should meet any one--if you should meet any
one, on no account say where you are going or where you have been. On no
account. If it should be known how ill I continue to be, I might be sent
away. They might think I am not strong enough to continue my work here.
Say you have lost your way if you should be met. You are a new little
girl and it is easy to lose your way in this big, rambling house. Keep
the bottle in your pocket and remember, Rosalie, on no account to tell.
On no account.” And so dismissed her.

A creepy business, going down to interview Mr. Ponders! The Sultana’s
butler was only seen by the girls on momentous and thrilling occasions.
He opened the hall door when new little girls arrived with their
mothers, and he would sometimes appear in a classroom and walk
thrillingly to the mistress and thrillingly whisper. This always meant
that for some fortunate girl a parent or an aunt had arrived and that
the presence of the fortunate girl was desired by the Sultana. He was a
shortish, dingy man with a considerable moustache. As he walked between
the desks to deliver his message, his eyes were always glancing from
side to side as though furtively in search of something, and always as
he left the room he would stand a moment with his hand on the door
as though meditating some statement and then suddenly de-termining to
disappear without making it. A rather mysterious and thrilling man.

Come into the basement, Rosalie walked as bid along the passage, then
to the right and then past two doors to the third, whereon she tapped
gently, and when a man’s voice said “Come in,” quaked rather, and went
in. The walls of Mr. Ponders’ room were completely surrounded by narrow
shelves. Beneath the shelves were the closed doors of low cupboards and
on the shelves were ranged many glasses, china and silverware. At one
end beneath the window was a sink with two taps, both dripping. On the
right-hand side was a fire before which in a wicker armchair sat Mr.
Ponders smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper.

“What do you want?” inquired Mr. Ponders.

Rosalie said, “If you please, Mr. Ponders, Miss Keggs is not feeling
at all well and would you be so very kind as to give her some of her
medicine, please?”

Mr. Ponders rose and regarded Rosalie from the hearthrug. “So it’s going
to be you coming for the medicine now, is it?” he said. He looked rather
a mean little man, standing there; not thrilling as when he appeared in
the schoolrooms for there was an unpleasing familiarity in his air, but
still decidedly mysterious, for though he smiled and looked snakily at
Rosalie, he still glanced from side to side as though furtively looking
for something and he still, before committing himself to an action,
paused as though meditating a statement and then suddenly performed the
action as though he had made up his mind not to speak--yet.

“You’re Rosalie, aren’t you?” inquired Ponders, putting his hands in
his pockets and stretching out his stomach like one much at his ease.
“Rosalie Aubyn. You come with your Auntie. What’s your Pa?”

“A clergyman, Mr. Ponders.”

“Oh, he’s a clergyman, is he?” Mr. Ponders’s eyes slid from side to
side, rather as if he had somewhere in the room some confirmation or
some refutation of Rosalie’s statement that he could produce if he could
catch sight of it, and continued thus to slide with the same suggestion
while he playfully put Rosalie through a further examination relative to
her “Auntie,” her “Ma” and her brothers and sisters. He appeared then
to be meditating a question of some other order but instead suddenly
straightened himself, withdrew his hands from his pockets and said,
“Well, you’d better be running along with the medicine.”

He took from Rosalie the bottle Miss Keggs had given her and from his
pockets a bunch of keys. In the lock of one of his cupboards he fitted a
key, paused a meditative moment, then with a decisive action opened the
cupboard and from a tall black bottle very carefully and steadily filled
the medicine bottle. The medicine was dark red. It first ran in a fine
dark red cloud around the inner shoulders and sides of the bottle and
then plunged in a steady stream direct from the larger receptacle to the
smaller.

Rosalie, watching, was moved to say, “How well you pour it, Mr.
Ponders.”

“I’ve poured a tidy drop in my time,” said Mr. Ponders, completing the
operation and corking the medicine bottle. He held it towards Rosalie,
paused in his mysteriously deliberative way, and then suddenly handed it
to her. “And a tidy fair drop for Miss Keggs at that,” he added. He went
to the door, again paused as though uncertain whether to open it, then
opened it for Rosalie to pass out. “Good night,” said Mr. Ponders.

Lucky Mr. Ponders to have for his own a cosy room like that--men, always
for some reason, with the best of everything again! Unpleasing Mr.
Ponders to look at you like that and to speak to you like that--men,
always horrible again! Rosalie, thus thinking, made a swift and
unobserved climb to the attics. Miss Keggs must have heard her coming.
The door was pulled sharply from Rosalie’s hand and there was Miss Keggs
and the bottle almost snatched away from Rosalie. “How long you’ve been!
But you’ve got it! And no one saw you?” Miss Keggs went very swiftly
to the washstand and took up a small tumbler. Clear that she wanted her
medicine very badly. She toppled in the contents of the bottle, its neck
clinking against the glass, the dark red medicine splashing and some
spilling, so differently from Mr. Ponders’s performance of a far more
difficult operation, and with the bottle still in her hand held the
glass to her lips and drank deeply.

Yet there was a funny thing about the draught. It seemed to Rosalie that
Miss Keggs with that eager draught yet did not swallow at once but only
filled her mouth to its capacity. She then swallowed very slowly and
with movements of her cheeks as though she was sucking down the medicine
and tasting it in every portion of her mouth. Colour came into her
cheeks. The medicine certainly appeared to do her immense good.

Miss Keggs’s friendliness towards Rosalie was settled and established
from that night. Thereafter it became a very regular thing for Rosalie
to visit the room of Miss Keggs of an evening; and at intervals,
sometimes twice a week, sometimes not three times in a month, to descend
to the den of Mr. Ponders for the dark-red medicine which did Miss Keggs
so much good and which she always took in that peculiar sucking way from
a full mouth, one would be so long sometimes in swallowing a mouthful,
beginning a sentence and then drinking and then all that time in
swallowing before she completed the sentence, that she several times, by
way of apology, ex-plained the reason to Rosalie. “I have to swallow it
very slowly like that,” explained Miss Keggs, “because that’s the way
for it to do me good. It’s my doctor’s orders.”

“It seems a business,” was Rosalie’s comment.

“Yes, it is a business,” Miss Keggs agreed.

Rosalie added, “How very lucky it is, Miss Keggs, that Mr. Ponders keeps
your medicine.”

“Yes, it’s certainly very lucky,” Miss Keggs agreed.

The effect of her medicine was always to make her very complaisant.




CHAPTER II


One seeks to give only the things in Rosalie’s life that contributed to
her record, as time judges a record. Of her years at Oakwood House, so
far as Oakwood House itself is concerned, only that friendship with
Miss Keggs thus contributed. The rest does not matter and may be passed.
Rosalie was happy there. It naturally was all very strange at first
but she soon shook down and found her place and formed friendships. The
thing to notice is this--that even in the strangeness of her first few
weeks the place was actively felt by her to be a haven. There is to be
recalled that aching desire of hers, when poor Anna lay dead, to get
right away from men: men who (though still pre-eminently wonderful)
caused her by their showing off to blink and have a funny feeling; and
by their distasteful presence spoilt her walks and her lessons; and by
the frightening things they did had brought that frightening death to
Anna. Thus had accumulated that aching desire to get right away from
men and be only amongst girls; and the feeling remained most lively in
Rosalie at the Sultana’s, and intensified. Those men! She used to see
the Bashibazook and shudder at him; and Mr. Ponders and shudder at him;
and sometimes Uncle Pyke, and because of ways he had, feel quite sick
to be near him. Men still were wonderful. The Bashibazook, Mr. Ponders,
Uncle Pyke, Uncle Pyke’s friends--all were infinitely superior and did
what they pleased; but, oh, not nice, frightening. It was safe and nice
to be only with girls. Girls were in heaps of ways extraordinarily silly
and unsatisfactory. Men though not nice, unquestionably did everything
better and could do things. Unquestionably theirs was the best time in
life. Unquestionably they were to be envied. But--not nice, frightening.

It was like that that her ideas at Oakwood House were shaping.

And all this time, most important and much contributory to the life of
Rosalie--Aunt Belle. Tremendous occasions in those years were the visits
to the Sultana’s of Aunt Belle. Frequently on a Saturday, kind Aunt
Belle used to call at Oakwood House for Rosalie and take her to a tea
shop for tea. Beautiful cousin Laetitia would accompany her, and kind
Aunt Belle would always invite Rosalie to bring with her another little
One Only. Kind, kind Aunt Belle! Aunt Belle used to sit by in the tea
shop, affectionate and loquacious as ever, while the two schoolgirls
stuffed themselves with cakes (not beautiful Laetitia who just nicely
sipped a cup of tea and nicely smiled at the two gross appetites) and
always kind Aunt Belle brought a small hamper of sweets and cake and
apples--“The very best goodies from the Army and Navy Stores, dear
child. They know us so well at the Army and Navy Stores. Your Uncle Pyke
has a standing deposit account there. We can go in without a penny in
our pockets and buy anything we please. Fancy that, dear child!” And
always half a crown for Rosalie, as kind Aunt Belle was leaving.

Once in every term, also, Rosalie spent a week-end at the magnificent
house in Pilchester Square. Such luxuries! Fire in her bedroom and
palatial late dinner! Breakfast in bed on Sunday morning (“Just to let
you lie as a little change from school, dear child.”) and Laetitia’s
maid to do her hair! Rosalie immensely im-pressed and Aunt Belle
immensely gratified at Rosalie’s awe and appreciation and gratitude.

A curious manifestation there was of Aunt Belle’s attitude in this
regard. On that famous visit to the rectory she had treated every one
like children. Here, in her own house, while Rosalie was still a child,
twelve, thirteen and fourteen, she was treated by Aunt Belle and shown
off to by her much as if she were a grown-up woman. About her servants,
and about prices, and about dress, and about her dinner parties, Aunt
Belle chattered to Rosalie; and about Uncle Pyke, what he liked, and
what he didn’t like, and what he did in the City, and what he did at his
club, and about her hosts of friends and their matrimonial experiences,
Aunt Belle chattered to her, confiding in her and telling her all kinds
of things she but dimly understood precisely as if she were a grown-up
young woman.

Then as Rosalie grew older, sixteen, seventeen and getting on for
eighteen, was reversion by Aunt Belle to the rectory manner. The child
had been treated as a young woman; the budding maiden was treated
precisely as if she were a small child or a small savage to be
entertained by mere sight of the wonders all about her in Pilchester
Square and by having them explained to her in words of one syllable.

“There, Rosalie,” (Rosalie at seventeen) “do you know you’re eating with
a solid silver spoon! Feel the weight of it! Balance it in your hand,
dear child. We usually only use this service for our dinner parties and
your uncle Pyke keeps it locked up and carries the key about with him.
Show Rosalie the key, Pyke. But I got it out for you to-day because I
knew you would like to see real solid silver plate. Dear child!”

Dear thing! Lightly on her, you Brompton Cemetery stones!

Uncle Pyke never would produce the key or whatever he might be asked to
show. Uncle Pyke would grunt and go on with his soup with enormous noise
as though having a bath in it. Uncle Pyke never spoke at all to Rosalie
on these week-end visits except, always, to put her through examination
on what she was learning at school. Rosalie, though horribly frightened
of Uncle Pyke, always had pretty ready answers to the examination--she
did uncommonly well at school--but there never was from Uncle Pyke
any other mark of appreciation than a grunt. A grunt! Those Pyke-ish,
piggish men! The outstanding characteristic Rosalie came to see in Uncle
Pyke and in the other husbands (his cronies) of Aunt Belle’s friends
was that they thought about nothing else but their food, their wine and
their cigars. They disliked having about them anybody who interfered
with their enjoyment of their food, their wine and their cigars. They
were affectionately regarded by their wives as tame, necessary bears to
be fed and warmed and used to sit at the head of the table and awe the
servants. That was what Rosalie saw in them--and shuddered at in them.
Hogs!

Cousin Laetitia all this time was living at home, attending a very
exclusive and expensive day school. Only twelve girls at beautiful
Laetitia’s school and more masters and mistresses than pupils--mostly
“visiting” masters--Italian, French, painting, singing, music, dancing.
Laetitia was about two years older than Rosalie. Very pretty in an
elegant, delicate fashion, and growing up decidedly beautiful in a
sheltered, hothouse, Rossetti type of beauty. Always very affectionate
to Rosalie and glad to see her; not patronising in the way she might
have been patronising and yet, as the two grew older, patronising in a
conscious effort to dissemble a conscious superiority.

Rosalie never could remember how early in their acquaintance it was she
first understood that the great aim of Laetitia’s life, and the great
aim of Aunt Belle’s life for Laetitia, was to “make a good match”; but
she seemed to have known it ever since she first heard of Laetitia,
certainly at a point of her childhood when too young exactly to
understand what “good match” meant. Later on, when Laetitia had left
school and was within sight of putting up her hair, “good match” was
openly spoken of by Aunt Belle in her crowded drawing-room or alone in
company of the two girls and Uncle Pyke.

“And soon dear Laetitia will be making a good match, a splendid match”;
and beautiful Laetitia would faintly colour and faintly smile.

There began to come to Rosalie, growing older, an acute and an odd
feeling of the physical and mental difference between herself and
beautiful Laetitia--a feeling in Laetitia’s company that she was a boy,
a young man, in the company of one most pronouncedly a young woman.
Rosalie was always very plainly dressed by comparison with Laetitia; her
voice was much clearer and sharper, her air very vigorous against an air
very langorous. Her hands used to feel extraordinarily big when she sat
with Laetitia and her wrists extraordinarily bare. She would glance down
at her lap sometimes and could have felt a sense of surprise not to see
trousers on her legs.

That was how, as they grew older, Rosalie often felt with Laetitia.

Her last term came. She was nearly eighteen. She was going to earn her
own living. That was decided. Exactly how was not decided; but Rosalie
had decided it. There was an idea that she should remain at the
Sultana’s as a junior teacher, but that was not Rosalie’s idea.

“Oh, don’t be a schoolmistress, Rosalie,” Keggo had said when Rosalie
told of the suggestion (propounded, through the Sultana, by Miss Ough
and warmly endorsed by Aunt Belle and grunted upon by Uncle Pyke). “Oh,
Rosalie, don’t be one of us. Don’t you see how we are just drifting,
drifting? Don’t do anything where you’ll just drift, Rosalie.”

“No, I’m not going to drift, Keggo,” said Rosalie. (Miss Keggs, in
the little room, had been “Keggo” a long time then.) “I’m not going to
drift. I’m going to have a man’s career. I’m going into business! Keggo,
that’s the mystery of that book I’m always reading that you’re always
asking me about: ‘Lombard Street’--Bagehot’s ‘Lombard Street.’ Oh,
Keggo, thrilling.”

She began to tell Keggo her stupendous enterprise....

There is in the study of man nothing more curious or more interesting
than the natural bent of an individual mind. An arrow shot to the north
and another from the same bow to the south spring not apart more swiftly
or more opposedly than the minds of two children brought up from one
mother in the same nursery. The natural bent of each impels it. Art this
one, science that; to Joe adventure, to Tom a bookish habit. Rosalie’s
natural bent declared itself in “figures”; in the operations, as she
discovered them, of commerce; in the mysterious powers, as they appealed
to her, developed in countinghouses and exerted by countinghouses. The
romance of commerce! A mind double-edged, with inquisitiveness the one
edge and acquisitiveness the other (as certainly Rosalie’s) is a sword
double-edged that will cut through the tough shell and into the lively
heart of anything. No more is required than to give the young mind a
glimpse of the lively heart that is there. Rosalie’s young mind was
already beating with half-fledged wings against the shell about that
side of life wherein, in her experience, (of her brothers, of Uncle
Pyke, of Uncle Pyke’s friends) men did the things that earned them
livelihood and gave them independence. Along, by happy chance, buried in
dust in the rectory study and found one holiday, came “Lombard Street”
 and Bagehot, and that was the book and Bagehot was the man to give
pinions to those fledgling wings. She saw romance, and thrusted for
it, in the business of countinghouses. It was fascinating to her beyond
anything the discovery that money was not, as she had always supposed,
a thing that you took with one hand and paid away, and lost, with the
other. Not at all! It was a thing that, properly handled, you never
lost. Enthralling! Thrilling! You invested it and it returned to you;
you expended it and propped it up with fascinating things called sinking
funds, and, although you had spent it, there it was coming back to you
again! It was the most mysterious and wonderful commodity in the world.
She got hold of that and she went on from that.

The romance of business! That ships should go out across the seas with
one cargo and sell it, not, in effect, for money, but for another and
an entirely different cargo; that cheques passing between countries, and
cheques circulating about the United Kingdom, should be traded off one
against the other in magic conjuring palaces called Clearing Houses with
the result that thousands of little streams merged into few great rivers
and only differences need be paid; that money (heart and driving-force
of all the mysteries) should have within itself the mysterious and
astounding quality of ceaselessly reduplicating itself--“the only thing
in the world,” as Rosalie quaintly put it to Miss Keggs--“the only thing
m the world that people, business people, will take care of for you
without charging you for storage or for trouble”--that these mysterious
and extraordinary things should be thrilled Rosalie as the mysterious
and extraordinary things of science or of nature or the mysterious
and beautiful things of art or of literature or of music will thrill
another.

That natural bent of her mind! That Bagehot that ministered to
her natural bent! Fascinated by Banks, fascinated by the Exchange,
fascinated by the Pool of London, where, obedient to the behests of
the counting-houses, floated the wealth that the countinghouses made,
fascinated by these was Rosalie as maidens of her years commonly are
fascinated by palaces, by the Tower and by the Abbey. Remember, it is
not what their eyes see that fascinates these romantic young misses. A
dolt can see the Tower walls and see no more than crumbling bricks and
stone. It is what their minds see that fascinates the ardent creatures.
Well, Rosalie’s mind saw strange romance in countinghouses.

That Bagehot!

And then must be picked up--and were with time picked up--others of the
magic man’s enchantments. “Literary Studies,” but she passed over that,
the burning subject was not there. “Economic Studies”; it much was
there. “International Coinage.” She read that! It approached the subject
of a Universal Money and her thought was, “Why, what a splendid idea
to have one coinage that would go everywhere!” And then, opening a new
field, and yet a connected field and a field profoundly engrossing to
her, “The English Constitution.” How laws came; how laws worked; the
mysteriousness (her word) within the Council chambers that produced
governance as the mysteriousness within the countinghouses produced
wealth! The mysterious quality within precedent and necessity and change
that reproduced itself in laws as the mysterious quality within money
caused money to reproduce itself in wealth; the romance of governance.

It was like that that her interests were shaping.

It was very easy, it was utterly delightful, to tell all this to Keggo.
It was not at all easy, it was very terrible, to tell it before Uncle
Pyke. It was appalling, it was terrific, to break to the house in
Notting Hill that she desired to earn her living, not as a teacher, but
in business--like men.

It was at dinner at the glittering table in the splendid dining-room of
the magnificent house in Notting Hill, Rosalie there on the half-term
week-end of her last term, that the frightful thing was done. At dinner:
Uncle Pyke Pounce bathing in his soup; beautiful Laetitia elegantly
toying with hers; Aunt Belle beaming over her solid silver spoon at
Rosalie. “Try that soup, dear child. It’s delicious. My cook makes such
delicious soups. Lady Houldsworth Hopper--Sir Humbo Houldsworth Hopper,
you know he’s in the India Office, you must have heard of him--was
dining with us last week and said she had never tasted such delicious
soup. It was the same as this. I asked cook specially to make it for
you. Now next term, when you are one of the mistresses at Oakwood House
and living at their table and you have soup, you’ll be able to say--for
you must speak up when you are with them, dear child, and not be
shy--you’ll be able to tell them what delicious soup you always get at
your Uncle Colonel Pyke Pounce’s. Be sure to mention your Uncle by name,
Colonel Pyke Pounce, R.E., not just ‘my uncle,’ and that he was a great
deal in India where he was entirely responsible for the laying of the
Puttapong Railway and received an illuminated address from the Rajah
of Puttapongpoo, such a fine old fellow, not being allowed of course to
take a present, which you have seen many times hanging in his study in
his fine house in Pilchester Square, Notting Hill (some of them are
sure to have heard of Pilchester Square, though never visited there, of
course); your uncle will show you the address again after dinner; that
will be nice, won’t it, dear? Won’t you, Pyke?”

(F-r-r-r-r-r-rup! from the splendid holder of the illuminated address
from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo, bathing in his soup.)

“Be sure to speak up for yourself like that, dear child, and let them
know who you are and that though you are poor and have to earn your
living, you have wealthy relations (though of course we are only
comfortably off and do not pretend to be rich) and are not at all like
ordinary governesses. Be sure to, dear. There; now you’ve finished that
soup and wasn’t it delicious, just? You will have another helping, I
know you will. A second helping of soup is not usual, dear, and Laetitia
or any one at any of our parties would never take it, but it’s quite
different for you, and I do love to see you enjoy the nice food I get
for you. More soup for Miss Aubyn, Parker.”

Now for it!

“Aunt, I won’t have any more soup. I won’t really. It was delicious.
Delicious, but really no more. Really. Aunt.... About the governesses
there and being one of them. I wanted to say... Aunt, I don’t want to be
a pupil-teacher. Aunt...”

Fr-r-r-r-rup! Frr-r-roosh! Woosh! Fr-r-r-roosh!

It is the holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of
Puttapongpoo most terribly and fear-strikingly struggling up out of his
soup. “Don’t want to be a pupil teacher? Wat d’ye mean? Wat d’ye mean?”

“Why, Rosalie, darling!” It is the exquisitely beautiful daughter of the
holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo.

“Never mind them, Rosalie. The dear child! Why, how crimson she is. Let
the dear child speak. What is it, dear child?” It is kind Aunt Belle.

“Aunt Belle. Aunt Belle, I don’t want to earn my living like that.
I want to earn it like--like a man. I want to--well, it’s hard to
explain--to go to an office like a man--and have my pay every week, like
a man--and have a chance to get on like men, like a man. I want to go
into the City if I possibly could, or start in some way like going into
the City. I know it sounds awful--telling it to you--but girls are doing
it, a few. They’re just secretaries and clerks, of course. They’re just
nothing, of course. But, oh, it’s something, and I do want it so. To
have office hours and a--a desk--and a--an employer and be--be like men.
I don’t mean, I don’t mean a bit, imitate men like all that talk there
is now about imitating men. I hate women in stiff collars and shirts
and ties and mannishness like that; and indeed I hate--I dislike men--I
can’t stand them, not in that way, if you understand what I mean--”

“.Rosalie!” (Laetitia.)

“Oh, Laetitia, oh, Aunt Belle, I’m only saying that to show I don’t mean
I want to be--. It is so fearfully difficult to explain, this. But Aunt,
you do see what I am trying to mean. It’s just a man’s work that I mean
because I’d love it and because I don’t see why--. And it’s just that
particular kind of work--in the City. Because I believe, I do believe,
I would be sharp and good at that work. Figures and things. I love
that. I’m quick at that, very quick. And I’ve read heaps about it--about
business I mean--about--”

Uncle Pyke Pounce. Uncle Pyke Pounce, holding his breath because he is
holding his exasperation as one holds one’s breath in performance of a
delicate task. Uncle Pyke Pounce crimson, purply blotched, infuriated,
kept from his food, blowing up at last at the parlour-maid: “Bring in
the next course! Bring in the next course! Watyer staring at? Watyer
waiting for? Watyer listening to? Rubbish. Pack of rubbish.”

The parlour-maid flies out on the gust of the explosion. Rosalie
finishes her sentence while the gust inflates again.

“Read heaps about it--about business--about trade and finance and that.
It fascinates me.”

The gust explodes at her.

“Wat d’yer mean read about it? Read about what?”

“Uncle, about money, about finance and things. I know it’s extraordinary
I should like such things. But I do. I can’t tell why. It’s like--like a
romance to me, all about money and how it is made and managed. There’s
a book I found in father’s study at home. ‘Lombard Street’ by Bagehot.
That’s all about it, isn’t it? I can’t tell you how I have read it and
reread it.”

“Never heard of it. ‘Lombard Street?’ Bagehot? Who’s Bagehot?”

“I think he was a banker, Uncle.”

“I think he was a fool!”

It comes out of the red and swollen face of the holder of the
illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo like a plum-stone
spat at her across the table. Rosalie blinked. These beastly men!
Violent, vulgar, fat, rude beasts! Uncle Pyke the worst of them! But she
came back bravely from her flinch. “If he wasn’t a banker, he knew all
about banking. Oh, that’s what I would be more than anything--that’s
what I do want to be--a banker--in a bank!”

The holder of the illuminated address from the Rajah of Puttapongpoo as
if, having expectorated the plum-stone, he desired to expectorate also
the taste thereof, spat out an obscene sound of contempt and disgust.
“Fah! I say the man, whoever he was, was a fool. And I say this, Miss. I
don’t often speak sharply, but I say that I think I know another fool--a
little fool--at this table. Pah! Enough of it! What’s this? Trout?”

Aunt Belle to the rescue! If Uncle Pyke and Aunt Belle had kept house in
Seven Dials instead of Notting Hill, Uncle Pyke would have beaten Aunt
Belle and Aunt Belle would have taken the blows without flinching and
then have wheedled Uncle Pyke with drops of gin. As it was, Uncle
Pyke was merely boorish or torpidly savage towards Aunt Belle and Aunt
Belle’s way with him--as with all combative men--was to rally him with a
kind of boisterous chaff and to discharge it at him as an urchin with an
armful of snowballs fearfully discharges them at an old gentleman in a
silk hat: backing away, that is to say, before an advance and advancing
before a retreat. Uncle Pyke usually retreated, either to eat or sleep.

Aunt Belle had blinked, as Rosalie had blinked, at that horrible
epithet “Little fool!” across the table. The lips that uttered it were
immediately stuffed with trout and Aunt Belle immediately rushed in in
her rallying way to the rescue. “Why, you great, big stupid Uncle Pyke!”
 cried Aunt Belle vivaciously. “It’s you who don’t know what you’re
talking about, you unkind old thing, you. Why, many, many girls, quite
nice girls, are going into business now and being secretaries and things
and doing very, very well indeed. Why, I declare it would do you good to
have a lady secretary yourself in that big, dusty office of yours in the
City, never dusted from one year’s end to another, I’m sure! Laetitia,
wouldn’t it do your father good, the cross, grumpy old thing? Give your
master some more of the sauce, Parker. Isn’t that trout delicate and
nice, Pyke? Trout for a pike! And I’m sure very like a nasty, savage old
pike the way you tried to gobble up poor Rosalie, the dear child. Now,
Rosalie, dear child, I think that’s a very, very good idea of yours to
go into business. I think it’s a splendid idea, and more and more quite
nice girls will soon be doing it. Now we’ll just see what we can do and
we’ll make that cross old uncle help and ask all his cross old friends
in the City, just to punish him. A young Lady Clerk, or a young Lady
Secretary! Now I think that’s the very, very thing for you. Just the
thing, and a dear, clever child to think of it. Yes!”

Kind, kind Aunt Belle! Victory through Aunt Belle! Accomplishment! A
career like a man! Aunt Belle had said it and Aunt Belle would do it! A
career like a man! Oh, ecstatic joy! “Lombard Street” had been brought
with her in her week-end suitcase. Directly she could get to bed
she rushed up to it and took it out and read, and read. It was all
underlined. She underlined it more that happy, happy night!

Ah, never underline a book till you are forty. Never memorialise what
you were, your lovely innocence, your generous heart, your ardent hopes,
lest the memorial be found one day by what you have become. Rosalie,
finding that “Lombard Street,” unearthed from lumber, in long after
years, turned over the pages and from the pages ghosts rushed up and
filled the room, and filled the air, and filled her heart, and filled
her eyes; and she rent the book across its perished binding and pushed
it from her with both her hands on to the fire and on to the flames in
the fire.




CHAPTER III


Incredibly soon, so stealthy swift is time, came this last term of
Rosalie’s at the Sultana’s. Time does not play an open game. It’s of the
cloak and dagger sort. It stalks and pounces. Rosalie was astonished
to think she was leaving; and now the time had come she was sorry to be
going. Not very sorry; very excited; but having just enough regret to
realise, on looking back, that she had been very happy at school and to
realise, actively, happiness in this last term. One knows what it is.
It’s always like that. One always was happy; one so seldom is. Happiness
to be realised needs faint perception of sadness as needs the egg the
touch of salt to manifest its flavour. Flashes of entertainment may
enliven the most wretched of us; but that’s pleasure; that’s not
happiness. One comes to know the only true and ideal happiness is
happiness tinctured with faintest, vaguest hint of tears. It is peace;
and who knows peace that has not come to it through storm, or knoweth
storm ahead, or in storm past hath not lost one that would have shared
this peace?

So that girl’s last term was (in her words) “tremendously jolly.” She
was just eighteen, and she was leaving, and responsive to this the
harness of the school was drawn off her as at the paddock gate the
headstall from a colt. She was out of lessons. She did some teaching of
the younger girls. She was on terms with the mistresses. She had the run
of Keggo’s room.

Such talks in Keggo’s room.... She was out from the cove of childhood;
she was into the bay of youth; breasting towards the sea of womanhood
(that sea that’s sailed by stars and by no chart); and she was
encountering tides that come to young mariners to perplex them and Keggo
could talk about such things with the experience that so enraptures
young mariners and of which young mariners are at the same time so
confidently contemptuous, so superiorly sceptical. Nearer to press the
simile, youth at the feet of experience is as one, experienced, climbing
a mountain with the young thing panting behind. “Go on! Go on!” pants
the growing young thing. “This is ripping. Go on. Show the way. But I
don’t want your hand. I can do it easily by myself--better.” And one
evening while Rosalie stumblingly explained, and eagerly received, and
sceptically doubted, “But look here, Keggo,” she cried, and stopped and
blushed, abashed at her use of the nickname.

Miss Keggs laughed. “Don’t mind, Rosalie. Call me Keggo. I like it. It’s
much more friendly. I’m very fond of you, Rosalie.”

They were by the oil stove, Miss Keggs in her wicker armchair, Rosalie
on the floor, her back propped against Miss Keggs’s knees. One of Miss
Keggs’s hands was on Rosalie’s shoulder and she moved it to touch the
girl’s face. “Are you fond of me, Rosalie?”

Rosalie turned towards her and spoke impulsively. “Oh, awfully--Keggo.”

The woman stooped and kissed the growing young thing, hugging her
strongly, pressing her lips upon the lips of Rosalie with a great
intensity. “Oh, I shall be sorry when you go, Rosalie.”

“We can still be friends, Keggo dear.”

Miss Keggs shook her head. “Ships that pass in the night.”

“O Keggo!”

Miss Keggs smiled, a wintry smile. “O Rosalie!” she mimicked. She
sighed. “Oh, my dear, it’s true--true! Don’t you remember how the lines
go--


  ‘Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;
  Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness.’


Just remember that in a few years. You’ll hail again perhaps. ‘O Keggo!’
Or I--it is more likely--wilt hail ‘O Rosalie!’ Just remember it then.”
 Her hand came down to Rosalie and Rosalie took it. It was so cold; and
on her face a strained and beaten look as though hand and face belonged
to one that stood most chilled and storm-beat upon the bridge, peering
through the storm. Her fingers made no motion responsive to Rosalie’s
warm touch. She said strangely, as though it was to herself she spoke,
“Does it mean anything to you, Rosalie, a vision like that? Can you
see a black and violent night and a ship going by full speed, and one
labouring, and through the wind and the blackness a hail.--and gone, and
the wreck left foundering?”

Ah, that most generous and quickly moved and loving-Rosalie--then! How
she twisted to her knees and stretched her arms about that poor Keggo,
sitting there--so drooped! How readily into her eyes her young and warm
and ardent sympathies pressed the tears, their flowers! How warm her
words? How warmly spoken! “O Keggo! Keggo, dear! Keggo, why do you talk
like that? How can you? After all the kindness you’ve shown me, accusing
me that I’ll forget and not mind. Keggo, you shan’t. You mustn’t.”

Then Keggo responded, catching her arms about Rosalie and straining
Rosalie to her as though here was some cable to hold against the driving
sea. “O Rosalie!”

And after a little Rosalie said, “You won’t again say I ever shall
forget, or hail and pass by. Oh, that was cruel, Keggo!”

Keggo was gently crying. “Natural. Natural.”

“Unnatural. Horrible. And you? Why do you say such things about
yourself? You didn’t mean it? It’s nothing? How can you ever be a wreck,
foundering?”

Keggo dried her eyes and by her voice seemed to put those things right
away. “No, nothing. Of course not. Darling girl, only this--you’re
young--young and so of course you are going by full sail as young things
do. Full sail! O happy ship! Rosalie, go on telling. Go on asking. I
love it, Rosalie.”

She was always “Keggo” after that; and the things that Rosalie told and
asked!

Such things! It is to be seen that now there were bursting into blossom
out of bud within that Rosalie those seeds planted in her by the
extraordinary ideas of her childhood. About men. First and always
predominating, about men as compared with women--their wonder, their
power, their importance, their infinite superiority; then about men in
their relations with women--their rather grand and noisy ways that made
Rosalie blink; their interfering presence that spoilt lessons and spoilt
walks; those sinister attributes of theirs, arising somehow out of their
freedom to do as they liked in the world, that somehow left the world
very hard for women. Grotesque ideas, but masterful ideas, masterfully
shaping the child mind wherein they germinated; burrowing in clutchy
roots; pressing up in strong young saplings. Agreed the child is father
of the man, but much more the girl is mother of the woman. It is the
man’s part to sow and ride away; conception is the woman’s office and
that which she receives she tends to cherish and incorporate within her.
Of her body that function is her glory; of her mind it is her millstone.
Man always rides away, a tent dweller and an Arab, with a horse and with
the plains about him; woman is a dweller in a city with a wall, a house
dweller, storing her possessions about her in her house, abiding with
them, not to be sundered from them.

So with that Rosalie. Those childhood ideas of hers were grotesque ideas
but she had received them into her house and they remained with her,
shorn of their grotesqueness, as garish furniture may be upholstered
in a new pattern, but tincturing her life as the appointments of a
room will influence the mood of one that sits therein. Father owned the
world--all males had proprietorship in the world under father--all
men were worshipful and giants and genii. That was the established
perception and those its earliest images. The perception remained,
deepening, changing only in hue, as a viscid liquid solidifies and
darkens in a vessel over the fire. It remained, persisted. Time but
steadied the focus as the wise oculist, seeking for his patient the
perfect image, drops lenses in the frame through which the vision
chart is viewed. In a little the perfect image is found. There was that
Rosalie, come to maidenhood, come to the dizzy edge of leaving school,
with the perfect image of her persistent obsession; with the belief no
longer that men were magicians having the world for their washpot and
women for their footstool, but unquestionably that they “had a better
time” than women and that they secured this “better time” by virtue of
their independence.

“And, Keggo,” (she is explaining it) “I’m going to be like that. I’m
going to be what a man can be. Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t a woman?”
 She paused and then went on. “Why, that’s the thing that’s been with me
all my life, ever since I can remember. I’ve always known that men were
the creatures. Always. Since I was so high. Oh, I used to have the most
ridiculous ideas about them. You’d scream, Keggo. And I’ve always had
the same attitude towards them--towards them as contrasted with women, I
mean. First awe, then envy, then, since I’ve been growing up here, just
as having a desirable position in life, as having the desirable position
in life, independence, a career, work, freedom, a goal--yes, and a goal
that’s always and always a little bit in front of you, always something
better. That’s the thing. That’s the thing, Keggo. Just look at the
other side. Take a case in point. Take my painful cousin, Laetitia,
sweet but in lots of ways very painful. What’s her goal? A good match!
A good match! Did you ever hear anything so futile and sickening?
Sickening in itself, but I’ll tell you what’s really sickening about
it--why, that she’ll get it--get her goal and then it’s done, over,
finished, won. Settle down then and get fat. Oh, I don’t want a goal I
can win. I want a goal I can’t win. One that’s always just in front.”

She suddenly realised the intensity of her voice and laughed and shook
her head sideways and back. She had just recently put her hair up and
it still felt funny and tight and the laugh and the shake eased away
the tightness of voice and of hair. She said thoughtfully, “You know,
I believe I’m rather like a man in many ways, in points of view. It’s
through always thinking them better, I daresay. The ideas I’ve had about
them!” and she laughed again. She said slowly, “Though mind you, Keggo,
they are better in many ways. They can get away from things. They don’t
stick about on one thing. And they’re violent, not fussing. When they’re
angry they bawl and hit and it’s over and they forget it. They don’t
just nag on and on. Oh, yes, they’re better.”

She extended her palms to the oil flame, and watching the X-ray-like
effects of the light and shadow upon her fingers, she added
indifferently, as one idly letting drop a remark requiring no comment,
negligently with the voice of one saying “Tomorrow is Tuesday,” or “It’s
mutton today,”--“Of course they’re beasts,” she added.

“Of course they’re beasts.” It was the adjusted image to which she had
brought that other perception of men which, running parallel with the
perception of their superior position, had permeated her childhood
years.




CHAPTER IV


She’s left the school! She’s living in the splendid house in Pilchester
Square looking for a post!

She’s found a post! She’s private secretary to Mr. Simcox!

She’s left the splendid house in Pilchester Square! She’s living an
independent life! She’s going to Mr. Simcox’s office, her office, every
day, just like a man! She’s living on her own salary in a boarding house
in Bayswater!

What jumps! One clutches, as at flying papers in a whirlwind, at a
stable moment in which to pin her down and describe her as she jumps.
One can’t. The thing’s too breathless. It’s a maelstrom. It’s an
earthquake. It’s a deluge. It’s a boiling pot. It’s youth. What it must
be to live it! One thing pouring on to another so that it’s impossible
anywhere to pick hold of a bit that isn’t changing into something else
even as it is examined. That’s youth all over. Always and all the time
all change. What it must be to live it!

What it must be! Why, when youth comes bursting out of tutelage there’s
not a stable thing beneath its feet nor above its head a sky that stays
the same for two hours together! Every stride’s a stepping-stone that
tilts and throws you; every dawn a sudden midnight even while it breaks,
and every night a blinding brilliance when it’s darkest. New faces, new
places, new dresses, new dishes; new foes, new friends; new tasks, new
triumphs; never a pause, never a platform; every day a year and every
year a day--not life on a firm round world but life in the heart of a
whirling avalanche. How youth can live it! And all the time, all the
time while poor, dear youth is hurtling through it, there’s age, instead
of streaming sympathy like oil upon those boiling waters, standing
in slippered safety, in buttoned dignity, in obese repose, bawling at
tumbling youth, “Why can’t you settle down! Why can’t you settle down!
Why do you behave like that? Why can’t you do as I do? Why can’t you
be like your wise and sober Uncle Forty? Or like your good and earnest
Auntie Fifty? Why can’t you behave like your pious grandmother? Why
can’t you imitate your noble grandfather? Oh, grrrr-r, why can’t you,
you impious, unnatural, ill-mannered, irresponsive, irresponsible
exasperating young nuisance, you!” Is it any wonder poor youth bawls
back, or feels and behaves like bawling back, “How to goodness can I
behave like my infernal uncle or my maddening aunt when I’m whirling
along head over heels in the middle of a roaring avalanche?”

Oh, poor youth, that all have lived but none remembers!

One clings, faut au mieux, to the intention to tell of her life only
the things in her life that contributed to her record, as records are
judged. There shall be enormous omissions. They shall be excused by
vital insertions.

She shall be glimpsed, first, in the splendid house in Pilchester
Square, in the desperate business that getting a place for a woman in a
business house was when women were in business houses far more rare
than are silk hats in the City in 1922. It was desperate. Uncle Pyke
and Uncle Pyke’s friends were the only channel of opportunity; and Uncle
Pyke and Uncle Pyke’s friends refused to be a channel of opportunity.
They had never heard of such a thing and they desired to bathe in their
soup and smack over their wine and not be troubled with such a thing.

Aunt Belle rallied them and baited them and told them they were “great
big grumpy things”; and Aunt Belle, in her crowded drawing-room, loved
talking about the search for work and did talk about it. “Has to earn
her own living,” Aunt Belle would chatter, “and is going into business!
Oh, yes, ever so many girls who have to earn their own living are going
into business now. She’ll wear a nice tailormade coat and skirt and
carry a little satchel and flick about on the tops of buses, in the City
at nine and out again at six and a nice plain wholesome lunch with a
glass of milk in a tea shop. Oh, it’s wonderful what girls who have to
earn their own living do nowadays. Quite right, you know. Quite right,
(for them). Come over here, Rosalie. Come over here, dear child, and
tell Mrs. Roodle-Hoops what you are going to do. The dear child!”

But nothing done.

Just that glimpse and then comes Mr. Simcox.

Mr. Simcox was first met by Rosalie while walking with Aunt Belle and
beautiful cousin Laetitia in the Cromwell Road. He came along carrying
a letter in his hand with the obvious air of one who will forget to post
it if he puts it in his pocket and probably will forget to do so in
any case. He was as obviously “a man of about fifty-six” that curiously
precise figure, neither a ten nor a five, always used for men who look
as Mr. Simcox looked and always continued to look while Rosalie knew
him, and probably always had looked. Men of “about fifty-six”--one
never says “about thirty-six” or “about sixty-six”; it would be “about
thirty-five” or “about seventy”--men of “about fifty-six” are almost
certainly born at that age and with that appearance and they seem to
continue in it to their graves.

Mr. Simcox was like that, and was short and had two little bunchy grey
whiskers, and wore always a pepper and salt jacket suit, unbuttoned, the
pockets of which always bulged and the skirts of which, containing
the pockets, always swayed and flapped. When he talked he was always
talking--if that is understood--and when he was busy he was always
frantically busy and looking at the clock or at his watch as if it were
going to explode at a certain rapidly approaching hour and he must at
all costs be through with what he was doing before it did explode. He
talked in very rapid jerks, always seeming to be about to come to rest
and then instantaneously bounding off again, rather like a man bounding
along stepping-stones, red-hot stepping-stones that each time burnt his
feet and set him flying off again.

He had been in the Bombay house of a firm of indigo merchants and there
had known Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke. He had retired and settled in
London and he now came very briskly up to Aunt Belle, to Rosalie and
to beautiful Laetitia, greeting them and bursting into full stream of
chatter while he was yet some distance away; and, having been introduced
to Rosalie and snatched at her hand precisely as if doing so while
shooting in midair between one red-hot stepping-stone and the next,
whizzed presently to “I really came out to post a letter” and flapped
the letter in the air as if it were a bothersome thing stuck to his
fingers and refusing absolutely to be stuffed into a post-box.

“Why, there’s a pillar-box just there; you’ve just passed it,” cried
Rosalie.

“Why, so there is!” exclaimed Mr. Simcox, jumping round to stare at
the pillar-box as if it had stretched out an arm and given him a sudden
punch in the back, and then spinning towards Rosalie and staring at her
rather as if he suspected her of having put the pillar-box there while
he was not looking; and while Mr. Simcox was so exclaiming and so doing
Rosalie had said, “Do let me just post it for you. Do let me,” and had
snapped the obstinate letter from his fingers, and posted it and was
back again smiling at Mr. Simcox, whom she rather liked and who reminded
her very much of a jack-in-the-box.

Indeed with his quick ways, his shortness, his bushy little grey
whiskers and his pepper and salt suit with its flapping pockets, Mr.
Simcox was very like one of those funny little jack-in-the-boxes they
used to sell. He said to her, regarding her with very apparent pleasure
and esteem, “Well, that’s very nice of you. That really is very nice
of you. And it’s most wonderful. It is indeed. Do you know, I must have
walked more than a mile looking for a letter-box and I daresay I should
have walked another mile and then forgotten it and taken the letter home
again.” He addressed Aunt Belle: “It’s a most astonishing thing, Mrs.
Pyke Pounce, but I cannot post a letter. I positively cannot post a
single letter. When I say single, I do not mean I can post no letter at
all. No, no. Far from it. I mean I can post no letter singly, by itself,
solus. My daily correspondence, my office batch, I take out in a bundle,
perhaps in a table basket. That is simple. But a single letter--as you
see, a clever young lady like this has to find a box for me or I
might carry the thing for days together. Astonishing that, you
know. Astonishing, annoying, and mind you, sometimes serious and
embarrassing.”

“Why, you busy, busy person, you!” cried Aunt Belle with her customary
air towards a man of shaking her finger at him. “You very busy person!
Fancy a basket full of correspondence! Why what a heap you must have!”

Mr. Simcox said he had indeed a heap. “Sometimes I think more than I can
manage.”

“Indeed,” agreed Aunt Belle, “you don’t seem to have much time to spare.
Why, I haven’t seen you in my drawing-room for quite a month (“You busy
little creature, you,” expressed without being stated). I expect you’re
getting very rich and disagreeable.” (“You rich little rascal, you!”)

Mr. Simcox declared that as to that his business wasn’t one to get rich
at. “In no sense. Oh, no, in no sense. It keeps me occupied. It gives
me an interest. That’s all. No more than that.” As to Mrs. Pyke Pounce’s
delightful drawing-room, most certainly he had been there less than a
month ago and most certainly he would present himself again on the
very next opportunity. To-morrow, was it? He would without fail present
himself there tomorrow, “and I hope,” said Mr. Simcox, taking his leave,
“I hope I may have the pleasure of seeing my postmistress there again.”
 He smiled very cordially at Rosalie and went flapping away up the street
at the pace and with the air, not of one who had come out to post a
letter and had posted it, but of one who had come out to post a letter,
had dropped it, and was flying back to look for it.

“Oh, isn’t he an ugly little monster!” cried Aunt Belle, resuming the
walk.

“But I think he’s nice,” said Rosalie. “What is his business, Aunt
Belle?”

Aunt Belle hadn’t an idea. “He’s an agent,” said Aunt Belle, “but an
agent for what I’m sure I don’t know. He’s a very mysterious, fussy,
funny little person. We knew him in Bombay where he had a very good
position, but he retired and what he does now I’m sure I can’t say. But
he’s very busy. You heard him say how busy he is. Rosalie, he might know
of something for you. We’ll ask him, dear child. The funny, ugly little
monster! We’ll ask him. He might help.”

He did help. A very short while afterwards, Rosalie received the
appointment of Private Secretary to Mr. Simcox; twenty-five shillings
a week; one pound five shillings a week! Office hours ten to five!
Saturdays ten to one! Holiday a fortnight a year! A man’s work! A man’s
weekly salary! A man’s office hours! The ecstasy of it! The ecstasy!

The matter with Mr. Simcox was that, in India a man of affairs, in
England he found himself a man of no affairs and a man who had “lost
touch.” On a leave from the Bombay house of the indigo firm he had been
prevailed upon by his mother and his maiden sister to remain at home and
look after them and he had done it and gone on doing it, and they had
died and he had never married, and he had now no relatives, and by
this and by that (as he told Rosalie early in her installation) he had
dropped out of friendships and, as he expressed it “lost touch.” He
owned and occupied one of those enormous houses in Bayswater. It had
been his mother’s and he lived on in it after her death and the death
of his sister, alone with a housekeeper. The housekeeper resided in the
vast catacombs of the basement of the enormous house; Mr. Simcox resided
in the immense reception rooms, miles above, of the first floor; the
three suites above him, scowling gloomily across a square at the twin
mausoleums opposite, were unoccupied and un-visited; on the first floor
Mr. Simcox had his office. The business done in this office, which
Rosalie was now to assist, and why it was done, was in this wise and was
thus explained to Rosalie.

Mr. Simcox, more than ever dropped out and more than ever having lost
touch after the deaths of his sister and mother, found himself irked
more than anything else by the absence of correspondence. He had been
accustomed in India to a big receipt of letters--a big dhak, as he
called it, using the Hindustani word--now he received no letters at all;
and he told Rosalie that when you are in the habit of getting a regular
daily post, its gradual falling off and then its complete cessation is
one of the most melancholy things that can befall a man. A nice bunch of
letters in the morning, he said, is like a cold bath to a young man, a
stimulant and an appetiser; and a similar packet by the night delivery
is an entertainment to look forward to from sunset till it arrives and
the finest possible digestive upon which to go to bed. Mr. Simcox found
himself cut off from both these necessities of a congenial life and it
depressed him beyond conception. Dressing in the morning he would hear
the postman come splendidly rat tatting along the square and would hold
his breath for that glorious thunder to come echoing up from his own
front door--and it never did. Only the sound of the footsteps came,
hurrying past--always.

Set to his solitary dinner in the evening, again would come along that
glorious, reverberating music, and again Mr. Simcox would hold his
breath as it approached and again--! Oh, particularly in the winter,
it was awful, Mr. Simcox told Rosalie. Awful; she wouldn’t believe how
awful it was. In the winter, in the dark nights, there is, Mr. Simcox
said, about the sound of the postman banging along the doors something
that is the sheer essence of all the mystery, and all the poetry, and
all the life, and all the comfort, and all the light and all the warmth
in the world. Often on winter nights Mr. Simcox would get up quickly
from the table (He couldn’t help it) and go tiptoe (Why tiptoe? He
didn’t know. You had to. It was the mystery and the aching atmosphere of
the thing) tiptoe across the room to the window, and draw an inch of
the heavy curtain and peer out into the darkness and towards the music.
There would be the little round gleam of the postman’s lantern, bobbing
along as he hurried. And flick! it was gone into a doorway, and rat-tat,
flick, and there it was again--coming! Flick, rat-tat! Flick, flick,
rat-tat! Coming, coming! Growing larger, growing brighter, growing
louder! Next door now. They always get it next door. Flick, rat-tat!
What a crasher! You can feel it echo! Flick! Now then! Now then! How it
gleams! He’s stopped! He’s looking at his letters! He’s coming in!
He is--ah, he’s passed; he’s gone; it’s over; nothing... nothing for
here.... Rat-tat! That’s next door. The party wall shakes. The lustres
on the mantelpiece shake. Mr. Simcox’s hands shake. He sits down, pushes
his plate away....

It is absurd; it is ridiculous, of course it is; but it was pathetic,
it was moving, as it was received from Mr. Simcox by that young and most
warm-hearted Rosalie. Her eyes positively were caused to blink as she
listened. She had an exact vision of that funny little jack-in-the-box
figure up from the table and tiptoeing across the enormous dining
room in his little pepper and salt suit with the pockets swaying, not
flapping, as he trod along, and opening that inch of the heavy curtain
and pressing out his gaze through the black window pane, and watching
the gleam and the flick and then the crash and the gleam again, and then
holding his breath and hearing his heart go thump, and then dropping the
curtain, and back again, with his hands shaking a little and hearing the
lustres tinkle....

Yes, very moving to that Rosalie in her youth and warmth. She had
actually to touch her nose (high up, between her eyes) with her
handkerchief and she said, “Oh, Mr. Simcox.... Yes, and then what?”

“Then what? Ah! ‘Then what’ is this.” They were seated in Mr. Simcox’s
great office on the ground floor. The office of a man of many affairs.
A very large writing table furnished with every conceivable facility for
writing, not only note papers and envelopes racked up in half a dozen
sizes, but sealing waxes in several hues, labels, string, “In” basket,
“Out” basket, “Pending Decision” basket, all sorts of pens, all sorts
of pencils, wafers, clips, scales, letter weights, rulers--the
table obviously of a man to whom correspondence was a devotional, an
engrossing, an exact art, and an art practised on an expansive, an
impressive, and a lordly scale. There were also in the office a very
large plain table on which were spread newspapers, a basket containing
clippings from newspapers, an immense blue chalk for marking newspapers
and a very long, also a very short, pair of scissors for cutting out
clippings from newspapers. A range of filing cabinets stood against one
wall; a library of directories and catalogues occupied shelves against
another wall.

“‘Then what’ is this,” said Mr. Simcox, indicating these impressive
appointments of the room with a wave of his hand. “You ask me ‘then
what?’ ‘Then what’ is all this. ‘Then what’ has grown now to be you.
I’ll tell you.”

It was this--the oddest, most eccentric notion (not that Rosalie it
thought so). Mr. Simcox, cut off from letters, had determined that he
must get letters. He would get letters. If the postman would not come of
himself (so to speak) then he must be forced to come. And Mr. Simcox set
about forcing him to come by answering advertisements. Not employment
advertisements; no; the advertisements to which Mr. Simcox re-plied were
the advertisements that offered to send you something for nothing--that
implored you to permit them to send you something for nothing. They
are common objects of the periodical press. Every paper is stuffed with
them. “Write for free samples.” “Catalogues.” “Trial packet sent
post free on application.” “Write for our beautifully illustrated
art brochure.” “Descriptive booklet by return.” “Write for full
particulars.” “Free sample bottle sufficient for seven days’ trial.”
 “Approval gladly. Postpaid.” “Plans and particulars of the sole agents.”
 “Superbly printed art volume on receipt of postcard.”

The advertisement columns of every paper are stuffed with them and soon
the letter-box of Mr. Simcox was stuffed with them. The postman who
never stopped at Mr. Simcox’s house now never missed Mr. Simcox’s house.
He went on a lighter and a brisker man after having dealt with Mr.
Simcox’s house. The agitation with which his approach was heard was
now exchanged for a superb confidence as his approach was heard. The
deliveries that for Mr. Simcox had never been deliveries were now,
not deliveries, but avalanches. They roared into the letter-box of Mr.
Simcox. They cascaded upon the floor of the hall of Mr. Simcox.

A mail thus composed does not perhaps sound interesting. Mr. Simcox,
once he had got into the full swing of the thing, discovered it to be
profoundly and exhaustively interesting. It possessed in the highest
degree the two primary essentials of a really good mail,--surprise and
variety. There would always be two or three fascinating little parcels,
there would always be two or three handsome packets, there would always
be two or three imposing looking letters. No common correspondence could
possibly have had the number of attractively boxed gifts, the amount of
handsomely printed literary and il-lustrated matter, and certainly not
the unfailing persistency of flow, that constituted the correspondence
of Mr. Simcox.

The mine once discovered proved to be a mine inexhaustible and
containing lodes or galleries of new and unsuspected wealth. Mr. Simcox
took in but two daily papers, and two penny weekly papers, and they
might well have sufficed. But an appetite whetted and an eye opened
they did not suffice. There thundered from the Bayswater free library a
positive babel of cries from advertisers in the score of journals
there displayed, howling for Mr. Simcox graciously to permit them to
contribute their toll to his letter-box; and there were at the news
agents periodicals catering for every specialised class of the community
and falling over themselves to put before Mr. Simcox the full range
of the mysteries, the luxuries and the necessities of every trade
and profession and pursuit, from shipbuilding to cycling and from
ironmongery to the ownership of castles, moors, steam yachts and salmon
fisheries.

Mr. Simcox, entirely happy, one of the busiest men that might be found
in the metropolis, struck out new lines. Hitherto he had received his
correspondence interestedly and pleasurably but passively. He began
to take it up actively and sharply. He began to write back, either
graciously approving or very sharply criticising his samples,
his specimens and his free trials; and the advertisers responded
voluminously, either abjectly with regret and enclosing further samples
for Mr. Simcox’s esteemed trial, or abjectly with delight and soliciting
the very great favour of utilising Mr. Simcox’s esteemed letter for
publicity purposes. This, however, Mr. Simcox, courteously but firmly,
invariably refused to permit.

The engagement of Rosalie was a development of Mr. Simcox’s hobby as
natural as the development of any other hobby from rabbit breeding to
china collecting. The craze intensifies, the scope is enlarged. To have
a secretary made Mr. Simcox’s mail and the work that produced his mail
even more real than already it had become to him. Following up the
personal touch that had been discovered by the criticism of samples,
Mr. Simcox had opened up a line that produced the personal touch in
most intimate degree: personal touch with schools and with insurance
companies. He created for himself sons, daughters, nephews, nieces,
wards. He endowed them, severally, with ages, with backwardness, with
brilliancy, with robustness, with delicacy, with qualities that were
immature and required development, with absence of qualities that
were desirable and required implanting, with unfortunate tendency to
qualities that were undesirable and needed repression and nipping in the
bud. He placed these children, thus handicapped or endowed, before
the principals of selected schools; he desired that terms and full
particulars might be placed before him to assist him in the anxious task
of right selection. They were placed before him. “Your backward nephew
Robin” (to take a single example) engaged the personal attention of
preparatory schoolmasters from Devonshire to Cumberland and from Norfolk
to Carnarvon. Similarly with insurance companies. Again dependents
and friends were created, by the dozen, by Mr. Simcox. Male and female
created he them, cumbered with all imaginable risks, and darkly brooding
upon all manner of contingencies; and male and female, cumbered and
perplexed, they were studied and advised upon by insurance companies
earnest beyond measure to show Mr. Simcox what astounding and
unparalleled benefits could be obtained for them.

At the time when Rosalie joined him, Mr. Simcox’s attention was in much
greatest proportion devoted to this development of his pursuit. Under
the instruction of a friend, long since dropped out and lost, who had
held a considerable position in a leading assurance company, he had
acquired a sound working knowledge of the principles and mysteries of
insurance. The subject had greatly interested him. In the phrase he used
to Rosalie he had “taken it up”; and in the phrase that so often sequels
and rounds off a thing suddenly “taken up” he had suddenly “dropped it.”
 He now, by way of the new development of his correspondence, approached
it again. It received him as a former habitation receives a returned
native. Mr. Simcox (if the metaphor may be pursued) roamed all about
the familiar rooms and corridors of the house of the principles and
mysteries of insurance. His knowledge of its possibilities enabled him
to develop an astonishing ingenuity in creating cases ripe and yearning
for the benefits of provision against contingencies, and as he very
easily was able to prove to Rosalie, and found immense delight in
proving, he had under his finger, that is to say in his exquisitely
arranged filing cabinets, also in his head, a range of insurance
companies’ literature which enabled him to work out for any conceivable
case the most suitable office or offices and the finest possible cover
for his risks. “Different companies specialize,” said Mr. Simcox, “in
different classes of risk. A man should no more walk into one of the
leading offices just because it happens to be one of the leading offices
and there take out his policy or policies than he should walk into and
take for occupation the first vacant house he sees, merely because it
is, as a house, a good house. It may be a most excellent house but it
may not be in the least the house most suitable to his requirements.”

Rosalie nodded intelligently. “But how is a man to find out, Mr.
Simcox?”

“Why, I suppose only by going round to every company and choosing the
best, just as I make out and send around these cases of mine. But of
course no one does that--the trouble for one thing, and ignorance for
another, and inability to realise their real requirements and to state
them clearly if they do realise them for a third. That’s what it is.”

Rosalie’s intelligent nodding had not ceased. She had a trick, when Mr.
Simcox was explaining things to her, of maintaining, with eyes fixed
widely upon him, a slow, affirmative movement of her head rather as
though she were some engine, and her head the dial, absorbing power
from a flow of energy. The dial never indicated repletion. Mr. Simcox
delighted to talk to Rosalie, to watch that grave movement of her head,
and to hear the short occasional “Why’s?” and comments that came like
little spurts or quivers as of the engine in initial throbbings pulsing
the power it stored.

She was absorbing power. The months were going on. The earlier
initiation into Mr. Simcox’s business might have had a tinge of
disappointment were it not that, whatever the nature of her work,
manifestly work it was, paid for, with regular hours, with an office to
attend, such as a man might do. The tinge of disappointment, if she
had suffered it, would have stung out of the thought: Where, in this
manufactured correspondence, in this pretence at a business which was in
fact no business at all, where in all this was Lombard Street? Where the
romance and mystery of finance? Where the touch with the power that was
made in countinghouses and with the exercise of the power exerted from
those countinghouses?

But it happened for Rosalie, first, that this thought could not come
because she was too busy with the glorious novelty of being in an office
and learning office ways; then, when the novelty had worn, that it could
not come because a new and a real element arrived to nullify it. In the
early days there was no realisation of sham because there was the real
business, to herself, of learning business methods and the whole theory
and practice of office routine. She could have had no better instructor
than Mr. Simcox, she could have had no better training than the
handling, the sorting and the filing of his curious and various
correspondence. She had become an efficient and a singularly apt and
keen office clerk when, more leisured because she had mastered her
duties, she might first have had time for realisation that Lombard
Street was not here nor all the romance and mystery with which she had
invested the power of countinghouses within a thousand miles of this
house of most elaborate pretence. And then, at once to prevent that
realisation and to dissipate its cause, came Lombard Street to her in
Mr. Simcox’s new absorption in (to her) the mysteries and the romance
and the astounding possibilities of the business of insurance. How the
mammoth companies, whose names soon were as household words to
Rosalie, accumulated their enormous funds and invested them; how, while
provisioning for to-day, they must calculate against liabilities falling
due in a to-morrow generations ahead; how they would put their money
into property the leases of which would fall in and the estate become
marketable again perhaps a hundred years hence, when officers of
the company yet unborn would be looking to the prudence of those now
reigning to maintain the inflowing tide; how risks were calculated and
vital statistics and chances and averages studied--all this, delightedly
and delightfully narrated by Mr. Simcox (watching that gravely nodding
head and those wide intelligent eyes) was sheer fascination to the
mind that had found romance and mystery in “Lombard Street” as commonly
romance and mystery are found in poetry and music.

Then one day she took a step towards applying the fascination that she
found.

It was the day of the conversation that has been recorded. How, Rosalie
had asked, was the seeker after insurance to find the policies best
suited to his case? Rosalie had asked; and had been told--he must go
round but he never does; he must know what there is to be had but he
never does know; he must realise exactly what he really wants but he
never does realise it; and if he does realise it he must be able to
state it clearly but he never can state it clearly.

Mr. Simcox, detailing this, permitted himself an amused contempt. The
public were ignoramuses, mere children; they knew nothing whatever about
insurance.

Rosalie said in a voice consonant with the grave measure of her nods:
“Of course, if it was a man, as you said, looking for a house, he’d go
to an agent. A house agent would tell him of houses best suited to his
needs that he could choose between. Well, there are insurance agents.
You’ve told me about them.”

“Ah, but not the same thing, not the same thing,” corrected Mr. Simcox.
“An insurance agent, the ordinary insurance agent, is agent for a
particular company. He only knows what his own company can do and he
only wants his own company to do it. That’s no good to the kind of man
in the position we’re speaking of. He wants some one who can tell him
what all the companies will do for him. Some one who can hear his case,
analyse it, put it before him in the right light and advise him the
best way of placing it. That’s what he wants. Exactly the same as these
letters I send out--as you and I send out, I should say. Why, I’ve had
practical examples of it. There was a young fellow I met at your aunt’s
house. There’ve been three or four cases of it for that matter but this
happens to be some one you know--”

He proceeded to tell her of a visitor at Aunt Belle’s, a young man home
on leave from the Indian army and recently married, with whom he had got
into conversation on the subject of insurance and had most ably helped.
The young man had a certain policy in view. Mr. Sim-cox had put an
infinitely better before him. “If he had come to me before his marriage
when he was first taking out a policy in his wife’s favour, I could have
saved him and gained her hundreds, literally hundreds,” said Mr. Simcox.
“He’d made a most awful mess of the business. As it was I helped him
very considerably. He was very grateful, devilish grateful. He went
straight to an agent of the office I recommended and did it.”

“There must be hundreds like him that would be grateful,” said Rosalie.

“Thousands,” said Mr. Simcox. “Tens of thousands. Every single soul who
insures, you may say.”

“Who got the commission?” said Rosalie.

“The agent, of course,” said Mr. Simcox.

“Oh,” said Rosalie.

“Why?” said Mr. Simcox.

“Nothing,” said Rosalie. “Only ‘oh ‘.”




CHAPTER V


There’s much virtue in an If, says Touchstone; and there’s much virtue
in an “Oh”--a wise, a thoughtful, a speculative, a discerning “Oh” such
as that “Oh” pronounced by Rosalie to Mr. Simcox’s information that
agents, and not he, drew the commissions for the insurance policies
which, out of his knowledge and experience, he had advised. There
followed from that “Oh” its plain outcome: her suggestion to Mr. Simcox
of why not make a business, a real business, of expert advice upon
insurance, and (out of the make-believe intercourse with schools) a
business, a real business, of expert advice upon schools? And there
shall follow also from that “Oh” a sweeping use of the intention that
has been mentioned to tell only of her life that which contributed to
her life. We’ll fix her stage from first to last, then see her walk upon
it.

This was her stage: Her suggestion was adopted. It has, astonishingly
soon, astonishing success. Advice upon insurance, advice upon schools,
commissions from each, are found wonderfully to work in together, each
bringing clients to the other. Aunt Belle’s swarms of friends, their
swarms of friends, the swarms of friends of those swarms of friends,
and so on, snowball fashion, are the first nucleus of the thing. It
succeeds. It grows. Real offices are taken. “Simcox’s.” Advertisements,
clerks, banking-accounts. Appearance of Mr. Sturgiss, partner in Field
and Company--“Field’s”--the bankers and agents. Field’s is a private
bank. Its business is principally with persons resident in the East,
soldiers, civil servants, tea planters, East India merchants. Field’s
is in Lombard Street. (Lombard Street!) Later Field’s opens a West End
office. Field’s is frequently asked to advise its clients and their
wives on all manner of domestic matters,--schools for their children,
holiday homes, homes for clients over on leave, insurance, investment,
whatnot, a hundred things. Comes to this Sturgiss, partner in Field’s,
an idea of great possibilities in this advisory business if developed
as might be developed and run as might be run. Tremendously attracted by
Rosalie as the person for the job. Makes her an offer. She declines it.
Mr. Simcox’s death. Sturgiss comes along again. Ends in Rosalie going
to Field’s. Lombard Street! Room of her own in the big offices. Glass
partitioned. Huge mahogany table. Huge mahogany desk. Field’s open the
West End office, in Pall Mall. More convenient for wives of clients.
Rosalie is moved there. Manager of her own side of the business. The war
comes. Sturgiss goes out. Other important officers of the bank go out.
Her importance increases very much in other sides of the bank’s business
than her own. Press scents her out and writes her up. “The only woman
banker.” “Brilliant woman financier.” Contributes articles to the
reviews. Very much a leading woman of her day. Very much a most
remarkable woman.

That’s her stage. Thus she walked upon it:

The beginning part--that tumult of youth, those dizzy jumps that we have
seen her in--was frightfully exciting, frightfully absorbing. She was
so tremendously absorbed, so terrifically intent, so tremendously eager,
that the transition from the Sultana’s to Aunt Belle’s, and the start
with Mr. Simcox, and the transition from Aunt Belle’s to independence
in the boarding house, was done with scarcely a visit--and then a rather
grudged and rather impatient visit--to the rectory home.

No, the absorption was too profound for much of that: indeed, for much
of home in any form. Letters came from Rosalie’s mother three and four
times a week. In the beginning, when fresh left school and at Aunt
Belle’s, Rosalie always kissed the dear handwriting on the envelope,
and kissed the dear signature before returning the letters to their
envelopes; and she would sit up late at night writing enormously long
and passionately devoted letters in reply. But she wasn’t going back;
she wasn’t going down; no, not even for a week-end, “my own darling
and beloved little mother,” until she had found an employment and was
established on her own feet, “just like one of the boys.” Then she would
come, oh, wouldn’t she just! She would have an annual holiday, “just as
men have,” and she would come down to the dear, beloved old rectory and
she would give her own sweet, adored little mother the most wonderful
time she ever could imagine!

Rosalie would sit up late at night writing these most loving letters,
pages and pages long; and her mother’s letters (which always arrived by
the first post) she would carry about with her all day and read again
before answering.

And yet....

The fond intention in thus carrying them on her person instead of
bestowing them in her writing case was to read them a dozen times in the
opportunities the day would afford. And yet... Somehow it was not done.
The day of the receipt of the very first letter was generous of such
opportunities and at each of them the letter was remembered... but not
drawn forth. Rosalie did not attempt to analyse why not. Her repression,
each time, of the suggestion that the letter should now be taken out and
read again was not a deliberate repression. She merely had a negative
impulse towards the action and accepted it; and so negligible was the
transaction in her record of her thoughts, so mere a cypher in the petty
cash of the day’s ledger, that in the evening when, gone up to bed, the
letter was at last drawn out and kissed and read and answered, and then
kissed and read again, no smallest feeling of remorse was suffered by
her to reflect that the intended reading in the dozen opportunities of
the day had not been done.

And yet... Was it, perhaps, this mere acceptance of a negative impulse,
a cloud no bigger than the size of a man’s hand upon the horizon of
her generous impulses? There is this to be admitted--that the letters,
accumulating, began to bulk inconveniently in her writing case. What
a lot dear mother wrote! Room might be made for them by removing or
destroying the letters from friends who had left the Sultana’s with her,
but about those letters there was a peculiar attraction; they were from
other emancipated One Onlys who watched with admiration the progress in
her wonderful adventure of brilliant, unconventional Rosalie, and it was
nice thus to be watched. Or room for her mother’s letters might be made
by removing or destroying letters that began to amass directly touching
her desire for employment--from city friends of Uncle Pyke, from Mr.
Simcox. But, no, unutterably precious those! Unutterably precious, too,
of course, those accumulating bundles of letters from her dear mother;
but precious on a different plane: they belonged to her heart; it was
to her head, to the voice in her that cried “Live your life--your
life--yours!” that these others belonged.

She was tingling to that voice one night, turning over the employment
letters; and, tingling, put her mother’s letters from her case to her
box.

Yes, upon the horizon of her generous impulses perhaps the tiniest
possible cloud. And then perhaps enlarging. You see, she was so very
full of her intentions, of her prospects. She had read somewhere that
the perfect letter to one absent from home was a letter stuffed with
home gossip,--who had been seen and who was doing what, and what had
been had for dinner yesterday and whence obtained. But she did not
subscribe to that view. She was from home and her mother’s letters were
minutest record of the home life; but she began to skip those portions
to read “afterwards.” One day the usual letter was there at breakfast
and she put it away unopened so as to have “a really good, jolly read”
 of it “afterwards.” In a little after that she got the habit of always,
and for the same reason (she told herself) keeping the letters till the
evening. One day she gave the slightest possible twitch of her brows at
seeing the very, very familiar handwriting. She had had a letter only
the previous day and two running was not expected: more than that, this
previous letter had slightly vexed her by its iteration of the longing
to see her and by very many closely written lines of various little
troubles. She was a little impatient at the idea of a further edition of
it so soon. She forgot to open it that night. She remembered it when
she was in bed; but she was in bed then... When, next day, she read the
letter it was, again, an iteration of the longing to see her and, again,
more, much more, of the little troubles: the residue was of the gossipy
gossip that Rosalie already had formed the habit of skipping till
“afterwards.” Altogether a vexatious letter.

After that, when the letters were frequent, it was frequent for Rosalie
to greet the sight of them with just the swiftest, tiniest little
contraction of her brows. Nothing at all really. Meaning virtually
nothing and of itself absolutely nothing. Possessing a significance
only by contrast, as a fine shade in silk or wool will not disclose a
pronounced hue until contrasted with another. The contrast here, to give
the thing significance, was between that swiftest, tiniest contraction
of the brows at the sight of her mother’s letters and the eager spring
to them, the quick snatching up, and the impulsive pressing to her lips
when first those letters began to come. Likewise answering them, that
had been an impulsive outpouring and brimming over, now was a very
slightly laboured squeezing. The pen, before, had flooded love upon the
page. Now the pen halted, paused, and had to think of expressions that
would give pleasure.

The change did not happen at a blow. If it had, Rosalie would have
noticed it. It slipped imperceptibly from stage to stage and she did not
notice it.




CHAPTER VI


There was a thing she said about men once (in the boarding house now)
and often repeated. “They’re very fond of saying women are cats,” she
once said. “Fools! It’s men that are the cat tribe: tame cats, tabby
cats, wild cats, Cheshire cats, tomcats and stray cats! Aren’t they
just? And look at them--tame cats are miserable creatures, tabby cats
the sloppy creatures, wild cats ferocious creatures, Cheshire cats fool
creatures, tomcats disgusting creatures, stray cats--on the whole the
stray cats are the least objectionable, they are bearable: at the right
time and for a short time.”

This characterisation of men as Rosalie, in sequent development of her
attitude towards men, had come to regard them was delivered to the girl
with whom (for cheapness) her room in the boarding house was shared.
Rosalie went from Aunt Belle’s to this boarding house to assert and to
achieve her greater independence. A man, Rosalie debated, would have
gone into bachelor rooms; but young women did not go into bachelor rooms
in those days and the singularity of Rosalie’s attitude towards life
is rather well presented in the fact that she never set herself against
conventions inhibitory of her sex merely because they were inhibitory
of her sex. When the years brought those violent scenes and emotions of
what has been called the suffragette campaign, Rosalie, who might have
been expected to be a militant of the militants, took no part nor even
interest in it whatever. She did not desire the privileges of men merely
because they were the privileges of men; she desired a status which
happened to be in the right of men and she went towards it without
seeking to change the established order of things, just as, from one
field desiring a flower in another field, she would have gone to fetch
it without changing her dress.

A man, anxious for full independence, would have gone into bachelor
rooms; but young women did not go into bachelor rooms. They achieved
their independence perfectly well, and far more cheaply, by going into
a boarding house. She therefore, very excitedly, went into a boarding
house.

There was no difficulty about leaving Aunt Belle’s. Once Rosalie was
established in business with Mr. Simcox, tied to business hours, and
earning a weekly salary, she no longer occupied in Aunt Belle’s house
the position of dependence which was in Aunt Belle’s house the first,
and indeed the only, qualification for all who occupied her house. Aunt
Belle’s guests had to be guests: wealthy guests who could be entertained
from early morning tea (beautifully served) to bedtime and made
graciously to admire; or if poor guests, and particularly poor
relations, guests who could be even more impressed and were naturally
much more enthusiastically delighted and profoundly admiring. Rosalie,
in business, could not be entertained and did not sufficiently admire.
She had to have a special early breakfast; she disappeared; she was not
in to lunch or tea; she was not sufficiently impressed by what cook had
prepared but had rather too much to say about what she had been doing,
at dinner; and she excused herself away to early bed on the ground of
fatigue or of having certain books to study. Rosalie, in business, was
not a guest at all in Aunt Belle’s sense of the word: indeed there came
an occasion--Rosalie twice in one week late for dinner--when Aunt Belle
said awfully, “My house is not a hotel, Rosalie. I cannot have my nice
house turned into a hotel.”

It was the nearest thing to an unkind word ever spoken by Aunt Belle to
Rosalie, and it was so near that it brought Aunt Belle up to Rosalie’s
bed that night--solicitude in a terrific dressing gown of crimson
silk--to express the hope that Rosalie was not crying (she was not; she
had been sound asleep) at anything Aunt Belle “might have said.” “But
you see, dear child, there are the servants to consider, all that
delicious soup and all that most tasty turbot au gratin to be kept warm
for you, and there is your kind Uncle Pyke to consider; men do not like
their meals to be...”

The boarding house, which Rosalie, with qualms as to its reception by
Aunt Belle, had for some time been secretly meditating, came easily
after that. The boarding house had moreover for Aunt Belle a double
attraction. It not only removed Rosalie in her capacity of one
threatening to turn Aunt Belle’s nice house into a hotel; it also
restored Rosalie in her capacity of overwhelmed, grateful and admiring
poor relation. Rosalie was now invited from the boarding house just as
previously she had been invited from the Sultana’s; the table and
the appointments of Aunt Belle’s house were now lavishly displayed in
contrast to the display and the table endured by Rosalie at the boarding
house; Aunt Belle was again supremely happy in Rosalie and abundantly
kind; dinner each Saturday night was a standing invitation and
frequently for these dinners Aunt Belle arranged “a little dinner party
for you, dear child, just one or two really nice people that it is nice
for you to meet and that you can tell your friends at the boarding house
about, dear child.”

Aunt Belle helped Rosalie to choose the boarding house and saw that it
was “nice.” Nice people went there and the proprietress, Miss Kentish,
was nice. Miss Kentish had a grey, detachable fringe which became, and
re-mained, semi-detached immediately after breakfast, and a mobile front
tooth which came out surprisingly far when she talked and went in with
a sharp click when she stopped. She had for newcomers a single
conversational sentence--“My name is Kentish, though funnily enough we
come from Sussex”--and, for all purposes, a single business principle,
that of willingness “to come to an arrangement.” “I am afraid I cannot
remedy your water not being hot at eight o’clock,” she would say to a
boarder, “but I will gladly come to an arrangement with you. Ten minutes
to eight or ten minutes past eight” (click). She would come to an
arrangement on anything. She became very fond of Rosalie in course of
time and once told her that though her duties never permitted her to
attend church she had “come to an arrangement” with the vicar and felt
that she had “come to an arrangement with Our Lord” (click). She came to
an arrangement with Rosalie in the matter of tariff, receiving her and a
Miss Salmon, who also sought arrangement, as “two friends as one.” This
was two persons sharing a room at the tariff of a person and a half.
Living was very cheap in those days. Rosalie, at the beginning, with
Miss Salmon, paid 18/6 a week, and out of the twenty-five shillings paid
her, at first, every Friday by Mr. Simcox there remained what seemed to
Rosalie great wealth.

She set herself to save on it and her first purpose in thus saving was
to accumulate money on which she could draw so as to be able to pay
for a room private to herself. That would have taken some time. Her
successive increases in her earnings, as Mr. Simcox’s hobby developed
into a business, brought privacy, and in time what amounted to luxury,
by much swifter process. Rosalie was a very long time at the boarding
house. From being two friends as one she passed to a small remote
room of her own, then to a larger and more accessible room, then to a
bed-sitting-room, finally to a very delightful arrangement. There was on
the second floor a fine roomy apartment having a dressing-room opening
out of it. Rosalie, by then in much favour with Miss Kentish, not only
secured the suite but “came to an arrangement” with Miss Kentish by
which the furniture and fittings were removed from the rooms and Rosalie
permitted to fit, decorate and furnish them herself. Rosalie never knew
happier hours than in the furnishing of those two rooms into a little
kingdom of her own: she never in all her life knew days as happy as the
days there spent.

But at the beginning, two friends as one with Miss Salmon and first
contact with life from the angle presented by some twenty various
individuals met at meals and in the public rooms. Miss Salmon was a
pale, fussy creature with pince-nez in some mysterious way set so far
from her eyes that she always appeared to be running after them as if to
keep them balanced. Whenever anything of which she did not approve was
being said to Miss Salmon or was being done before Miss Salmon, she
maintained throughout it, moving about in pursuit of her pince-nez, a
rather loud, constant, tuneless humming. When her moment came she
would always begin “Well, now” and then swallow forcibly as though the
swallowing gave her pain. “Well, now” (gulp). This introduction was
always precedent to speech by Miss Salmon, whether after humming or not.
Rosalie frequently went to Sunday church service with her and there
was an occasion in the Litany on which Miss Salmon, who either had been
wandering or sleeping, suddenly came to herself at the correct moment
and said: “Well, now”--(gulp)--“We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord.”

Miss Salmon was employed as a daily nursery governess by a family
resident across the park who, not hav-ing room for her, had “come to
an arrangement” with Miss Kentish for her accommodation at the boarding
house; and with her fussiness, her nose pursuit, her humming and her
general ineptitude of habit and of thought, she was as it were a fated
companion for Rosalie; and it was the case that all the other inmates of
the boarding house were, in regard to Rosalie, equally and in the same
sense fated. Miss Salmon and they were fated, or fatal, to Rosalie, in
the sense that it would have been well then for Rosalie, as always well
for any developing young thing, to have been among companions who drew
upon her sympathies and called for her consideration. The contrary was
here presented to her. She was ripe to be intolerant for she was very
full of purpose and purpose is a motive power of much impatience. Miss
Salmon, who would have made a saint impatient, made Rosalie, who was not
a saint, very impatient and the virus of this impatience was that very
soon Rosalie made no attempt to conceal it. It seemed to Rosalie that
whenever she projected any plan to Miss Salmon--as to “do” a pit at a
theatre--or any theory--as that men and not women were manifestly the
cat tribe--it seemed to her that Miss Salmon always hummed with
the maddening humming denotive of disapproval, and always prefaced
stupendously stubborn idiocy with the “Well, now” and the gulp that
alone were sufficient to drive enthusiasm crazy.

“Mmmmm--mm. Mmm--mmmm--mm--mm,” would go Miss Salmon, following her
pince-nez up and down the little bedroom. And then, the pince-nez
poised, “Well, now” (gulp).

And Rosalie came to cry, “Oh, never mind. Never mind, for goodness’
sake. I know exactly what you’re going to say so what is the good of
saying it?” Miss Salmon nevertheless would say it, in full measure,
pressed down at intervals in solid lumps with reiterated “Well, now”
 (gulp). And then Rosalie would hum to show she was not listening and
thus in time to the position that Rosalie, beyond the ordinary changes
of everyday conversation, took not the slightest notice of Miss Salmon
but busied herself in their room, or came into it or went out of it,
precisely as if Miss Salmon, who with her gulps, her fussiness and
her balancing was very much there, was in fact not there at all. When
Rosalie for the weekly dinner at Aunt Belle’s used to dress in the
evening frock of Laetitia’s given her for the purpose by Aunt Belle, she
used, at first, to say to Miss Salmon, “There, how do I look, Gertrude?
Can you see that mend in the lace?”

“Well, now--” (gulp).

Very soon she was dressing (at the common dressing table) with no more
regard for Miss Salmon or for the continuous humming of Miss Salmon
(signification of Miss Salmon’s disapproval of the monopolisation of the
dressing table) than if Miss Salmon had been an automaton wound up to
balance a pince-nez around the room, to hum, and at intervals to gulp.

This was a small thing, but it was an important small thing. Rosalie was
entirely insensible to the opinions and the existence of Miss Salmon,
and it followed that she became entirely insensible to the feelings of
Miss Salmon. To begin by ignoring a person with whom you are in daily
contact is certainly to end by not caring at all what happens to that
person. It was the misfortune of Miss Salmon to suffer periodically and
acutely from biliousness (which she called neuralgia). In an attack, she
took instantly to her bed and lay there flat on her back, absurdly and
unnecessarily poising her pince-nez, and looking, unquestionably, very
unpleasant. Rosalie,--who believed that Miss Salmon on these occasions
had overeaten herself, the attacks invariably coinciding with pork in
winter and with a fruit trifle known in the boarding house as “Kentish
Delight” in the summer, of both of which Miss Salmon was avowedly fond,
was at first warmly sympathetic and attentive on their occurrence,
anointing the fevered brows with eau-de-Cologne, nipping the unnecessary
pince-nez off the pallid nose, darkening the room, and stealing about
on tiptoe. In time her attitude came to be expressed by her reception
of the sight of Miss Salmon prone, stricken, yellow, pince-nez, poising.
“What, again?”

“Well, now----” (Gulp).

But Rosalie would be gone.

And it came to be the same with all the other fellow inmates of the
boarding house, alike the men and the women. Rosalie, in a colloquialism
of to-day not then coined, “had no use for them.” There was in none of
them anything that aroused her esteem; there was in each of them, in
degree greater or less, much that provoked her scorn. The result was
as resulted from Miss Salmon--she did not bother about them; and not
bothering about them she suffered an inhibition of her sympathies. To
repeat the thing said, her environment here was, as it were, fated
or fatal. In her eagerness for her career, her generous emotions were
likely to be laid aside and to wither; and the environment of the
boarding house in no way drew upon her sympathies.

This was not good for Rosalie.

Moreover, the community of the boarding house served Rosalie ill on
another point. She came there with all those grotesque ideas of her
childhood on the respective positions of men and women precipitated
through her older years to the perception given to Keggo: women
were this, women were that; in their commonest characteristics they
contrasted very badly with men; men did things better than women; they
had by far the better lot in life than women; unquestionably men were
the creatures; of course--off-handedly--they were beasts. She came to
the boarding house with these ideas and the boarding house presented
these ideas to her in living fact and assured her in her ideas. She came
there very susceptible to the qualities she believed to be rooted with
their sex in men and women and she saw those qualities there at once.
The boarding house might have been all her ideas of women and of men
taken away by an artist and put into an exact picture. It was her words
to Keggo in terms of actual life. Its population, little varying, was
always round about twenty; the proportion in sex always in the region
of fifteen women to five men. The figures were always constant and the
characters, when they changed, seemed always to Rosalie to be constant;
the names changed, the personalities did not change. Even the faces did
not change: there are certain types of faces that either are produced
by permanent residence in boarding houses or that go instinctively to
boarding houses for their permanent residence. There is a boarding-house
mould. There would always be two husbands with wives and three men
without wives. The men were never spoken to by any of the women but with
a certain archness which Rosalie detested; and they never spoke to the
women but with a certain boisterousness, a kind of rubbing together of
the hands and a “Ha! What miserable weather, Mrs. Keeley. How does it
suit you? Ha!” which Rosalie equally detested. It was as though the
women, leading boarding-house lives, knew that the men (who were
never in to lunch and sometimes absent from dinner) did not lead
boarding-house lives but secret, dashing and mysterious lives; and as
though the men knew that they lived secret, dashing and mysterious lives
but condescended to the women who lived only boarding-house lives; and
the archness on the one side and the boisterousness on the other
implied tribute and worthiness of tribute. This implication Rosalie also
detested.

Men--as she now saw men and women--she dismissed; generally as “of
course they’re beasts,” severally and in the groups to which they
belonged, as cats--of the cat tribe--tame cats, wild cats, Cheshire
cats, tomcats and stray cats. But she dismissed them. That was her
attitude, as it developed, towards men. They had been, in her regard,
owners of the earth, possessing and having dominion over the round world
and all that therein is, as a stage magician owns and dominates his
stage; they had next been wonderful things but apt to be troublesome and
braggart things whose braggadocio caused you to blink and have a funny
feeling; they had then been sinister and frightening things that caused
poor Anna to say it was hard for women; they became, at last, creatures
that had the best of life, that is to say the better time in life, not
because they merited it, but because it was theirs by tradition and they
stepped into it, or were put into it, as naturally as a man child is
put into trousers; and they had, when all was reckoned up, the better
qualities--largeness, tolerance, directness, explosiveness (as opposed
to smouldering-ness)--not, Rosalie thought, because they were males, but
because they had the position that males have, just as by the habit of
command is given to small boys in the Navy and very young men in the
Army the air and the poise of command.

Yes, certainly men were, as they had always been, the creatures; but the
eyes that formerly saw them as magicians, as by a savage is seen only
the mystery of the moving hands, the tick, and the strike of a
clock, now looked inside the case and saw the works. No mystery.
No exclusiveness of natural power. Nothing abnormal. Men, on their
estimable qualities and position, were what they were merely because,
as the works of a watch, thus and thus the wheels were made to go round.
Easy. Nothing in it. On the contrary. On the contrary, men were the more
despicable in that, dowered as by tradition they were dowered, they yet
were--what they were! The eyes that had been caused to blink by Robert
blowing smoke through his nose and by Harold pulling up his collar and
speaking with a “haw!” sound, blinked from a contempt yet more profound
(because now known for contempt) at the exhibition, seen all about her,
of men’s unlovely side. And she dismissed them. They did not attract her
in the smallest degree. All that they had in them to esteem, whether
of qualities or of position, they had--here was the parallel--in common
with drones in a hive. They had the best of everything; they were
blundering, blustering, noisy, careless, buccaneering owners of the
world, and to her--as all the roystering swarm to any individual worker
bee--to her, negligible. She was a worker bee, busy, purposeful.

There is a special function belonging to drones in a hive. That special
function of men in regard to women was repellant to Rosalie. All that
pertained to it was repulsive to her. She loathed to think of men in
that capacity and she loathed to see women ensnared in that regard by
men. Beautiful cousin Laetitia and the “good match” that obviously had
been found for her: she detested seeing those two together: it made her
feel sick.

Men! By this and by that in passage of time she was in contact with a
good number and a good variety of men. There was the frequently changing
male contribution to the boarding-house community; there were clients
met in the development of her work at Simcox’s; there were the men of
the circle of Uncle Pyke Pounce; there were the men of the circle of
cousin Laetitia, brought to the little Saturday-dinner parties. A very
fair average, a rather wider than the normal average of contact with
men; and she dismissed them. They had not any attraction for her at
all. If, rarely, she met one whose superficial points were superficially
attractive, his contribution to her attitude to men was to make her
blink (inwardly) the more, albeit on a different note. That one so
exceptionally dowered should find pleasure in, for instance, dalliance
of sex! Contemptible! Oh, sickening and contemptible! One Harry Occleve,
of Laetitia’s circle, so obviously “the good match,” was outstandingly
such a case. It was thought upon him, scornful and disgusted thought,
that made her, walking back from one of the Saturday-evening parties--he
was always there--arrange her experiences with men in that analogy
between men and cats which, as related, had been delivered to Miss
Salmon.

Like a tame cat! She never had met a man she despised so much. You’d
think a man like that couldn’t help but be above such things as Cousin
Laetitia and Aunt Belle made of him. “Occleve.” The very name that
he owned had a nice sound; and he was brilliantly clever and looked
brilliantly clever. He was a barrister and Aunt Belle, who was forever
talking about him, had said that evening, just before his arrival, that
some famous counsel had declared of him that he was unquestionably
the most brilliant of the young men of the day at the Bar. So he was
talented, had a great future before him, had a strong, most taking
presence, a commanding air, a voice of uncommon charm--and was in bonds
to Laetitia! Looked sickly at her! Mouthed fatuous nothings with her!
Was obviously marked down to be that “good match” that Laetitia was to
make, and was content, was eager, to be the tame cat of her languishing
glances and of Aunt Belle’s excessive gushings! Was to be seen in
a future not distant mated with Laetitia and sharing with her an
atmosphere of milk and silk and babies and kisses! Tame cat! What an end
to which to bring such qualities! What a desecration of such qualities
to set them to win such an end! Tame cat!

But they all were cats of one kind or another. Yes, men are of the
cat tribe! Tabby cats--the soft, fattish kind, without any manlike
qualities, that seemed to be by far the greater proportion of all the
men one saw about in buses and in the streets and met in business;
tabby cats--sloppy, old-womanish creatures. Cheshire cats--the kind
that grinned out of vacuous minds and that never could speak to a woman
without grinning; the unattached men at the boarding house invariably
were of the Cheshire-cat cats. Tomcats--the beastly ones with lecherous
eyes that looked at you. “Of course they’re beasts.” It had been a large
experience of the tomcat cats that had made her add that final summary
of men to Keggo. The Bashibazook, once or twice encountered in her last
terms at the Sultana’s, though never spoken with, had looked at her in
a horrible way, not understood, but felt to be frightening and horrible;
Mr. Ponders, on a dreadful occasion after handing over the medicine for
Miss Keggs, had horribly said, “Well, now, wouldn’t a kiss be nice?
I think a nice kiss would be very nice.” She had managed to get away
without being touched; the nausea in her eyes perhaps had frightened
him. It was nausea she felt, not fear, a horrible physical sickness;
and finally to round off the “of course they’re beasts” of men as then
experienced and now to fill up the schedule of tomcat cats the friends
of Uncle Pyke Pounce’s circle and Uncle Pyke Pounce himself and the
men like the men of his circle--tomcats something past their prime as
lechers (but at a hint only more lecherous for that) but in the full
prime of their beastliness as guzzlers, who with guzzle eyes eyed their
food. She had come across a word in Carlyle’s “French Revolution” that
instantly brought Uncle Pyke Pounce and his friends to her mind and
that always thereafter she applied to the elderly tomcat encountered
or passed in the street--“atrabilious.” Atrabilious! The very word! She
looked it up in the dictionary, was disappointed to find it did not
mean exactly what she thought it meant, but gave it her own meaning, and
applied it to them. It sounded like them. They had small beady eyes, set
in yellow; no apparent eyelids either above or below, just an unblinking
eye set in a puffy face like a currant in a slab of cold pudding that
gloated or glared at everything and everybody as if it was a thing to
be devoured; guzzlers who gloated upon their food and wallowed in their
soup, always with little streaks of red veins and blue veins in their
faces. Atrabilious! Tomcats!

Wild cats--the roamers, the untamed ones, the ones with cruel and with
wicked faces that made you not sick, but frightened; mostly they were
dressed in rough clothes, men hanging about the streets who patently
were thieves or worse, who looked at you and at once looked all around
as if to see if any were about that might protect you; but often dressed
in gentle dress and then with the cruel and wicked look more cruel and
more wicked, to make your shudder to think of a woman having to belong
to that.

Stray cats--on the whole the only really bearable ones; the lonely ones
that seemed to have lost something or to be lost, that seemed to need
looking after, that made you have a funny tender feeling towards them, a
wanting as it were to pick them up and carry them home and be sharp with
them because they couldn’t take care of themselves, and to be kind to
them also because they couldn’t take care of themselves; yes, the only
bearable ones: Mr. Simcox was precisely one.

All cats, of the cat tribe. There wasn’t one you couldn’t place. There
wasn’t one, save dear little Mr. Simcox and the stray cat ones you
sometimes saw, that was not in some trait contemptible. The only thing
to be said for them was that it was their nature. They were created like
that. You just shrugged your shoulders at them and let them go at that,
negligible entities. Active disgust was only felt of them when one of
their traits was manifested directly towards you; or, much more, when
the sight was given of such a one as this Harry Occleve making such an
exhibition of himself and enjoying it, delighting in it, asking nothing
better than to be philandering with Laetitia, or escorting Laetitia, or
gazing at Laetitia. That did make you angry enough with a man to hate
a man. It was like seeing a good book--as it might be “Lombard
Street”--used to prop a table leg; or a jolly dog--as the dearest Scotch
terrier once brought to the boarding house--led for a walk on a leash by
an old maiden mistress and wearing a lapdog’s flannel coat with ribbon
bows at the corner. Her aversion to Harry Occleve was such that, in
their rare passages together, she was almost openly rude to him. It
seemed there was even no physical quality he had but he used it to abase
himself or to make an exhibition of himself. He had noticeably long,
strong-looking arms, but the sickening thing to see him once using those
arms to hold silk for Laetitia while she wound it! He had a striking
face that she named, from a line in Browning, a “marching” face--“one
who never turned his back but marched breast forward”--but to see that
face bent fatuously towards Laetitia! There radiated from the corners of
his eyes towards his temples those little lines that sailors often have,
“horizon tracks,” she called them; but to see them deeply marked while
he mouthed earnest nothings with Laetitia! There was an odd, nice smell
about him, of peat, of tobacco, of soap, of heather with the wind across
it, of things like that most agreeably mixed, and actually she had heard
Laetitia say to him in the babyish way she spoke to him, “You smoke too
much. You do.” And he, like a moon calf: “Oh, you’re not going to ask me
to give up smoking, are you?” And she with a trailing eye and hint of
a blush, “Perhaps I shall--some day.” And he--a sigh! Positively a
love-sick sigh straight out of a novel! Ah, positively she could detest
the man! She came to discover it as an odd thing that, while commonly
she was entirely indifferent to men, always after a Saturday meeting
with Laetitia’s Harry she had for quite a day or two an active
detestation of them.

But it was the women at the boarding house--to instance the boarding
house--the fifteen women, the immense, straggling army of women as they
looked to be, when they came trooping in to dinner or went trailing out
again, that had Rosalie’s sharpest observation and that best pointed
her youthful estimates. Unlike men who had fallen woefully from her
childhood estimate of them, the women maintained and intensified her
early estimate of women. The women in the boarding house showed Rosalie
what women come to. A few were emphatically old; the rest, with the
single exception of Miss Salmon, were emphatically not old; on the other
hand they were emphatically not young. They were at pains to let you
see they were not old and the pains they were at rather dreadfully (to
Rosalie) emphasised the fact that they were not young. The thing about
them, the warning, the proof that they exhibited of all Rosalie’s ideas
about the inferiority of women, was that they were, in her phrase,
derelicts--not wanted; abandoned; homeless; or they would not be
here. Yes, derelict; and what was worse, derelict not in the sense of
desuetude of powers or of powers outworn, but with the suggestion of
never having had any powers, of having been always the mere vessels of
another’s powers--some man’s; and now, with that power withdrawn--the
man, whether father, brother, lover or husband, gone--derelict as a
ship, abandoned of crew, rudderless and dismasted, is derelict; as an
obscure habitation, cold of hearth, crazy of walls, abandoned to decay,
is derelict. She summed them all up as having arrived at what they
were precisely because in their earlier years they had been what in
her childhood she had supposed women to be: inferior creatures at the
disposal and for the benefit and service of men. What a warning never to
be that! There they were--manless. And therefore derelict. And because
derelict for such a reason, therefore testimony to a social condition
that was abominable, and because seen to be abominable never, never
herself should enfold. Never! Manless. Husbandless. There they were,
the straggling mob of them,--deserted by husbands, semi-detached from
husbands, relict of husbands fallen out with a stitch in the side in the
race for husbands. Urh!

She was very young, Rosalie.

“Despised and rejected of men,” she said to Miss Salmon, holding forth
in their bedroom on her subject. “That’s what I call them. Despised and
rejected of men. Oh, don’t hum louder than ever. It’s not irreverent to
say that. It describes a condition, that’s all, and I’m using it because
it describes this condition, their condition, exactly. It does. You can
hum; but it does. They’ve never done anything, they’ve never meant to
do anything, they’ve never tried to do anything except hang round after
some man. That’s all. They’ve either caught him and now lost him; or
they’ve missed him and now go on missing him. That’s their lives. That’s
nearly any woman’s life. It’s not going to be mine. If anything were
wanted to make the whole idea of marriage and all that repulsive to
me--and nothing is wanted--that would. Despised and rejected of men! I
used to think and to say I intended to be like a man and to do a man’s
work and have a man’s share. I tell you that even getting so close to
a man as that--I mean as close as intentional emulation of him--even
getting as close as that makes me feel sick now. It’s my own life I’m
going to have, my own place, my own share; not modelled on any one
else’s. If it were conceivable that I ever met a man I cared tuppence
about--but it isn’t conceivable; that’s a quality that’s been left clean
out of me, thank goodness--but if it were conceivable, what I’d offer
would be just to share; to go on living my own way and he his--Oh,
your humming! I mean after marriage, of course; I think this free-love
business they talk about is even more detestable than the lawful
kind--just animalism. That’s all I’d do. Me my life; he his life;
meeting, as equals, when it was convenient to meet. I’d like to bring
all these poets and people who write about love into our dining-room to
see those people. That’d teach them!

 Man’s love is of his life a thing apart;
 ‘Tis woman’s whole existence.

What an existence!”

“Well, now--” (gulp).




CHAPTER VII


“You have pretended to dislike and to despise men, but it was a pretence
to deceive me and you are a liar.”

This was the astounding opening of an astounding letter, pages and
pages, to Rosalie from Miss Salmon. Pages and pages, having the
appearance, each one, of a battlefield or of a riot: a welter of thick,
black underscores strewn about like coffins or like corpses, and a
bristling pin-cushionful (black pins) of notes of exclamation leaping
about like war-dancing Zulus or staggering about like drunken or like
wounded men. A welter you had to pick your way through with epithets
rushing against you at every step like units of a surging mob hounding
and charging against an unfortunate pedestrian caught in the trouble.

Miss Salmon had two months before introduced “a gentleman friend” to the
boarding house. He was a clerk in some big business firm. His name was
Upsmith and he bore upon a fattish face a troubled, beseeching look,
rather as though something internal and not to be mentioned was severely
incommoding him and might at any moment become acute. Miss Salmon called
him Boo, which Rosalie considered grotesque but not unsuitable, and
it was communicated to the boarding house that the twain were at
a mysterious point of affinity called, not an engagement, but an
understanding.

Rosalie had by this time taken the second step in her upward progression
of comfort in the boarding house. She had moved into a separate room,
leaving Miss Salmon to become half of another two friends as one, and
she and Miss Salmon therefore saw much less of each other. But Rosalie
still sat at the same table as Miss Salmon at dinner and there Mr.
Upsmith joined them.

The thing may be hurried along to its astounding conclusion in the
astounding letter. It was not in itself an event of any sort of moment
to Rosalie. She was in no way outraged by being called a liar. There is
no hurt at all in being called a liar when you know you are not a
liar. The accusation has sting only if you are a liar; and indeed it is
comforting evidence of some inner self within us that only when we have
ourselves debased that inner self become we open to wounds from without.
That citadel is never taken by storm; only by treachery. No, the
significance of the astounding letter reposed in the fact that her
reception of it opened to Rosalie a glimpse of a quality rising beneath
her to carry her forward as a wave beneath a swimmer. It has been
perceived in her but Rosalie had not perceived it.

A great triumph and a great happiness swelled within Miss Salmon with
the arrival of Mr. Upsmith and with the circulation about the boarding
house that there was an understanding between herself and Mr. Upsmith.
Her humming took on a loud, defiant quality, as of triumph; she pursued
her pince-nez with a certain eagerness, as of confidence of balance and
certitude of capture. Her note and her air seemed to say that she was
Boo’s and Boo hers and she gloried in it with that exalted and yet
something fearful glory that is to be seen, pathetically, on the faces
of very plain young women, or of distinctly ageing young women, who have
got a Boo but for whom the Boos of this world are elusive to capture
and slippery to hold. The look is to be seen a dozen times on any Sunday
afternoon when the young couples are out.

At dinner time Miss Salmon would talk much to Boo in whispers and then
would look up and hum across at Rosalie in triumph, as of one that knew
things that Rosalie could not know and that had a thing that Rosalie did
not possess. Mr. Upsmith looked also much at Rosalie, in no triumph,
but in an apparent great excess of his unfortunate complaint. He stared,
troubled and beseeching, at her at meals, and he stared, troubled and
beseeching, at her when he encountered her away from meals. The longer
he sojourned in the boarding house the more troubled and beseeching,
when Rosalie happened to notice him, did his fattish countenance appear
to become. That was all. There scarcely ever was exchanged between them
even the courtesies customary between dwellers beneath the same roof;
they never, that Rosalie could remember, were a minute alone together
and yet on a day in an August, Miss Salmon a week away on a month at the
seaside with the family to which she was nursery governess, Rosalie was
being told in the violent opening sentence of one letter that she had
pretended to despise and dislike men but had only done it to deceive
Miss Salmon and was a liar; and in the impassioned sentences of another
which had been enclosed and had fallen and to which bewildered she
stooped and then read, that the heart of Boo was at her feet (“your
proud, sweet little feet that I would kiss in my adorance”) that he had
adored her ever since he had first set eyes on her, that he treasured
“like pearls before swine” every encouragement she had given him from
her divine eyes and from her proud little lips, that he had had no sleep
for a fortnight and felt he would go mad unless he wrote these few
lines (nine pages), that he earned “good money,” and that he was,
in conclusion, to which Rosalie amazedly skipped, “ever and ever and
imperishably always her imperishably adoring Boo.”

Two days previously Rosalie had received, but not read, another slightly
mysterious letter. It had been in her receptacle in the letter rack in
the hall, addressed to her in an unfamiliar writing and deposited by
hand, not through the post. It had begun “Dear Miss Salmon, re our
friendship I have to inform you--” Rosalie had turned to the end,
“B. Upsmith.” She had replaced it in its envelope, written upon the
envelope, “This is evidently for you, but addressed to me, as you
see--R.” and had placed it in another stamped wrapper to be forwarded
by Miss Kentish. She had only thought of it as in funny style for a love
letter, proper no doubt to the niceties of an “understanding.” And what
had happened was that the vile, egregious, and infamous Boo, writing to
break off one understanding and establish another, had placed them in
the wrong envelopes. The outpourings of his bursting heart to Rosalie
had been received by Miss Salmon; the information “re our friendship”
 had gone to Rosalie.

Of itself, as has been said, the whole incident was nothing at all in
the life of Rosalie. It came with the crash, but only startling and
quite harmless crash, of an unexpected clap of thunder, and it passed
as completely and as passively, doing no damage, leaving no mark. Miss
Salmon never returned to the boarding house; the vile, egregious and
infamous Boo haply incisively informed by Miss Salmon of what he had
done, incontinently, and without speech to Rosalie, fled from the
boarding house. They were gone, they were nothing to Rosalie; the
correspondence was destroyed, it was nothing to Rosalie.

But the significance of the matter was here. There was in Miss Salmon’s
letter to Rosalie one paragraph that Rosalie read a second time. She
had received the letter when coming in just before dinner. Not at
all injured nor in any way discommoded by the hurtling epithets,
the terrific underscores intended to be as bludgeons, or the leaping
exclamatory notes set there for stabs, she had put the thing away in a
drawer and gone down to her meal. The passage alluded to came more than
once into her mind. When she was about to get into bed that night she
destroyed the letter, first reading that paragraph, and only that,
again. Sole in the violent welter of those sheets it had no underscores
nor any exclamations. It was added as a postscript. It said:

“Well, now; Boo and I met the first time in a crowd watching a horse
that had fallen down. It kicked and I stepped back quickly and trod on
his foot. It made him put his hands on my arms and I looked around to
apologise and there was his dear face smiling at me, although in great
pain, for I had trodden on a corn he has; and I knew at once it was the
face I had looked for and longed for all my life and had found at last;
and I loved him from the first and we went out of the crowd and talked.
Well, now; I clung to him in all our happy, happy months together, in a
way you can never understand, because I loved him, and because I am not
the sort that men like because I am only plain, and I knew that if ever
he left me I could never get another. Well, now; you have taken him away
from me. You could get dozens and dozens of men to love you, but you
have taken mine, and I never, never can get another.”

The thoughts of Rosalie, not sequent, but going about and amounting
thusly, were thus: “That is very pathetic. That is horribly sad and
pathetic. Coming at the end like that and without any strokes and
flourishes, it is as if she was exhausted of her hate and rage and just
put out an utterly tired hand and set this here like a sigh. That’s
pathetic, the mere look of it and that thought of it. And then what she
says. The dreadfully simple naivete of the beginning of it. Staring at a
fallen horse in the street. It’s just where they would be, both of them.
They’d stand there for hours and just stare and stare. And then she
steps back on his foot and there’s ‘his dear face’ smiling at her; ah,
it’s pathetic, it’s poignant! I can see it absolutely. Yes, I can. As if
I were in the crowd around the horse, watching them. There they are, the
horse between us, and all the doltish, staring faces round about; and
their two dull and stupid faces; and as their eyes meet that sudden look
upon their foolish faces, as of irradiation out of heaven, that would
make a clown’s face beautiful and cause the hardest heart to twist.
But it doesn’t cause mine to twist. That’s the odd thing. I remember
perfectly when a thing like that would have given me a little blinky
kind of feeling. I’ve always been awfully quick to notice things like
that. I’ve often seen them. Quite recently, so little, I believe, as a
year ago, things like that, things like this, would have moved me a lot.
They somehow do not now. That frightful ending of hers: ‘You could get
dozens and dozens of men to love you, but you have taken mine and I can
never, never get another.’ That is most terribly pathetic. I think that
is the most poignant thing I have ever heard. Well, I can realise its
utter pathos; I can realise it but I cannot feel it. It does not move
me. ‘And I never, never can get another.’ It’s frightful. I could cry.
But I do not a bit want to cry. I must have somehow changed. I am not a
bit sorry if I have changed. I would be sorry to go back and be as, if I
have changed, I must have been--sentimental. I have changed. I believe I
can look back and see it. About the time I left the Sultana’s, mother’s
letters, and keeping them and answering them, began to be--yes they
did begin to be a little, tiny bit of a nuisance to me. Yes, it was
beginning then, this. And I expect earlier, if I worked it out. There’s
nothing in it to regret. It’s just a growing out of a thing. It’s not,
when I see a thing that’s pathetic, that I’ve grown blunt or blind and
can’t see it for pathetic. It’s just--I know what it is--it’s just that
it doesn’t appeal to me in the same way. It’s like seeing a dish of most
tempting food in front of you, not that I ever remember my mouth, as
they say, watering at anything; but say strawberries and cream--I’m fond
of strawberries and cream--it’s like seeing a dish of strawberries and
cream in front of you, and knowing it’s good and knowing it’s delicious,
and knowing you’re awfully fond of it--and just not being hungry;
turning away and leaving it there, not because it’s not everything that
it ought to be, but just because--you don’t want it. I should say that’s
how it is with me about these--these pathetic things. I know they’re
pathetic. I don’t want them.”

That is how it was, how it had become, with Rosalie. That was just her
first recognition of it, as the swimmer, intent on his own making of his
progression, recognises not, till he has been borne some distance by it,
the current that also is carrying him along.

Visits home to the Rectory were further manifestations to her of this
arising symptom.

There were appeals that should have arisen to her out of her home; and
they did arise; and she recognised them; but they did not appeal to
her--not in the old way. She went home very rarely for occasional
week-ends, always for her annual holidays, always for Christmas; and the
discovery she made was that she liked her home very much better when she
was away from it than when she was in it. When a visit was in prospect
she desired her home, that is to say her mother, most frightfully. But
when the visit was in being the joy she had promised herself she would
spread somehow was not at her command; the love she had yearned to show
somehow was chilled within her and not forthcoming. It was the tempting
dish in a new illustration--rushing eagerly to it, avid of its delights;
coming to it and finding, after all, one was not hungry.

Strange!

Her mother was ageing rapidly. She could have wept to see the ageing
signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not weep; was not moved; received
the impression but was not sensitive to it; felt the tug but did not
respond to the pull. Rather, indeed, was apt to be a little impatient.
Returned to London and to her engrossing work and longed to be back with
her mother; came back to her mother--and was not hungry.

Strange!

Then she began to analyse the strangeness of it and found it was not,
after all, so strange; at least it was not a thing to be distressed
about, nor bearing conviction of unnatural qualities, of hardness, of
unkindness. There was a line she knew that came in a verse:

    There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
    The earth, and every common thing
    To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light,
    The glory and the freshness of a dream.
    It is not now as it hath been of yore.
    Turn wheresoe’er I may
    By night or day,
    The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

“The things which I have seen I now can see no more.” That was the line.
“The things which used to appeal to me now appeal no more--or rather
not quite in the same way. I think I used to be very sentimental. It
is stupid and useless to be sentimental. People must grow old. There’s
nothing sad in that. It is natural. It is life. It is life and one must
accept life. The unnatural thing, the foolish and wrong thing, is to
remain a sentimental child for ever, with a child’s ready foolish tears
at what are common, necessary facts of life. I can be much kinder,
much more really kind, by seeing things clearly--and in their right
perspective than by occluding them with false compassions. I am always
my dear, my darling mother’s devoted daughter, ever at her disposal, and
she knows it and loves me for it. When I am to her or to any friend but
as ships that pass in the night--Keggo’s phrase--then let me take myself
to task.”

Keggo’s phrase! Keggo was being intermittently seen at this time and
these thoughts of Rosalie’s were very close to the occasion when finally
she lost sight of Keggo. It could be said like this--that Keggo here
made a contribution to Rosalie’s life that passed Rosalie on her way.

They had kept touch for quite a time after their separation as governess
and pupil. They then lost touch.

“Why, it must be more than a year!” cried Rosalie, suddenly encountering
Miss Keggs near the Marble Arch one evening and delightedly greeting
her. It was in the summer and Rosalie had gone out from the boarding
house after dinner for some fresh air in the park. She was enormously
glad to see Keggo again and carried her greeting straight on into
excuses for her share in their long sundering. “More than a year! You
know, the fact is, Keggo, that when I first left the Sultana’s, and for
quite a time afterwards, I used to gush. I did! I was so frightfully
full of all I was doing and it was all so new and so wonderful and I was
so excited about it that it was sheer letting off steam--gush--to write
you reams and reams of letters about it as I used to do. Then it got
normal and the--the tumultuousness of it wore off and I was just--I am,
you know--just absolutely absorbed in it and there was no more steam to
let off; all the energy went into the work, I suppose. So gradually, I
suppose, without quite realising it, I gave up writing. But, oh, if you
knew how glad I am to see you now!”

Miss Keggs to all this presented only a fixed smile. A smile belongs
much more to the eyes than to the lips. The lips, but not the eyes, can
counterfeit a smile. False coin is “uttered” as they say in law; and the
lips utter. Not so the eyes. All metal that the mouth issues is to be
tested there. The expression in Miss Keggs’s eyes was not at all in
consonance with that of her mouth. The expression of her eyes was rather
oddly vacant as you may see on the face of a person who is apparently
attending to what you are saying but really is listening to another
conversation in the same room. “Not listening” as it is called. “An
absent look” as they say.

Nevertheless she joined dove-tailed response to Rosalie’s words. “To
tell you the truth,” said Miss Keggs, speaking very slowly and repeating
the preamble. “To tell you the truth I wouldn’t have received your
letters if you had written them.”

“You wouldn’t? Why not?”

“To tell you the truth--” there had been a pause before she first spoke;
a pause again before this reply and then again a beginning with this
phrase about which there was nothing odd in itself but something odd in
the manner of its use by Miss Keggs. “To tell you the truth, I’ve left
the school.”

“Left the Sultana’s!”

Miss Keggs nodded with slow inclinations, like grave bows, of her head.

“Whatever for? Keggo, when, why?” And then Rosalie, impelled by some
apprehension that suddenly pressed her, put a quick hand on Keggo’s arm
and cried sharply, “Keggo! There is something very strange about you.
What has happened to you? Something has happened. You can’t keep it from
me.”

But Keggo could. At that quick gesture of suspicion of Rosalie’s,
animation sprung to meet it as a cat, at a sudden start, will leap from
profound slumber to a place of safety and to arched defence. Miss Keggs,
in their first exchanges, might have been as one drowsily answering
questions from a bed. She was suddenly, in her instant casting away of
her absent air, as that one flinging away the bedclothes and leaping
upright to the floor. What had she been saying? She had been quite lost
in something she was thinking of when Rosalie came up. She scarcely had
recollected her. She had been very, very ill with “this influenza” and
still was only convalescent. Why, how very, very glad she was to see her
dear Rosalie again! And how Rosalie had developed!

“Why, Rosalie, you are beautiful! You are! And you don’t blush or simper
to hear it! Yes, you are beautiful.”

There was a little room in a street somewhere off the Harrow Road that
Miss Keggs now occupied. It was a forbidding street. It was one of those
derelict streets frequent in certain quarters of London, in Holloway, in
Kentish Town, in Kilburn and all over South London, all about which life
teems and roars but where, along their own pavements, no life is. They
are most characteristic of themselves, these streets, when, as often to
be seen, there is no soul along them but a sad drab that is an itinerant
singer that drifts along wailing, at every few paces shuffling her body
in complete turns to scan the windows she has passed and the immediate
windows on either hand. She has no home and these are not homes to which
she wails. There is no flicker of life at any window. She’s a sad drab,
repulsive within; and they are sad drabs, not nice within. At night,
but not before dusk, forlorn things flicker in and out of them like drab
ghosts had on the strings of a puppet show. By day there sometimes is
an old man crawling in or crawling out; sometimes a woman, always with
a parcel or a net bag, fleeting along, expressionless. The high houses,
all of one pattern, appear to have no pattern. They are like dead walls
and the place they enclose like a vault, and the itinerant drab like
a thing in drab cerements (they trail the dust) that ought to be dead
wailing for entrance to things, tombed in those walls, that are dead.
There is no life at all in these streets. There is nothing active
or positive. There is just passivity and negation. There is just
nothingness. They are not habitations, which connote life; they are
repositories, which connote desuetude. They are the repositories of
creatures, not that have done with life, for the sheer fact of living
acknowledges service to life, but with whom life has done.

These came to be Rosalie’s thoughts of this street--Limpen Street--but
they could not have been hers when she was first going there to spend
evenings with Miss Keggs, for it was in her earlier visits there to
Keggo that she cried there. When she could cry for pure compassion for
another she was still too--too ardent for Limpen Street to be seen as it
has been presented. From the first it affected her disagreeably but she
would have felt, then, a sympathy for its state, and a belief that it
could be aroused out of its state, and a wish so to arouse it; and in
her earlier visits she had ardently this sympathy, but it was raised to
a profound compassion; this belief, but it was a conviction; and this
wish, but it was a resolution, in regard to Keggo.

For Keggo was drinking.

Keggo had been drinking for years and years and now Keggo had walled
herself away in Limpen Street to drink and drink, still secretly with
the sharp cunning of the secret drinker, but now with cunning only
necessary when of her own wish she met the world. At the Sultana’s,
(only Mr. Ponders in her secret, and in her pay; “that vile man”
 as, after the revelation, she always spoke of him to Rosalie) at the
Sultana’s and in all her life of that period she was, as it were, as one
whose life is threatened, dwelling among spies; that breastplate of her
cunning never could be laid off then; now, as one threatened, but secure
in a castle, the breastplate only was needed when sallies forth were
made. There was at the Sultana’s the need of constant care to inhibit
her cravings; there now was none to save her--unless Rosalie did.

There is no need at all to tell all this and all that by which Rosalie
was led to this most terrible discovery and Keggo impelled to her most
painful revelation. There was deceit and its exposure; lies and
their crumpling in the hand; mystifications and their sinister
interpretations; contingencies and their ugly dissolutions. These would
be all beastly to tell. Beastly is a vile word but this is a vile
thing. There was about it all, all the time, a tainted and unwholesome
atmosphere. There was always in the little room in Limpen Street that
strange disagreeable smell of bad eau-de-Cologne that always had hung
about the little room at the Sultana’s.

Beastly things....

But they were not felt to be beastly by Rosalie, then. They are said
here to be beastly, for they were beastly, only in excuse for Rosalie
afterwards. They only were to her, then, intensely sad, most deeply
pitiful, intensely increasing of her love for Keggo as pure love is
increased by seeing its object in tortures that may not be helped
because they will not be confessed. If only Keggo would tell her! Once
or twice she said to Keggo, speaking with an entreaty that must have
made obvious to Keggo her knowledge, “Keggo, haven’t you something to
tell me; something that you’d like to tell me?” The occasion was always
when she was leaving after a visit that had found Keggo very unwell,
very dejected of spirits, and that Keggo had at last terminated by
saying, “I think perhaps you had better go, Rosalie. I think perhaps I’d
be better lying down.” But Keggo’s answer always was, “Something to tell
you? No, nothing at all! What should I have to tell you?”

And then one day something said brought them very near to the matter
between them. Miss Keggs came nearer yet. She said, “The fact is,
Rosalie, I sometimes get so I simply cannot make an effort, the smallest
effort. I believe when I’m like that if a thousand pounds were offered
me for the going out and asking of it, and God knows I want it badly
enough, I simply could not make the effort to do it. I’d simply let it
pass and know that I was letting it pass and not care. That’s how it’s
got with me, how it is sometimes with me, Rosalie.”

Rosalie said with extraordinary emphasis, leaning forward on the chair
in which she sat facing Keggo. “Why is it, Keggo?”

If Keggo had answered, the thing would not have happened. Keggo did not
answer. She was sitting with her hands crossed, one palm upon the
other, and resting on her lap, her eyes to the ground. Quite a long time
passed. Rosalie said, “You’re drinking, aren’t you, Keggo?”

“Yes, drinking, Rosalie.”

“Oh, Keggo!”

It was then that Rosalie cried.




CHAPTER VIII


Sne cried. Her sympathies, though drying and slower now to be aroused,
still then were such that she could weep for pity. It is a glimpse of
her not to be seen again. There was she on her knees by Keggo, and with
her arms about Keggo’s waist, and with her head on Keggo’s lap,
crying for Keggo; and in the pauses of Keggo’s unfolding of her story
entreating her, as one that cried responses to a litany, “Don’t mind,
Keggo! Keggo, don’t mind now! Dear Keggo, poor Keggo, it’s all right
now.”

And presently all the tale told: what Mr. Ponders’ medicine was; and all
the humiliation suffered in keeping in with “that vile man”; and that
vile man’s betrayal of her to the Sultana, and her dismissal; and all
the earlier dreadfulness of her first steps down into her dreadful
malady; and all the dreadful secrecy of all those years; and all the
horrible humiliation secretly to get her poison; and all the horrible
humiliations when her poison got. All the dark tale of that presently
told; and her head bowed down to Rosalie’s, and Rosalie’s wet face
against her face, and her face also wet; and just her murmurs, murmured
at intervals, as though her heart that had discharged its grievous load
ran slowly now, slowly to rise and then to well with, “God bless you,
Rosalie; oh, Rosalie, God bless you”; and for a long time just seated
thus, cheek to cheek, hand to hand, heart to heart; weakness bound about
with strength, sorrow in pity’s arms, travail in sanctuary....

It is desired that one should try to see that picture. Its counterpart
was not again in the life of Rosalie, hardening.

There were, after that, such happy evenings in Keggo’s room. Keggo,
with one to help her, fighting for herself; Rosalie, with one to help,
elevated upon that high happiness that comes with fighting for another.
For a short time there seemed to be no lapses in Keggo’s struggle. When
they came (as Rosalie knew afterwards) the practised cunning of years of
secrecy had no difficulty in concealing them from the unsuspecting eyes
of Rosalie. Ill that it was so! Rosalie was harder when came the lapse
that cunning could not hide. She did not cry. Her eyes were hard. She
said with thin lips, “Why, even all this time you have been deceiving
me!” the which egged on, in that vile way in which exchanges of a
quarrel are as knives sharpening one against the other, Keggo’s enflamed
retort, “The more fool you! Little fool!”

But at first, while the lapses were few and the cunning was equal to
them, only a closer friendship was set afoot between the woman that was
grown and the woman that was burgeoning, and there were such very happy
evenings in the room in Limpen Street. Such jolly talks.

There was one talk that, forgotten with the very evening of its passage,
afterwards very strongly returned to Rosalie and abode with her. It had
in it rather vital things for Rosalie.

She loved to talk about her work with intelligent and sympathetic Keggo,
and she had been on this occasion expounding to her the mysteries and
interest of life insurance: in particular explaining the “romance” of
vital statistics; in particular, again, the curious fact that, though
women in the United Kingdom largely outnumbered men, many more male
children were born than female. The disproportion “the other way about”
 in maturity, said Rosalie, was because the death rate among men was much
higher--due to risks of their occupations. “A certain number of house
painters,” said Rosalie sagely, “fall off ladders every year and are
killed; women don’t paint houses, so they don’t fall off ladders and get
killed. Similarly on railways, Keggo. The death rate among railway men
is much higher in proportion, over an average, than the rate in any
other occupation. Porters doing shunting, for instance, are always
getting killed. Well, women don’t shunt trains so they don’t get killed
while shunting trains, so there you are again, so to speak. The thing in
a nutshell, Keggo, is that, by contrast, men lead dangerous lives.”

Keggo, who always was very alert in response, was here very long in
responding. Then she responded an extraordinary thing that Rosalie
afterwards remembered. She said slowly, “Oh, but Rosalie, it’s very
dangerous to be a woman.”

Rosalie questioned her.

Keggo said, “Rosalie, you’ve great ideas, and I think very shrewd and
very striking ideas, about the difference between men and women, but
there’s this difference I think you haven’t thought of--the danger that
women carry in themselves; right in them, here”--she had a hand against
her breast and she pressed it there--“born in them, inerradicable, and
that men have not. Men go into dangers but they come out of them and go
home to tea. That’s what it is with men, Rosalie. They can always get
out. They can always come back. They never belong to a thing, body and
soul and heart and mind. Rosalie, women do. That’s their danger. That’s
why it is so very, very dangerous being a woman. Women can’t come back.
They can’t, Rosalie. Look at me. They take to a thing and it becomes a
craze, it becomes an obsession, it becomes a drug. Look at me. They take
to a thing--anything; a poison like mine, or a pursuit like some one
else’s, or an idea like some other’s, or a--a career in life like, like
yours, Rosalie,--they take to it and go deep enough, and they’re its;
they never will get away from it, they never, never will be able to come
out of it. Never.”

She was extraordinarily vehement. It was embarrassing for Rosalie.
Rosalie desired to contest, as vehemently, these theories. She did
not believe them a bit. They were founded, she felt, on the tragedy of
Keggo’s own case. Keggo was unfairly, though very naturally, arguing
from the particular to the general, from the personal to the abstract.
But how could she reply to Keggo, “Of course you say that?”

She was silent; but she betrayed perhaps her thoughts in a gesture, her
difficulty in some expression of her face.

Keggo said very intensely, “But, Rosalie, if you only knew! With me
it’s drink and you’ll say--. But I say to you, Rosalie, never, never let
anything get the mastery of you. With me it’s drink and you’ll say that
is a matter altogether different, with which parallels are not to be
drawn. Oh, do not believe it, Rosalie. A woman should in all things be
desperately temperate--watchfully, desperately temperate. A man--nearly
every man--seems somehow to have his life and all his interests in
compartments. He can be immersed in one while he is in it, and can get
out of it and distribute himself over his others and close it and
forget it. Rosalie, a woman can’t. Men have hobbies. They don’t have
attachments; they have detachments. They detach themselves and turn to
a thing and they detach themselves from it and turn back again. Rosalie,
women don’t turn to a thing; they go to it. They don’t have hobbies,
they have obsessions. They don’t trifle, they plunge. They cannot sip,
they drain. It’s in their bone. They never would have occupied the place
they do occupy if it were not that from the beginning they have given
themselves over, or they were given over, to mastery. They are the
weaker vessel. Rosalie, I tell you this, when a woman gives herself,
forgets moderation and gives herself to anything, she is its captive for
ever. She may think she can come back, but she can’t come back. For a
woman there is no comeback. They don’t issue return tickets to women.
For women there is only departure; there is no return.”

Rosalie said, “Keggo, I think I could argue, but I won’t. But what I
can’t imagine is the application of it in hundreds of cases--in by far
the great majority of cases. Take mine. You’re not warning me, are you?
I don’t see the possibility--”

Keggo said, “Darling, I’m not warning you and yet I am. I am warning you
because you are a woman; and because you are a woman you are susceptible
to danger. It’s what I’ve said; it’s what I would have you remember
for a day perhaps to come, that it is dangerous being a woman. I’m not
warning you, because there’s nothing to--well, but isn’t there? You’ve
got a theory of life and you are bent upon a career in life. There’s--”

Rosalie cried, “Well, but there you are, Keggo. No comeback, no return
tickets--well, I don’t want to come back; I don’t want a return ticket.”

“You might. You never know. Suppose you ever did?”

“But you can’t suppose it. Why ever should I?”

“Suppose you wanted to marry?”

Rosalie laughed. The thing immediately lost reality. “Well, suppose the
incredible. Suppose I did. There’d be no comeback wanted there. I could
perfectly well marry and still keep my theory of life; I could perfectly
well marry and still keep on in my career--and most certainly I would
still keep on. Why, that is my theory of life, as you call it, or a very
outstanding principle of it. There’s nothing to me more detestable
in the whole business than the idea that because a woman marries she
therefore must give up her work. That’s what is the reason the boarding
house and every boarding house and every home and street and city swarms
with derelicts--with derelict women--just because their lives are all
planned as blind alley occupations, marriage at the end of the alley,
no need to do anything, no need to be anything because it’s only a blind
alley you’re in. When you reach the end--you reach the end! That’s it,
Keggo. You reach the end. You’re a woman, therefore for you--the end!”

She laughed again. She was returning Keggo’s vehemence without
embarrassment upon the subject that had made return difficult. She
cried, “I’ve got you now, Keggo. I really have. You say they don’t issue
return tickets to women. No. Perhaps they don’t; but I’ll tell you where
they book them all to--from the cradle to a terminus.”

Keggo smiled and would have spoken. But Rosalie was pleased with her
adroit turning of metaphors. She repeated “To a terminus. Well, I’ve
booked beyond, Keggo.” She laughed again. “And then the idea of marriage
for me! I’ve granted the preposterous just for the sake of the argument
and just to floor the argument. But you know, you know perfectly well
from all our talks, even so far back as at the Sultana’s, that it’s
simply too grotesque! Marriage, for me! Why, if a million men came to
me on their bended knees, each with a million pounds on their backs
you know perfectly well that I’d just feel sick. Tame cats, tabby cats,
tomcats, Cheshire cats, wild cats, stray cats,--I’m not going to set up
a cats’ home. No thanks.”

So Rosalie had the laugh of that evening.




CHAPTER IX


But this was not to continue. Keggo began to lapse; Rosalie began to
weary of helping Keggo. She had herself to think of. Those who go down
in life, whether by age or by misfortune, are prone, engulfed, to cry to
those ascending, “You could help me!” There is a correct answer to this.
It is, “I have done (or I do) a great deal for you. I cannot do more. It
is not fair to ask me to do more. I have a duty to myself. I have myself
to think of.” Our generation endorses this.

Rosalie had herself to think of. By stages that need not be detailed,
they are the common facts of life, the thing passes from that picture
of those two with Rosalie’s strong young arms about the other to a new
picture, the last, between them.

The stages show Rosalie’s enormous, ardent plans for the rescue and
rehabilitation of Keggo, and they show the projection and the failure of
the plans. They show work found for Keggo (through Simcox’s scholastic
side) and lost and found again and again lost and still again. They
show Keggo’s remorse and they show Rosalie’s forgiveness. They show it
repeated and repeated. They show by degrees the gradual, and then the
rapid, staling of Rosalie’s fond sympathies. They show her finally,
immersed in her own purposeful interests, discovering to herself
feelings in regard to Keggo on a plane with feelings discovered to
herself in regard to her mother. It has been written: “Her mother was
ageing rapidly. Rosalie could have wept to see the ageing signs;
but somehow, seeing them, did not weep; was not moved; received the
impression but was not sensitive to it; felt the tug but did not respond
to the pull. Rather, indeed, was apt to be a little impatient.” It is
not necessary to expand. Keggo was fast going downhill. Rosalie could
have wept to see the downhill signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not
weep; was not moved... rather, indeed... impatient. She had herself to
think of.

Youth’s an excuse for youth as childhood’s an excuse for childishness.
Youth, still, like childhood, but unlike maturity, can be lost in its
emotions, absorbed in them to the exclusion of all else, abandoned to
them with all else pitched away as a swimmer discards his every stitch
and joyously plunges in the stream. Youth is not accountable for its
actions then: it is too happy or it is too sad. One oughtn’t to blame
youth, immersed.

There was outstandingly one such day of absorption in delight, of
abandonment to ecstasy for Rosalie, and it was the day on which she made
her third advance in the social grade of Miss Kentish’s boarding house
and moved into the two rooms en suite, furnished and decorated by
herself to her own taste. She awoke to this great day, long anticipated;
and with the vigorous action of throwing off the clothes and jumping out
of bed, she plunged into it and was lost in it. The excitement and
the elation of taking possession of that enchanting, that significant
apartment of her own! She was excited; she was elated. Moving in was
the cumulative excitement of all the long-drawn, anxious excitements of
peering round the antique dealers and picking up the bits of furniture
and of placing them and moving them a shade to this side and then a
shade to that till was found the one and only exact position that suited
them and that they suited; and the terrible excitements of watching the
decorators at work, her scheme developing beneath their hands, and
the awful knowledge that now it was being done it was done for good or
bad--no altering it now!--and the agonizing excitements of putting down
the carpets--how can you tell exactly how a carpet is going to
look until you see it actually down upon its floor and between its
walls?--and the increasing excitement all the time of the knowledge
that everything was harmonising and was looking just as in dreams of the
ideal it had been made to look; and now all ready! The bed-sitting-room
slept in last night for the last time; the two utterly perfect rooms and
all that their possession connoted, to be occupied that evening for the
first time! Yes, in all the tumultuous pride and engrossment of that,
there was no place--how could there be place?--for tiresome things of
other people’s worlds, if such should offer.

And in this tremendous day there was stuff more tremendous yet. This
also was the day on whose evening was made the tremendous tribute to her
work and to her talent, the evening of the dazzling offer that, like
a door swung open on a treasure house, disclosed to her new fields to
which her career had brought her, new triumphs that her career, in its
stride, might make her own--the evening when Mr. Sturgiss of Field’s
Bank leant across the dinner table in his house (at his request only she
and himself left in the room) and said in his quiet voice, “Well,
look here--to come to the point--the reason I’ve got you up here
to-night--it’s this: we want you, Field and Company, the Bank, we want
you to join us. We want you in Lombard Street.”

Lombard Street!

Cumulative also was this thrill, for it had begun some few days
previously when Mr. Sturgiss, calling at Simcox’s for a chat with Mr.
Simcox, an old friend, had come into her room and after mysteriously
fidgetting with business and conversational trifles, had issued
the invitation to dinner at his house at Cricklewood in language
mysteriously couched. “My wife would like to meet you,” said Mr.
Sturgiss. “She’s heard a lot from me, and from Field, of what an
astonishingly clever young person we think you and she’d--she’d like to
meet you. And more than that.” Mr. Sturgiss’s halting speech suddenly
became direct and definitive like a flag that had been fluttering
suddenly streaming upon the breeze. “And more than that. The fact is,
there’s a proposition I want to put up to you. A proposition. We could
go into it quietly and discuss it. I rather think it would interest you.
I’m sure it will. You’ll come? Good. I’m very glad. Very glad.”

A proposition! From Mr. Sturgiss! Of Field and Company! What could it
be?

But Rosalie was not of the sort to tread the succeeding days on the
enchanted air of fond surmises. She told herself that the mysterious
proposition might be everything or might be nothing: the fact that
outstood was that she had brought her aspirations to this--that a
partner in a London bank recognised in her stuff sufficient to invite
her to a confidential meeting, there to go into something with her
“quietly together,” to meet together over something and “discuss
it.” She had determined to establish herself and she was establishing
herself. And was it not an omen propitious and significant that this
recognition of her parts was to fall on the very day on which the
exercise of those parts brought her into the dignity and comfort of that
delicious, that significant apartment of her own?

This solid stuff, and no mere daydreams, was the delight absorbing her
and the ecstasy to which she was abandoned when that great day came. In
the morning she put the last of her possessions, the equipment of her
dressing table, into the new apartment; after the day spent at Simcox’s,
she returned to dress for the first time before the noble cheval glass
purchased for the bedroom. She decided to go up in a hat; it could be
removed or not for dinner as Mrs. Sturgiss might seem to indicate. She
put on an evening bodice of black silk and net with a simple skirt in
keeping. She gave last approving glances about the delightful rooms and
set out, immersed in eager happiness, for Cricklewood.

One of those old red buses that vied with the white Putney buses as
being the best horsed on the London routes took her there. Up the
Edgware Road; past the junction with the Harrow Road that led to Keggo’s
street--she only had for it the thought that it was weeks since she had
seen Keggo, almost months; along broad Maida Vale and past the turning
that led to the Sultana’s with the corner where often the crocodile had
huddled--and she was so engrossed in her happy achievements that she
passed it without thinking of it. The bus terminated its journey at the
foot of Shoot Up Hill. Rosalie, called upon to alight, came out of her
thoughts into her surroundings. She realised that she must have passed
Crocodile Corner without noticing and the realisation caused her to give
a little note of amused indifference. The indifference was not directed
precisely at the Sultana’s; it was at the idea, which came to her, that,
normally to human predilections, she ought to have given--ought now to
give--a sentimental thought to memories of the Sultana years. Well,
she did not. Funny! Yes, it was funny. As she sometimes thought of her
mother and of all her home ties; of Miss Salmon and that cry of hers of
never being able to find another lover; of Keggo now so seldom seen
and known to be going from bad to worse,--so with memories of Crocodile
Corner and the Sultana’s, she could see and appreciate the call of all
these attachments, but somehow, seeing and appreciating, did not respond
to them. What a very curious attitude! It was not unfeeling for she
could feel. It was not insensibility for she was sensitive to such
things. Sensitive! No, a better word than that. She was in such matters
sensible. She saw, as one should see, these things in their right
perspective. They were touching (as of her mother) or they were sad (as
of Keggo) or they were appealing (as the happy schoolgirl memories)
but they must not touch or sadden or appeal too closely. They must be
estimated in their degree and in their place; they must not be assumed,
be shouldered, be permitted to cumber. No good could be done to them by
encumbrance with them. That was the point. What good could it do them?
No good. Yes, that was sensible.

She abated, in these thoughts, nothing of the eagerness with which she
was living this great day--the day whose points of suspension (on
which it tumultuously revolved) were the taking over of the significant
apartment from which she had just come and the entering upon the
significant invitation to which now her feet were taking her. These
thoughts, this analysis of her attitude to sentimental appeals, she
tossed upon her eager happiness that was her being as an airball tossed
upon laughing breath that yet is used, breathing, to support life. And
she was aware that this was so. And she enjoyed a flash of approval of
herself that it could be so; it was admirable, it was sensible, thus
to be able to detach and look upon a portion of her mind while her main
mind deflected not a shade from its occupation with the main chance.
That faculty was perhaps the secret of her success, the quality, that,
in exercise, had brought her to the significant apartment and to the
significant invitation.

She was at the gate of Mr. Sturgiss’s house and she most happily passed
up the short drive, ascended the steps and rang the bell.

Mr. Sturgiss’s house was almost on the summit of Shoot Up Hill. It was
one of those houses standing a few miles along the main thoroughfares
out of London that, now in decay or displaced by busy shops, packed
villas, or monstrous flats, were then the distinctly impressive
residences of distinctly well-to-do business people. Mr. Sturgiss was
a distinctly well-to-do business person. The house, double-fronted, had
that third sitting-room which confers such an immense superiority over
houses of but two sitting-rooms--“Such a convenience in so many ways”
 as those newly promoted from two to three nowadays remark with
languid triumph to visitors still immured in two. Houses--new, two
sitting-roomed houses--extended beyond it and around it, and now stretch
miles beyond and about, but Mrs. Sturgiss told Rosalie that when they
first came there they actually had cows grazing and horses ploughing in
fields adjoining their garden.

Mrs. Sturgiss told Rosalie this while personally attending Rosalie’s
removal of her hat (it was “no hat”; Rosalie felt so glad she had come
dressed for either indication) and Mrs. Sturgiss sighed pleasantly as
she said it. “Things are going ahead at such a pace now!” said Mrs.
Sturgiss. “It’s all very different from what it used to be. Why, the
very fact of your coming here, not as my guest but as my husband’s, ‘on
business!’ The idea of women being in business, or even knowing anything
about business, when I was a girl, why, I can’t tell you how, how
positively shocking it would have been considered.”

Rosalie laughed. She liked Mrs. Sturgiss, who was motherly and seemed to
have her own dear mother’s gentle ways--this personally attending her in
her bedroom, for instance. “Oh, there are getting to be heaps of women
in business now, Mrs. Sturgiss,” she smiled.

Mrs. Sturgiss returned brightly, “Oh, I know it. I know it well.” She
paused and her voice had a thoughtful note. “But even then.... Use the
long mirror, my dear; the light is better. Even then, there can be few
as,--as much in it as you. You know, my husband has an immense idea of
your abilities. He has spoken of you so much. Do you know, you are
a great surprise to me, now I see you. I could only imagine from all
John’s idea of you a rather terrible looking blue-stocking, as we used
to call the clever women.” She came and stood by Rosalie, regarding the
image in the glass that Rosalie regarded. She said simply, “But you are
beautiful.”

A very odd feeling, akin to tears--but for what on earth
tears?--quickened in Rosalie. She turned sharply from the mirror. “I am
quite ready now.” She pretended she had not heard.

Mrs. Sturgiss said, “My dear, do you like it, being what you are?”

It was a great rescue for Rosalie to be able to spring away from that
odd feeling (in her bosom and in her throat) by swift animation. “Oh,
I love it. I simply love it. It is everything to me, everything in the
world!”

Mrs. Sturgiss opened the door. “No, you go first, my dear. But if I had
had a dear girl, such as you, I would have wished her to stay with me at
home.”

She had made with her hand the gesture of her wish that Rosalie should
precede her from the room. Rosalie impulsively touched the extended
fingers. “But, Mrs. Sturgiss, don’t you see, that’s just it, the
idea there is now. If you had had a daughter and she had stayed at
home--well, let that go, while you were with her. But when you died and
left her, what would there be--don’t you see it?--what would there be
for her then?”

Mrs. Sturgiss pressed the warm young hand. “But I would have left her
married, a dear wife and a dear mother.”

“Oh, that!” cried Rosalie and her stronger personality carried off the
exchanges in a laugh. Mrs. Sturgiss thought the expression and the tone
meant, happily, that marriage might happen to any one, in the market as
much as in the home. Rosalie, with all the fierce contempt that her
“Oh, that!” conveyed to her secret self, was ridden strongly away from
emotionalism in the conversation. Her thought as they went downstairs
was, “If I were to instruct her in the cat-men! Her horror!”

There was downstairs a surprise that was very annoying, but that
was made to produce compensations. An unexpected fourth person,
presuming--so Rosalie was given to understand--on a long standing,
indefinite invitation, had dropped in to dinner. She recognised him
directly they entered the drawing-room and could not stop the emblem of
a swift vexation about her mouth and in her eyes. He caught it, she
was sure; and she hoped he did. It was Harry Occleve--Laetitia’s futile
slave! He had already informed his host that he knew her. She greeted
him with a mere touch of her hand, a touch made cold by intent, and with
“With a free evening off one would have expected you would spend it with
Laetitia,” said disdainfully. It was a rude and inept thing to say (in
the tone she said it) for the feeble creature, as she stigmatised him,
had not yet screwed his fatuous idolatry to the point of proposal of
marriage. But she intended it to be rude and to discomfort him and she
was glad to see some twinge at the flick pass across his face. She hated
his presence there. The presence of any man, in the capacity of a monkey
to entertain and to be entertained, was always, not to put too fine a
point upon it, repulsive to her. This man was of all men obnoxious
to her. When he approached her for their brief greeting (she turned
instantly away at its conclusion) she savoured immediately that odd,
nice smell there was about him, of mingled soap and peat and fresh
tobacco smoke and tweed; and that annoyed her. It was a reminder,
emanated from him and therefore not to be escaped, of a distinction he
had different from, and above common men. She always granted him
his distinction of looks, of air, of talent. It was why she so much
disdained him. To be dowered so well and so fatuously to betray his
dowry! Tame cat!

But she made him, through the meal, pay compensations for his presence.
At the table of Aunt Belle, in his presence she was accustomed to sit
largely silent. Beautiful Laetitia was there the star; and while he
mouthed and languished in that star’s rays Aunt Belle and Uncle Pyke,
(stealing about him to capture him as a farmer and his wife with mincing
steps and tempting morsel towards a fatted calf) fawned, flattered and
deferred to him, he returning it. There was no place for her, and she
would have shuddered to have held a place, in that society for mutual
admiration. She sat apart. She was very much the poor relation (Aunt
Belle could not comprehend her business success and Uncle Pyke would not
admit it) and especially odious to her was the Occleve’s polite interest
in her direction when Aunt Belle, poor-relationing her, would turn to
her from coquettish raillery of him with, “Dear child, you’re eating
nothing.” He would smile towards her and, fatuously anxious to please,
offer some remark that might draw her into the conversation. She never
would be so drawn. She scarcely ever exchanged words with him. She made
herself to be unconscious of his presence. He was so occupied with his
adoration of Laetitia that to be insensible of his presence was easy.
When sometimes she glanced towards him it was with the thought, “Fancy
being one of the rising young men at the Bar, being the rising young
man--the Bar, with silk and ermine and, why not? the Woolsack before
you--and being that, doing that! Fatted calf; dilly, dilly, come and be
killed, goose; tame cat!”

Here, at the table of Mr. Sturgiss, it was very different. Intolerable
that he should be here, but she was able to make him provide her
compensation for his presumption. For the first time in her life, she
found herself with sufficient interest in a man to enjoy, nay, to seek,
a triumph over him. And she had that triumph. She was as certain as that
she sat there that Mr. Sturgiss, in the period before her arrival in
the drawing-room, had been telling him of her abilities and of his high
regard for her. There was an interest in his look at her across the
table that assured her he had been informed. There was, much more, a
conviction within her, from Mr. Sturgiss’s manner and from his choice of
subjects--confined almost entirely and to the absolute exclusion of Mrs.
Sturgiss to the political situation and to markets, exchanges and the
general tendency in the City--and particularly from the openings in
these subjects with which continuously he presented her--a conviction
arising out of these that Mr. Sturgiss, proud of her, of his discovery
of her, was bent upon showing her off to his second guest, bent upon
proving to his second guest what unquestionably he had said to him about
her.

She most admirably responded. If she were indeed the subject of a
challenge she most admirably flattered her backer. She is not to be
imagined as a pundit excavating from within herself slabs of profound
wisdom, nor yet as a pupil astoundingly instructing her masters, nor
even as one of Mrs. Sturgiss’s blue stockings, packed with surprising
lore. Rosalie was nothing so foolishly impossible, but she displayed
herself knowledgeable. She was profoundly interested in the matters
under notice and therefore (for it follows) she was interesting in
her contributions to them; she was fascinated--the old fascination of
“Lombard Street” and of “The English Constitution” now intensified as
desire intensifies by gratification--and therefore she fascinated; she
was never silly--Rosalie could not be silly--but she was frequently in
her remarks ingenuous, but her ingenuousness, causing Mr. Sturgiss
more than once to laugh delightedly (Occleve, curiously grave, no doubt
because surprised, did not laugh) was born out of a shrewd touch towards
the heart of the matter, as the best schoolboy howlers are never the
work of the dullard but of him that has perceptions. Of her in her
childhood it has been said that she was never the wonder-child of
fiction who at ten has read all that its author probably had not read at
thirty. So now of her budding maturity she was not the wonder-woman of
fiction, causing by her brilliance her hearers, like Cortez’s men, to
stare at each other with a wild surmise. No, nothing so unlikely. But
she was intelligent and she was ardent; and there are not boundaries to
the distance one may go with that equipment. She was admirable and
she felt that she was effective. She had a consciousness of confidence
amounting almost to a feeling of being tuned up and now let go; to a
feeling of power, as of inspiration. And this strange animation that she
had, came, she knew, from the triumph over that man, from the feeling,
stated grimly, that she was giving him one.

It is much more important, all that, than, when it came, the great
reason of the great invitation that had brought Rosalie to take part in
it. The great reason already has been disclosed--Mr. Sturgiss, bending
across the tablecloth, they two left alone, “Well, look here--to come
to the point--the reason why I’ve got you up here tonight--it’s this:
we want you--Field and Company, the Bank,--we want you to come to us--we
want you in Lombard Street.”

She was beautiful to see in her proud happiness at that. Startled and
tremulous, she was; like some lovely fawn burst from thicket and at
breathless poise upon the crest of unsuspected pastures; within her
eyes the cloud of dreams passing like veils upon the gleam of her first
ecstasy; upon her face, shadowed as she sinks somewhat back, the tide
of colour (her rosy joy) flooding above her sudden pallor; her lips
slightly parted; her hand that had been plucking at the cloth caught to
her bosom where her heart had leapt.

It may be left at that. It is enough; too much. What, in the
reconstruction of a life, are, in retrospect, its triumphs but empty
shards, drained and discarded, the litter of a picnic party that has fed
and passed along?

Mr. Sturgiss bent farther across the tablecloth, expanding his proposal:
She knew, said he, what he represented, what the firm was. Field and
Company. A private bank. Well, the days of private banks were drawing
in. These huge joint-stock leviathans swallowing them up like pike among
the troutlings. But not swallowing up Field and Company! Not much!
If the old private houses were tumbling into the joint-stock maw, the
greater the chances for those that stood out and remained. The private
banks were tumbling in because they stood rooted in the old, solid,
stolid banking business and the leviathans came along and pounced while
they dozed. There was no dozing at Field’s. They were very much awake.
They were enterprising.

“Look at this very matter between us. The idea of bringing a woman into
a bank! Even old Field himself was startled at first. Why? In America,
women are entering banking seriously and successfully. They’re going to
in England. At Field’s. You.” He wasn’t proposing to bring her in for
fun or for a chance that might turn up, like the man who picked up a dog
biscuit from the road on the chance that some one would give him a
dog before it got mildewed; no, he was bringing her in to develop an
enterprise that should be the parent of other and greater enterprises.
Her knowledge of insurance, her knowledge of schools, these, with
her sex, on the one side of the counter and all their clients--the
Anglo-Indian crowd who were the backbone of the business--on the other
side of the counter. Field’s, for cash, and, while it was drawing, for
advice, was always the first port of call of the wives and the mothers
home from India, to say nothing of the husbands and the fathers,--“well,
Field’s, you, shall be the fount of all that domestic advice that
is just what all those people, cut off from home, are constantly and
distractingly in need of.” She didn’t suppose, as it was, that Field’s
did no more, for them than bank their money? Field’s were their agents.
Field’s saw that they booked their passages, and that their baggage got
aboard; and when they arrived this end or the other, or when they broke
their journeys coming or going, Field’s representatives were there to
meet them and take over all their baggage troubles for them. “Very well.
Now Field’s--you--are going to look after their domestic troubles for
them--find them rooms, find them houses, find them schools for their
children. When people know what we can do for them, people will come to
us to bank with us because we can do it. When people come to us to bank
with us--we go ahead.”

Mr. Sturgiss ended and drew back and looked at her. He lit a cigarette
and took a sip at his coffee. “We thought of offering you three--” he
set down his cup and looked at her again--“four hundred a year.”

She declined the post. She was girlish, and delighted him, in her
expression of her enormous sense of the compliment he paid her; she was
a woman of uncommon purposefulness, and increased his admiration for her
by the directness and decision with which uncompromisingly she said him
no. She owed a loyalty which she could never fully pay to Simcox’s, to
Mr. Simcox; that was the beginning and the end of her refusal. Simcox’s
was her own, her idea, her child that daily she saw growing and that
daily absorbed her more: that was the material that filled in and
stiffened out the joints of her refusal. “But if you knew how proud I
am, Mr. Sturgiss! You don’t mind my refusing?”

He laughed and rose to take her to the drawing-room. “I don’t mind a
bit. This is only what they call preliminary overtures. I shall ask you
again. We mean to have you.”

Between the two rooms he said, “Yes, mean to. It’s a big thing. I’m
certain of it. We shall keep it open for you. We shan’t fill it.” He put
his hand on the drawing-room door and opened it. “We can’t.”

She went in radiant.

She was on the red bus again, going home. She had stayed but the
briefest time after dinner. She was too elevated, too buoyant, too
possessed possibly to remain in company; excitedly desirous to be alone
with her excited thoughts,--especially to be alone with them in that
significant apartment of hers. Significant! Why upon the very day of
entering it had come this most triumphant sign of its significance!
Significant!...

She had a front seat on the outside of the omnibus. She gazed before
her along a path of night that the lamps jewelled in chains of gold,
and streamed along it her tumultuous thoughts, terrible as an army with
banners. It was very strange, and it vexed her, robbing her of her proud
consciousness of them, that there obtruded among them, as one plucking
at her skirt--as captain of them she rode before them--the figure of
Laetitia’s Harry. Similarly he had obtruded and been like to spoil the
pleasure of her visit; but he had been made to provide compensations and
he obtruded now only in rebirth of a passage with him that, rehearsed
again, much pleased her even while, annoyed, she cut him down.

Taking her leave, she had been seen from the threshold by Mr. Sturgiss
and by Laetitia’s Harry. It was pitchy dark, emerging from the
brightness of the interior, and he had stepped with her to conduct her
to the gate. “It was an extraordinary coincidence, meeting you here,” he
had said.

She did not reply. His voice was most strangely grave for an observation
so trite; he might have been speaking some deeply meditated thing,
profound, heavy with meaning, charged with fate. Fatuous! It was
extraordinary that there was not an action of his but aroused her
animosity. This vibrant gravity of tone--an organ used for a jig, just
as his gifts were used for his Laetitia moon-calfings--caused newly a
disturbance within her against him. She would have liked to whistle or
in some equal way to express indifference to his presence.

They were at the gate and he stooped to the latch and appeared to have
some trouble with it. “Sturgiss has been telling me what a wonderful
person you are.”

Again that immense gravity of tone. She was astonished at the sudden
surge of her animosity that it caused within her. She had desired to
express indifference. She desired now to assail. She made a sneer of her
voice. “I should have thought you had ears for the wonder of no one but
Laetitia.”

“Why do you say that?”

She felt her lip curl with her malevolence. “To see you raise your eyes
and hear you breathe ‘Ah, Laetitia!’”

He opened the gate and she passed out, tingling.

It astounded her to find herself a hundred yards gone from the house,
nay, now upon the bus a mile and more away, recalling it, trembling
and with her breath quickened. It was as if she had been engaged in a
contest of wills, very fierce; nay, in a contest physical, a wrestling.
She had not known, she told herself, that it was possible to hate so.
That man! These men! She put her eye upon the bus driver, strapped on
his perch so near to her that she could have touched him, and absurdly
in her repugnance of his sex hated him and shrank farther away from him.

It was enormously, sickeningly real to her, her repugnance. Even on
detached consideration of her ridiculous shrinking from the bus driver
she could not have laughed at it. People who had an uncontrollable
antipathy to cats did not laugh at the grotesque puerilities to which it
carried them. Nor she at her antipathy. “Of course they’re beasts.”
 Yes, the right word! It was the beastliness of sex that bottomed her
loathing.

She could not have laughed; but she could and did with a conscious
intention of her will put that intruder on her animation finally out of
her mind. This very joyous uplifting of her spirit, was it not because,
in this world dominated by men, based for its fundamental principle upon
play of sex as commerce is based upon the principle of barter, she
was assured of position, of privilege, and of power that raised her
independent of such conventions and such laws?

She was her own! All her proud joys, her glad imaginings, her delighted
hopes, arose amain and anew, tuned to this cumulative paean as a nourish
of trumpets at the climax of a proclamation. She was intoxicated on her
happiness.

They were come to the lighted shops and the crowded pavements. The bus
drew up at the thronged corner adjacent to the divigation of the Harrow
Road and she leaned over and watched the scene, smilingly (for sheer
happiness) looking down upon it, as smilingly (for her triumphant
altitude) she felt that she looked down upon the world. She would not
have changed place with any life living or that could be lived; she was
so much abandoned to her happiness that she made the intention she would
sit up in her significant apartment all that night, not to lose a moment
of it. She grudged that even sleep upon her happiness should intrude.

There came one in the traffic beneath her that caught her attention: a
woman whom people stood aside to let pass and turned to look upon with
grins; two or three urchins danced about the woman, pointing at her and
calling at her. Her dress was disordered, muddy all up one side as if
she had fallen; her face flushed; her hat awry; her hair escaped and
wisped about her eyes and on her shoulders. She was drunk. An obscene
and horrible spectacle, the mock of her beholders. A horrible woman.

It was Keggo.

Rosalie caught her breath. She made to rise but did not rise. Keggo
stopped and lifted all around a vacant gaze. Her eyes met Rosalie’s
straight above her. She lurched a step and stopped and swayed and looked
again, battling perhaps with hints within her fumy brain of recognition.
Rosalie made again to rise to go to her and again did not rise. The bus
moved forward. That wretched woman, making as if to pursue her aroused
be-fuddlement, turned about to follow and came a few steps, lurching
like a ship that foundered. The light blazed down upon her upturned
face. She lurched into some shadow and, as wreckage swallowed up in the
trough of the sea, her face was gone.

Lurching... as a ship... that foundered. There was in Rosalie’s mind
some dim memory struggling. Lurching... as a ship... in the darkness...
in the night. And her face... seen and gone... as a ship... labouring...
as a ship...

Ah!

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing; Only a
signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness.

It came to Rosalie complete and word for word; and with perfect
clearness, as though she saw and sensed them, all its attendant
circumstances: the attic room at the Sultana’s, the strange smell
mingled with the smell of the oil lamp, Keggo in the wicker chair, she
beside her, her head against Keggo’s knee; and Keggo’s voice reciting
the lines and her young, protesting, loving cry, “O Keggo!”

She saw it, sensed it, heard it--and stonily regarded it. A thing to
weep at, she knew it; but did not weep. A thing to stab her, it ought
to; but did not stab. What good could she do? Suppose she had got up
and gone down; suppose she now got up and went down and went back? What
good? All sentimentality that. Be sensible! If a thousand pounds would
do Keggo any good, and if she had a thousand pounds, freely and gladly
she would give the last penny of it. But to get down, to have got down,
what could she have done? Why should she worry about her? Keggo had had
her chance. Everybody had their chance. She now had hers. Why should
she...

She never saw Keggo again.




CHAPTER X


She had not good health in the week immediately following that great
day. She did not feel well. She did not look very well. Mr. Simcox,
profoundly sympathetic to every mood of her who was at once his protege
and his support, told her he thought she had been overdoing it. She
seized upon that excuse and tried to persuade herself that perhaps she
had; or, which amounted to the same thing, that she was suffering
from the revulsion of those huge excitements. But she did not persuade
herself. Her malaise, whatever it was, was not of that kind. Its
manifestations were not in lassitude or sense of disability. They
were in a curious dis-ease whose occasion was not to be defined; in a
consuming restlessness beneath whose goad even the significant apartment
had not power to charm and hold her; in a certain feverishness whose
exsiccative heat, leaving her palms and temples cool (she sometimes felt
them and had surprise) caused inwardly a dry burning that made her long
for quiet places.

She could not settle to anything. Her limbs, and they had their way,
desired not to rest; her mind, and it deposed her captaincy, would cast
no anchor.

Mr. Simcox, as the week drew on, suggested a weekend at home. It had
occurred to her, very attractively, but she had negatived it. Aunt Belle
(before the idea had come to her) had written an invitation to one of
the Saturday dinners in which she had “most particularly, my dear child”
 desired her presence. Something most delightful was going to happen and
she must be there. She had accepted and she later told herself she
did not like to refuse. She knew, instantly as she read, what was the
identity of this delightful thing that was to happen and she decided,
with a sharp turn within her of some emotion, that certainly she would
be there. To whet her scorn! She was thereafter much aggravated that her
drifting mind, against her wish, swayed constantly towards it sometimes
with that same sharp turn of that same emotion (nameless to her and
without meaning) always with aggravation of her restlessness, of
her fever, of her dis-ease. When came Mr. Simcox’s suggestion of the
week-end at home she decided, as swiftly as she had first accepted, to
revoke her acceptance. She would not be there! She would not--waste her
scorn!

Impatient for movement, she that evening went to the splendid house
in Pilchester Square to tell her withdrawal. This most exasperating
dis-ease of hers! Now that she was come to change her mind she did not
want to change her mind. It was like going to the dentist with an
aching tooth. On his doorstep the tooth does not ache. Her governance of
herself was by her malaise so shaken that positively, as she came
into Aunt Belle’s presence, she did not know whether she was going to
withdraw or to confirm her acceptance of the invitation.

Most comfortingly, Aunt Belle saved her the decision. “My dear child!
How unexpected! How opportune! I was just writing to you. Our little
dinner is put off! Sit here while I tell you. Now would you like
anything, dear child? A piece of cake? Some nice fruit? To please
me. Really, no? Well, now; our dinner that I so especially wanted you
for--did you guess?”

She began to tell.

She told what Rosalie had perfectly well known. The delightful thing
expected to happen was Harry Occleve’s proposal of marriage to darling
Laetitia. There had been certain signs and portents. They had come at
last. Their meaning was perfectly clear. There was not the least doubt
that at the next meeting Harry would ask Laetitia’s hand. Not the shadow
of a doubt! Aunt Belle knew all the signs! Every woman of Aunt Belle’s
experience knew them, dear child. So Harry had been asked for this
dinner; a meaningly written letter, dear child, to encourage him, the
dear, poor fellow! And had accepted, in terms so meaning too, the dear,
devoted fellow. Then--

“But, Aunt Belle--”

“Listen, dear child. Then he suddenly wrote saying he found he had made
a mistake--”

“Made a mistake!” The words went out from Rosalie in a small cry.

“Dear child, it is nothing. How sweet to be so concerned! It is nothing,
it is the best of signs. Made a mistake that he was disengaged for
Saturday. The dear, devoted fellow was so absurdly vague about it.
Unavoidable circumstances prevented him; that was all; his writing and
all the appearance of his letter so delightfully distracted! How amused
we were, your Uncle Pyke and I! How amused, and how we felt for the
dear, devoted fellow! Screwing up his courage! How we remembered our own
courtship! You should hear your Uncle Pyke tell how he had to screw up
his courage to propose to me and how many times it failed him and he
fled. Dear, child, you’ve no idea how ridiculous these poor men are in
their love! How timorous! How they suffer! The dear, poor fellows. Your
Uncle Pyke wrote him at once a most kind and meaning letter--accepting
his unforeseen circumstances (he had to, of course) and positively
fixing him for Monday instead. ‘Laetitia is expecting you,’ your Uncle
Pyke wrote. The dear fellow! How happy it will make him! So it is
Monday, dear child. Monday, instead. We do so want you to be there. I
do so want you, and so does my darling, to be the first to congratulate
her. And you shall be a bridesmaid! Won’t that be nice? Kiss me, dear
child. I shall never forget your sweet concern before I told you his
excuse meant nothing. Dear child, you look startled yet.”

There was only a faint voice that came to Rosalie’s lips. “Really
nothing, Aunt Belle?”

“Dear child, nothing at all.”

She went down to the Rectory on Saturday and found herself more glad
to be there and to be with her mother than she had ever been. When she
greeted her mother, “Kiss me again, dear, small mother,” she cried
and put her cheek against her mother’s and held it there some moments,
rather fiercely and with her eyes closed, as though there were in
that contact some febrifuge that abated her inward fever, some mooring
whereto, adrift, her mind made fast.

What beset her? What was the matter with her? What worked within her?
Feverishly she inquired of herself, seeking to analyse her case; but she
could by no means inform herself; her case was not within what diagnosis
she could summon. What? Near as she could get she had the feeling, nay,
the wild longing, to get out: out of what? She did not know. To get
away: away from what? She could not say.

She found in herself a great and an unusual tenderness towards the home
life. Only her mother and her father were now at home. Harold was at
a branch of his bank in Shanghai. Robert was in Canada. Flora was
in India, married, with two small children. Hilda was in Devonshire,
married to a doctor. These things had happened, these flights been
winged, and she had taken but the smallest interest in them. She had had
her own af-fairs. She had had herself to think of. She had lost touch
with her brothers and sisters. She scarcely ever thought about them. Now
she wanted very much to hear about them. What news of them was there?
How were they getting on? She did want--she could fix that much of her
state, or it presented a relief for her state--she did want to feel that
she belonged to them and they to her. She noticed with a large whelming
of pity how very small her mother seemed to have grown She was always
small, but now--much smaller, fallen in, very fragile. She noticed with
a quick pang how all her father’s violent blackness of hair, and violent
red of colouring, and violent glint of eye and violent energy of gesture
were faded, greyed, dimmed, devitalized to a hue and to an air that was
all one and lustreless, as if he had gone in a pond covered, not with
duckweed but with lichen, and had come out, not dripping, but limp and
shrouded head to foot in scaly grey. Was it possible that all this had
been so when she was last here? She had not noticed it. She noticed that
both her dear mother and her father walked on the flat soles of their
feet, and touched articles of furniture as they trod, heavily, across
the room. A most frightful tenderness towards them possessed her. She
wanted like anything to show them devotion and, most frightfully, to
receive from them signs of devotion to her--to be able to feel she was
theirs, and they hers. She wanted it terribly.

But what else did she want? What? They gave her, all the home talk, but
soon it flagged and whatever in her desired satisfaction still gnawed
within her and was unsatisfied; she ministered to them and they were
pleased but they seemed very quickly tired; they had their accustomed
hours and habits, and whatever it was in her that found relief in
solicitude still tossed within her and was not relieved. What beset her?
What?

Monday came. She was at this dinner, this festival for the consummation
and celebration of the betrothal of beautiful Laetitia and Laetitia’s
darling Harry. That sick dis-ease of hers had wonderfully vanished when
she came into the house, when she was hugged fit to crack her to Aunt
Belle’s bosom with “Dear child! Dear child! He’s just arrived! He’s with
your uncle downstairs. Look at Laetitia! Lovely! Isn’t she lovely?
Kiss me again, again, dear child!” When she was floated to by Laetitia,
exquisitely arrayed, pink and white, doll-faced, doll-headed, squeaking
with coquettish glee, “Rosalie! Darling! Isn’t this awful? Imagine it
for me, Rosalie! It oughtn’t to have been planned like this, ought it?
Do tell darling mamma it ought not to have been! I’m trembling. Wouldn’t
you be?”

Yes, gone that sick dis-ease. How at this spectacle suffer dis-ease,
or any other disturbance of the emotions save only disgust, contempt at
such a horrid preparation for such a horrid rite. Excited responsiveness
to their most friendly excitation was not needed in her for it was not
expected. “The shy, quiet thing you always are, dear child,” Aunt Belle
often used to say to her and said now. (And within the week was to beat
her breast in that same drawing-room and cry with an exceeding bitter
cry, “Shy! We thought her shy! Sly! Sly! Sly to the tips of her fingers,
the wicked girl!”)

So she need respond with no more than her normal quiet smile, her normal
tone, in their presence, of poor-relation deference and awe. So behind
that mask could curl her lip and shudder in the refinements of her views
at this most horrid preparation for this most horrid rite. And did. That
dis-ease strangely fled, there came to her the swift belief that
here, and she had not known it!--was that dis-ease’s cause. It was the
anticipation of this exhibition of all the things she hated most, of the
most glaring presentiment of outrage of all her strongest principles.
This Laetitia, embodiment of useless woman-hood, launching herself on
that disgusting dependence on a man that soon would strand her among the
derelicts; and that Laetitia’s Harry, that might have been a man among
men, coming to the apotheosis of his languishing to--oh, wreathed,
fatted calf with gilded horns!

Yes, it was this had vexed her so; and suddenly informed of the seat of
her injury she turned upon it disgust and scorn such as never before had
she felt (and she, had felt it always) for the whole order of things for
which it stood. She felt her very blood run acid, causing her to twist,
in her acid contempt for the subservience of women, and most of all for
that Laetitia’s subservience, floated on that ghastly coquetry like a
shifting cargo that in the first gale will capsize the ship; she felt
her very temples throb, and almost thought they must be heard, in her
fierce detestation of all the masculinity of men and most of all--yes,
with a flash of eye she could not stay and hoped that he could see--that
fatuous Harry’s masculinity.

He came into the room--looked pale--poor calf!--and went, with a nervous
halt in his walk--sick fool!--to his Laetitia; and looked across at
Rosalie and made a half-step to her; and she thought with all her force,
to send it to him, her last words to him: that most malevolent, “to see
you raise your eyes and hear you breathe, ‘Ah, Laetitia’”; and surely
sent it, for on that half-step towards her he stopped, hesitated, and
turned and engaged Laetitia again.

She had told herself, leaving the Sturgiss’s house that night a week
ago, that she had not believed it possible to hate a man so. Now! Why
that was not hate; that, compared with the inimity that now consumed
her, was a mere chill indifference. And it had made her tremble! She was
rigid now. Stiff with hate! He personified for her all in life against
which she was in rebellion, all in life that her soul abhorred; and
while, in the moments before dinner, grunting Uncle Pyke and rallying
Aunt Belle and coquetting Laetitia crowded about him, leaving her alone
and far apart, she, for the reason that it gave to her hate, and for the
example that stood before her eyes, reviewed again her theories of life
and again pledged herself in their support....

“Dinner is served.” That group went laughing to the door, she followed.
“No, no, my boy. Don’t stand on ceremony. Pass along as we come. Why,
hang it, man, we regard you as one of the family! Ha! ha! haw!” Down
the stairs in a body, she following. There is, from their conversation,
something the wreathed calf is to get from his coat to bring to show
them, a letter or a token or something. The dining-room is to the front
on the ground floor. The coats hang in the hall, a narrow passage there,
that runs back to Uncle Pyke’s study. They are down. “Shall I get it
now?” “Yes, bring it along; bring it along, my boy.” “And Rosalie” (Aunt
Belle), “my fan, dear child. Dear child, I left it on the table in Uncle
Pyke’s den. You will? Dear child!”

They pass in. The gilded calf turns from them for what it is he is to
fetch from his coat; she slips by him to the study and takes up the fan
and comes with it again.

It is dim in the passage. A condition on which generous Uncle Pyke years
before installed this wonderful electric light that you flick on and
flick off as you require it was that it should always be flicked off
when you did not require it. Now as Rosalie came from the study the
passage was lit only by the shaft of light that gleamed from the
dining-room door; its only sound Aunt Belle’s noisy chatter from the
waiting table.

He was fumbling at the coats, standing there sharply outlined against
the stream of light, his face cut on it in a perfect silhouette. She
had to pass him. That hateful he. She was seized with a fit of that same
trembling that had shaken her after the passage between them at the gate
on Shoot Up Hill. It shook her now, dreadfully. Her knees trembled. She
felt faint. Awful to hate so! She was quite close, almost touching him.
It was necessary he should move, forward or back, to give her room. But
he did not move. His hands, outstretched before him on the coats, and
sharp against the light, appeared to her to be shaking; but that was the
hallucination of this frightful trembling that possessed her. She tried
to say, “If you please--,” but, dreadfully, had no voice; but made some
sound; and he, most slowly, drew back. It was before him that she had to
pass.

She advanced; and felt, as if she saw it, the intensity of the gaze of
his eyes upon her; and saw, as if the place were light and her look not
averted, his “marching” face and those lines radiating to his temples
(horizon tracks) where the faint touch of greyness was; and suddenly had
upon her senses, with an extraordinary pungency, causing them to swim,
that odd, nice smell there was about him of mingled peat and soap and
fresh tobacco, of tweed and heather and the sea.

She caught her breath...

The thing’s too poignant for the words a man has.

She was caught in his arms, terribly enfolding her. He was crying in
her ears, passionately, triumphantly, “Rosalie! Rosalie!” She was in his
arms. Those long, strong arms of his were round her; and she was caught
against his heart, her face upturned to his, his face against her own;
and she was swooning, falling through incredible spaces, drowning in
incredible seas, sinking through incredible blackness; and in her ears
his voice, coming to her in her extremity like the beat of a wing in the
night, like the first pulsing roll of music enormously remote, “Rosalie!
Rosalie!”

The thing’s too poignant for the words one has. This girl’s extremity
was very great, not to be set in words. Words cannot bring to earth that
which, ethereal, defies our comprehension as life and death defy it and,
like life and death, to our comprehension only sublimely IS. Words only
can say her spirit, bursting from bondage, streamed up to cleave to his;
how tell the anguish, how the ecstasy? Words only can say her spirit,
like a live part of her drawn out of her, seemed to be rushing upwards
from her body to her lips; words cannot tell the anguish that was bliss,
the rapture that was pain. Only can say that she was in his arms, her
heart to his, his lips against her own, and cannot tell--

But also it is to be accounted to her for her extremity that herein all
her life’s habit was delivered over by her to betrayal.




CHAPTER XI


He was saying, “We must go in. Can you go in?” She breathed, “I can.”

That dinner! That after-dinner in the drawing-room upstairs! It is a
nightmare to be imagined, not to be described. Imagine walking from the
darkness and the frightful secret of the passage into the blazing
dazzle and the glittering eyes of the resplendent dinner party! They, in
Harry’s absence, have been exchanging the last private nods and flashes.
“Soon! Soon!” they have been nodding to one another. Uncle Pyke, licking
his chops anticipatorily of his bath in his soup, has been licking them
also in relish of working off his daughter in this excellent match;
Aunt Belle, kind, kind Aunt Belle, with a last satisfied eye about the
appointments of the table, has patted her Laetitia’s hand and conveyed
to her, “Soon, soon, darling; soon, soon!” Beautiful Laetitia has given
a gentle, glad squeeze to the patting hand and smiled a lovely, happy,
certain smile. “Soon! Soon!” has gone the jolly signal--and it is not
going to be soon, nor late; it is never, never going to happen; and
worse than never happen!

Worse than never happen! That’s it. That is the awful knowledge of awful
guilt with which Rosalie sits there and freezes in guilty agony at every
pause in the conversation and could scream to notice how the pauses
grow longer and longer, more frequent and more frequent yet. There’s
a frightful constraint, a chilly, creepy dreadfulness steals about
the party. They go upstairs--Aunt Belle and Rosalie and beautiful
Laetitia--and the constraint goes with them. They sit and stare and
hardly a word said. Something’s up! What’s up? What’s the matter with
everything? Why is everything hanging like this! What’s up? And the men
come in--Uncle Pyke swollen with food, swollen with indigestion, swollen
with baffled perplexity and ferocious irritation; and Harry--she dare
not look at Harry--and the thing is worse, the awfulness more awful.
Glances go shooting round the awful silences--Uncle Pyke’s atrabilious
eye in the burning fiery furnace of his swollen face is a stupendous
note of interrogation directed upon Aunt Belle; Aunt Belle’s eyebrows
arch to scalp and appear likely to disappear into her scalp and remain
there in the effort to express, “I don’t know! I can’t imagine!”;
Laetitia--Laetitia’s eyes upon her mother are as a spaniel’s upon one
devouring meat at table.

Frightfulness more frightful, awfulness more awful; in Rosalie almost
now beyond control the desire to scream, or to burst into tears or
wildly into laughter. Then she knows herself upon her feet and hears
her voice: “Aunt Belle. I must go, I think. I think I am very tired
to-night.”

They suffer her to go.

That’s all a nightmare; but, when the door is closed upon them, like a
nightmare gone. She was alone upon the staircase and then down in the
hall--by those coats!--and, as though no ghastly interval had been, the
amazing and beloved moment was returned to her. Out of a nightmare into
a dream! She stood in her dream a moment--two moments--three--by
the hall door. Who till that evening never had thought of love,
astonishingly was invested with all love’s darling cunning. She felt
somehow he would see her again before she left; and love’s dear cunning
told her right. He came swiftly down the stairs. She never knew on what
pretext he had left the room. He came to her. Love loves these snatched
moments and always makes them snatched to breathlessness. She opened
the door and must be gone. She said to him, speaking first, “Oh, we were
vile in there! How vile we were!”

It was, the intimacy and the abruptness of it, the perfect comprehension
that their thoughts were shared, as if they had known and loved for
years.

He caught her hand. “My conspirator! My secret-sharer!”

She gave him her heart in her eyes.

He said, “To-morrow, I will come to you.”

She disengaged her hand.

He gave a swift look all about and caught her in his arms. “You must
tell me, my Rosalie. Tell me.”

She breathed, “You knew, before I knew, that I loved you.”

When she was home and got to her room she undressed, suffering her
clothes to lie as they slipped from her. She got into bed, moving there
and then lying there as one in trance.

Cataclysm! All she had been, all she had determined--all, all gone;
all nothing, surrendered all. At a touch, in a moment, without a cry,
without a shot, without a stroke, all her life’s habit swept away. All
she had been, all she’d designed, all she had built within herself
and walled about herself, all she had scorned, all that with a violent
antipathy she had shuddered from or with curled lip spurned away,--all,
all betrayed, breached, mined, calamitously riven, tumultously sundered,
burst away.

She turned her face to the pillow and began to cry--most frightfully.

It was very terrible for Rosalie.




PART THREE--HOUSE OF CHILDREN

CHAPTER I


There’s none so sick as, brought to bed, that robust he that ever
has scorned sickness; nor any sinner like a saint suddenly gone from
saintliness to sin; and there can be no love like love suddenly leapt
from repression into being.

Rosalie, that had abhorred the very name of love, now finding love was
quite consumed by love. She loved him so! Even to herself she never
could express how tremendous a thing to her their love was. She used
deliberately to call it to her mind (as the new, rapt possessor of a
jewel going specially to the case to peep and gloat again) and when she
called it up like that, or when, in the midst of occupation, her
mind secretly opened a door and she turned and saw it there, a surge,
physically felt, passed through her, and she would nearly gasp, her
breath taken by this new, this rapturous element, as the bather’s at his
first plunge in the cold, the splendid sea.

She loved him so! She looked at him with eyes, not of an inexperienced
girl blinded by love, but of one cynically familiar with the traits of
common men, intolerantly prejudiced, sharply susceptible to every note
or motion of displeasing quality; and her eyes told her heart, and what
is much more told her mind, that nothing but sheer perfection was here.
Harry was brilliantly talented, Harry was in face and form one that
took the eye among a hundred men. But she had known all that and freely
granted him all that before. What she found as she came to know him, and
when they were married what she continued to find, was simply, that he
was perfect. He was perfect in every way and there was no way in
which, inclining neither to the too much nor the too little, he was not
perfect.

The labour of a catalogue of her Harry’s virtues is thus discounted.
Name a virtue in a man and it was Harry’s. Declare too much perfection
is as ill to live with as too much fault, and it is precisely just
before too much is reached that Harry’s dowry stopped. Suggest she was
blind to defects, and it is to be answered that there was no man who
knew him that ever had a thought against him (except Uncle Pyke, Colonel
Pyke Pounce, R.E., who, justifiably, was warned by his physician never
to think upon the monster lest apoplexy should supervene) nor any fellow
man in his profession (and that is the supreme test) that ever grudged
him his success. Disgruntled barristers, morosely brooding upon the fall
of plums into other mouths than theirs, always said, when it was Harry’s
mouth: “Ah, Occleve; yes, but he’s different. No one grudges Harry
Occleve what he gets.”

Different! In Rosalie’s fond, fondest love for him she often used to hug
her love by making that catalogue of all his parts that has been shown
not to be necessary. And it was the little, tiny things wherein he
differed from common men that especially she cherished. By the deepest
part of her nature terribly susceptible to the grosser manifestations
of the male habit, it was extraordinarily wonderful and delicious to her
that Harry of these had none. In an age much given to easy freedom of
language it will not be appreciated, it perhaps will cause the pair
of them to be sneered at, but it demands mention as illuminating
a characteristic of hers (and of his), that she had, for instance,
especial delight in the fact that Harry never even swore. The impossible
test in the matter of self-command is when a man hits his thumb with
a hammer. What does a bishop say when he does that? But she saw Harry
catch his thumb a proper crack hanging a picture in the house they
took, and, “Mice and Mumps!” cried Harry, and dropped the hammer and
the picture, and jumped off the stepladder, and did a hop, and wrung his
hand, and laughed at her and wrung his hand and laughed again. “Mice and
Mumps!”

“Mice and Mumps!” It always seemed to her to characterise and to
epitomise him, that grotesque expression. It always made her laugh; and
the more serious the accident or the dilemma that brought it to Harry’s
lips, the more, by pathos, one was forced to laugh and the seriousness
thereby dissipated into an affair not serious at all. Yes, that was the
point of it and the reason it epitomised him. There was none of life’s
dilemmas--little dilemmas that irritate ordinary people or in which
ordinary people display themselves pusillanimous; or tragic dilemmas
that find ordinary people wanting and leave them in vacillation and
despair--there was none of any sort that Harry, receiving with his
comic, “Mice and Mumps! Mice and Mumps, old girl!” did not receive with
the assurance to her that, though this was a nuisance, he had metal and
to spare to settle such; that, though this was a catastrophe, a facer,
he’d too much courage, too much high, brave spirit for it to discommode
him; there was no fight in such, he was captain of such, trust him!

“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward.”

That was Harry!

“Mice and Mumps!” On the evening of the day following that astounding
betrothal of theirs, affianced as it were at a blow--a day spent
together in the park complete, without a break for food or thought of
occupation--on the evening of that day he must go, he de-clared, to the
horrific castle in Pilchester Square and break the awful news, proclaim
his villainy.

She was terrified. “They’ll kill you, Harry. Write.”

“No, no. I’ve been a howling cad. It’s true, a howling cad, not of
guile, but of these astounding things that have happened to us outside
ourselves, but nevertheless a howling cad as such conduct is judged,
and will be judged. So I must go through it. I must. That’s certain. I
couldn’t hide behind a letter. They are entitled to tell me to my face
what they think of me. They must have their right. Oh, yes, I’ve got to
give them that. To-night. Now.”

A howling cad, but of forces outside themselves (“Too quick for me,” he
had explained), not of guile.

He had explained, in those enchanted hours in the park, that it was
really by resolve to do the right thing, and not to do the caddish
thing, that he had presented himself the howling cad that they would
hold him. That night at the Sturgiss’s at Cricklewood had charged him
(“Oh, Rosalie, like bursting awake to breathe from suffocation in a
dream.”) what for many days, only looking at her, never speaking to
her, suffering her not veiled contempt, he had felt as one feels a
premonition that is insistent but that cannot be defined--that night
had charged him that he loved her. He was no way definitely committed
to poor Laetitia. Was he more wrong if, now knowing his heart was
otherwhere, he maintained and carried to its consummation the intimacy
between Laetitia and himself, or if he stopped while yet he had not gone
too far? He had decided to break while yet it might, be broken. There
was an invitation from Mrs. Pyke Pounce he had accepted. He wrote,
endeavouring to give a meaning to his words, excusing himself from it.

She murmured, “I remember.” (“Nothing in it, dear child; nothing in
it!”)

There came back a letter from Colonel Pyke Pounce in which Colonel Pyke
Pounce also had endeavoured to give a meaning to his words, and had
succeeded. Now Harry knew his problem of moral conduct in a fiercer
form; now, resolving to do what he told himself was the right thing and
not the caddish thing, he took the step that made him be the howling cad
that they would think him. (“But, Rosalie, gave me you!”)

He had resolved that he must accept the invitation, present himself at
the house--and let the hour decide. As the situation revealed itself
so he would accept it. If it was made clear to him, as the Pyke Pounce
letter much gave him to believe, that proposal for Laetitia’s hand was
expected of him, he would “do the right thing” and stand by what his
behaviour apparently had led them to expect; if the way still seemed
open, the door not shut behind him, he would very frankly explain to
Laetitia’s grisly father that he thought it best his visits to the house
from now should cease. The hour should decide! But there was in the
hour, when it came, one terrible, one lovely element that he never had
expected to be there. In all his visits to the house Rosalie never had
been met on any other day than Saturday. This dinner was on the Monday,
and arriving to face and carry through his ordeal, he was startled, he
was utterly shaken to see her there. (“To see my darling there.”)

O forces outside themselves! “When you had to pass me in the passage
nothing mattered then--except I could not let you pass.”

So it was that now, the right thing not having been done on that night,
the right thing in this new position must be done to-day. They were
entitled to tell him to his face what they thought of him and they must
have their right. That was his view and he would not abate it.

“They’ll kill you, Harry.”

They had come by this to the corner of Pilchester Square and there he
bade her wait. She said again, part laughing, most in fear, “They’ll
kill you.”

“I’ve got to give them the chance to do their best.”

And off he went, strongly, erect. One who never... but marched breast
forward.

Waiting for him, she really was terrified for him. Ferocious Uncle
Pyke! Terrific Aunt Belle! Swollen and infuriated Uncle Pyke! Bitter and
outraged Aunt Belle!

In twenty minutes came the crash of a slammed front door that clearly
and terribly was Uncle Pyke Pounce slamming it as if he would hurl it
through its portals and crash it on to Harry down the steps.

Harry reappeared, uncommonly grave.

She put out a hand to him, dreadfully anxious.

“Mice and Mumps!” said Harry. “Mice and Mumps!”

You couldn’t help laughing! But also, squeezing the strong arm beneath
which he tucked her hand, you felt, with such a thrill, from that
grotesque expression, and from his face as he said it, that this, like
every forward thing, had in it nothing that could discommode that high,
brave spirit: no fight in such; he was captain of such, trust him!

Thus also her delight in another form, and yet in the same form, in that
grotesque expression, when it was ejaculated as his sole expletive when
he caught his thumb that frightful crack while hanging a picture in what
was to be his study in their newly taken house.

Any other man in the world, even a bishop, would have sworn; would have
sworn no doubt harmlessly and with an honest heartiness to which the
most pious prude could not have taken exception. Agreed! But the point
was--that Harry didn’t!

She loved him so! She insisted she must bind up the thumb with her
pocket handkerchief, and did, Harry protesting; and for years, still
loving him with the old, first love, she often would be reminded by the
picture of the incident and of her joy in it.

Yes, the only expletive she ever heard him use; and, lo, in that very
room, years on, he seated beneath that very picture, she was to come to
him with news (and hers the guilt of it) that for the first time was to
strike him between the joints of his harness, visibly ageing him as she
spoke, and for the first time cause him to groan his pain. She was
to glance at the picture as she spoke and very terribly its merry
association to be recalled to her. She was to recall him young, gay,
tremendously splendid, wringing his damaged hand, laughing, “Mice and
Mumps!” She was to see him, grey ascendant upon the raven of his hair,
shrinking down in his seat, wilting as one slowly collapsing after a
stunning blow, and at her news (and hers the guilt of it) to hear
his voice go, not exclamatorily, but in a thick mutter, as one dazed,
bewildered, in a fog, “My God, my God, my God, my God!”

How could one ever have foreseen that?




CHAPTER II


She loved him so! On that first day together in the park she told
him everything about herself, about all her ideas and theories and
principles, particularly where these touched his sex, even about that
terrible fit of crying of hers in bed an hour after she had left him.
And Harry understood everything and agreed with her in everything. O
rapturous affinity!

They met early when business London was rushing to business. They stayed
late, with no thought of food or of their occupations, till business
London was returning, and night, in lamps below and stars above, was
setting out its sentinels.

She told him everything; and even if she had wished not to open all her
heart, there would have been the immense selection of everything--every
single thing about herself--from which to choose to tell him. For there
never had been such a betrothal as theirs; done at a blow with no single
intimate thing ever before passed between them! Her very first words to
him as they met, her greeting of him as they came together, showed how
preposterous and never-before-imagined was their affiancement. “You
know, it’s incredible,” she greeted him. “It’s incredible, it’s
grotesque, it’s flatly impossible--I’ve never before seen you except in
your dress clothes or at afternoon tea!”

Harry took both her hands in his. “But I think I’ve wanted you,” said
Harry, “ever since I was in long clothes. I know I’ve wanted you ever
since first I saw you.”

One knows another, in her place, would have bantered this off in that
modern attitude towards love which is a horror, boisterously expressed,
of admitting love as an emotion. Rosalie, that had scorned the very name
of love, and that, because betrayed by love, had turned her face to her
pillow and cried most frightfully, received it with a sound that was
between a sigh and a catching of her breath. She loved him so!

And then they talked; and the thing between them, that had come so
wonderfully, was so wonderful that they were as it were transfigured by
it, as awe and spirituality and mysticism would fill the dwellers in a
house visited by a miracle of God. So wonderful, that conversation, they
would have felt, was not possibly a word for all that occupied them in
those rapturous hours: not conversation, no,--a sublime engagement of
their spirits wherein (possessing the keys of all the wonders), seas,
continents and worlds of thoughts were traversed by them, in every clime
most exquisite affinity discovered.

As at a blow they had become affianced, so, with no stage between,
but in immediate sequence perfectly natural to them both, the natural
repercussion of the blow, they talked immediately of betrothal’s
consummation, of marriage, of their marriage.

About marriage Rosalie had immensely much to tell Harry. It was what she
had principally to say, and this is how and why and what she told him.

When from her first terrible dismay--that frightful crying, her face
turned to the pillow--she had recovered; when to the lovely ardour of
her love--stealing about her, soothing her, in the night; bursting upon
her, ravishing her, in the morning--she had passed on; she remembered
her second line of her defences and she fell back upon it. “If ever I
fell in love,” she had often said, alike to Keggo and to Miss Salmon,
“if such an impossible thing ever were to happen to me, I’d marry as
marriage should be. I’d enter a partnership. I would live my life; he
would live his life; together, when we wanted to, when we were off duty,
so to speak, we would live our life. A partnership, a mutually free and
independent partnership.”

The second line of her defences! Oh, strong and reassuring thought! Of
course, of course the first line, breached and swept away, had never
really mattered. Foolish to have wept for it! It was built against
love and she knew now, by her darling and her terrible experience, that
against love----! Nay, in that whelming admission’s very tide, sweeping
upon her from envisagement of Harry and bearing her deliciously upon its
flood, there had come a thought as strong with wine as that was sweet
with honey. Built against love! Why, in seeking to build against love,
to shut away love from her life, was she not perpetrating against
herself the very act--denial of anything a free life might have--that it
was her life’s first principle to oppose? A man’s place, a man’s part,
everything that a man by conventional dowry is given, hers should be as
freely as a man’s it is! That was her aim; that at once the basis of her
standpoint and the target of her shaft; and lo, at the very outset of
her independence, she had sought to deny herself that which (as now
she knew) was life’s most lovely gift. She was steadfast, and she was
caparisoned, to obtain and to possess the things that, of her sex,
commonly a woman might not have, and she was shutting herself from that
which, if it offers, not all the man-owned world can deny the woman
lowliest in office, heaviest in chains, deepest in servitude!

O senselessness! She could see, as looking upon an individuality not her
own, that foolish girl that for such had turned her face to her pillow
and cried out her heart; and at that very moment, and no other, of
smiling pity for that mistaken grief, there came to Rosalie a sudden
sense of womanhood attained; of much increase of years and wisdom; of
growth of stature; of transportation, as from one world to another, from
the character and the presence that had been hers to a personality and
a body that looked down upon that other as, tenderly, a mother upon the
innocence of her small child.

That poor, brave, foolish Rosalie that was! Did she protest, that
foolish girl, that she was right in what had been her attitude to love?
Did she with would-be bitterness recall those views laid down upon the
women in the boarding house--that they were derelicts precisely through
this love business, abandoned of men, relict of men, footsore and fallen
in pursuit of men?

Ah, small, misguided creature! The principles were right but all askew
the application. Love! Consider other attributes of life. Consider
learning; consider food. Learning and food--were they not bounties of
life’s treasure, to be absorbed and used for sustenance in order, by
their nourishment, to give to live this life more fully? Why, so with
love! Derelicts, those women, because receiving love (that loveliest
gift of all!) not as a means but as an end--the end of all: that
attained, everything attained; that won, all finished. That was it! That
the misapplication! Learning, or food, or love--the same with all! How
dead the life that only lived in scholarship; how gross the life that
only lived to eat; how derelict that she that only lived to love, to
marry--then ceased to live!

And equally, O small, misguided girl, how starved the life that has no
books; how weak the frame that has no food; ah, dear (thus smiled she to
herself), how dead the life that knows not love!

The second line of her defences! Nay, as now through this mature and
happy cogitation she saw it, the first and last and only line! In her
aloneness, in that girl’s single life, there had been nothing against
which to defend. She had fought phantoms, that girl; resisted shadows.
Now was the necessity, now the test; and now, because with Harry,
because she loved him so, because he was every way and in all things
perfect, now should be the triumphant exposition.

And she told Harry: marriage that should be a partnership--not an
absorption by the greater of the less; not one part active and the other
passive; one giving, the other receiving; one maintaining, the other
maintained; none of these, but instead a perfect partnering, a perfect
equality that should be equality of place, equality of privilege,
equality of duty, equality of freedom. “Harry, each with work and with
a career. Harry, each living an own life as every man, away from home,
shutting his front door upon that home and off to work, leads an own and
separate life. Harry--”

Oh, wonderful beneath this imperturbable sky, amongst these common,
passive things--these paths, those trees, that grass, this bench--within
this seclusion of that murmurous investment of this city, the ceaseless
roar of London, standing like patient walls, eternal and indifferent,
about her quietudes. Oh, wonderful in these accustomed and insensible
surroundings thus to be calling “Harry,” as he were brother, him that a
day and night away virtually was unmet; to be exposing, as to a gracious
patron, all her mind’s treasury of thought; to be revealing, as in
confessional, her inmost places of her heart; to be receiving, as by
transfusion, the glow of affirmation on her way and in her trust. Oh,
wonderful!

Wonderful, because remember for her that she was still beneath the shock
of her dismay at her betrayal of herself; still breathless at that rout
from her prepared positions; not yet assured her banners were unsullied
in their withdrawal to her second line; not yet convinced it was no
rout but a withdrawal, wise and strategical, ranks unbroken, to the true
point of her defence.

Do try to imagine her, tremulous in this her vital enterprise, tremulous
in this wonder that her armies found. It is very desirable to remember
what can be remembered for that girl.




CHAPTER III


Harry assured her! Harry convinced her! Harry was here upon the
battlements, come with her in her retirement, joined with her as her
ally. All her ideas were his ideas. He, too, had these new views of
marriage. He said they always had been his. He hated, as she hated, that
old dependence notion: all the privileges the man’s, the woman’s all the
duties. That was detestable to him, said Harry. Marriage in his view--

“I’ll tell you this,” was one thing Harry said. “I’ll show it to you
this way, Rosalie. I don’t exactly know what a reciprocating machine
is, but I know what it sounds like, and what it sounds like is what
a marriage ought to be,--a perfect fitting together, a perfect
harmonising, a perfect joining of two perfect halves that everywhere
reciprocate.”

The word delighted her. A reciprocating machine! Yes, yes! Each an own
part; each with own and separate interests; and their parts, and
the production arising out of their interests--their individual
selves--approached together, by free will, to join towards a mutual
benefit, a shared endeavour, a common advancement, a single end.

She was desperately in earnest and so was he. There was a mill near his
people’s home in Sussex, a water mill, and his illustration by it of the
design they had showed her how earnestly her own ideas were his. There
were two wheels to this mill, Harry told her, one on either side. Each
ran in its own stream, each was entirely independent of the other; they
worked alone, but each helped the other’s work; the mill joined them and
they joined to make the mill.

That was it!

And she was not talking any generalities, and Harry was not, either.
They weren’t, either of them, playing with this idea of mutual
independence. There would “of course” be a business basis to it, Rosalie
said. She was earning her own income and she would pay her half of the
upkeep of their home together. It was a stipulation that she advanced
with a definite fear that here, at last, she might be taking Harry from
his depth; that by natural instinct of generosity, or by instinct of
immemorial custom to endow the wife with all the husband’s worldly
goods, he would here reveal a flaw in his till now flawless duplication
of the views that were her own.

But Harry (the never failing rapture of it!) was every way without spot
or blemish. He was looking straight and close into her eyes while she
put forward this, and there moved not the least dissentient shade across
his own while he received it. She need have had no fear. He said, “I
agree absolutely with that, Rosalie. There’s only one point--” and his
expansion of this point wholly entranced her because it established
conditions even more matter-of-fact and businesslike than her own broad
principle.

“There’s only one point,” Harry said. “It can’t be half and half in
terms of actual bisection. Look, Rosalie, in this matter of running the
home we’re making a contract between two parties and--don’t forget I’m a
lawyer--it has to be an equable and just contract, and to be that it has
to be based for each party’s liability--Do you like me to use the law
jargon?”

She nodded. “I do, I do!” This was frightfully, entrancingly serious for
her. This was a survey of the fortifications of her second line of her
defences. “I do, I do!”

“Well, has to be based for each party’s liability on each party’s
interest, on the extent to which each party is involved. I’m making
more--an uncommon good bit more--than you are, Rosalie. My interest,
therefore my liability, that is, my share, has to be allowed to be
proportionately the more. Put it in another way. We’re going to run an
establishment as an establishment might be run by two or more people of
different incomes who wish to join forces for mutual pleasure, two or
three relatives, two or three friends. Well, there’s a regular principle
governing that kind of arrangement. You don’t all pay the same. If you
did, you’d reduce the scale of living to the level of what the poorest
can afford, and half the idea of the combination is to enjoy a very
much better scale. No, you run the show on the level the wealthiest is
willing to go to, and to the total charge each one contributes in the
proportion of his income. If one party has a thousand a year and the
other five hundred, and the thousand-pounder wants to live at the rate
of nine hundred a year, he pays six hundred and the other three hundred.
Each is paying his just share--that’s the point. That’s how we’d arrange
it, Rosalie.”

She loved him so! If that were said a thousand times (as already perhaps
too often for the robust) it still would not approach the volume of its
swelling in the heart of Rosalie, for that was ceaseless. His attitude
in this matter now between them, as in every matter, might have been the
perfect agreement with her own view that it was and yet might so have
been presented as to be much antipathetic to her. His attitude might
have made her feel she ought to say, “Thank you, Harry, for agreeing to
that”; it might have had the note, “I know exactly how you feel about
marriage; I want to make every-thing just as you wish.” Quicksands!
Principles to be received as grants, bases of her defences to be
accepted as concessions! Quicksands! At either attitude, as at a foreign
flavour in a cup, she would have drawn back, suspicious; at either sense
within herself, of winning a favour, of accepting a hazard, she would
have taken alarm, dismayed. But it was why she loved him so that here,
as everywhere, his standpoint was her standpoint’s own reflection. She
was, as she would have said, deadly in earnest; deadly in earnest to
a depth that she could let go to absurdity and never know it for
absurdity; and so was he.

Approving this plan of computation of the share that each would pay, “It
would have to be done strictly,” she said, “as though it were strictly
business. And--you don’t know, perhaps--I’m making, or soon shall be,
just on five hundred a year.”

He smiled the nice smile of his she loved, more with his eyes than with
his lips. “I’m afraid mine’s a good bit more than that. Money’s rather
pushed at you at the Bar once it starts. You’d have to put up with
that.”

Her fondness in her eyes reflected him. “I know how famous you are
getting. I’d not be stupid about that, Harry. It would be the just
share, each according to our means; that’s understood. Only, for me, it
would have to be the just share, that’s what I’m saying; not a matter of
form, a strict proportion.”

“If you liked,” said Harry, “we’d give the figures to the costs clerk at
my chambers and let him work the contributions out.”

“Absurd!” she might have laughed; and as an absurdity he might, with a
laugh, have presented it. But quite gravely he made the suggestion, and
quite gravely, after a moment’s grave thought, “I don’t think that would
be necessary,” she returned.

His earnestness in this thing so vital to her matched her own, and
therefore she loved him; and he yet could bring to it lightly a touch
which, though light, yet was profoundly based; and therefore, newly, she
loved him. She knew she talked with immense profligacy of words in her
endeavour to make clear the principles this second line of her defences
must maintain. “Each with work and with a career, each with an own
and separate life.” She kept repeating that. “Equal in work and in
responsibility, Harry, and therefore equal in place, in privilege, in
freedom.”

And Harry, with a light touch but a grave air, a happy setting for a
profound meaning, put it in a sentence. “Things which are equal to the
same thing are equal to one another,” said Harry.

She loved him so!

But there ought here to be explained for her what, loving him so and
he so loving her, she could not have known for herself. This plan of
maintaining their establishment by contribution of share and share was
maintained by Rosalie from the beginning--to the end. She never had
cause to doubt that in all the earnestness of that close conversation
Harry was utterly sincere. She often recalled that steady gaze with no
dissentient shade across it with which his eyes received her statement
of her case and knew that only truth was in that gaze. He did believe
what she believed. It only was afterwards she discovered that also he
believed that, both for her and him, the thing would mellow down as
mellows down the year, her heady Aprils burnt in June, her burning Junes
assuaging to September; that it would pass; that time--

Yes, it must be explained. It was not active in his mind, this
reservation. It was passive, underlying, subconscious, as beneath
vigour’s incredulity of death lies passively admission of death’s final
certitude. He believed what she believed; but he believed it as are
believed infinity and eternity: wherein mankind, believing, reposes upon
that limitation of the human mind which cannot conceive infinity but
sees ultimately an end, and can pretend eternity through myriad years
but feels ultimately a termination. Harry believed what she believed but
only by stabilisation of a man’s inherent articles of faith. He was of
the male kind; and observe, by an incident, what inherent processes of
thought the male kind has:

When they were looking over the house which ultimately they took--an all
ways most desirable house in Montpelier Crescent, Knightsbridge--Rosalie
had only a single objection: it was far too big.

“Miles too big,” cried Rosalie, coming up to the second floor where
Harry had preceded her. “What are you doing there, Harry? Miles too big,
I was saying. It really is. Of course I realise you must have a house
suitable to your fame but--What are you doing, Harry?”

“Fame, yes,” breathed Harry, desperately occupied. “I’ve turned on this
tap and I can’t turn it off again. Eternal fame. After me the deluge!”

She was looking around. “But, Harry, really! Look at this floor. Two
more huge rooms. What can we--”

“Mice and Mumps!” groaned Harry, straining at the tap. “Mice and Mumps!”

He came to her wiping his hands on his handkerchief. “Too big! Look
here, supposing this house isn’t washed away by that tap. Suppose it’s
still standing here tomorrow. Take a broad, courageous view of the
thing. Suppose this isn’t the beginning of the Great Flood of London,
and that we’re going to live in a house and not an ark. Well, what
you’ve got to remember is that we’re not coming in here for a week.
We’ve got to look ahead. Take these two rooms. Why, you can see what
they’re for, what they’ve been. Opening into one another, and those
little bars on the windows, and that protected fireplace. Nurseries. Day
nursery and night nursery.”

Rosalie laughed.




CHAPTER IV


That’s all done. The thing traverses the waters of the years, as across
seas a ship, and makes presently a new shore, a new clime, wherein are
met occasions new and strange, not anticipated by Rosalie.

Here is one.

Habitant in the new continent across these years, she is wife and,
though she had laughed, is mother, and on a day is with her Harry, and
Harry is saying, not at all with any hardness in his voice, but very
gravely:

“I have a right to a home.”

She replies, as grave as he, as one debating a matter that is weighty
but that is before the arbitrament, not of feeling, but of reason,
“Harry, you have a home.”

A gesture of his head, much comprehensive, is made by him: “Is this a
home?”

“It’s where we live.”

“Ah, where we live, Rosalie!”

She did not reply to this. Himself, and not she, spoke next; but his
note was as though she had answered and he were speaking in his turn. “I
have a right to a home. The children have a right to a home.”

She said, “Then, Harry, give yourself a home. Give the children a home.”

He said, “Rosalie, I am a man.”

She answered, “Harry, I am a woman.”

Harry was smoking and he indrew an inhalation from his pipe with a long
sibilant sound: her answer was very well understood by him.

No, she never had anticipated this.

Yet might not she have seen? Astounding how in life one’s suddenly
engulfed in depths and never has perceived the shoals from which they
led; suddenly entombed in night and never has perceived the gradual
declination of the day! Why, when she looked back, so far away as in
those days of choosing their house had been in seed this thing that now
was come to fruit. And she had watched it grow from seed to seedling,
and on to bud and blossom, and never had suspected.

But had she not? Then it was curious, she knew, that, alone of all her
thoughts, all her beliefs, all her theories, her observations and
her deductions from her observations, curious that of them all only a
certain observation, made when choosing their house, she never had told
to Harry.

Choosing their house! She had gone back to her rooms from the third day
of their house-hunting gently amused at an addition to her compendium of
lore on the male habit. It was in a way like the cat idea; at least it
was, like that, reversal of a common opinion on distinguishing traits
as between men and women. It went in her mind like this and, because
it arose out of Harry, she laughed softly to herself as like this she
shaped it:

“They say a woman marries for a home. Wrong, wrong! It’s man that
marries for a home--a home that, having got it, superficially he cares
little enough about, and superficially uses as a good place to get away
from; but that’s just how he uses his business, how he uses everything.
Oh, he wants it, he wants it, and he marries for it far more than a
woman wants it or marries for it. How plain it is! A man marries to
settle down, a woman for just precisely the opposite: to break up; to
get away from the constraints of daughterhood and of Miss-hood, as a
schoolgirl, holiday-bound, from the constraints of school; to enlarge
her life, not to restrict it; to aerate her life, not to compose it.
Why, it’s inherent in a man, the desire for a home; it’s in his bones.
Look at little boys playing--it’s caves and tents and wigwams they
delight to play at; a place they can in part discover and in part
construct, and then arrange their things in, and then go off exploring
and then, all the time, be coming back to the delicious cave and creep
in and block up the door! Girls don’t play at that; they play at shops
and being grown up, at nursing dolls and not themselves being nursed.
But that’s your man--a hunter with a cave, and the return to the cave
the best part of the hunting. That’s what he marries for--a home; a
pitch of his own; a place to bring his things to and wherein to keep his
things; an establishment; a solid, anchored base; a place where he
can have his wife and his children and his dogs and his books and his
servants and his treasures and his slippers and his ease, and can feel,
comfortably, that she and they and it are his,--his mysterious cave with
the door blocked up, his base, his moorings, his settled and abiding
centre. Dear Harry!”

“Dear Harry” because all this had come to her while with secret, fond
amusement she had watched Harry delightedly and entrancedly fussing
about the houses they explored. The boy with a cave! The man with a
home! She liked the idea of a new home, and a home with Harry, but,
given outstanding features obviously essential, almost any home would
have satisfied her. She was animated and interested in the choosing,
but not with Harry’s interest and animation. Hers were the feelings with
which she had established herself in the two-room suite at the boarding
house. There any two rooms would have done; here any pleasant house
would do. It was not the rooms; it was the significance of her entry
into their possession. It was not the house; it was the significance of
all connoted by the house. The rooms had been a stepping-off place to
independence larger and to triumphs new; the house was a stepping-off
place to independence, to triumphs, to battle of life and to joy of
life, lifted upon a plane high above her old world as the stars, as
bright and keen as they.

But for Harry it was a stepping-in place.

It was Harry that fussed and examined and measured and opened and shut
and tested and tried and must have this and must have that. It was Harry
who saw everything with the eye that was going to see it and live with
it permanently and for all time. It was Harry who invested every square
yard of every interior with the attributes that should be there when
they therein were domiciled. Harry who said, “This front door! Rosalie,
we’re going to have a front door that will hit you in the eye and make
you say ‘Mice and Mumps, there’s a distinguished couple that live behind
a door like that!’ None of your wretched browns and greens and blacks
and reds for our door, Rosalie! We’ll have a yellow front door, gamboge.
I’ve seen it on a house in Westminster. I’ll take you there. You wait
till you see it. Imagine it, Rosalie, beneath that lovely old fanlight
overhead. And then yellow window boxes tinted to match in every window
and crammed with flowers. It’ll be a house you’ll run to get into
directly you catch sight of it. Then inside here, in the hall, there’ll
be the thickest rugs money can buy and the brightest light and the
warmest stove. You’ll step in and shut the yellow door and, ‘Mice and
Mumps,’ you’ll say, ‘this is home!’ Now, look here; here’ll be my study;
I’ll have bookshelves built in all round there and there and there.
Pictures there. This nook--I’ll fix a little cupboard there and keep my
tools in. I’ll spend half my time our first weeks pottering about with a
hammer and a pair of pliers. This place just here on the landing. Looks
like a dungeon. We’ll knock out a window there and fit it up with hot
and cold water as a cloak room. Now here’s your room, your--”

“My study,” she had interpolated, a little apprehensive lest for her
private room he should use another word.

“Yes, your study, rather. Each of us with our own study! A lark, eh?
And Rosalie, in mine there’ll be a special chair for you and in yours a
special chair for me. We’ll stroll in on each other’s work--”

She loved him for that. “Like two men in chambers,” she said.

His reply was, “We’ll rip out this fireplace and put you in one in
oak; the walls something between gold and brown, eh? Now come into
the drawing-room. This’ll be the room. Let’s start with the hearth and
imagine it’s winter. This is where we’ll have tea the days when I get
back in time--”

“And when I get back in time.”

“Of course, I’d forgotten that. Why, then whichever of us is back first
will be all ready with the tea and waiting to welcome the other. Can’t
you see the room? Warm, shadowed, glowing here and there, here and there
gleaming, and the tea table shining? Won’t it be a place to rush back
to? I say, Rosalie, it’s going to be rather wonderful, isn’t it?”

Dear Harry! Yes, men that married for a home.

So she had known that from the start; and, the significant thing (as
later perceived) she never had mentioned it to Harry. There was not
a line of her life, as lived before she knew him, that she had not
revealed to him; there was not a passage of her life, when joined to
his, that was not handed to him to write upon; but this, that she knew
he’d married for a home, was never revealed, never inscribed upon the
tablets submitted daily for his annotation.

Yes, significant!

But how could its significance have been perceived? Look here, there had
been a night--a thousand years ago!--when a girl had turned her face to
her pillow and cried, most frightfully. Significant! Why, that girl’s
world had lain in atoms at the significance of that girl’s grief. And
she that now looked back had been born out of those tears, as the first
woman drawn from the side of the first man, and fondly had chid that
child that no significance was there at all. There was none. There was
nothing to fear. A natural joy of life that had been stifled had been
embraced, a shattered world had been remoulded on foundings firmer and,
ah, nearer to the heart’s desire. Significant! It had been so disproved
that not more possibly could fears arise from those, her lovely
dissipations of those fears, than from its watchful mother’s reassuring
candle and her soothing words new terrors to a frightened child at
night.

Then how, she used to ask herself, could significance have been
perceived in not admitting Harry to her smiling thought on men and home?
Significance--then? Nay, memory bear witness, much, much the contrary!
Bear witness, memory, it was that very thought of Harry as boy with
cave, as man with home, had suddenly suffused her with...

“Dear Harry!” she had thought, and with the thought...

Anna! That cry of Anna’s upon that frightening night, striking her hands
against her bosom, “I have a longing--here!” Never till then its meaning
nor even thought upon its meaning.

Then! Upon that thought--“Dear Harry!”--had come, with a catch at the
breath as at an obscure twinge of pain, a tremor of the sense that
was its meaning: thereafter flooding all her being as floods a flood
a pasture. A longing to be mother, Anna’s longing was! A longing to
be mother, to hold a tiny scrap against her breast; to have her heart,
bursting for such release, torn out by baby fingers; to have her design
of God, insufferably overpacked within her by the remorseless pressure
of instinct through a million ages, relieved, discharged, fulfilled by
motherhood. Poor Anna! Ah, piteous! “Oh, God, thou knowest how hard it
is to be a woman.” Poor, piteous Anna, and poor, piteous every woman
that, made vessel of this yearning, must have it unfulfilled.

Not she!

The coronet of love, denied poor Anna, was hers. He’d said “These
rooms--the nurseries”; the crown of love; and she had laughed!

Oh, stubborn still! Oh, still not cognisant of nature’s dower to her
sex. To wear the coronet and to refuse the crown! To be wife and not to
be mother! To think of baby fingers and to think to put away the offer
of their baby clutch!

That girl that turned her face to her pillow and began to cry, most
frightfully, cried next again when she again lay abed and had a tiny
scrap, an ugly, exquisite, grotesque, miraculous scrap, a baby boy, a
baby man, along her arm and watched it there. Those had been passionate
and rending tears; these did not even flow. Those burned her eyes; these
stood within her eyes a lovely welling up of pride and adoration,
drawn from her by this newly risen wonder as by the sun at his arising
moisture in lovely mists is drawn from earth.

Motherhood! When later he was christened, she and Harry named him Hugh;
but it was a caressing diminutive she made out of his name by which he
was always known. Her tiny son! His tiny arms hugged you as never tiny
arms possibly could have hugged before and so she called him “Huggo.”

“Harry, if you could feel how he’s hugging me! It’s absurd he can
have such strength! It’s ridiculous he can love me so! And how can he
possibly know that hugging’s a sign of love? Harry, how can he? Take him
and hold him up like that and see if he hugs you the same. He is! He is!
Isn’t he?”

“Mice and Mumps,” said Harry, “he is; he’s throttling me, the tiger.”

“Ah, give him back, I’m jealous. There’s never, never been a hugger
like him since the world began. He’s Huggo. That’s his name. Creature
straight out of heaven, you’re Huggo.”

Her love for infant Huggo so maternal; her unity with Harry so
exquisitely one; how could she have known were to be met across the
waters of the years occasions new and strange, as that already shown,
or, onward yet a further voyage, as this?

The matter between them touched the same as when, “I have a right to a
home; the children have a right to a home,” Harry had said. But their
tones not the same; in Harry’s voice a quality of dulness as of one
reciting a lesson too often conned yet never understood; in hers a
certain weariness as with instruction too often given.

They had been talking a very long time. Harry hadn’t any arguments. He
just kept coming back and coming back to the one thing. He said again,
the twentieth time, in that dull voice, “We are responsible for the
children. We have a duty towards them.”

The twentieth time! She made a gesture, not impatient, just tired, that
was of repletion with this thing. “Ah, you say ‘we’ have a duty. You say
‘we’; but, Harry, you mean me. Why I a duty more than you? Why am I the
accused?”

Harry’s dull note: “Because you are a woman.” Ineffable weariness was
in the murmur that was her reply. “Ah, my God, that reason!” No, she had
never anticipated this.




CHAPTER V


How did it happen? Within her face abode the explanation of how it
happened.

There was a mirage in her face.

If she were taken (for a moment) when she had been married ten years,
her age thirty-two, and then taken again when she was forty-six, when
she had done, when, in 1922, she said, “I have done,” and her story
ceases, it is material to a portrait of her that in those fourteen years
her appearance did not greatly change. Events inscribed it; but these
writings were in two scripts, rendered in the two natures that were
hers, and, as it were, a balance was maintained between them; there
remained constant the aspect that her face presented to the world;
constant, that is to say, the spirit that looked out of her face.

That girl that at the door of the great house in Pilchester Square had
breathed, “You knew, before I knew, that I loved you,” had been called
beautiful. This woman that now was wife and now was mother was beautiful
with that girl’s beauty and with her own, matured of years, set upon it.
That girl, shaded in her colouring, commonly was sombre in her hue, but
with a quick, impetuous spirit beneath her flesh that, flashing, somehow
lightened all her tints; this woman, albeit dark, had somehow about her
a deep golden hue as of dusk in a deep wood beheld against a sunset.
Her face had always had a boyish look and still, with years, was
boyish. There was a mirage in her face. The stranger glanced and saw a
mother--extraordinarily shielding and maternal and benignant things;
and looked again and saw a boy--astonishingly reckless and impetuous
and rather boyish, hard and mutinous things. Or glanced and saw a boy,
perhaps laughing and eager, perhaps obstinate and petulant; and looked
again and only much tenderness was there.

There was a mirage in her face; and with its changes her voice changed.
When she was a boy her voice was April; when she was a mother September
was her voice.

There were two natures in her and those were their reflections; two
lodestars set above her that by turns brightened and drew her gaze; two
lodestones set within her that claimed her banners as claim the moon and
earth the inconstant sea; one of head, one of heart; one of choice, one
of dower; one of will, one of nature.

In that tenth year her married life there stood for the mother in her
face three children: Huggo who then was nine; Dora, whom she called Doda
because in her first prattle this heart’s delight of hers-“A baby girl!
A beloved one, Harry, to be daughter to me, and to be a tiny woman with
me as little girls always are, and then budding up beside me and being
myself to me again, my baby girl, my daughter, my woman-bud, my heart’s
own heart!”--had thus pronounced her name, who then was seven; and last
Benjamin, then five, whom she named Benjamin because, come third, come
after cognizance of confliction within herself, come after resentment of
his coming--called Benjamin because, come out of such, there were such
happy tears, such tender, thank-God, charged with meaning tears to greet
him, the one the last of three, the little tiny one, so wee beside the
lusty, toddling others. Benjamin she told Harry he must be named; Benji
she always called him.

Huggo and Doda and Benji! Her children! Her darling ones, her lovely
ones! Love’s crown; and, what was more, worn in the persons of these
darling joys of hers (when they were growing up to nine and seven and
five years old) in signal, almost arrogant in her disdain of precedent
to the contrary, that woman might be mother and yet work freely in the
markets of the world precisely as man is father but follows a career.

Children! There had been a time when, speaking from the boy that would
stand mutinous and reckless in her face, and with her April voice, she
had expressed her view on parentage in terms of the old resentment
at the old disability, encountered, bedrocked, wherever into life she
struck a new trail; in terms of the old invertion of an old conceit
wherever with her principles she touched conventional opinion. The
catlike attributes, the marriage for a home, here the familiar saw on
parenthood--

“They talk about hostages to fortune,” she had expressed her idea,
“they talk about a man with young children as having given hostages to
fortune. You know, it’s quite absurd. He doesn’t. I don’t say a man to
whom the support of children is a financial anxiety hasn’t, by begetting
them, placed himself in a position of captivity to fortune, or to the
future, or whatever you like to call it. He very much has. He’s backed
a bill that any day may fall due and find him without means to meet it;
he’s let himself in for blackmail, always over him a threat. But
I’m talking about men above the struggle line. They don’t, in their
children, give hostages. It’s the woman does that. Men don’t give nor
forfeit anything. It’s the woman gives and forfeits. Why, when his
friends meet a man who was last met a bachelor a couple or three years
ago, what change do they see in him? They don’t see any change at all.
There isn’t any change to see. He has to tell them; and he always tells
them rather sheepishly or rather boisterously. ‘I’m married, you know,’
he says. ‘Yes, rather. Man alive, I’ve got two kids!’ The other says,
‘My aunt!’--more probably he says ‘My God!’--‘My God, fancy you!’ And
they both laugh--laugh!

“Hostages to fortune! To a man and amongst men it’s just a joke. It’s no
joke to a woman. Do you suppose a married girl, meeting old friends,
has to tell them she’s a mother, or, if she had to tell them, would tell
them like that? Can’t they see it at a glance? Isn’t she changed? Isn’t
she, subtly perhaps, but unmistakably, altogether different from the
unfettered thing she used to be? Of course she is. How otherwise? She’s
given hostages to fortune and she’s paying; she’s being bled. She’s
giving up things, she’s not going out so much, she’s not reading so
much, she’s not playing so much, she’s not interested so much in what
used to interest her. How can she? There’s the children. How can she?
She’s given hostages to fortune. Oh, happy is the man that hath children
for they are as arrows in the quiver of a giant. But it’s the woman is
the arrowbearer! It’s the woman pays.”

Lo, there had come to this intolerance the longing--“Here!”--that Anna’s
bosom had, the urge to hold a tiny scrap against her breast, to have
her heart, bursting for such release, torn out by baby fingers. It had
o’erborne the other. She had thrown herself upon its flood; not yielded
to it as one drawn in by rising waters, but tempestuously engulfed by
it and borne away upon it as swallowed up and borne away in Harry’s arms
when “Rosalie! Rosalie!” he had cried to her.

That which the subsidence revealed, adoringly she called her Huggo.

There was a mirage in her face. When, turned again towards the star to
which she showed her boyish and impetuous look, and, following, she felt
again the call that set the mother in her face, she this time reasoned.
That idea that, having children, it was the woman who gave hostages to
fortune! Deadly and cruelly true it was, but only by convention. Why
should it be so? Why should motherhood that was the crown of love, of
woman’s life, be paid for in coin that no man was called upon to pay?
Unjust; and need not be! She perfectly well had carried on her work with
Huggo. Sleeping was the adored creature’s chief lot in life. If she had
ever thought (which she never had) of giving up her work and staying at
home on his account, what could she have done but twirl her thumbs and
watch him sleep and in his lovely lively hours superintend the nurse
who required no superintendence? As it was she was about him in the
delicious exercises of transporting him from cot through toilet and
refreshment to readiness to take the air. His lordship was off in his
lordship’s perambulator by nine o’clock every morning. She did not
herself leave, with Harry, till shortly before ten. There, in instance,
was an hour at home with not the smallest benefit to Huggo. It would
have been the same, had she remained at home, with three in four of all
the other hours. Ridiculous to lay down that a mother, having a good
nurse and a well-ordered house and a husband out all day, must tie
herself there, abandoning her own life, to attend her children!
Children! Darlings of her own! Ease for this yearning in her heart,
assumption of this lovely glory that was her natural right! Yes, she
had proved love not to be incompatible with her freedom; she would show
motherhood as beautifully could be joined.

It seemed to her a blessing upon, and an assurance in, her purpose that
in the precious person of a little daughter came the embodiment of this
reasoning and of this design. A baby girl! A tiny woman-bud to be a
woman with her in the house of Harry and of Huggo! A woman treasury into
which she could pour her woman love! Her self’s own self, whose earliest
speech chose for herself her name--her Doda!

It all worked splendidly. Winged on the eager pinions of their
individual lives these two nested their joined life in a home that for
every inmate was a perfect home; perfect for a husband, perfect for a
wife, perfect for the babies, perfect for the servants. The peace of
every home in civilized society rests ultimately on the kitchen, and the
peace of half the homes known to Harry and to Rosalie was in constant
rupture by upheavals thence. Not so behind the gamboge door. Rosalie
always granted it to men that, as was commonly said, servants worked
better for men. Men kept out of the irrational creatures’ way; that was
about it. The conduct of her life gave her the like advantage. Giving
her orders before she left the house, she was out all day and never
unexpectedly in. Positively the servants welcomed her on her return at
five o’clock!

The babies, to whom then she flew, were with a perfect nurse. Harry had
helped in her appointment. She had come one evening, early in the life
of Huggo, when a change had to be made from the nurse who specialised
only up to the point then reached by Huggo, and she had presented
herself to them, seated together in Harry’s study, a short body, one
shape and a solid shape from her shoulders to her shoes, who announced
her name as Muffett.

“Miss Muffett, I hope,” said Harry gravely.

“Unmarried, sir,” said Muffett with equal gravity and with a sudden
drop and then recovery of her stature as though some one had knocked her
behind the knees.

“There’s nothing to do,” said Harry when she had gone, “but to buy her
a turret and engage her”; and there was nothing to do, when she was
installed, but enjoy the babies and delight in them just as a man enjoys
and delights in his tiny ones,--in the early mornings before Rosalie
left for her work, in the evenings when she returned home.

It all worked splendidly. In those early years, when two were in the
nursery and as yet no third, there wasn’t a sign that Harry who had
married for a home ever could say, “I have a right to a home.” He had,
and he was often saying so, the most perfect home. He came not home of a
night to a wife peevish with domestic frets and solitary confinement and
avid he should hear the tale of them, nor yet to one that butterflied
the day long between idleness and pleasures and gave him what was left.
He came nightly to a home that his wife sought as eagerly as he sought,
a place of rest well-earned and peace well-earned. That was it! “Things
which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.” They had
discovered and had removed the worm of disparity that eats away the
heart of countless marriages. They not infrequently had friends in to
dinner, not infrequently dined at the tables of friends, made a point
of not infrequently attending a theatre or a concert; but however the
evening had been passed--and the evenings alone were always agreed to
be the best evenings of all--there was none but they ended sitting
together, not in the drawing-room, but in Harry’s study or in hers, just
talking happiness. Equal in endeavour, they were thereby made equal on
every plane and in every taste. A reciprocating machine. That was it!

At least that was how, profoundly satisfied with it, she thought it was.

Then Benji came.




CHAPTER VI


There were attendant upon the expectation and the coming of Benji
certain processes of mind that had not been with Huggo or with Doda.
When it was in prospect she had vexation, sometimes a sense of injury,
that again her work was to be interrupted. It would make no difference
to Harry. It happened that the days of her trial were timed to fall on
the date when a criminal prosecution of sensational public interest was
due for hearing at the Old Bailey. Harry, for the defence, had added
immensely to his brilliant reputation when seeing it through the
preliminary stages before the magistrate. The Old Bailey proceedings
were to be the greatest event, thus far, in his career. He had told
her--how proud and delighted to hear it she had been!--that if he pulled
it off (and he had set his heart on pulling it off) he would really
begin to think about “taking silk.”

Well, but she also had her heart, in no single or sensational climax of
her work, but in its every phase and every hour. It absorbed her. Two
years earlier Mr. Simcox had begun disturbing signs of health that,
begun, developed rapidly. His brisk activity went out of him. His walk
had the odd suggestion of one carrying a load. His perky air went dull.
His mind was like a flagging watch, run down. He could not concentrate,
he suffered passages of aphasia, he began more and more to “give up the
office,” more and more to leave things to her. The agency in both its
branches, scholastic and insurance, developed well. She was its head
and it absorbed her. She had a sense, that was like wine to her, of
increasing swiftness of decision, of power, of judgment, of vision,
of resource. She used to hurry to her office of a morning as an artist
urgent with inspiration will hurry to his colours, or a poet to his
pen,--avid to exercise that which was within her.

Well, it was to be stopped. Childbed. For a month at least, for two
months more likely, all was to be set aside, to go into abeyance, to
drift. Whereas Harry’s work.... Yes, vexatious! These laws that gave men
the desirable place in life were not laws but conventions and she had
proved them such; but with all proved there yet remained to the man
privileges, to the woman restraints, that were ordinances fundamental
and not to be escaped. Yes, injurious!

Thus in those weeks of the coming of him that was to be Benji, solely
the boy of aspect mutinous and impetuous was in her face; and when
within a month stood her appointed time came an event that stiffened
there that aspect, turned it, indeed, actively upon the child within her
waiting deliverance. This event in its momentous incidence on her career
placed its occasion on parity with Harry’s anticipations of the Old
Bailey trial. Mr. Simcox died.

There’s no use labouring why the emotions that at this loss should have
been hers were not hers. That girl whose eyes had gathered tears at the
picture of the little figure with flapping jacket peering through the
curtains at the postman’s “rat-tat-flick” was not present in the woman
whose first thought at the sudden news, brought to her seated in her
office, was, “At such a time! Just when--Now what is to be done?” True
for her that there followed gentle feelings, and gentler yet in her
attendance on her patron’s obsequies, in the discovery that all of which
he died possessed he’d left to her, but it is the duller surfaces that
are slowest to give refraction, the least used springs that are least
pliant. She was come a long road from her first signs of hardening. She
was past, now, the stage where, when grieving for the little old man,
she would have felt contrition that her first thought at his death had
been, not of him, but of his death’s effect upon her work.

And there supervened, immediately, interests that caused the passing of
Mr. Simcox merely--to have passed.

Mr. Sturgiss, of Field and Company, attending the funeral with her, said
to her as he was taking his leave, “One would say this isn’t a moment to
be talking of other things, business things, but after all--In a way it
is the moment. You’ll be making new arrangements and rearrangements now.
Before you start settling anything I want you to have in mind the old
proposition. You’ve been loyal to poor Simcox to the end. This business
is your own now. We want it. We want you. We want you in Lombard
Street.”

This, cut and dried, glowingly enlarged in long interviews with Mr.
Sturgiss and Mr. Field, succinctly reduced to writing by the firm that
it might be fairly studied, was before her, not demanding, but eagerly
absorbing, her most earnest attention when she was a fortnight from her
trial. This was the event whose momentous incidence on her career
placed the days then in process and immediately in prospect on parity of
importance with their meaning to Harry, absorbed in preparation for his
case. There was so much to weigh; and like a threat, a doom, banked
her impending banishment from affairs, distracting her, haunting her,
hurrying her. There was so much to do, to settle, to wind up (for she
found herself arranging for the change even while she debated it); and
in the midst of it she was to be cut off as by term of imprisonment!
There was so much to scheme, to plan, to dream (her mind already
elevated among the high places of her new outlook); and between now and
action she was to go--out of action.

Whereas Harry.... Whose child it was also to be....

Yes, injurious!

Not injurious as between dear Harry and herself; but injurious as
between his sex and hers. There were moments of thinking upon the
difference when she could have conceived a grudge against the child she
was to bear.

And Harry could not perceive the difference! Immersed in his
preparations and, when the case opened, lost to all else in his case, he
presented precisely that faculty (and that permission by convention) of
complete detachment from his home that long she had known to be man’s
most outstanding and most enviable quality. He had no attention to spare
for the consideration of her own problem and ambition, and she was too
honourable to his interests, and too devoted to him in his interests, to
bother him with hers. But, more significantly to her feelings than that,
he was also too immersed to offer her, in her ordeal of childbirth, the
sympathy and the anxiety that, unengrossed, he would have shown. It
was there, profound and loving, beneath the surface; but his work came
first. He was a man, capable of detachment, permitted by convention to
practise detachment, by gift of, nature not inhibited from detachment.
A man, he could put it beneath the surface. A woman, in conflict of her
instincts and her ambitions, it was her ambitions that she must sink.
That was it! Yes, injurious.

And he did not even understand.

On what proved to be the evening before her delivery, and was the third
day of Harry’s case, she was lying, as she had lain some days, on the
Chesterfield in the drawing-room, loosely robed. Harry had thought
he could get back to tea, and got back. He came to her with tenderest
concern, and with immense tenderness at once was talking to her. But she
could see! The apparent deepening of all the lines of his dear, striking
face, as of one who for hours has been under enormous concentration;
the slight huskiness of his voice, from hard service; the repressed
excitation in his air; the frequent glint behind the soft regard of his
eyes, as of one that has been hunting high and hunting well--she could
see; she could tell where was his spirit!

Her own went lovingly to meet it where it was. “Ah, never mind all
that, Harry. Tell me all that’s been happening to you. How is it going,
Harry?”

Dear Harry! Most mannish man! She laughed (and he laughed too, knowing
perfectly well why she laughed) to note the delight, like a dog from
chain, with which he bounded off into his mind’s absorption. He sat
upright. He grabbed for a cigarette and inhaled it tremendously. “It’s
going like cutting butter with a hot knife. I started cross-examining
today. I gave him three and a half hours of it, straight off the ice,
and I’m not through with him yet. Not half. If he had as many legs as a
centipede he’d still not have one left to stand on when I’m through with
him. I doubt he’ll have his marrow bones to crawl out on, the way he’s
crumpling up. Even old Hounslow at his worst can’t possibly misdirect
the jury, the way I’ve gummed their noses on the trail. I’ll tell you--”

He told her.

She had put out both her hands and taken one of his. “It’s splendid,
Harry. It’s too splendid. How delighted I am, and proud, proud! No one
would have imagined it at the beginning. What a triumph it will be for
you!”

His grasp squeezed hers in fond response. “Why, it won’t do me any
harm,” he agreed. His tone was light. He released his hand and took up
a cup of tea, and his tone went deep. “Mind you, I’m glad about it,”
 he said, and stirred the spoon thoughtfully within the cup. He had come
into the room declaring he was dying for some tea, but he had touched
none, and he now replaced the cup untasted on the table and she saw on
his face the deep “inward” look that she knew (and loved) for the sign
of intense concentration of his mind. “Yes, glad,” he spoke; his voice,
as was its habit when he was “inward,” sounding as though it was the
involuntary, and not the intentional, utterance of his thoughts. “I’ve
gone all out over this case. I saw, the minute they briefed me, that
one tiny flaw, his neglect to take up that option--you remember, I told
you--right down at the bottom of the whole tangle, and I went plumb down
for it and hung on to it and fought it up like, like a diver coming up
from fathoms down.”

She had a quickness of imagery. It constantly delighted him. “Yes,
that’s good,” she declared. “Up like a diver, Harry. Not with goggles
and a helmet and all that, but shot up like a flash, all shining and
glistening and triumphant with the jewel aloft. What a shout there’d be!
Dear Harry! You’re splendid!”

He smiled most lovingly. “As a matter of fact, I feel I ought to make a
mess of it. It’ll be the first big case since we’ve been together that,
while it’s been on, we haven’t had talks about. You couldn’t, of course,
with this so near to you. It would be significant, and proper, if I
drowned in it.”

She shook her head. “Absurd! Why, the thing I’m most glad about, Harry,
is that all this”--she indicated with a gesture her pose, her dress, her
condition--“that all this hasn’t in the least upset your work. It might
have. It hasn’t--and when it happens, it won’t, will it?”

Harry said, “I’m rather ashamed to say it hasn’t, in the least. I’ve
thought of you, often, but I’ve simply put the thought away. And when
it happens, I shall think of you--terribly--going through it; and of the
small thing--But we shall be in the crisis of the case and I shall have
to forget you. I’ll have to, Rosalie, as I have had to. The work must go
on.”

She agreed emphatically. “Of course it must.” She then said, “Whereas
mine--”

He did not attend her. The “inward” look was deep upon his face. There
was the suggestion of a grimmish smile about his mouth. One could
have guessed that he was rehearsing, with satisfaction, his enormous
application while the work was going on.

She gave a sound of laughter, and that aroused him. “What’s the joke?”

“Why, just how this does rather illuminate the point--”

“The point...?”

“Your work and mine--a man’s and a woman’s.”

“Yes, tell me, dear.”

“Why, Harry, I do think of it sometimes. We’ve planned it and arranged
it and settled it so nicely, these years, and you see the big thing
in marriage comes along and shatters it to bits. Your work goes on
precisely as if nothing at all were happening; mine has to stand by.”

“Ah, but this,” Harry said, and in his turn indicated her condition.
“This--this is different. We agreed, before Huggo, that if we had
children it need make no difference to you, to your work, in a way. And
it hasn’t, and needn’t now--when it’s over. But this time, this period,
why, that’s bound to interfere.”

“But it doesn’t interfere with you. It shows the difference.”

“Oh, it shows the difference,” he assented.

His tone was conspicuously careless, conceding the difference but
attaching to it no importance at all; and with it he rose--she had
instantly the impression of him as it were brushing the difference like
a crumb from his lap--and announced, “I’m going to my study now for a
couple of hours before dinner. I must. Our solicitor’s coming in.” He
bent over her and kissed her lovingly. “You understand, I know.”

And he went.

Yes, it showed the difference! And was not seen by him! Yes, injurious.
Yes, could conceive a grudge....

There was a mirage in her face. Her face, that had been boy’s and
mutinous these weeks, was Mary’s and was lovely in maternal love when it
was turned towards the scrap that on a morning lay against her breast;
her thoughts, that had been stubborn, hard, resentful while her days
approached, welled in remorse, compassion, yearning, joy, when they were
past and this was come. She’d grudged him, this littlest one! Grudged
his right, put her own right against it, this tiny, helpless one! When,
added to these thoughts, Huggo and Doda, those lovely darlings, were
permitted to see him, asleep beside her, he was so wee, so almost
nothing against their sturdy limbs, and had come so unwanted--yes,
unwanted, this cherishable one of all!--that she knew instantly what
name he must be given. Her Benjamin!

Lying much alone in the succeeding days, contrite, adoring; with
frequent happy tears (she was left weak): with tender, thank-God,
charged with meaning tears, she found a vindication of her self-reproach
that immensely bound her up, forgave her, gave her comfort. She could
give up her work! She could leave all and be with her darlings! Of
course she could! At any time! She had grudged the right to come of
this defenceless scrap. She had set against his right her own right. Ah,
dangerous! A long road lay that way! In conflict of his coming, with her
own rights she had been much engaged. Here, on the sheet beside her, and
in the nursery, overhead, were other rights. Well, when they claimed....
Of course she could! She had not thought enough about these things....

There is to be said for her that she thought not very widely nor
very deeply upon them now. Her resolution that she could, when it was
necessary, give up her work, scattered them. It came to her as comes to
a man, beset by poverty, scheming by this way and by that to abate it,
news of a legacy. He ceases, in his relief, his present schemes; he
has “no need to worry now.” Or came to her as comes a sail to one
shipwrecked and adrift, painfully calculating out his final dregs
of food and water. He ceases, at that emblem, his desperate plans to
stretch his days. He’s all right now.

It was like that with Rosalie.

While only she had realised her resentment of this baby’s claims, and
only now her contrite yielding to them; before she had conjectured
deeply on all the problem thus revealed; there came to her, like way
of escape to one imprisoned, like instantaneous lifting of a fog to one
therein occluded, the thought, “I can give up the work.”

Of course she could! At any moment; by a word; by the mere formulation
of the step within her mind, she could abandon her career. Not now.
It was not necessary now. But if or when--she used that phrase, in set
terms propounding her resolution to herself--if or when the call of
her children, of her home, came and was paramount, she could give up
everything and respond to it. Oh, happy! Oh, glad discharge of her
remorse! When the children wanted her she could just--come back. Field
and Company, her career, her successes--what of them? She had done
well in her career, she still would do well. Let the claim of home and
children once come into the scale against the claim of those ambitions
and--she would just come back!

Oh, happy!

“Come back”? Who was it had said something about that, something about
“come back” for a woman, making the expression thus dimly familiar in
her mind? Who? Laetitia? No, Laetitia was always associated with another
phrase: striking because in terms identical with accusation previously
delivered against her. Well she remembered it! On the day following
Harry’s visit to the house to take his deserts from poor Aunt Belle and
Uncle Pyke, she also had gone there, following his high idea of what was
right. She had been refused admittance. There had come for her as the
last voice out of that house a quivering letter from Aunt Belle, seeming
to quiver in the hand with the passionate upbraiding that had indited
it, and a forlorn sentence from Laetitia. “I have done everything for
you, everything, everything, and this is how you have rewarded me,” had
pulsed the pages of Aunt Belle; Laetitia only had written:

“Oh, Rosalie! You could have had any one you liked to love you, but you
took my Harry and I shall never, never have another.”

Miss Salmon’s cry again! Twice identically accused. Once grotesquely
accused; once, on the surface, rightly accused. Both times aware how
poignant and pathetic was the cry; not moved the first time, not moved
the second. Recurring to her now, she knew again how broken-hearted sad
it was, and knew again it ought to move, but did not. Well, not strange
now. She was a long way out of those too soft compassions. No, not
Laetitia had made “come back” familiar to her. The phrase, as she seemed
to recollect its context, was too profoundly practical for the Laetitia
sort; and that was why, of course, it moved her nothing. She had learnt,
jostling off corners in the market place, what formerly she had only
conjectured,--that there was in life no room for sentiment, it clogged;
it hampered; it brought sticky unreality into that which was sharply
real. “Come back?” No, not Laetitia. Who? Keggo? Yes, it was Keggo; and
immediately with the name’s recovery was recovered the phrase’s context.
This very matter! “Rosalie, a woman can’t--come back.”

Absurd! But, yes, how she remembered it now! “Very dangerous being a
woman,” Keggo had said. “Men go into dangers but they come out of them
and go home to tea. That’s what it is with men, Rosalie. They can always
get out. They can always come back. They never belong to a thing, heart
and soul, body and mind. Rosalie, women do. That’s why it is so very,
very dangerous being a woman. Women can’t come back. They take to a
thing, anything, and go deep enough, and they’re its; they never, never
will get away from it; they never, never will be able to come back out
of it. Rosalie, I tell you this, when a woman gives herself, forgets
moderation and gives herself to anything, she is its captive for ever.
She may think she can come back but she can’t come back. For a woman
there is no comeback. They don’t issue return tickets to women. For
women there is only departure; there is no return.”

Poor Keggo!

Poor Keggo had of course founded her theory upon her own bitter plight.
How she had given her case away when she had said, “Look at me!” It
applied to her, of course, or to any woman--or man for that matter--who
drank or drugged. It applied not in the least to such a case as this of
her own. Keggo had tried to apply it. She had said, “You have a theory
of life. You are bent upon a career in life. Suppose you ever wanted to
come back?”

She had laughed and declared she never would want to come back. Well,
look how absurd all poor Keggo’s idea was now being proved! It had
suddenly occurred to her that it might at some future time be required
of her to come back; and all she had to do was just--to come back. No
difficulty about it whatsoever! No struggle! Indeed, and fondly she
touched that by her side which had called up these thoughts, she would
come back joyously. Of course she would! Field and Company, ambition,
that for if and when her darlings called her! Yes, wrong every way,
that poor Keggo. Dangerous being a woman, she had said, and it was not
dangerous. It could be, and she had proved it, a state that could be
lived full in every aspect,--full in freedom, full in endeavour, full
in love, full in motherhood. Dangerous! A week ago, inimical to this
advent, injurious; now, in this advent’s presence, and with this
resolution gladly dedicated to it, only and wholly glorious.

This one! Come after connection, come in contrition, come to call
her back when she should need to be called, the little tiny one, the
belovedest one, the Benjamin one--her Benji!




CHAPTER VII


Those children were brought up with every modern advantage. Wisdom is
judged by the age in which it flourishes, and everything that the day
accounts wise for children those children had. Their father was of
considerable and always increasing means; their mother was of great
and untrammelled intelligence: anything that money could provide for
children, and that intelligent principles of upbringing said ought to be
provided for children, those children enjoyed. When they were out of the
care of Muffet, who was everything that a nurse ought to be, they
passed into the care of a resident governess, Miss Prescott, who was a
children’s governess, not for the old and fatuous reason that she “loved
children,” but for the new and intelligent reason that she was attracted
by the child-mind as a study and was certificated and diplomaed in the
study of children as an exact science,--Child Welfare as she called it.
Miss Prescott had complete charge of the children while they were tiny
and while they were growing up to eleven and nine and Benji to
seven years old. She taught them their lessons (on her own, the new,
principles) and on the same principles their habits and the formation of
their characters. It might roundly be said that everything troublesome
in regard to the children was left to Miss Prescott, and, left to her,
came never between the children and their mother. Their mother only
enjoyed her children, presented to her fresh, clean and happy for the
purpose of her enjoyment; and the children only enjoyed their mother,
visiting them smiling, devoted, unworried, for the purpose of their
happiness.

It was a perfect, and a mutually beneficial arrangement. As there had
been, before the children came, two independent lives behind the gamboge
door, so, with the occupation of the nurseries, there were, as it might
be, three independent households, mingling, at selected times, only for
purposes of happiness.

It was perfect. In the summer a house was taken at Cromer by the sea and
there, all through the fine weather, Miss Prescott was installed with
her charges. Their mother had three weeks from Field’s in the summer and
she and their father would spend the whole of it, and often week-ends,
at Cromer idling and playing with their darlings. That was jolly. The
children associated nothing whatever but happiness with their parents.

In the other months of the year their mother was immensely occupied with
her work at Field’s, developing beyond expectation; and their father
early and late with his work in the Temple, his esteem by solicitors and
by litigants almost beyond his time to satisfy. Their father was
much paragraphed in the social journals, and their mother also. The
paragraphs said their father was making a “princely fortune” at the Bar
and never told of him without telling also of his wife. They described
her as “of Field’s Bank” and always drove the word “unique” hand in
hand with every mention of her parts. “Unique personality”; “unique
position”; “unique among professional women”; “unique,” said one, “in
combining notable beauty and rare business acumen; an office which
she attends daily and a charming home; a profession, three beautiful
children, and a brilliant husband.”

The syntax is weak, but the truth is in it and those children were to be
envied in their mother.

Miss Prescott, when she came, did not displace the Muffet. She
was installed additional to the Muffet; and as touching the modern
principles relating to children she very soon told Muffet a thing or
two not previously dreamt of in the Muffet philosophy but having, thence
forward, occasional place in the Muffet nightmares.

The Muffet, however, was of lymphatic character, with, as her most
constant desire, the desire not to be “plagued.” She was one of those
people who are for ever declaring that they never eat anything, who at
meals, indeed, appear to eat very little, but who between meals, are
eating all day long. At all hours of the day the Muffet jaws, like the
jaws of a ruminant, were steadily munching, munching. When Benji was
three Muffet was getting distinctly fat. On a corner of the night
nursery mantelpiece she had a photographic group of her parents and of
an uncle and aunt who lived with her parents. These four were very fat
and one evening the children’s father made a remark about this portrait
that made their mother laugh delightedly.

Benji was in his cot. Huggo had just come from his bath and was having
his toes wiped by his mother because he declared Muffet had not dried
them properly. He said Muffet groaned when she stooped.

His mother said, “You know, Harry, Muffet is getting fat. Have you
noticed it?”

Their father was bent almost double swinging Doda between his legs,
the stomach of Doda reposing on the palms of his joined hands and Doda
squealing ecstatically.

Their father said, “I have. Go and look at that photograph, Rosalie, and
you’ll see why. Look at what her people are. Muffet’s broadening down
from precedent to precedent.”

It made their mother laugh. The children didn’t know why it made her
laugh, but they laughed with her. They always did, or with their father
when he laughed. And there was always lots of jolly laughter when their
father and mother came up to the nurseries.

Those children, as they passed through early childhood, never saw their
parents but happy and good-spirited. They never saw them worried nor
ever saw them sad. That was, as one might say, Rosalie’s chief offering
to her darlings. It was splendid to Rosalie that her way of life, far
from causing her (as prejudice would have prophesied) to neglect her
children, enabled her to consider them in their relations with herself
as, by their mothers, children in her childhood never were considered.
That they should associate nothing--nothing at all--but happiness with
her was the basis of it. Children, she held, ought not to see their
parents bad-tempered or distressed or in any way out of sorts or out of
control. For a child to do so has in two ways a bad effect on the child
mind. In the first place, it is harmful for children to come in contact
with the unpleasant things of life; in the second, parents should always
be to their children models of conduct and of disposition. They should
in themselves present ideals to their children. A man should be a hero
to his son; a woman an ideal to her daughter. Why is no man a hero to
his valet? It is simply because his valet sees him, as do not those
whose esteem he desires to win, in his off moments. Children should
never see their parents in their off moments.

This principle was not Rosalie’s alone. It is the modern principle. The
point, to Rosalie, was that, by her way of life, she was able to apply
it. Children were too much with their parents. That was the fault;
in her childhood the universal fault, even now the fault among the
unenlightened. Parents, being human, must have off moments; are not off
moments, indeed, in the total of the day, of greater sum than moments
of circumspection? It follows that if children are always with their
parents, the more unlovely side cannot fail to be perceived, and,
arising out of it, must follow injury by example, harm by environment,
smirching of idealism, loss of respect. In those homes where the mother
(in Rosalie’s phrase) is the children’s slave, why has the father the
children’s greater respect? Why is it fine to do what father does? Why
jolly and exciting to be with father? It is only because the father
commonly is away all day, only seen by them when, shedding other
affairs, he comes to see them specially.

Her life--oddly how well for everything and every one her attitude to
life fell out!--obtained for her and for them the same wise and happy
restriction from too free familiarity. She was able to come to her
children only when all her undivided attention and whole hearted love
could be given to them. They never saw her vexed, they never saw her
angry, they never saw her sad. It was not a commonplace to them to see
their mother. It was an event. A morning event and an evening event--and
unfailingly a completely happy event. She looked back upon her own
childhood with her own mother and reflected, fondly but clearly,
affectionately but not blinded by affection, how very different was
that. She was always with her mother. Her mother was often sad, often
worried, often, in distraction of her worries, irritable in speech.
Often sad! Why, she could remember time and again when her dear mother,
hunted by her cares, was broken down and crying. She would go to her
mother then and cry to see her crying, and her mother would put her arms
around her and hug her to her breast and declare she was her “little
comfort.” Was it good for a child to suffer scenes like that? She used
to be with her mother all day long, from early morning till last thing
at night. With what result? That she saw and suffered with her, or
suffered of her, all that her mother suffered; that she was sometimes
desolated to feeling that her heart was broken for her mother. Could
that be good for a child? Her Huggo, her Doda and her Benji never saw
her anything but radiant; and because that was so (as she told herself)
she never saw them cry, either on her account or on their own.

Therein--grief in her presence on their own account--another point
arose. With as her ideal that only happiness should be associated with
her, she found her way of life beneficial to the preservation of that
ideal in that it prevented her from being the vessel that should convey
the restrictions, the reproofs and the instruction that are troublesome
to small minds. All that was left to Miss Prescott. She remembered
lessons with her mother; she remembered the irksome learning of a
hundred “don’ts” from her mother; and though they were tender and
pathetic memories she remembered also the reverse of the picture,--being
glad to escape from her mother, resentful against her mother when stood
in the corner by her mother, when stopped doing this that and the other
by her mother, when made to learn terribly hard lessons by her mother
and to go on learning them till she had learnt them. Only childish
resentment, of course, swept up and forgotten as by the sun emerging out
of clouds the shadow from a landscape. But why should children ever have
the tiniest frown against their mother? There must be frowns, there
must be tears. Let others bear the passing grudge of those. Let Miss
Prescott.

Miss Prescott was willing and able to bear anything like that. She
delighted in such. She told Rosalie, when Rosalie engaged her, and after
she had seen the children, that her only hesitation in accepting the
post was that the children were too normal. “By normal,” said Miss
Prescott, speaking, as she always spoke, as if she were a passage out of
a book given utterance, “By normal, Mrs. Occleve, I do not, of course,
mean commonplace. Any one can see how attractive they are, how gifted;
any one can know how distinguished, with, if I may say so, such talented
parents, their inherited qualities must be. No, when I say normal,
I mean showing no disquieting signs, constitutionally tractable, not
refractory. In that sense of normality it is much more the abnormal
child to whom I would have liked to devote myself. I have specialised
in children. The harder the case the more I should be interested in it.
That’s what I mean. But I never could have hoped to find a household
where, though there can be no difficulties, I should have such
opportunities of helping children to be perfect men and women; nor a
mother to whose children I would more gladly, proudly, devote myself;
nor a place with which I should feel myself so entirely in sympathy.
If you feel, on reflection, that I should suit you, it will be, I am
sure--why should I not say so--an auspicious day for those little ones.”

How happy was Rosalie thus by provision to destiny her darlings!

Miss Prescott was thirty when engaged by Rosalie. She had a way of
looking at people which, if described, can best describe her appearance.
She was once in an omnibus in London and the conductor, standing against
her, and about to serve a ticket to a passenger seated next her, had
some trouble with his bell-punch. It would not work and he fumbled
with it, angry. Everybody in the bus watched him. It is not nice to be
watched when baffled and heated in bafflement but the only gaze to which
attention was given by the conductor was the gaze of Miss Prescott.
He glanced constantly from the obdurate machine to the face of Miss
Prescott. Suddenly he said: “‘Ere, suppose you do it, then,” and pushed
the bell-punch at her. Miss Prescott took it, did it, astoundingly and
instantaneously, and handed it back with no word. The conductor seemed
more angry than before.

It was like that that Miss Prescott looked at people.

There is right way of doing everything. Miss Prescott had an uncanny
instinct for finding it; and, applying this faculty to her training
of the child-mind, she presented herself as a notable exponent of the
system in which, as has been said, she was certificated and diplomaed.
She taught children how to play in the right way, how to learn in the
right way, and above all how, in every way and at every turn, to reason.
By the old, ignorant plan children were instructed, speaking broadly,
by love or by fear. It was by pure reason that Miss Prescott instructed
them. The child was treated as an earnest physician treats a case. Ill
temper or wrong behaviour in a child was neither vexing nor sad. It was
profoundly interesting. There was a right and scientific way to treat it
and that right and scientific way was thought out and administered. The
child was “a case.”

It was taught nothing but truths and facts. Its mind was not permitted
to be befogged with fairy stories, with superstitions, with Father
Christmases and the like, nor yet with religious half-truths and
misty fables. These entailed not only befogging at the time, but
disillusionment thereafter. Disillusionment was wicked for a child.
It further was taught nothing at all (in the matter of lessons) at the
grotesquely early age at which children used to be taught. It was taught
first to reason.

In general the whole system lay in developing the child’s reasoning
powers and then, at every turn and particularly at every manifestation
of indiscipline, appealing to its reason. “I am here to be happy”--that
was the first, and surely the kindest and easiest, knowledge to fix
in the child. From that foundation everything was worked. It never was
necessary to punish a child. It only was necessary to reason with it. In
the old phraseology a child meet to be punished was a naughty child.
In the terminology of Miss Prescott such a child was a sick child or an
unreasoning child: a case presenting an adverse symptom. But take the
older term,--a naughty child. A naughty child was an unhappy child. The
treatment went like this, “I am here to be happy. I am not happy. Why am
I not happy? Because I have done so and so and so and so....”

Kind, wise, simple, effective, easy. Rosalie in her childish
misdemeanours would have been prevailed upon by the unhappiness her
conduct caused her mother. All wrong! A faulty process of reasoning;
indeed not a process of reasoning at all: a crude appeal to the
emotions. Those three children who on the one part never saw their
mother sad and were constrained to comfort her, on the other never
were bribed to good behaviour by the thought of grieving her. They
only associated happiness with her and they enjoyed happiness simply by
reasoning away unhappiness.

Kind, wise, simple, effective, easy.

Happy Huggo, happy Doda, happy Benji, happy Rosalie!




CHAPTER VIII


It has been said of Time, earlier in these pages, the cloak-and-dagger
sort he is, that stalks and pounces. One seeks only to record him when
he thus assails, and there is this result; that it is necessary to
pare away so much. In instance, there’s to be inserted now a note on
Rosalie’s advance in her career. It’s cut to nothing. This is because
all that career ultimately was known to her never to have really
mattered. And so with other things. That girl, all through, pressing so
strong ahead, rises to the eye not cumbered with other importance than
her own. There might be asked for (by a reader) presentation of Harry’s
parents; of what was doing all this time to her own parents in the
rectory, to Harold, Robert, Flora, Hilda; of friends that Rosalie and
Harry had. That girl’s passage is not traced in such. Whose is? The
chart where such are marked is just a common public print, stamped for
the public eye. They’re not set down upon that secret chart all carry
in the cabin of their soul, and there, in that so hidden and inviolable
stateroom, poring over it by the uncertain swinging lamp of conscience,
prick out their way.

Her installation in the bank had been a notable success. She dealt with
all the insurance advice and with income-tax advice and business; and
it was remarkable to her, at first, how many of Field’s clients were as
children in the mysteries of income tax, and as children alike in their
ignorance of the possibilities of life insurance and in their pleasure
at the discoveries she set before them. But further than this (and more
important, said Mr. Sturgiss and Mr. Field) was the quick response
of the clients to the various domestic advice that it was Rosalie’s
business to give. Husbands and wives from the East, or returned thither
from London and writing from the East, consulted her on innumerable
matters. When, in instance, an army officer wrote to her from India,
very diffidently wondering if she could help him in the matter of some
Christmas presents for his wife and children at home, Mr. Sturgiss was
uncommonly pleased.

“I knew it!” said Mr. Sturgiss. “That’s the kind of thing. You watch how
side-lines like that will develop. That’s what these people want--some
one at home they can rely on. I tell you, Mrs. Occleve, you, that is
to say your department of Field’s, is what the Anglo-Eastern has been
wanting ever since Clive and Warren Hastings went out--a link with home.
You see.”

She did see. Mr. Field saw. The clients saw. The friends of the clients
saw--and became clients.

All of her position reposed, and was developed by her, on the cruel
disabilities of those who earn their bread in the East. For all such,
married, comes, in time, the sad and the costly business of the divided
home,--the two establishments, the sundering of children and parents, of
husband and wife. By the age of seven at latest, the children have to
be sent home for health and education. Then the sundering, the losing of
touch, the compulsion upon the man, that those at home may be promptly
supported, to deny himself year after year the longed-for visit home.
The losing of touch.... Invaluable to them to have in Field’s, in
“that Mrs. Occleve” a link, known personally or by reputation, that was
useable as relations (capricious, “touchy,” interfering) often are not
useable; and dependable as relations, unpractical, certainly are not
always dependable. Invaluable to the clients; declared by Mr. Field and
by Mr. Sturgiss to be invaluable to the bank; absorbing and splendid to
Rosalie. “And still,” Mr. Sturgiss was always saying, “still capable of
much bigger development.”

He sketched one day a development that would be a stride indeed.
It began to be discussed by the three. It connoted so absolute a
recognition of Rosalie’s worth that she decided--lest it should fall
through--she would not mention it to Harry till either it was fallen
through or was afoot. Then!

It made her busy. She told Harry once, when they’d been talking of
how much at office she was kept, of her work, and of the place she was
making for herself, “Well, it’s not bad, Harry,” she told him. “It’s
not bad. I’ll admit that. What pleases me is that it’s only a beginning;
well as it’s going, and long as I’ve now been at it, only a beginning.
I can’t, as I’ve often said to you, be doing all this without getting a
long insight into the actual banking business. Oh, don’t you remember
my telling you about that appalling evening when I told poor Uncle Pyke
that I wanted to be a banker? How outraged he was! Poor person, how
rightly outraged! The ridiculous notion that I ever could be a banker! A
grotesque dream!” She gave a small laugh as if tenderly smiling at image
before her of that innocent, eager girl at the Pyke Pounce table. She
said softly, “A grotesque dream. Now, with patent limitations--not a
dream.”

It was like that that Time (disguised as triumph) kept out of the way;
and similarly disguised, showed no sign either on the children’s side.
All splendid there! Growing up! Huggo set to school!

Huggo learnt with Miss Prescott till he was nine, then attended daily a
first-rate school for little boys in Kensington, at eleven started as a
boarder at a preparatory school for Tidborough. Next he was to go to
the great public school itself, afterwards to Oxford and the Bar. All’s
well! Time had nothing at all to say during the first two stages of the
programme. It was in Huggo’s first holidays from the preparatory school
that Time whipped out his blade and pounced.

On a day that was a week before the end of that holidays the great new
scheme for Rosalie at Field’s rose to its feet and walked. It was a
special mission on behalf of the bank.

It necessitated.. . .

She came once or twice to a bit of a stop like that while waiting their
evening talk together in which she should tell Harry. It necessitated
a departure from the established order of things; but what of that? Was
not the way bill of her life all departures from things established,
and all successful, and were not all contingencies of this particular
departure fully insured against? She very easily cantered on, on this
rein. That bit of a stop was scarcely a check in the progression of her
thoughts.

Seated with Harry in Harry’s room that night she was about to tell
him her great news when, “I’d an unusual offer made to me today,” said
Harry.

Almost the very words herself had been about to use!

“Why so had I to me!” she cried.

They both laughed. “Tell on,” said Harry.

“No, you. Yours first.”

“Toss you,” cried Harry; and spun a coin and lost and went ahead: “Well,
mine doesn’t exactly shake the foundations of the world with excitement
because I refused it. It was to go out to defend in a big murder case in
Singapore!”

She exclaimed, “In Singapore!”

“Yes, Singapore. Why do you say it like that?”

She did not answer.

The prisoner, Harry went on, was a wealthy trader, immensely wealthy,
and immensely detested, it appeared, by the European settlement; had
native blood in his veins; was charged with poisoning an Englishman
with whose wife he was supposed to have been carrying on an amour. “A
wretched, unsavoury business,” said Harry, and went on to say that,
though the fee offered was extraordinarily handsome, he had declined the
proposal. It was doubtful he would actually make more money over it than
in his normal round at home, more than that it went against the grain to
be defending a man of native origins who had pretty obviously seduced a
white woman if not murdered her husband. “No, no ticket to Singapore for
me, thanks,” said Harry.

Rosalie turned to him with a sudden, direct interest. “Harry, suppose
you had accepted, how long would you have been away?”

“Not less than six months in all. Certainly not less. That’s another
point against--”

“Yes, against the idea, because in any case you don’t want to go. But
suppose the circumstances had been different; suppose it was a case that
for various reasons very much attracted you; would you have gone?”

Harry said indifferently, “Oh, no doubt, no doubt.”

“Although it would have taken you from home six months--or more? You’d
not have minded that?”

He laughed delightedly. “Ah, ha! I was beginning to wonder what you were
driving at. You’re a regular lawyer, Rosalie; you led me on and then
caught me out properly.”

His amusement was not reflected by her. She said with a certain
insistence, “But you wouldn’t have minded?”

He laughed again. “The judge ruled that the question was admissible and
must be answered. Well, minded--I’d have minded, of course, very much
in a way. I’m a home bird. I’d have hated being away the best part of a
year. But there you are. If the call was strong enough, there you are;
it would have been business.”

She indrew a long breath. “That’s it. It would have been business.”

There was then a pause.

Harry, who had been talking lightly, then said slowly, “Rosalie, is
there something behind this?”

She turned towards him with a very nice smile. “Harry, I’ve been doing a
very shocking thing. I’ve been making you commit yourself.”

“Commit myself?”

She nodded. “Been taking down your statement without warning you that it
may be used in evidence against you.”

He said gravely, “Somehow I don’t like this.”

She told him, “Ah, stupid me! I’m making a small thing seem big. Listen,
Harry. It was curious to me this about you and Singapore--”

“Yes, I noticed that. Why?”

“Because there’s an idea of my going out to Singapore.”

He was astounded. She might have said to Mars. “You? To Singapore?”

“To the East generally. To Bombay, to Rangoon, to Singapore. For about a
year.”

He was all aback. “For about a year? Rosalie, I can’t--Why on earth--?”

She did not like this. The great scheme! Her special mission! It
necessitated.... Here was the necessity at which she had checked
but confidently ridden on, and Harry was pulled right up by it. His
astonishment was not comfortable to her. Was there to be a check then?
He said again, “You? A year? But, Rosalie, what on earth--”

She pronounced a single word, his own word:

“Business.”

He was standing before her on the hearthrug. He made a turn and at once
turned back. “Are you thinking of this seriously?”

“Most seriously.”

“Of going?”

“Of going. It’s business.”

“For a year?”

“Harry, yes.”

He began to fill his pipe with very slow movements of his fingers, his
eyes bent down upon her. “And you called this--just now--a small thing?”

She said with a sudden eagerness, “Harry, it’s a very big thing for me,
for Field’s. I meant a small thing in the sense not to be made a fuss
about.”

He made very slowly a negative movement with his head. “I don’t see it
like that.”

“Let me tell you, Harry.”

She told him how the great possibilities of the department she had
established in the bank rested on the personal touch established between
herself and the clients. The scheme was that those possibilities should
be developed to their fullest extent. While she was in London that
personal touch could be established with clients by dozens. If she
visited the branches in the East, at Bombay, at Rangoon, at Singapore,
it was by hundreds that the touch could be established. That was it.
Field’s customers would talk to her, and when she was returned they
would talk of her, and would tell others of her, as one met, not during
the jolly freedom of leave when the impulse was to feel that, after all,
nothing mattered much, but met out there when they were in the yoke
and the harness of the thing,--met as one fresh out from home in their
particular interests and shortly, charged with their special interests,
returning home. That was it! A novel mission, a valuable mission, her
mission. About a year. To start in about six weeks. “There, Harry,
that’s the plan.”

“And you are going?”

“I have agreed to go.”

He said slowly, “It astonishes me.”

There was then a pause.

She spoke. “I think I do not like your astonishment, Harry.”

“It is justified.”

“No, no; not justified. When you told me of a possibility of Singapore
for you I was not astonished. I made no difficulty.”

“Different,” he said. “Different.”

“Not different, Harry. The same. How different? If you could go, I can
go. The same. Aren’t things with us always the same?”

He shook his head. “Not this. If I had to go--”

“Yes, yes. It’s the point. If you had to go you’d have to go. Well, I
have to go.”

“Rosalie, if I had to go I could go. A man can.”

She cried, “But, Harry, that--This isn’t us talking at all. You mean a
man can leave his home because his home can go on without him. But our
home--it’s just the same for me in our home. We’ve made it like that.
It runs itself. The kitchen--I don’t know when I last gave an order.
The children--there’s never a word. The thing’s organised. I’m an
organiser.” She laughed, “Dear, that’s why they’re sending me. Isn’t it
organised?”

He assented, but with an inflexion on the word “It’s--organised.”

She did not attend the inflexion. “Well, that’s no organisation that
can’t, in necessity, run by itself. This can. You know, quite well, this
will. You know, quite well, that you will not be put about a jot.”

“Oh, I know that,” he said.

“Well, then. Astonished--why astonished?”

He looked at her. “Let’s call it,” he said, “the principle of the
thing.”

Oh, now astonishment between them. Her voice, astounded, had an echo’s
sound--faint, faint, scarcely to be heard, gone. “The prin-ci-ple!”

This room was lit, then, only by a standard lamp remote from where they
were beside the fire. She was in a deep armchair; its partner, Harry’s
chair, close by. He sat himself on the arm, looking towards her. The
firelight made shadows on his face.

She presently murmured, her voice as though that echo, lost, was
murmuring back, “Oh, it is I that am astonished now. The principle!
It’s like a ghost. Harry, how possibly can there come between us the
principle?”

His voice was deep, “Are we afraid of it, old girl?”

She put out a hand and touched him and he touched her hand. They were
such lovers still. That was the thing about it. There never had been
an issue between them, not the smallest; the bloom of their first union
never had dissipated, not a rub. But there was in Harry the intention
now to take her, and there was in her the apprehension now of being
taken, to a new dimension of conversation, not previously trod by them.
As they proceeded it was seen not to be light in this place; a place
where touch might be lost.

She said, “But to bring up the principle in this! It can’t be possible
you’ve changed. It isn’t conceivable to me that you have changed. Then
how the principle?”

“It is the situation that has changed, Rosalie. It never occurred to me;
I never dreamt or imagined that a thing like this could arise.”

She moved in her chair. “Oh, this goes deep....”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “We’re not afraid.”

“But I’m so strong in this. So always certain. In our dear years
together so utterly assured. Nothing within the principle could touch
me. I am steel everywhere upon the principle. I might hurt you, Harry.”

“I’ll not be hurt.”

“Well, say it, Harry.”

He was silent a moment. “There isn’t really very much to say. To me it’s
so clear.”

She murmured, “And to me.”

He said, “We’ve made this home--eleven years. It’s been ideal. You have
combined your work with your--what shall I call it?--with your domestic
arrangements--your business with your domesticity--You’ve done it
wonderfully. We’ve never had to discuss the subject since we agreed upon
it.”

She murmured, “That is why--agreed.”

“Agreed in general. But when you take the home as between a man and a
woman, there are bound to be responsibilities which, however much you
share, cannot be divided. The woman’s are the--the domesticity.”

“What are the man’s?”

“To maintain the home.”

“I share in that.”

“Well, grant you do. I do not claim to share the other.”

“You are not asked to, Harry.”

“No, but, Rosalie, I’ve the right to ask you to provide the other.”

Her murmur said, “Oh, do not let us bring up rights. I am so fixed on
rights.”

“Rosalie, let’s keep the thing square. A man can leave his home; he
often has to. I think not so a woman; not a mother; not as you wish now
to leave it. It can’t, without her, go on--not in the same way.”

“Yes, ours. Ours can.”

“Not in the same way. You can’t take out the woman and leave it the
same,--the same for the man, the same for the children. We’re married.
The married state. With children. Doesn’t the whole fabric of the
married state rest on the domesticity of woman?”

She murmured, “No, on her resignation, Harry.”

As if he had touched something and been burnt he very sharply drew in
his breath.

She said, “Ah, you’d be hurt, I told you. Dear, I can’t be other than I
am on this. Upon her resignation, Harry. Men call it domesticity. That’s
their fair word for their offence. It’s woman’s resignation is the
fabric of the married state. She lets her home be built upon her back.
She resigns everything to carry it. She has to. If she moves it shakes.
If she stands upright it crashes. Dear, not ours. I’ve stood upright all
the time. I’ve proved the fallacy. A woman can stand upright and yet
be wife, be mother, make home. Dear, you are not to ask me now--for
resignation.”

Therein, and through all the passage of this place where the footway
was uneven, the light not good, the quality of her voice was low and
noteless, sometimes difficult to hear. There is to say it was by that
the more assured, as is more purposeful in its suggestion the tide that
enters, not upon the gale, but in the calm and steady flow of its own
strength.

The quality of Harry’s voice was very deep and sometimes halting, as
though it were out of much difficulty that he spoke. He said, deeply,
“That you stand upright does not discharge you from responsibilities.”

She said, “Dear, nor my responsibilities discharge me from my
privileges.”

There was then a silence.

He spoke, “But I am going to press this, Rosalie. I say, with all
admitted, this thing--this ‘I could go but you should not go’--is
different as between us. I am a man.”

She made a movement in her chair. “Ah, let that go. I have a reply to
that.”

“What reply?”

“I am a woman.”

He began--“It’s nothing--.”

She said, “Oh, painful to give you pain. To me--everything.”

He got up from his position beside her and went to his chair and seated
himself. He sat on the edge of the chair, bowed forward, his forearms on
his knees, his hands clasped; not smoking; his pipe between his fingers,
his eyes upon the fire. Once or twice, his hands close to his face, he
slightly raised them and with his pipe-stem softly tapped his teeth.




CHAPTER IX


He had called it the principle. She watched him. That attitude in which
he sat was of a profundity of meditation not to be looked upon without
that sense of awe, of oppression, of misgiving that is aroused by the
suggestion in man or nature of brooding forces mysteriously engrossed.
There came to her, watching him, a thought that newly disturbed her
thoughts. He had called it the principle. She had been astonished but
she had not been perturbed. Upon the principle as between man and woman,
husband and wife, she was, as she had said, so strong, so confident,
accustomed and assured, that there was nothing could be said could touch
her there. But it was not the principle. This was the knowledge brought
to her by the new thought suddenly appeared in her mind, standing there
like a strange face in a council of friends, unbidden and of a suspect
look. What if she communicated that knowledge to Harry brooding there?
He had called it the principle. What if she put across the shadowed room
the sentence that should inform him it was not the principle but was an
issue flying the flag of ships whose freights are dangerous? What if she
put across the shadowed room the sentence, “Men that marry for a home”?

Ay, that was it! The thing she had always known and never told.
Those are keepsakes of our secret selves, those observations, vows,
conspiracies with which romantically we plot towards our ideals. This
the sole keepsake of her treasury she never had revealed to Harry.
Significant she had not. Some instinct must have stayed her. Yes,
significant! He had called it the principle. It was not the principle.
He was sincere upon the principle and in the examination of eleven years
had proved his sincerity. It was not the principle. It was that herein,
in her intention to exercise her freedom in a new dimension, she had
touched him, not through the principle, but upon the instinct that led
him, as she believed men to be led, to marry for a home, a settling-in
place, a settling-down place, a cave to enter into and to shut the door
upon.

Oh, this was dangerous! There were no lengths to which this might not
lead! If at her first essay at that which countered his idea of home she
was to be asked to pause, what, in the increasing convolutions of the
years, might not she be asked to abandon? Let him attempt restriction of
her by appeal to principle and she could stand, and win, unscathed. Let
him oppose her by his wish within his home to shut the door, and that
was to put upon her an injury that only by giving him pain could be
fought. Oh, dangerous! Not less an injury because by sentiment and not
by reason done! Much more an injury because so subtly done! Much more!
Dangerous! Ah, from this the outset to be withstood!

He spoke and his first words were confirmation of her fears.

“Rosalie, do you feel quite all right about the children?”

Yes, she could see where this was set to lead. He could leave her with
the children; but she--men that married for a home--could not leave him
with the children.

She said gently, “Dear, there’ll not be the least difficulty.
Everything’s perfectly arranged. Everything will perfectly well go on.”

He had not moved his pose and did not move it. His voice presented in
tone the profound meditation that his pose presented. He said, “I don’t
quite mean that. I mean, do you always feel everything’s quite all right
with them?”

How setting now? She answered, “Dear, of course I do.”

His eyes remained upon the fire. “Rosalie, d’you know I sometimes
don’t.”

Her motion--a lifting of her face, a questing of her brows--was of a
helmsman’s gesture, suspicious to catch before it set a shifting of the
breeze. “Harry, in what way? They’re splendid.”

“You feel that?”

“Dear, you know they are.”

He put his pipe to his mouth and with that meditative tapping tapped his
teeth. “Splendid, yes, in health, in appearance, in development, in all
that kind of thing. I don’t mean that.” He turned his face towards her
and spoke directly. “Rosalie, have you ever thought they’re not quite
like other children?”

Oh, setting from what quarter this? She said, “They’re better--miles and
miles.”

He got up. “Well, that’s all right. If you have noticed nothing, that’s
all right.”

“But, Harry. I am at a loss, dear. Of course it’s all right. But what
have you noticed, think you’ve noticed?”

He was standing before her, his back against the mantelpiece, looking
down at her. “Just that--not quite like other children.”

“But in what way?”

“It’s hard to say, old girl. If you’ve not noticed it, harder still.
Not quite so childish as at their age I seem to remember myself with
my brothers and sisters being childish. A kind of--reserve. A kind
of--self-contained.”

She shook her head, “No, no.”

“You think it’s fancy?”

“I’m sure it is.”

He was silent a moment. “It’s rather worried me. And of course now--If
you are going to be away--”

Stand by! She had the drift of this!

She said simply, “Harry, this can’t be.”

“You can’t give up the idea?”

Her hand upon the helm that steered her life constricted. “It is not to
be asked of me to give it up.” She paused. She said softly, “Dear, this
is a forward step for me. You are asking me to make a sacrifice. I would
not ask you.”

He began, “There are sacrifices--”

“They are not asked of men.”

He said, “Rosalie, you said once, when Benji was born, that, if at any
time need be, you would give up, not a thing like this, but your work
entirely.”

As if to shield or to support her heart she drew her left hand to it.
“Would you give up yours, Harry?”

He said quickly, “I’m not suggesting such a thing. It is ridiculous. I’m
only showing you--”

She began to say her say, her voice reflective as his own had been. “But
you have shown me frightful things, shown me how far and oh, how quick,
a thing that starts may go. Oh, my dear, know the answer before it ever
is suggested. Sacrifices! It is sacrifice for the children that you
profess to mean. Well, let us call it that. Have you ever heard of a
father sacrificing himself for his children? There’s no such phrase.
There’s only the feminine gender for that. ‘Sacrificed himself for his
wife and children.’ It’s a solecism. If grammar means good sense,
it isn’t grammar because it’s meaningless. It can’t be said.
It’s grotesque. But ‘Sacrificed herself for her husband and her
children,’--why, that the commonest of cliches. It’s written on half the
mothers’ brows; it should be carved on half the mothers’ tombs--upon my
own dear mother’s.” She stood up and faced him. “Harry, not on mine.”
 She put a gentle hand on his. “I love you--you know what our love is. I
love the children--with a truer love that they have never been a burden
to me nor I on a single occasion out of mood with them. But, Harry, I
will not sacrifice myself for the children. When I ask that of you, ask
it of me. But I never will ask it of you.”

She was trembling.

He put an arm about her shoulders. “It’s over. It’s over. Let’s forget
it, Rosalie.”

Of course she did not forget it. Of course she knew that Harry could
not. Men that marry for a home! Already in his mind the thought that
for his home she should give up, not only this present forward step,
but--everything! Oh, man-made world! Oh, man-made men! “It’s over. It’s
over,” he had said. Of course she knew it was not over. Men that marry
for a home! Secret she had kept it and in the same moment that she had
realised the significance of her secrecy it had been enlarged. Now it
stalked abroad.

But what is to be observed is the quality of the love between them. It
was through the children that he had made this claim that he had sought
to impose upon her. She had told him, as she believed, that what he
thought he saw was fancy. It never occurred to her to imagine so base
a thing as that he, to give himself grounds, had invented or even
exaggerated his fancy; but it had been excusable in her (threatened as
she saw herself) to avoid, in the days that followed, discussion of that
fancy, much less herself to bring it forward. Her love for Harry was
never in that plane. It could admit no guile. It happened that within
the week she was herself a little pained by a matter with the children.
She took her pain straight to her Harry.

On his last day of the holidays before he returned for his second term
at his preparatory school, Huggo was noisy with excitement at the idea
of returning. It rather pained Rosalie that he showed not the smallest
sign of regret at leaving home. Miss Prescott had done all the necessary
business of getting his clothes ready for school, but Rosalie took from
Field’s this last afternoon to do some shopping with her little man (as
she termed it) in Oxford Street; to buy him some little personal things
he wanted,--a purse of pigskin that fastened with a button, a knife with
a thing for taking stones out of horses’ hoofs, and a special kind of
football boots. Since there had come to her the “men that marry for
a home” significance, that mirage in her face had much presented that
mutinous and determined boy it often showed. Only the mother was there
when she set out with Huggo. And then the sense of pain.

Oxford Street appeared to be swarming with small boys and their mothers
similarly engaged. All the small boys wore blue overcoats with velvet
collar and looked to Rosalie most lovably comic in bowler hats that
seemed enormously too big for their small heads. Huggo was dressed to
the same pattern but his hat exactly suited his face which was thin and,
by contrast with these others, old for his years. Rosalie wished somehow
that Huggo’s hat didn’t suit so well; the imminent extinguisher look of
theirs made them look such darling babies. And what really brought out
the difference was that all these other small boys invariably had a hand
stretched up to hold their mothers’ arms and walked with faces turned
up, chattering. Huggo didn’t. She asked him to. He said, “Mother, why?”

“I’d love you to, darling.”

He put up his hand and she pressed it with her arm to her side, but she
noticed that he was looking away into a shop window while he did as he
was asked, and there came in less than a dozen paces a congestion on the
pavement that caused him to slip behind her, removing his hand. He did
not replace it.

In the shop where the knife was to be bought an immense tray of every
variety of pocketknife was put before them. Huggo opened and shut blades
with a curiously impatient air as though afraid of being interfered with
before he had made his choice. Immediately beside Rosalie was another
mother engaged with another son upon another tray.

“It’s got to have a thing for levering stones out of horses’ hoofs,”
 said Huggo, brushing aside a knife offered by the assistant and
rummaging a little roughly.

Rosalie said, “Darling, I can’t think what you can want such a thing
for.”

The lady beside her caught her eye and laughed. “That’s just what I’m
asking my small man,” she said.

Her small man, whose face was merry and whose hat appeared to be
supported by his ears, looked up at Rosalie with an engaging smile and
said in a very frank voice, “It’s jolly useful for lugging up tight
things or to hook up toffee that’s stuck.”

They all three laughed. Huggo, busily engaged, took no notice.

He found the knife he wanted. Rosalie showed him another. “Huggo, I’m
sure that one’s too heavy and clumsy.”

The voice of the little boy with the hat on his ears came, “Mummie, I’d
rather have this one because you chose it.”

Rosalie said to Huggo, “It will weigh down your pocket so.”

“This one! This one!” cried Huggo and made a vexed movement with a foot.

Rosalie, sitting with Harry before the fire in Harry’s room that night
said, “Harry, tell me some more of what you said the other day about the
children.”

He looked up at her. He clearly was surprised. “You’ve been thinking
about it?”

“I’ve been with Huggo shopping for him this afternoon and been at little
things a little sad. Harry, when you said ‘not like other children’ did
you mean not--responsive?”

He said intensely, “Rosalie, it is the word. It’s what I meant. I
couldn’t get it. I wonder I didn’t. It’s my meaning exactly--not
responsive. You’ve noticed it?”

“Oh, tell me first.”

“Rosalie, it’s sometimes that I’ve gone in to the three of them wanting
to be one with them, to be a child with them and invent things and
imagine things. Somehow they don’t seem to want it. They don’t--invite
it. Your word, they don’t--respond. I want them to open their hearts and
let me right inside. Somehow they don’t seem to open their hearts.”

She said, “Harry, they’re such mites.”

He shook his head. “They’re not mites, old girl. Only Benji. And even
Benji--It was different when they were wee things. It’s lately, all
this. They don’t seem to understand, Rosalie--to understand what it is I
want. That’s the thing that troubles me. It’s an extraordinary thing
to say, but it’s been to me sometimes as if I were the child longing
to be--what shall I say?--to have arms opened to me, and they were the
grown-ups, holding me off, not understanding what it is I want. Not
understanding. Rosalie, why don’t they understand?”

She had a hand extended to the fire and she was slowly opening and
shutting her fingers at the flames. This, coming upon the feeling she
had had that afternoon with Huggo, was like a book wherein was analysed
that feeling. But, “I am sure they do understand, dear,” she said. “I’m
sure it’s fancy.”

“I think you’re not sure, Rosalie.”

“Oh, yes, I am. If it’s anything it’s just perhaps their way--all
children have their ways. What I thought about Huggo this afternoon
might perhaps be something what you mean. Harry, if it is, it’s just the
little man’s way.”

“What was it you thought?”

She maintained that movement of the fingers of her hand. “Why, only
things I noticed; tiny things; nothings, I’m sure. Out shopping with me,
Harry. Well, it was his last day and I would have expected somehow he
would have been fonder for that. He wasn’t and I rather felt it. Things
like that. I would so like him to have held my arm. He didn’t want to.
Not very grateful for the things we bought. But there, why should he be,
dear Huggo? But just his way; that’s what one ought to think. But I felt
it a little.”

Harry said, “I know. I know. It’s that that I have felt--not responsive.
It’s what I’ve thought I’ve noticed in them all.”

Telling him perhaps enlarged, as telling does, her sensibilities. She
said very quickly, “Not Benji!”

“Well, Benji’s so very young. But even--But in the other two--”

She said as quickly as before, “Ah, Doda’s responsive!”

“You’ve seen it, dear, in Huggo.”

“Oh, Harry, nothing, just his way. I’m sorry now I mentioned it.”

He had been watching the flexion of her hand. He said, “I’m glad you
have. When I spoke of it the other day you said you didn’t see it. I
think it’s generous in you to admit you have.”

She murmured, “Generous?”

“It brings up--Rosalie, does this affect a little, alter perhaps, your
decision?”

She shut her fingers sharply. “No.” She kept them shut. “There’s nothing
at all could alter that, Harry.”

He turned aside and began to fill his pipe, with slow movements.

It has been warned that it was in this holidays of Huggo’s from his
preparatory school that Time, that bravo of the cloak-and-dagger school,
whipped out his-blade and pounced. These, since that warning, were but
the doorways and the lurking posts he prowled along.

He now was very close to Rosalie.

Rosalie and Harry both were home to lunch next day. In the afternoon
they were to take Huggo to Charing Cross to see him off in the saloon
specially reserved for his school. All the children were at lunch for
this occasion. Benji in a high chair just like the high chair that had
been Rosalie’s years back--what years and years!--at the rectory. Huggo
was in boisterous spirits. You would think, you couldn’t help thinking,
it was his first day, not his last day home. Rosalie observed him as
she had not before observed him. How he talked! Well, that was good. How
could Harry have thought him reserved? But he talked a shade loudly and
with an air curiously self-opinionated. But he was such a child, and
opinions were delightful in a child. Yes, but something not childish
in his way of expressing his opinions, something a shade superior,
self-satisfied; and she particularly noticed that when anything in
the way of information was given him by Harry or by herself he never
accepted it but always argued. She grew very silent. She felt she would
have given anything to hear him, in the long topic of railways with his
father, and then of Tidborough School, say, “Do they, father?” or, “Does
it, father?” He never did. He always knew it before or knew different.
Once on a subject connected with the famous school Harry said, a shade
of rebuke in his voice, “My dear old chap, I was at Tidborough. I ought
to know.” Rosalie felt she would have given anything in the world for
Huggo to reply, “Sorry, father, of course you ought.” Instead he bent
upon his plate a look injured and resentful at being injured. But in a
minute she was reproaching herself for such ideas. Her Huggo! and she
was sitting here criticising him. Different from other children! Why, if
so, only in the way she had affirmed to Harry--miles and miles better.
Opinionated? Why, famously advanced for his years. Superior? Why,
bright, clever, not a nursery boy. She had been wronging him, she had
been criticising him, she had been looking for faults in him, her Huggo!
Unkind! Unnatural!

Listen to him! The meal was ended. His father was bantering him about
what he learnt, or didn’t learn, at school; was offering him an extra
five shillings to his school tip if he could answer three questions.
The darling was deliciously excited over it. How his voice rang! He was
putting his father off the various subjects suggested. Not Latin--he
hadn’t done much Latin; not geography--he simply hated geography. Listen
to him!

“Well, scripture,” Harry was saying. “Come, they give you plenty of
scripture?”

“Oh, don’t they just! Tons and tons!” Listen to him! How merry he
was now! “Tons and tons. First lesson every morning. But don’t ask
scripture, father. Father, what’s the use of learning all that stuff,
about the Flood, about the Ark, about the Israelites, about Samuel,
about Daniel, about crossing the Red Sea, about all that stuff: what’s
the use?”

Time closed his fingers on his haft and took a stride to Rosalie.

She sat upright. She stared across the table at the boy.

Harry said, “Here, steady, old man. ‘What’s the use of Scripture?’”

“Well, what is the use? It’s all rot. You know it isn’t true.”

Time flashed his blade and struck her terribly.

She called out dreadfully, “Huggo!”

“Mother, you know it’s all made up!”

She cried out in a girl’s voice and with a girl’s impulsive gesture of
her arm across the table towards him, “It isn’t! It isn’t!”

Her voice, her gesture, the look upon her face could not but startle
him. He was red, rather frightened. He said mumblingly, “Well, mother,
you’ve never taught me any different.”

She was seen by Harry to let fall her extended arm upon the table and
draw it very slowly to her and draw her hand then to her heart and
slowly lean herself against her chair-back, staring at Huggo. No one
spoke. She then said to Huggo, her voice very low, “Darling, run now to
see everything is in your playbox. Doda, help him. Take Benji, darlings.
Benji, go and see the lovely playbox things.”

When they had gone she was seen by Harry to be working with her fingers
at her key-ring. In one hand she held the ring, in the other a key that
she seemed to be trying to remove. It was obstinate. She wrestled at it.
She looked up at Harry. “I want to get this”--the key came away in her
hand--“off.”

He recognised it for her office pass-key.

Caused by that cry of hers to Huggo and by that ges-ture with her cry,
and since intensifying, there had been a constraint that he was very
glad to break. He remembered how childishly proud she had been of that
key on the day it was cut for her. They had had a little dinner to
celebrate it, and she had dipped it in her champagne glass.

He said, “Your pass-key? Why?”

She said, “I’m coming home, Harry.”

“Coming home?”

She was sitting back in her chair. She tossed, with a negligent movement
of her hand, the key upon the table. “I have done with all that. I am
coming home.”

He got up very quickly and came around the table to her.




PART FOUR--HOUSE OF CARDS

CHAPTER I


There is a state wherein the mind, normally the court of pleas where
reason receives and administers the supplications of the senses, is
not in session. Reason is sick, suspends his office, abrogates his
authority, withdraws to some deep fastness of the brain, and suffers the
hall of judgment to be the house of license or of dreams: of dreams, as
sleep, as vanity of reverie; of license when there is tumult in the body
politic, as fever, as excesses of the passions, as great shock. Reason
is sick, withdraws, and there is strange business in that place.

If that is just the way one writes, not susceptible of easy
comprehension, and not enough explanatory of Rosalie’s condition, it
goes like this in Rosalie’s own words. Drooped back there in her chair
before that littered disarray of lunch, and that key lying there, and
Harry stooping over her and holding both her hands, she said, “Oh,
Harry! Oh, Harry! I feel deathly sick.”

She said it had been a most frightful shock to her, what Huggo had
declared. She said, “Oh, Harry, I feel all undone.”

Undone! We’ll try to feel her mind with that; to let that explain her
when she said this else, and when she wrote some things that shall be
given.

She said she had suffered, in that moment of crying out to Huggo and
of stretching out her arm to him, the most extraordinary--what was the
word?--the most extraordinary hallucination. “Harry, when Huggo said
that frightful thing! Oh, Harry, like an extraordinary dream, I was a
child again. It wasn’t here; it was happening; it was the rectory; and
not you and the children but all us children that used to be around the
table there. No, not quite that. More extraordinary than that. Robert
was there; Robert, I think, in Huggo’s place; and all the rest were
me--me as I used to be when I was ten; small, grave, wondering, staring.
And yet myself me too as I was then--oh, horrified as I’d have then been
horrified to hear the Bible stories called untrue; jumped up and crying
out, ‘It isn’t! It isn’t!’ as I would then have jumped up and cried out;
and all the other Rosalies staring in wonder as I’d have stared. Oh,
extraordinary, extraordinary! Within this minute, I have been a child
again. The strangest thing, the strangest thing!

“I was a child again, Harry, in a blue frock I used to wear and in a
pinafore that had a hole in it; and all those other Rosalies the same.
Those other Rosalies! To see them! Harry, I’ve not seen that Rosalie
I used to be--not years and years. That tiny innocent! It is upon me
still. I feel that small child still. Oh, I feel it! I remember--dear,
did I ever tell you?--when my father once... had been talking about
Cambridge... and suddenly cried out, it was at breakfast, ‘Cambridge! My
youth! My God, my God, my youth!’ There was coffee from a cup that he’d
knocked over came oozing, and I just sat there huge-eyed, staring, a
small, grave wondering child....

“Oh, Harry, my youth, my childhood--and now the children’s! The
difference! The difference!”

Harry talked to her. He ended, “The teaching, all the ideas, dear girl,
you mustn’t worry, it’s all different nowadays.”

“Harry, to hear it from a child like that!”

“It’s startled you. It needn’t. We’ll talk it out. We’ll fix it. It’s
just what he’s been taught, old girl.”

She said, “Oh, it is what he’s not been taught!”

Then there were things that, while was still upon her this shock, this
sense of being again the small, grave child in the blue frock and in
the pinafore with the hole in it, she wrote down. She dismissed Miss
Prescott. She thought, when the interview of dismissal opened, that she
would end by upbraiding Miss Prescott, but she was abated all the time
in any anger that she might have felt by Huggo’s other frightful words,
“Well, mother, you never taught me any different.” She did not want to
hear Miss Prescott tell her that. She told Miss Prescott simply that
she was giving up her business and coming now to devote herself to the
children. She thought, she said, their education had in some respects
been faulty, and told Miss Prescott how. Miss Prescott, speaking like
a book, told her it had not been faulty and told her why. “Truth,
knowledge, reason,” said Miss Prescott. “Could it conceivably be
contested that these should not be the sole food and the guiding
principle of the child mind?”

It was after that interview that Rosalie, sitting long into the night,
wrote down some things. She is to be imagined as wrenched back, as by a
violent hand, across the years, and in the blue frock and the pinafore
with a hole in it again, and awfully frightened, terribly unhappy, at
the thing she’d heard from Huggo. That was the form her shock took.
Beneath it she had at a blow abandoned all her ambitions as when a child
she would instantly have dropped her most immersing game and run to a
frightening cry from her mother; as once, in fact (and the incident and
the parallel came back to her), she had been building a house of cards,
holding her breath not to shake it, and her mother had scalded her hand
and had cried out to her, frighteningly. “Oh, mummie, mummie!” she had
cried, running to her; and flap! the house of cards had gone. Her inward
cry was now, “The children! The children!” and what amiss the leaving of
her work? Her work! Oh, house of cards!

Her state of mind, the imaginings in which that shock came to her, is
better seen by what she wrote down privately, to relieve herself,
than by the talk about it all that she had with her Harry. She wrote
immediately after Miss Prescott had stood up for “truth, knowledge,
reason,” and by combating truth, knowledge, and reason more clearly
expressed herself than in her talk with Harry. It was in her diary she
wrote--well, it wasn’t exactly a diary, it was a desultory journal
in which sometimes she wrote things. As she wrote, her brow, in the
intensity of her thought, was all puckered up. She still felt “deathly
sick; all undone.” She wrote:

“Of course it’s as she says (Miss Prescott). That is the kind of thing
to-day. Knowledge, stark truth--children must have in stark truth all
the knowledge there is on all the things that come about them. It’s
strange; yes, it is strange. No parent would be such a fool as to trust
a child with all the money she has nor with anything superlatively
precious that she possesses; but knowledge, which is above all wealth
and above all treasure, the child is to have to play with as it likes.
Oh, it is strange. Where is it going to stop? If you bring up a child on
the fact that all the Old Testament stories are untrue, a bundle, where
they are miraculous, of obviously impossible fairy tales, what’s
going to happen to the New Testament? The Immaculate Conception, the
Resurrection, the Ascension--what’s your child-mind that knows the
old stories for inventions going to say to those? Are they easier to
believe? The Creation or the Conception? The Flood or the Resurrection?
God speaking out of a burning bush or the Ascension to Heaven? The
pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire or the Three in One of the
Trinity? Oh, I wonder if Modern Thought has any thought to spare for
that side of the business--or for its results in a generation or two?”

Then she wrote:

“I’ve never taught them any different.”

Then she wrote:

“Mother, I am a child again to-night. Darling, in that blue frock I used
to wear. Darling, all that I to-night am thinking is what you taught
me. Oh, look down, beloved! I’ve been so wrong. I thought everything was
infinitely better for them than you made it, beloved mother, for me. I
didn’t realise.”

Then she wrote:

“It just means losing everything in God that’s human. It must mean that.
All our intelligence, if materialism may be called intelligence; all
modern teaching, if this new stuff that they pontificate may be called
teaching, offers us God the Spirit but, as it seems to me to-night,
denies us God the Father and God the Son. It may be--reasonable. But
things spiritual demand for their recognition emotions spiritual, and
there’s a pass that thousands reach when the spirit is a dead thing.
If they are to believe in God only as a Spirit, a Force, a Power; an
Essence to be felt but not seen; an Element to be absorbed into but not
to be visualised--if this, if these, there needs in them some spirit,
some force, some power of themselves to lift themselves to meet it.
They must be of themselves responsive as hath the sea within itself
that which respondeth to the sublimation of the sun. Well, there are
thousands (am I not one?) that have it not. It once was theirs. Now it
is not theirs. If there is for them only God the Spirit then is there
for them only that to which they have no more power to reach than has
one bedridden power to rise and find a mile away what may restore him.
They have only that, their breaking heart, which would cast itself, ah,
with what bliss of utter abandonment, before God the Father, a human and
a personal Father, quick to succor, and before God the Son, a human and
a personal Son, ardent to intercede. And that is denied them. That God
that existed and that was taught to exist for my mother and for her day
to this day may not exist. It may be--reasonable. Oh, it is offering a
stone where bread was sought.”

She also wrote:

“Oh, mother, if you could have been here, how you would have loved my
darlings, and how you would have given them all that you gave to me!
I will now, mother. Mother, I’ve come back home to them, in the blue
frock, and in the pinafore with a hole in it.”

That was the spirit in which she came back home to the children, that
and all that went with it and that arose out of it. It was nothing at
all to her when she did it, the frightful break with Field’s. Harry
was distressed for her, but there was no need at all for him to be
distressed, she told him. There wasn’t a sigh in her voice, nor in her
inmost thoughts a sigh, when, telling him of the interview with Mr.
Field and with Mr. Sturgiss at her resignation of her post, she said
with a smile, “Carry on? Of course the department can perfectly well
carry on. Dear, it’s just the words I said to you a fortnight back on
the matter so very different. ‘The thing’s organised. It runs itself.
That is why it is the success it is, because it’s organised. That’s
why I can come away and leave it, because I’m an organiser. Aren’t I an
organiser?”

He held her immensely long in his arms. “You are my Rosalie,” he said.

Immensely long he held her, immensely close; oh, men that marry for a
home! Until, come home, she saw Harry’s tremendous happiness in the home
that now she gave him, she never had realised the longing that must have
been his for the home for which he had married, and never till now had
had. It was poignant to her, the sight of his tremendous happiness.
“Always to find you here!” he would cry, in the first weeks of the new
life, coming home to tea and coming in to her in the drawing-room where
she would be, all ready for him, with Doda and with Benji. “Always to
leave you here!” he would say, taking leave of her in the morning, and
she and Doda and Benji coming with him to the hall door to see him off.
“Mice and Mumps,” he used to add in codicil, “Mice and Mumps, I’m a
happy chap!” and was for ever bringing home trifles for her and for the
children, or plans and passes for how and where the Saturday and the
weekend should be spent, all four together. “Mice and Mumps, I’m gorged
with happiness! And you, Rosalie?”

“Oh, happy!” she used to say.

And was. It was poignant to her, his tremendous happiness, and it
brimmed up the cup of her own happiness. She was doing virtuously and
she had of her virtue that happiness which, as the pious old maxims tell
us, comes of being good.

That should have been well; but virtue is a placid condition and the
happiness arising out of it placid. It brims no cups, flushes no cheeks,
sparkles no eyes. It is of the quality of happiness that one, loving a
garden, has from his garden, the happiness of tranquillity, not of stir;
of peace, not of thrills; of the country, not of the town. There was
more heady stuff than this that Rosalie had out of her new condition,
and that was dangerous. She was doing virtuously and she had out of her
virtue an intoxication of joy that, in so far as it is at all concerned
with virtue, arises, not from virtue’s self, but from the consciousness
of virtue. That was dangerous. The danger point in stimulants is when
they are resorted to, not as concomitant of the pleasures of the table,
but be-cause they stimulate. Rosalie, come to her children and her Harry
and her home, to the thought of her renunciation and of her happiness
constantly was turning for the enormous exhilaration of happiness that
there she found. “How glad I am I gave it up! How glad! How glad!
How right I’m doing now! How right! How right! How happy I am in this
happiness! How happy! How happy!”

Is it not perceived that thus it was not well assured, this great joy
that she had, this cup of hers that brimmed? She started from that
danger point at which the drug is drunk for stimulant. On the very first
day of her new life she was saying, “How glad I am! How glad I am!” and
going on radiant from her gladness. But she, in her resort to this her
stimulant, suffered this grave disparity with the drinker’s case: he
must increase his doses--and he can. She, living upon her stimulant,
equally was compelled--but could not. The renunciation that brimmed her
happiness on the first day was available to her in no bigger dose on the
succeeding days, the hundredth day and the three hundredth and the five
hundredth. It never could increase. It had no capacity of increase. Is
it not perceivable that it had, on the contrary, a staling quality?

It would have been all right if it had been all right. It would have
been all right if it had not been all wrong. If these absurd premises
can be understood, her case can be understood. She used them herself in
after years. “It would have been all right,” she used to say to herself,
twisting her hands together, “if it had been all right.” “It would have
been all right,” she used to say to herself, “if it had not been all
wrong.” What she meant, and what here is meant, requires it to be
recalled that it was in that spirit of that glimpse of herself back a
child again in the blue frock and in the pinafore with a hole in it that
she came back to the children, came back home to them. Shocked by
the thing that had come to pass, penitential by influence of the old
childhood influences that had stirred within her, most strangely and
most strongly transported back into that childhood vision of herself, it
was in the guise of that child and with that child’s guise as her ideal
for them that passionately she desired to take up her children’s lives.
Her Huggo, her man child, her first one! Her Doda, her self’s own self,
her woman-bud, her daughter! Her Benji, her littlest one, her darling!
She longed, as it were, to throw open the door, and in that blue frock
and in the spirit of that blue frock most ardently to run in to them
and hug them, blue frocked, to her breast, and be one with them and tell
them the things and the things and the things that were the blue frock’s
mysteries and joys, and hear from them the things and the things and the
things that were the blue frock’s all-enchanted world again.

That was what most terribly she wanted and with most brimming gladness
set about to do--and there was borne, in upon her, hinted in weeks,
published in months, in seasons sealed and delivered to her, that there
was among her children no place for that spirit. They did not welcome
the blue frock; they did not understand the blue frock; they were not
children as she had been a child. It was what Harry had said of them,
they somehow were not quite like other children; it was what she herself
had noticed in Huggo; they did not respond. They’d gone, those children,
too long as they’d been left to go. She came to them ardently. They
greeted her--not very responsively. They didn’t understand.

What happened was that, coming to them great with intention, she was,
by what she did not find in them, much dispirited in her intention.
What followed from that was that she turned the more frequently to the
stimulation of the thought of her renunciation, to the sensation of
happiness that arose in her by consciousness that she was doing what she
ought to be doing. She would be puzzled, she would be a little pained,
she would be a little tired at the effort, fruitless, to call up in the
children those lovely childish things that as a child had been hers.
She then would feel dispirited. She then would think, “But how glad I am
that I gave it all up; but how right I am to be at home with them; but
how happy I am that I am now doing that which is right.” That stimulated
her. That made her tell herself (as before she had told Harry) that
it was just fancy, this apparent difference, this indifference, in the
children.

But the more she found necessary that stimulus, the less that stimulus
availed; and she began to feel, then, the first faint gnawings after
that which had been stimulus indeed, her work, her career.

Of course this is making a case for her, this is special pleading for
her, but who so abandoned that in the ultimate judgment a case will
not for him be prepared? Try to consider how it went with her. First
intoxication of happiness; and must not intoxication in time wear
off? Then immense intention and then dispirited in her intention. Then
frequent resource to the stimulus of her realisation of virtue and then
the natural diminution of that cup’s effect. Is she not presented prey
for her life’s habit’s longings? Is she not shown dejected and caused by
that dejection (as caused by depression the reclaimed victim of a drug)
to desire again that which had been to her the breath of life?

That was how it went with her.

Doda was nine when she began; Huggo, when he was home for his holidays,
eleven, rising twelve; Benji only seven. They seemed to her, all
of them, wonderfully old for their years and, no getting over that,
different. She tried to read them the stories she used to love. They
didn’t like them. Doda didn’t like “The Wide Wide World” and didn’t like
“Little Women.” Huggo thought “The Swiss Family Robinson” awful rot,
and argued learnedly with her how grotesque it was to imagine all that
variety of animals and all that variety of plants in one same climate.
“But, Huggo, you needn’t worry whether it was possible. It was just
written as a means of telling a family of children natural history
things. They didn’t have to believe it. They only enjoyed it. I and
your uncle Robert never worried about whether it was possible; we simply
loved the adventure of it.”

“Well, I can’t, mother,” said Huggo. “It’s not possible, and if it isn’t
possible, I think it’s stupid.”

And Doda thought Ellen in the “Wide Wide World” silly, and Beth and Jo
and the others in “Little Women” dull.

She read them Dickens, but it was always, “Oh, leave out that part,
mother. It’s dull.” And so was Scott Lamb’s “Tales from Shakespeare”
 never had a chance at all. They had heard from Miss Prescott, or Huggo
had heard at school, that Shakespeare was a lesson. “Oh, not a thing
out of lessons, mother.” What they liked were what seemed to Rosalie
the crudely written stories, and the grotesque and usually rather vulgar
comic drawings, in the host of cheap periodicals for children that
seemed to have sprung up since her day. They called these exciting or
funny and they revelled in them. They were different. Benji was no more
than a baby, but he was extraordinarily devoted to Doda, liked only the
things that Doda liked, and did not like the things that Doda didn’t
like, or, in the language sometimes a little unpleasantly emphatic that
always was Doda’s and Huggo’s, that Doda “simply loathed.” Rosalie had
some old bound numbers of treasured juvenile periodicals of the rectory
days. Even Benji didn’t like them. They were markedly different from the
books the children did like. Their illustrations were mainly of children
in domestic scenes. “Don’t they look stupid?” was Doda’s comment; and
Benji, copying, thought they were stupid too.

All this was a very small thing and of itself negligible; even,
as Rosalie told herself, natural--naturally children of succeeding
generations changed in their tastes. It only is introduced as
conveniently showing in an obscure aspect what was noticeable to
Rosalie, and felt by her, in many aspects, whose effect was
cumulative. “A kind of reserve,” Harry had said of them: “a kind
of--self-contained.” It was what she found. She wanted to be a child
with the children; they didn’t seem to understand. She wanted to open
her heart to them and have their hearts opened to her; they didn’t seem
to understand. She was always seeing that vision of Rosalie in the blue
frock among them, rather like Alice, the real Alice, Tenniel’s Alice.
She was always feeling that Rosalie, thus guised, was held off from
their circle, not welcomed, not understood, as certainly they did not
care for the demure, quaint Alice of Tenniel.

She began to have sometimes when she was with the children an
extraordinary feeling (just what Harry had said) that she was younger
than the children, that it was she who was the child, they that were the
grown-ups.

When the step of her renunciation was first taken, ardent to devote
herself to them in every moment of the day, she began to give their
lessons to Doda and to Benji. It was not a success. The methods of
teaching, as the text-books, had changed since she was a child. The
Prescott methods were here and to her own methods the children did not
respond. There it was again--did not respond. There was obtained a Miss
Dormer who came in daily and who confined herself, Rosalie saw to that,
solely to lessons; the walks and all the other hours of the day were
Rosalie’s.

That’s all for that. The picture has been overdrawn if has been given
the suggestion that Rosalie was unhappy with the children or the
children openly indifferent to her. All of that nature that in fact
arose was that, whereas Rosalie had expected an immense and absorbing
occupation with the children, she found instead an occupation very
loving and very happy but not relieving her of all the interest and all
the affection she had desired to pour into it. It was rather like to a
hungry person a strange dish that had looked substantial but that, when
finished, was found not to have been substantial; still hungry. She
had thought the children would have been entirely dependent on her. She
found them in many ways independent and wishing to be independent. It
would have been all right if it had been all right. That was it. It
would have been all right if it had not been all wrong. That was it.

She began to think of Field’s.

When first she began to think of Field’s, which was when she had been
nine months away from Field’s, she would let her mind run upon it
freely, as it would. One day, thus thinking upon it, she brought up her
thoughts as it were with a round turn. She must not think so much about
Field’s--not like that. She sighed, and with the same abruptness of
mental action checked her sigh; she must not regret Field’s--not like
that.

It was a fateful prohibition. It was the discovery to herself, as to
Eve of the tree by the serpent, of a temptation seductive and forbidden.
Thereafter “like that” her mind, missing no day nor no night, was often
found by her to be there. The quality that made “like that” not seemly
to her, increased, at each return, its potency.

It became very difficult to drag her mind away. It became impossible to
drag her mind away.

Her governance of her mind became infected and it became not necessary
to think it necessary to drag her mind away.

She had not visited Field’s since she had left. Mr. Sturgiss and Mr.
Field had written to her reproaching her for carrying to such lengths
of neglect her desertion of them, and she had responded banteringly but
without a call. One day (she had lain much awake on the previous night)
she at breakfast told Harry she had the idea of going that afternoon to
see how Field’s was getting on.

She was surprised at his supplement to his reply. The children had left
the room. He first agreed with her that the idea was good. “Yes, rather;
why not?” was the expression he used. He then said, surprising her,
“Rosalie, you’ve never, have you, regretted?”

Her surprise framed for her her reply. “Why ever should you ask that?”

“I’ve thought you’ve not been looking very well lately.”

“But what’s the connection, Harry?”

“Fretting?”

She smiled. “I’m not the fretting sort.”

He was perfectly satisfied. “I knew you’d tell me if you were.
Everything going well?”

“Fine.”

He shot out his arms with a luxurious stretching gesture. “Mice and
Mumps, it’s been fine for me, I can tell you. Fine, fine!”

How happy he looked! How handsome he looked! Her thought was “Dear
Harry!”

He got up and began to set about his departure. She went with him into
the hall and she called up the stairs, “Children, father’s going.” They
came bounding down. He joked and played with them. He loved this custom,
now long established. She brushed his hat, also a rite she knew he
loved. He kissed her with particular affection. “Yes, you go up to
Field’s and give old Sturgiss and old Field my love. You’ll almost have
forgotten the way there. I say, it’s funny, isn’t it, how time changes
things and how it goes? We couldn’t have imaged this once, and here it
is the most established thing in the world. Do you know, it’s almost
exactly a year since you chucked it?”

“Chucked it!” The light expression smote her. O manlike man that thus
could phrase divorce that from her heart’s engrossment had cut her life
asunder!

In the afternoon she set out upon her intention. It meant nothing, her
visit, she assured herself. It had no purpose beyond the exchange of
courtesies. But when she was leaving the house she paused. Should she
go? She went down the steps and through the gate, then paused again. She
returned to the house. She had an idea. She would take the children with
her. She called them, and while they gleefully dressed for the outing
she repeated to herself the word in which the idea of taking them with
her had come to her.

“A bodyguard!” she said.

The note of laughter she gave at the word had a tremulous sound.

Tremulous would well have described her manner when they were at
Field’s. She was asking herself as they went towards the City what it
was that she wanted to hear--that Field’s was doing very well without
her? That her department was not doing very well without her? Which?

She would not let her mind affirm which it was that she desired.

It appeared, when they arrived, that it was neither, nor anything at
all to do with the Bank. Her first words to the partners were of
smiling apology at bringing to precincts sacred to business, “a herd of
children.” That was a natural introduction of herself; it was an unusual
thing to do. But not natural the way in which she maintained the subject
of the children. It seemed that she had come to talk of nothing
else. Tremulous she was; talking, of the children, with the incessant
eagerness, and with the nervous eagerness, of one either clamant to
establish a case or frightened of a break in the conversation lest
a break should cause appearance of a subject most desperately to be
avoided.

Her bodyguard!

Mr. Field and Mr. Sturgiss were delighted to see her and expressed
themselves delighted to see the children. There was plenty in the bank,
coffers and strong-rooms and all sorts of exciting things, said Mr.
Field, that would amuse the small people, and when tea was done they
should be taken around to see them. In an inner holy of holies, behind
the partners’ parlour, a very exciting tea was made. A clerk was sent
out for a parcel of pastries and returned with an enormous bag, and
there was no tablecloth, nor no proper tea-table, and the children, much
excited, were immensely entertained.

Easy, while they were there, to make them the conversation’s centre.
But the meal ended and then became most evident her anxiety to keep the
chatter on the children. They became impatient to be off on the promised
exploration. She delayed it. Twice the clerk who was to conduct the tour
was about to be summoned. By a new gathering of general attention, she
stopped his coming. When at last he came she said she would be of the
party. The partners did not want that. The children did not want it.
“Mother, it will be much more exciting by ourselves.” She insisted.
She was aware for the first and only time in her life of a feeling
of nerves, of not being quite in control of herself, of making of her
insistence rather more than should be made.

“Well, stay,” said Mr. Sturgiss, “at least for a minute’s chat before
you join them.”

That was not possible, unless she was going to become hysterical, to
resist. The children trooped away. Her bodyguard!

She turned aside and it is to be remembered for her that, her face
concealed from the partners, she gave the tiniest despairing gesture
with her hands.

When, with the children, she was returning home, she was trying to
determine whether, while it was in suspense, she had or had not desired
to hear of the partners that which she had heard from them. They had
talked with her generally of the business. They had talked particularly
of the work of her department of the business. There was approaching all
the time the thing that sooner or later they must say. She was trembling
all the time to know how she would receive it. In whichever of its two
ways it came would she be glad or would she be sorry? She simply did not
know. She suddenly herself projected the point. She could not endure
any longer its delay. “And Miss Farmer,” she said. “How’s Miss Farmer
doing?” Miss Farmer, formerly one of her assistants, had on her
resignation taken her place.

Miss Farmer, replied Mr. Sturgiss, was estimable but--he opened his
hands and made with them a deprecatory gesture. “She’s not you. How
could she be you, or any one be you? We could replace Miss Farmer.
What’s the good? It’s you we’ve got to replace. We can’t replace you.”

Her heart had bounded.




CHAPTER II


That happened in the Christmas holidays, in January. In February was
Doda’s eleventh birthday. The child had friends rather older than
herself, neighbours, who for a year had been boarders at a school
in Surrey. She was desperately eager to join them there and it was a
promise from Rosalie that she should go when she was twelve, earlier if
she were good. On this eleventh birthday, which brought birthday letters
from the neighbours at the school and thus again brought up the subject,
“Oh, haven’t I been good?” cried Doda at the birthday breakfast. “Oh,
do let me go next term, mother. Father, do say I may.” Her eagerness for
school had been much fostered by Huggo’s holiday stories of school life;
and Huggo, as Doda now adduced, was leaving his preparatory and starting
at Tidborough next term; couldn’t she, oh, couldn’t she make also her
start then?

Harry said, “O grown-up woman of enormous years, think of your sorrowing
parents. How will you like to leave your weeping mother, Doda? How will
you like to leave your heart-broken old father?”

“Oh, I’d love to!” cried Doda.

The ingenuousness of it made her parents laugh.

“She’ll have her way, won’t she?” said Harry, when Doda, conscious, by
that laugh, of tolerance, had danced out of the room.

“I think she’d better,” said Rosalie.

The school was very well known to Rosalie. It was exclusive and
expensive; was limited to seventy girls, of whom twenty, under the age
of thirteen, were received in the adapted Dower House of the ancient
estate which was its home; and the last word in modernity was, in every
point of administration, its first word. It had been established only
eight years. The motto of its founders and of its lady principal was
“Not traditions--precedents!”

The subject came up again between Rosalie and Harry that evening and it
was decided that Doda should be placed there after the next holidays, at
the opening of the summer term. Harry declared himself, “in my bones” as
he expressed it, against boarding schools for girls, “But that’s my old
fogeyism,” said he. “It’s the modern idea that girls should have the
same training and the same chances in life as their brothers, and
there’s no getting away from the right of it.”

Rosalie said in a low voice, “To what end?”

He did not hear her. She had got out from the accumulation of papers
of her business life prospectuses and booklets of the school and he was
amusedly browsing over the refinements and advantages therein, not by
traditions but by precedents, set forth. “Mice and Mumps, Rosalie,”
 said he, “they not only do riding as a regular thing but ‘parents are
permitted, if they wish, to stable a pupil’s own pony (see page 26).’
Oh, thanks, thanks! ‘Mr. Harry Occleve, barrister-at-law, availing
himself of your gracious permission on page twenty-six, is sending down
for his daughter a coach and four with ‘ostlers, grooms, coachmen, and
outriders complete.’ Ha!”

She was just watching him.

He said after an interval: “Yes, there’s a lot of sound stuff here,
Rosalie. It’s convincing. Not that any one needs convincing on the point
less than you and I.” He quoted again. “‘And advance them towards an
independent and a womanly womanhood.’ And it talks further back about
how ‘Idle women’ will soon be recognised as great a term of reproach
as ‘an idle man.’ It’s sound. I like this booklet here that each
girl’s given, ‘To the Girl of the Future.’ It tells them all about an
independent career, makes no fancy picture of it, tells ‘em everything.
Did you read that?”

“A long time ago. It probably doesn’t tell them one thing.”

“What?”

“That they can always--chuck it.”

He looked up quickly. “Hull-o!”

She gave him no response to his expressed surprise and he laughed and
said, “D’you know, Rosalie, I don’t believe I’ve ever before heard you
use slang.”

“You taught me that bit, Harry.”

“Oh, I sling it about. When did I?”

“One day last holidays when it was just on a year since I’d left
Field’s. Just a year, you said, since I’d--chucked it. O Harry--”

There was a quality in her voice that might, from what she saw upon his
face, have been a tocsin’s roll. His face was as a place of assembly
into which, as it might be a people alarmed, there came crowding in
emotions.

He said, “What’s up?”

She said, “O Harry, you look out for yourself!”

There was much movement in his face. “Look out for myself?”

She said, “That came out of me. I didn’t know I was going to say it.
It’s a warning. It shows the fear I have.”

“Rosalie, of what, of what?”

“Harry, for you.”

“You’re going to say something you think will hurt me?”

“No, something you’ll have to fight--if you want to fight it. Harry,
perhaps I can’t go on like this. I want to go back to my work.”

He expired a breath he had been holding. “I was guessing it.”

“Before just now?”

“No, while you’ve been speaking. Only now. I asked you weeks ago if you
ever felt you regretted--”

She leant forward from the couch whereon she sat, and with an extended
hand interrupted him. She said intensely, “Look here, Harry, if it was
just regret I’d not mind and I would tell you No a hundred times, just
not to disturb you, dear. But when you asked me that you spoke, a minute
afterwards, of my having--chucked it, as if it was giving up sugar
or stopping bridge. Well, that’s why I’m warning you to look out for
yourself. Because, Harry, I don’t regret it. I’m craving to go back to
it, craving, craving, craving!” She stopped. She said, “Do you want me
not to go back, Harry?”

He looked steadily at her. “Rosalie, it would be a blow to me.”

She said, “Well, then!” and she leaned back in the couch as though all
now was explained.

He very gravely asked her, “Are you going back, Rosalie?”

“Would it be a crime, Harry, to go back?”

He said to her, “I believe in my soul it would be a disaster.”

She got up. “Come over here to me, Harry.”

He went to her and took the hands that she extended to him. “If you
think that, a disaster, and if to you it would be what you said, a blow;
then that’s what I mean by saying, Harry, you look out for yourself. I
don’t know if I’m going back. I want to go terribly, oh, terribly. There
was a woman I once knew told me that if a woman once gives herself to
a thing, abandons all else and gives herself to it, she never never can
come back from it. ‘They don’t issue return tickets to women,’ she said
to me. ‘If you give yourself,’ she said, ‘you’re its. You may think you
can get away but you never will get away. You’re its.’ She was right,
Harry. I believe I’ve got to go back. If you don’t want me to, well,
you look out for yourself.” She drew herself towards him by her hands.
“Harry, when I went down to Field’s with the children that day last
holidays I took them to be a bodyguard to me, to prevent me from being
captured. When they left me there alone for a few minutes, I turned away
and wrung my hands because I knew I was going to be terribly tempted. I
am terribly tempted. I’m being dragged.” She went into his arms. “Harry,
hold me terribly tight and say you don’t want me to go back.”

He most tenderly embraced her. “Don’t go back, Rosalie.”

She disengaged herself, and made a sound, “Ah!” as if, while he had held
her body, herself had held the fort of her solicitude for his desires
against the horde of her own cravings that swarmed about its walls.

How long?

There was a mirage in her face. While Easter came and Doda, in huge
spirits, made her start at school, and Huggo, boisterously elated, his
start at Tidborough, and Benji, much dejected at Doda’s going, his start
at Huggo’s former day school; and while the long summer term and the
holidays passed on, there was never again seen nor heard by Harry the
tenderness that had been in her face and in her voice when she had
warned him, “Well, Harry, you look out for yourself,” and when she had
asked him, “Harry, hold me terribly tight in your arms and say you do
not want me to go back.” There thenceforward did fill up her countenance
the boy, mutinous and defiant, that was her other self. It was almost
upon the morrow of that passage with him (whose poignancy the written
word has failed to show) that she had a revulsion from the attitude
she had then exposed to him. Avid now to go back to the life she had
abandoned, she was ferocious to herself when she remembered she had
asked him, “Would it be a crime, Harry, to go back?” A crime! “Horrible
traitor to myself that I was” (her thoughts would go) “to question it a
crime just to take up my life again! A crime! Horrible fool that I was
to be able, with no sense of humour, to give to so natural a desire an
epithet so ludicrous as crime! A crime! A right, a right!”

Worst of all, she had invited, she had implored, Harry when her longings
were manifest to reason with her. Her longings now always were manifest;
but when he reasoned with her it was out of the scorpions of her
revulsion that she answered him.

He once said, “It appears to me that your attitude is changed from the
night you first mentioned this.”

She said, “Harry, what’s disturbing me when we talk about it is not my
own case, it’s the general case. Here’s a woman--never mind that it’s
me--here’s a woman that has made a success in life, that has abandoned
it and that wants to go back to it. You argue she mustn’t. I could say
it’s monstrous. I don’t say that. I choose to say it’s pitiful. If it
was a man, he’d go. He wouldn’t think twice about it. And if he did
think twice about it, every opinion and every custom that he
consulted would tell him he was right to go. It happens to be a woman,
therefore--well, that’s the reason! It’s a woman--therefore, No.
That’s the beginning of the reason and the end of the reason. A
woman--therefore, No. Oh, it’s pitiful--for women.”

Harry questioned: “Every opinion and every custom would tell a man to
go? No, no. You’re taking too much for granted, Rosalie. He wouldn’t
go, necessarily, and he wouldn’t be advised to go, if he had duties that
pulled him the other way.”

She gave a note of amusement. “But that’s the point. He never would have
such duties. It’s notable that a man always makes his duties and his
ambitions go hand in hand. Yes, it’s notable, that.”

“Well, put it another way. Suppose it wasn’t necessary for him to go....
Suppose nothing depended on his going, much on his staying. That makes
the parallel, Rosalie.”

She said to him, “Ah, I’ll agree to that. Let that make the parallel.
They’d tell a man in such a case, ‘Man, take up your ambitions. You are
a man. You have yourself to think of.’ That’s what they’d say. Well,
that’s what I’m saying. ‘I am a woman. I have myself to think of.’”

He asked, “And shall you, Rosalie?”

She said, “I’m thinking--every day.”

The more she thought, the more she stiffened. This was the thought
against whose goad she always came--Why should she be hesitant? What a
position! What a light upon the case and upon the status of woman
that, just because she was a woman, she must not consider her own, her
personal interests! For no other reason; just that; because she was a
woman!

“I’ve shut a gate behind me,” she on another day said to Harry. “That’s
what I’ve done. I’ve come out of a place and shut the gate behind me
and because I am a woman I mustn’t open it and go back. That’s what a
woman’s life is--always shutting gates behind her. There aren’t gates
for a man. There’re just turnstiles. As he came out so he can always go
back--even to his youth. When he’s fifty he still can go back and have
the society of twenty and play the fool as he did at twenty. Can a
woman?”

“That’s physical,” said Harry. “A man much longer keeps his youth.”

She said then the first aggressively bitter thing he ever had heard her
say. “Ah, keeps his youth!” she said. “So does a dog that’s run free.
It’s the chain and kennel sort that age.”

She hardened her heart.

She looked back upon the days when she had discovered for herself the
difference between sentiment and sense, between sentimentality and
sensibility. She then had made her life, and therefore then her
happiness, by putting away sentiment and using sense for spectacles. She
told herself she now was ruining her life, and certainly letting go her
happiness, by suffering herself to bear the sentimental handicap.

The summer holidays came. It had been her obvious argument to Harry
that, now the elder children were at school, and Benji soon to be the
same, that reason for her constant presence in the home no longer was
advanceable. It had been Harry’s argument to her that there were the
holidays to remember. The holidays came. Huggo wrote that he wanted to
go straight from school to a topping time in Scotland to which he had
been invited by a chum; when that was over he had promised, and he was
sure he would be allowed, to have the last three weeks with another
friend whose people had a ripping place in Yorkshire. Doda came home and
Doda’s first excitement was that nothing arranged might interfere with
an invitation from mid-August to a schoolfellow whose family were going
to Brittany. So much for her holiday necessity! Rosalie thought. So much
for Harry’s idea of how the children would naturally long to spend the
vacation all together! Doda did not seem to have a thought for Huggo,
nor Huggo a thought for when he should see Doda. Neither of them, she
could not help noticing, had the faintest concern to be with Benji. She
and Harry with Benji went down to a furnished house in Devonshire, and
the other two, their plans in part curtailed, were brought to join them.
It was jolly enough. It would have been more truly jolly, she used
to think, if Doda had not largely divided her time between writing to
apparently innumerable school friends and counting the days to when she
might be released for the Brittany expedition; and if Huggo had not
for the first few days openly sulked at the veto on the Yorkshire
invitation. How independent they were, how absorbed in their friends,
how--different!

She hardened her heart.

The reopening of the schools drew on and return was made to London.
Huggo and Doda were made ready for school and returned to school. The
Law Courts reopened and Harry took up again his work. October! You
could not take up a paper without reading of the inauguration of the new
Sessions at all the universities and seats of education. October! The
newspapers that for months had been padding out vapid nothings became
intense with the activities of a nation back to the collar. October! The
first brisk breath of winter in the air! She could not stand this! Could
not, could not!

She said suddenly one evening: “Harry, I was down at Field’s to-day.
They want me.”

Ever since, by that simile of hers of the dog chained and kenneled,
she had put a bitter note into this matter between them, he had by this
means or by that contributed no share to it when she had presented it.
He once had referred to the dog incident. “I can’t talk to you when you
talk like that, old girl,” he had said. “That’s not us. We don’t talk
like that. You know how I feel about this matter. Talking only vexes
it.”

“Harry, I was down at Field’s to-day. They want me.” It was now to be
faced.

He put down the paper he had been reading and began to fill his pipe.
“This wants a smoke,” he said and smiled at her; and he then told her
that which the level quality of her voice, a note from end to end of
purpose, had informed him. “I think we’re getting to the end of this
business,” he said.

Her voice maintained its quality. “Yes, near the end, Harry.”

“Field’s want you. What are you going to do?”

“Going back.”

“I want you.”

“I’m not leaving you. I am with you, as I came to you!”

“The children want you.”

“I am not leaving the children.”

“It’s a question of home, Rosalie. It’s the home wants you.”

She shook her head.

“What are you going to do?

“Going back.”

“You’ve thought of everything?”

“Everything.”

“The children?”

“Harry, the children don’t want me in the way that children used to want
their mothers when I was a child. They don’t display the same affection,
not in the same way, that we used to. I wish they did. I came back
for it. It wasn’t there. They’re darlings, but they’re self-reliant
darlings, self-assured, self-interested.”

“They’ve a right to a home, Rosalie.” He paused. “And, Rosalie, I have a
right to a home.”

She said, “Have I no rights?”

“There are certain things--” he slowly said and paused
again--“established.”

She said quickly, “Yes, men think that. They always have. Well, I
believe that nothing is.”

He looked steadily before him. “If it’s not established that woman’s
part is the home part; if that is going to change, I wonder what’s going
to happen to the world?”

She said, “Men always do. They always have--wondered, and the future
always has changed right out of their wondering. I believe that the
future is with woman. I believe that as empires have passed, Rome,
Greece, Carthage, that seemed to their rulers the pillars of the world,
so will pass man’s dominion. Woman’s revolt--it’s no use talking of it
as that, as a revolt. Women aren’t and never will be banded. They’re
like the Jews. They’re everywhere but nowhere. But the Jews have had
their day; woman--not yet. They work, not banded, but in single spies.
In every generation more single spies and more single spies. In
time.... In every generation man’s dominion, by like degree, decreased,
decreased. In time.... I’m one of this day’s single spies, Harry.”

He said with a sudden animation, “Look here, let’s take it on that
level, Rosalie. In your case what’s the need? Call it dominion. I’ve
never exercised nor thought to exercise dominion over you.”

“But you’ve not understood, Harry. I gave up what was my life to me.
To you I’d only--chucked it. Oh, but that hurt! That man’s supreme
indifference, that is dominion.”

He said, “I’ll know it, dearest, for your sacrifice.”

She put out a hand as if to hold that word away. “Oh, trust not that.
They talk of the ennoblement of sacrifice. Ah, do not believe it. It can
go too long, too far, and then like wine too long matured... just acid,
Harry. I never said a bitter thing to you until--thus sacrificing. It is
the kennel dog again. If I went on I’d grow more bitter yet, more bitter
and more bitter. It’s why women are so much more bitter than men. It’s
what they’ve sacrificed. I’m going back, Harry. I’ve got to. You ask
me if I’ve thought of everything. I have; but even if I had not this
outrides it all. I have gone too far. She was right, that woman I told
you of, who said that for a woman, once she has given herself to a
thing, there is no comeback from it. I have tried. It is not to be
done.”

There was a very long silence. She said, “It’s settled, Harry.”

He said, “Nothing’s been said, Rosalie, that gets over what I have said.
There’s no home here while both of us are working. I have a right to a
home. The children have a right to a home. Nothing gets over that.”

She answered, “Then, Harry, give yourself a home. Give the children a
home.”

He said, “I am a man.”

She answered, “I am a woman.”




CHAPTER III


The thing goes now at a most frightful pace for Rosalie. One hates the
slow, laborious written word that tries to show it. There needs a
pen with wings or that by leaping violence of script, by characters
blotched, huge and run together, would symbolise the pace at which the
thing now goes. There’s no procession of the days. Immersed in work or
lost in pleasure, there never is procession of the days, so hurtling
fast goes life. They crowd. They’re driven past like snow across a
window pane. The calendar astounds. It is the first of the month,
and lo, it is the tenth. It’s the sixteenth--half gone!--while yet it
scarcely had begun; a day after the twentieth is the date; it’s next
the twenty-fifth; it’s next--the month has gone.... The month! It is a
season that has flown. Here’s Summer where only yesterday the buds of
Spring; here’s Winter, coming--gone!--while yet the leaves seem falling.

It was like that the thing now went with Rosalie.

They call it a race. It isn’t a race, living like that. It’s a pursuit.
Engaged in it, you’re not in rivalry, you are in flight. You’re fleeing
all the time the reckoning; and he’s a sulky savage, forced to halt to
gather up what you have shed, ordered to pause to note the things that
you have missed, and at each duty cutting notches in a stick.

That is his tally which, come up, he will present to you.

Well, best perhaps to take that tally stick to try by it to show the
pace at which the thing now went. Rosalie, when all was done, could run
the tally over (you have to) in thought, that lightning vehicle that
makes to crawl the swiftest agency of man’s invention: runs through a
lifetime while the electric telegraph is stammering a line; reads memory
in twenty volumes between the whiff and passing of some remembered scent
that’s opened them; travels a life again, cradle to grave, between the
vision’s lighting on and lifting from some token of the past.

All’s done; some years rush on; she sits in retrospection, that tally
stick in hand; and thought, first hovering, would always start for her
from when, returned to her career, the thing at frightful pace began to
go; and then, from there, away! from scene to scene (the notches cut by
reckoning in his stick) rending the womb of memory in dread delivery,
as it were flash on flash of lightning bursting the vault of night from
east to west across the world.

Her thoughts first hovering: There’s Huggo and there’s Doda and there’s
Benji! Her children! Her darling ones! Her lovely ones! Love’s crown;
and, what was more, worn in the persons of those darling joys of hers
in signal, almost arrogant in her disdain of precedent to the contrary,
that woman might be mother and yet live freely and unfettered by her
home, precisely as man is father but follows a career. Ah....

Away! The womb of memory is rent, and rent, delivers.

Look, there they are! She’s down with one or other at some gala at their
schools. It’s Founders’ Day at Tidborough, or it’s at Doda’s school on
Prize Day. Aren’t they just proud to be with her and show her off,
their lovely, brilliant mother so different from the other rather fussy
mothers that come crowding down! All the masters and all the mistresses
know the uncommon woman that she is. The children, growing older, know
it. “You must be very proud of your mother.” It has been said (the
self-same words) to each of them by their respective principals. Nice!
Nice to have your children proud of you!

Look, there’s Huggo telling her how the headmaster had said the thing
to him (she’s just walking with her Huggo across the cricket ground on
Founders’ Day). “And a sloppy young ass that heard him,” says Huggo,
“oh, an awful ass, asked me why the Head had said I must be proud
of you, and I told him, and I said, ‘I bet you’re not proud of your
mother.’ And he said, ‘Of my father, I am. He got the V. C. in South
Africa.’ So I said, ‘Yes, but proud of your mother?’ So this frightful
ass said--what do you think he said? ‘No, I’m not proud of my mother. I
don’t think I’d want to be. I only love her.’”

Huggo mimicked the voice in which the frightful ass had said this; and
Rosalie, at the words and at his tone, had across her body a sudden
chill, as it were physical. She wanted to say something. But it was the
kind of thing you couldn’t, somehow, say to Huggo, at fifteen. But she
said it. “Huggo, you do love me, don’t you?”

He turned to her a face curiously thin-lipped. “Oh, I say, mother, do
look out, some one might hear you!”

Her Huggo! (She wants to stop the passing scenes and to stretch out to
him across the years her arms.) Her Huggo! The one that first along her
arm had laid; the scrap that first within her eyes adoring tears had
brimmed; her baby boy, her tiny manling, her tiny hugging one, her first
born! It is in retrospection that she sits and there’s expelled for ever
from her face that aspect mutinous, intolerant, defiant, that used to
visit there. That, when she housed it, was the aspect of the young man
Ishmael whose hand was against every man. She is like Hagar now to be
imagined, sitting over against these things a good way off, as it were a
bowshot.

Strike on!

Her Huggo! Look, that’s the day they got that bad report of him from
school. She had questioned Harry about a letter in his post and, naming
the headmaster of Tidborough, “Yes, it’s from Hammond,” he had answered
her.

“About Huggo?”

“Yes, it’s about Huggo.”

Nothing more. They were beginning to have exchanges terse as that.

She said presently, “I suppose it would interest me, wouldn’t it?”

His face was very hard. “Do you want to know the answer I feel like
giving to that?”

“I’ve asked for it, haven’t I, Harry?”

“You shall have it. The answer is that I think what the letter says
implicates you.”

She preserved her composure. She by now had had practice in preserving
her composure. “What’s the matter, Harry?”

“Hammond says--as good as says--that Huggo will have to be withdrawn
from Tidborough.”

She knew perfectly well that this was only leading up to something. “May
I hear?”

“You may.” He took up the letter and read from it. “‘Apart from that,
and it would of course be the reason given--the other, I am confident,
is susceptible of change--apart from that, the boy has now twice failed
to keep his place in the school. If he does not get his remove in the
coming term I shall be compelled to ask you to remove him.’” He put down
the letter and looked at her. “That’ll be nice, won’t it?”

She made an appeal. “Harry, don’t. I mean, don’t talk like that. It
won’t happen.”

He softened in no degree. He said sternly: “It will happen.”

She persevered. “I’m quite sure it won’t. You’ve only got to talk
seriously to Huggo. This coming holidays you can get him some coaching.
He’s got brains.”

There was a steely note in Harry’s voice: “Oh, he’s got brains. He can
have coaching. It’s what he hasn’t got and what he can’t get that’s
going to get Huggo withdrawn.”

“What is it you mean?”

“A home.”

She slightly raised the fingers of her hands and dropped them. This
subject!

Harry said: “Hammond says more than I’ve told you.”

“I supposed he did. ‘Apart from that.’ Apart from what?”

“It’s Huggo’s character he’s writing to me about. This is what he says.
‘The boy, though young, has not a good influence in his house. If I may
suggest it, he does not, during the holidays, see enough of his home.’”

He folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. “Does it strike
you that is going to be easy for me to answer?”

“It might be easier, Harry, if your tone made it possible for us to
discuss it.”

He gave a sound that was glint, as it were, of the blade in his voice:
“Our discussions! I am a little tired of that blind alley, Rosalie.”

She said sombrely, “And I.”

“Will you suggest how the letter is to be answered?”

She said: “It’s plain. If you agree with Mr. Hammond, it’s plain. You
can say you will stop Huggo’s invitations. Harry, we’re not by any means
the only family that doesn’t spend the whole of its holidays together.
It’s rather the practice nowadays, young people visiting their friends.
If you think Huggo shouldn’t--you can say so.”

“Yes, I can say that. Tell me this. Is it going to give him a home?”

Her voice sprung from a sudden higher note. “Oh, you insist, you
insist!” she cried. “You speak of blind alleys, but you insist.”

He touched the letter. “This gives me ground for my insistence. This is
an outsider, a stranger, appreciating how we live. This is my son, at my
old school, condemned by how we live.”

She interjected, “A schoolmaster’s primeval animosity--blame the
parent.”

“Rosalie, a parent’s primeval duty. We are responsible for the children.
We have a duty towards them.”

She softly struck her hands together. “Ah, how often, how often, and
always worse! You said just now that I am implicated. It’s always I. You
say we have a responsibility towards the children. But you don’t mean
us, you mean me. Why I more than you? Why am I the accused?”

He began, “Because you--”

“Ah, don’t, don’t!”

But he concluded. “Because you are a woman.”

Her voice that had gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as to the
same reason and with the same words she’d made before, of weariness with
this thing, “Ah, my God, that reason!”

Strike on!

Look, there’s Huggo, failing again to get his remove, superannuated,
withdrawn. There’s Harry having a scene with the boy. There ought to be
tears. There are tears. But they’re in Harry’s voice and twice he wipes
his eyes. They’re not in Huggo’s.

Harry says to Huggo: “I say, I’m not going to be harsh; but, I say,
can’t you understand the disgrace; can’t you understand the shame,
old man? You’ve been at the finest school in England and you’ve had
to leave. You’re sixteen. Old man, when I was sixteen I got my footer
colours. I was the youngest chap in the team. You’re sixteen and you’ve
never even got a house cap and you’ve had to leave. Huggo, I’ve never
missed going down to a Founders’ Day since I went to Oxford. It’s always
been the day of the year for me. I don’t say I’ve ever done much in
life, but every time I’ve been down to Founders’ Day I’ve thought over,
in the train, any little thing I may have pulled out in the year and
I’ve felt, I’ve felt awfully proud to be taking it down to the old
school, so to speak. Old chap, the proudest, far the proudest of all,
was the year I went down when first you were there. I was proud. I’d
given a son to the place. I’d got a boy there. Another Occleve was going
to write the name up on the shields and rolls and things. It was the
year Garnett first came down as a Cabinet Minister. Huggo, I looked old
Garnett in the face with a grin. Whatever he’d done I’d got this much up
on him--he hadn’t given a son to the place. He hadn’t got a boy there.
That’s how I always felt. Well, old man, it’s all over. I can’t go
down to Founders’ Day ever again. I’ve never missed. Now--I’ve had to
withdraw my boy. I can’t go again. I couldn’t face it.”

He wiped his eyes. No tears in Huggo’s eyes. On Huggo’s face only a
look sullen and aggrieved; and sullen and aggrieved his mutter, “Well,
perhaps it was different for you. I couldn’t stick the place.”

She gasped out, “Huggo!” but Harry had heard, and Harry, perhaps in
offset to the emotion he had displayed, smashed his hand down on the
table before him and cried out, “Well, keep your mouth shut about it
then! Couldn’t stick it! What can you be? What can be the matter with
you? Couldn’t stick it! Tidborough! The finest school in the world!
Couldn’t stick it!”

She interposed, “Harry, dear! Huggo; Huggo, tell your father you didn’t
mean that.”

Huggo’s mumble: “I’m sorry, father.”

Harry’s deep, kind voice: “I’m sorry too, old man. It rather jarred.
Look here, this is all over. It’s just been a side-slip. I’ve forgotten
it. So has your mother. You just think over sometimes what I’ve said,
my boy. We’re fixing up this tutor’s for you. You start in fresh and go
like steam. Finest thing in the world a fresh start. Makes a side-slip
worth while. I’m going to be--I am--prouder of you than anything on
earth. My eldest boy! Like steam from now, old chap, eh?”

Strike on!

After that interview and when the boy had left the room--shambled out
of the room in that sullen, aggrieved air he would always assume under
correction--after that she and Harry had talked, most fondly. It was
all, the talk, that poignantly affecting “fresh start” business that
he’d begun with Huggo. Poignantly affecting because Harry, piling upon
his love for Huggo and his pride in Huggo, which she shared, his love
for his old school and his pride in it, which she could understand but
could not share, had been so bravely, cheerfully earnest and assured
about the future. “One who never turned his back but marched breast
forward.” The boy would be all right. Mice and Mumps, old lady, he’d be
all right! It was just a mistake, just a side-slip. He’d got the right
stuff in him, Huggo had, eh, old lady? They must just pull together to
help the boy, eh?

He paused the tiniest space at that and pressed her hand and looked at
her. She knew his meaning. If only....

He went on: This was a good place, this tutor’s down in Norfolk they
were sending him to, Harry was sure it was. It was a pity, of course,
he couldn’t go to another public school; but of course he couldn’t; they
wouldn’t take him; no use worrying about that. This tutor, this man they
were sending him to, was a first-class chap. Only took six pupils. Was
a clergyman. Understood boys and youths who hadn’t quite held their own
and wanted special coaching and attention. Huggo was keen on the idea.
After all, why shouldn’t he have disliked Tidborough? There were such
boys who didn’t like public-school life. There, there! Perhaps it was
the best thing that could have happened. Bet your life this was going
to be the making of old Huggo, this change. This tutor and the quiet,
self-reliant life there, each chap with his own jolly little bed-sitting
room, would prop him up and get him into Oxford when the time came and
make him no end happy and splendid.

“There, there, old lady,” said Harry, and patted her and kissed her
(she’d been affected). “There, there, it’s going to be fine. The rest is
just up to us, eh? We know the boy’s weaknesses. We know what Hammond’s
told us about him--home life and home influences and all that stuff, and
that’s easy; we’ll see the boy gets that, won’t we?”

She used to wring her hands at that, and crying “If only!” cry again
in desperation of excuse: “If only the war hadn’t come! If only the war
hadn’t come!”

The war was on then. It was 1915. “You see,” she used to appeal to the
arbitrament before which, watching these pictures, she found herself,
“you see, the war made everything so difficult, so impossible, so
frightful, so confused, so blinding. Sturgiss had left the Bank to do
war service in the Treasury. More than half the clerks had gone. We were
understaffed and badly staffed at every turn. How could I give it up
then? I don’t say I would have. I’m on my knees. I’ve thrown in my hand.
I’m not pretending anything or anyway trying to delude myself. I don’t
say I would have given it up and come home to make home life for the boy
and for them all. I don’t say I would. I’m only saying how infinitely
harder, how impossibly harder, the war conditions made it. There was the
understaffing--that alone. There was the cry about releasing a man for
the front--that alone. I was releasing half a dozen men. Field said I
was. I knew I was. How could I go back and be one of the women sitting
at home? That alone! How could I? And there was more than that. It
wasn’t only the understaffing. It was Sturgiss going. I’d been absorbing
the banking business for years. It was meat and drink to me. I’d had a
bent for it ever since the Bagehot ‘Lombard Street’ days. I’d nourished
my bent. I’d been encouraged to nourish my bent. The work was just a
passion with me. Sturgiss went. I went practically into his place. I’d
a position in banking that no woman had ever held, nor no banker ever
imagined a woman ever holding, before. It was Sturgiss, a partner, I’d
released for war service. It was Sturgiss’s, a partner’s, place I’d
got. How could I give that up? How could I? How could I? If only the war
hadn’t come. If only....” Strike on!

It isn’t all going as it should with the boy at the tutor’s. But wasn’t
it impossible to observe, at the time, that it wasn’t all going as it
should? Of course (her thoughts would go) it was her fault; but was
not the world, spiritual and material, in conspiracy against her, and
against Huggo, and against her other darlings, to make easy her fault?
Ah, that war, that war! Didn’t it unsettle everybody and everything?
Naturally it unsettled the boy down at the tutor’s. Naturally one did
not notice or foresee the trend of his unsettlement. Naturally it made
plausible the excuses that he made.

There he is, down there at the tutor’s. He wanted to do war work, not
sitting there grinding lessons. All the tutor’s pupils did. Naturally
they did. The boy couldn’t go in the army. He was too young. He was in a
rural district. He got doing land-work. They all did. It was supposed to
be done in leisure hours. Naturally it encroached on, and unfitted for,
work hours. “After all,” as the tutor wrote, “how can you blame the
boys? After all, it’s very hard to seem to try to check this patriotic
spirit.” After all! Oh, why do people say “after all” when they mean
quite the contrary? This was before all, this seductive escape
from uncongenial duties, precedent of all, influencing to all that
happened--after all. Naturally it interfered with scholastic work. That
was condoned. As naturally it interfered with discipline. That was
not mentioned by the tutor. If he was cognisant of it was not domestic
discipline everywhere relaxed “on account of the war”?

There Huggo is. These are his holidays. After the setback at Tidborough
he was to have spent all his holidays at home. He was not, for the
future, to go away on invitations. That war! He never spent any of his
holidays at home. How could the boy be tied down in London with this war
on? He made his land-work his excuse, most plausible. He spent all his
holidays with friends whose homes were in rural districts.

Then it turned out that he had not, as he had given out, been always
at the house of friends. He was found in cottage lodgings living with a
friend, a fellow-pupil at the tutor’s; on land-work truly, but in gross
deception, and in worse.

It came out quite by chance and in a way very horrible. Harry discovered
it. Harry, early in 1915, had been absorbed into the Home Office. His
work was very largely in connection with a special secret service body
dealing with spies. He examined in private arrested suspects. He advised
and he directed on criminal matters therewith connected. He was working,
under immense pressure, terrible hours. He was hardly ever in to dinner.
He often was away all night. He frequently was away travelling for days
together. When he was seen he showed signs of strain to Rosalie.

He came in one evening about nine o’clock. It was early in 1916. Huggo
was then seventeen. Rosalie heard him in the hall and heard that some
one was with him. She heard him, by the dining-room door, say, “You’d
better go in there and get something to eat. I’ll attend to you
presently.”

His voice was iron hard. Who was with him? What was the matter?

He came in to her. His face was iron hard. He shut the door. “Do you
know who I’ve got here with me? Do you know where I’ve been? Do you know
what’s happened?”

His manner was extraordinary. His voice was like heavy axes, thudding.
His face was dark and passionate, menacing. Happened? Things were always
happening in these appalling days. She said, “Oh, what is it, Harry?”

“It’s Huggo.”

“Huggo?”

“Huggo!”

Like axes! It seemed that, of his passion (and she never before had seen
passion in his face), he scarcely could speak. He fought for words. When
they came out they thudded out.

“Do you know where Huggo’s been this past month?”

“With the Thorntons, his friends.”

“He’s not. He’s lied. He’s been living with some blackguard friend in
rooms in Turnhampton, in Buckinghamshire.”

“Harry! Doing what? Land-work?”

“Land-work! Loafing! Drinking!”

“Drinking? Huggo?”

“Listen to me. This is what I’ve come to. This is what that boy’s
come to. I had to go down to this place Turnhampton about a spy they’d
arrested. He was to come up in the police court there this morning. They
took the other cases first. Court going to be cleared for my man. I sat
there, waiting. The second case--this is what I’ve come to--was my son,
my boy, Huggo, brought up from the cells where he’d spent the night.
My son! Drunk and disorderly. He didn’t see me. The police gave him a
character. I sat there and listened to it. My son! A visitor, the police
described him. Supposed to be working on some farm. Not a desirable
character in the village. My son! Always loafing about. Always in the
inn. Last night drunk. Assaulted the landlady. My son! Arrested. My
son!”

He turned away.

She cried, “Harry! What happened?”

He turned on her in a violence renewed. “I declare to you that if he had
gone to prison I would not have raised a hand to stop him. He’d had
the grace--or he’d all the time had the guile--to give an assumed name.
Would I have confessed, to save him, that he was my son? I believe I
couldn’t. He got off with a fine. I got hold of him. I’ve brought him
back. He’s here.”

She went to the bell. “I must get you some food.”

He stayed her. “Food! I’ll tell you what to get me. I’ll tell you what
to get that boy. Get me a home. Get him a home. That’s what’s caused
this. Do you know what he said to me coming up in the train? I said to
him, ‘Why are you always away like this? Why, in the holidays, are you
never at home?’ He said, ‘What home is there for me to come to? Who’s
ever there?’ He’s right. Who is? Are you?”

She said quietly, “Harry, not now. Dear, you are not yourself.”

He was not and continued not to be. “Well, answer my question. Are you
ever in the home?”

She implored, “Oh, my dear!”

He was not to be placated. “Where is the home?”

“Harry!”

“Where’s Doda?”

She began in her spirit to move. “Staying with friends.”

“Where’s Benji?”

“You perfectly well know. Staying with friends.”

“Where are you?”

She put her hand to her bosom. “Oh, beware me, Harry. Here.”

“For the night. Are you ever in the children’s home?”

“Are you?”

“That sophistry! I have my work!”

“I’ve mine.”

He smote his hand upon the mantelshelf by which he stood and turned and
left the room.

Strike on!

Of course it healed and was obliterated and all passed over. Of course
Harry forgave the boy. Of course he was handsome to the boy’s excuses.
Drunk! Of course it was just a slightly tipsy ebullition. Had been in
the hot sun in the fields all day and was affected by a too long slake
of beer. Assaulted the landlady! She’d been rough mannered and objected
to his noise and got in the way and he had pushed her. “The boy’s all
right,” Harry said to Rosalie after, the boy forgiven, he sat and talked
with her. “He’s got no vice. How could he have? It was wrong, it was
deceitful, going off like that to that place without telling us. But he
meant no harm. He’s explained. He’s genuinely sorry. He’s just got out
of hand a bit. They all have, the young people, in this war time. The
boy’s all right. He’s eighteen in a few months. I’ll see if I can speed
it up a bit getting him into the army. He’s magnificently keen. He’ll
do fine, God bless him. Think no more about it, old lady. In the whole
business I’m only sick with myself that I lost my temper with him as I
did--and with you, my dear, and with you.” And he put out his hand to
her.

“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward.”

“And with you.” Of course he was distressed he had been violent with
her. Of course that painful outbreak was healed, obliterated, put away.
He had expressed his utter regret. He’d been badly rattled with this
infernal war all that week; this business on the top of it had been
a most frightful shock to him. What had he said? Forgive, Rosalie,
forgive! Of course she had nothing to forgive. Forgiveness also was for
her to ask. As to the point thus violently raised, he saw, didn’t he,
the clear impossibility of her giving up her work, war work as much as
his own, at such a time? Not to say the unnecessity of it--the children
were growing up... it clearly could be done now. The position she
held...

He said, “I know, old lady.” He said, “I know, I know,” and sighed.

Ah, from that vision of him saying, “I know,” and sighing, and from the
mute appeal that then was in his eyes, from that--strike on!

Most retentive to her, as it had passed, of Huggo’s share in all that
episode had been that she from her expostulation with Huggo had not come
away with the same satisfaction as seemingly had Harry. She put before
the boy how terribly his father had felt the shame of it, how almost
broken-hearted he had been. “He idolises you, Huggo. You’re always his
eldest son. He thinks the world of you.”

Huggo took it all with that familiar air of his of being the party that
was aggrieved. He listened with impatience that was not concealed and he
had no contrition to display. “Well, mother, it’s all over. What is the
good of going on and on about it? I’ve had it by the hour from father.
He’s understood. What is the good?”

She very lovingly talked to him. He all the time had an argument.
He kept up his own case. He presently said, “And I do wish, mother,
especially now I’m going into the army soon, I do wish you’d drop that
‘Huggo.’ You can’t tell how I hate it. You might just as well call me
Baby. It’s a baby’s name.”

“Oh, Huggo, it was the name we loved you by.”

“Well, I can’t stick it. My name’s Hugh.”

Strike on!

There he is. He’s in the army. He’s utterly splendid in his uniform. How
proud of him she is! They no longer gave commissions direct from civil
life; but he’d been in the cadet corps at Tidborough and Harry was able
to get him direct into an officer cadet battalion. He’s off to France
in what seems next to no time. He’s home on leave and there’s nothing
that’s too good for him and her purse at his disposal when he’s run
through Harry’s generous allowance. He seems to get through an immense
amount of money on leave. He’s never at home. He’s often out all
night. Well, he’s on leave. He’s fighting for his country. You can’t be
anything but utterly lenient with a boy that’s fighting for his country.
He went back. Three days after he was supposed to have gone back Rosalie
came face to face with him in Piccadilly. He was with some flapper
type of girl, in the detestable phrase (as she thought it) by which the
detestable products of the war (as she thought them) were called. He was
just getting into a cab. She called out to him, astounded. She heard him
swear and he jumped into the cab and was driven away. She didn’t tell
Harry. Harry found out. It came out that the boy for overstaying his
leave was to be court-martialled. She did not know what Harry did. She
noticed in those days what a beaten look Harry’s face was getting. It
was, of course, the war strain; but it only was first evident to her in
that time of the court-martial. He scarcely spoke to her. She did not
know what he did, but she knew he had much influence and exerted it at
no sparing of himself. The boy got off with a severe reprimand and was
returned to France. And to be in France, out there, in that ever-present
shadow of death, was to be excused everything and to be forgiven
everything.

Miraculously the war ended. The boy had had rather more than two years
of it. He applied for immediate demobilisation as being a student, and
he was one of the batch that got away immediately on that ground. He
was nearly twenty then. Now what was he going to do? Oxford, of course,
Harry said, and then the Bar, as always intended. Huggo, larking about
in uniform long after he ought to have been out of it, was in immense
feather with himself. He didn’t say No and he didn’t say Yes to the
Oxford idea. All he said was that he voted all that wasn’t discussed the
very day he got back (it was more than six weeks since he had got back).
He surely, he said, was entitled to a bit of a holiday first, after
all he had been through. London seemed to be swarming with thousands
of young men who claimed they were entitled to a bit of a holiday first
after all they had been through. Huggo was never in the house. He had
picked up with a man, Telfer, whom he had met in France, a big business
man, Huggo described him as, and he seemed to spend all his time with
this man. Telfer was a much older man than Huggo. Huggo brought him to
dinner one night. It was rather a shock to Rosalie, meeting the man of
whom she had heard so much. Huggo had never said anything about his age.
He must have been quite forty. He had dull, cloudy eyes and a bad mouth.
He called Huggo “Kid,” using the word in every sentence, and it was easy
to see from Harry’s manner that Telfer was repellent to him. Easy, also,
and not nice, to see Telfer’s dominion over Huggo. Not nice to hear
Huggo’s loud, delighted laughter at everything addressed to him by
Telfer. Harry spoke less and less as the meal advanced. The two left
early; they were going to a music hall. When they had gone Rosalie and
Harry looked at one another across the table and by their look exchanged
a great deal.

“That’s a detestable companion for Huggo,” Harry said. “Rosalie, there’s
been enough of this. The boy must get to work.”

It appeared, in interviews following that evening, that Huggo was not a
bit keen on the Oxford idea. He wanted to go into business. He was not
clear as to precisely what kind of business, but he wanted the freedom
and the excitement of earning his own living, not to be cooped up at
the “Varsity” like back at school again. Harry took a firm line. The
boy resented the firm line. Well, anyway, he argued, he couldn’t go till
October, it was only June now; all right, he’d go in October--if he
had to. Harry made arrangements for some reading through the summer
preparatory to Oxford. It upset plans made by Huggo. He thought
it “uncommonly hard” that he should have to spend the whole summer
“swotting.” Oh, well, if he had to, he had to. He had an invitation for
a month for that immediate time to Scotland. The reading was arranged
to start a month ahead. He didn’t in the least want to be out of London
just when there was so much going on and all his pals here; but anything
was better than sticking this kind of life at home, father always at
him; so he’d go to Scotland; he supposed he was entitled to a bit of
country holiday before they cooped him up? He went to Scotland.

Twice during that month Rosalie thought she saw Huggo in the West End.
But London was full of young men of the Huggo type. It wasn’t likely.

It turned out to have been very likely. It turned out that Huggo had
never been in Scotland at all but in London all the time. And much worse
than that. One evening, towards the end of the so-called Scotland month,
Huggo unexpectedly walked into the house. Rosalie was sitting with Harry
in the dining-room over the end of dinner. Doda was upstairs putting
last touches to herself before going out to a dance. Doda was eighteen
then (it was 1919), had left school, and, with a large circle of
friends, was going out a great deal. Benji was still at school, at
Milchester. Harry had never resumed relations with beloved Tidborough.

The door opened and Huggo walked in. His face was very flushed and his
articulation a little odd. When, after greetings, he sat down, he sat
down with a curiously unsteady thud and gave a little laugh and said,
“Whoa, mare, steady!”

It appeared, after explanations, that he had come to talk about “this
Oxford business.” “I really can’t very well go to Oxford now, father. I
really ought to start in some money-making business now, and I’ve got a
jolly good opening promised me. I really ought to take it.”

The decanters were on the table. He had already taken a glass of port.
He filled another and drank it.

“The fact is, I’m--married.”

There were some hard and bitter things said between his father and the
boy. The boy fumbled--he obviously had been drinking--between would not
or could not say very much as to who it was that he had married.

Harry said, “Who are her people? That’s a plain question, isn’t it?”

Huggo, very red, increasingly difficult to understand, said, “It’s a
plain enough question. It’s a plain enough question. I’ve come here to
be perfectly frank and plain and plain enough question. The fact is I
don’t know very much about her plain enough people.”

Rosalie broke out of the frozen stupefaction that had numbed her.
“Huggo, you must know. You must know who her people are.”

Huggo turned a very slow gaze around from his father to his mother. He
looked at her. He said with astonishing violence, “Well, I tell you I
don’t. People! What have her people got to do with it? I haven’t married
her people. She’s my little girl and I’ve married her, not her people.
Isn’t that enough for you?”

Harry got up and went over to him. “Look here, you’d better run along.
You’re not in a fit state to talk to your mother. I’m not sure you’re
in a fit state to talk to any-body or to know what you’re saying. You’d
better go, my boy. We’ll go into this in the morning. Come round early
in the morning. We’ll settle it then.”

He was passing with Huggo through the door when Doda, equipped for her
dance, came running down the stairs. “Hull-o, Huggo! Why, I haven’t seen
you for weeks. Where have you been?”

Huggo, standing unsteadily, unsteadily regarded her. “Point is, where
are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I’ll bet you have!
I’ve seen you jazzing about the place when you haven’t seen me, Dods.
And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching you at the Riddle
Club the other night told me some pretty fierce--”

“Oh, dash, I’ve left my fan,” cried Doda, and turned and ran back up the
stairs.

Huggo called, “I say, Dods. I’m in a row. So’ll you be one day, if you
don’t look out for yourself.”

Doda’s voice: “Oh, dry up--you fool!”

Strike on!




CHAPTER IV.


Her Doda! The one that was her baby girl, that was her tiny daughter!
The one that was to be her woman treasury in which she’d pour her woman
love; that was to be her self’s own self, her heart’s own heart, her
tiny woman-bud to be a woman with her in the house of Harry and of
Huggo! Her Doda!

Look, there she is! There’s lovely Doda! She’s fourteen. It’s early in
1915, in the first twelve months of the war. (That war!) She’s at that
splendid school. She’s been there nearly three years. She loves it.
She’s never so happy as when she’s there, except, judging by her
chatter, when she’s away in the holidays at the house of one of her
friends. It’s at home--when she is at home--that she’s never really
happy. She’s so dull, she always says, at home. She always wants to be
doing something, to be seeing something, to be playing with somebody.
She can’t bear being in the house. She can’t bear being, of an evening,
just alone with Rosalie. “Oh, dear!” she’s always saying. “Oh, dear, I
do wish it would hurry up and be term time again.”

“Darling, you are a restless person,” Rosalie says.

“Well, mother, it is dull just sticking here.”

“You know how Benji loves to have you home, Doda. Benji simply lives for
you. I’ve never known a brother so devoted. You ought to think of Benji
sometimes, Doda.”

“Well, I can’t be always thinking of Benji. I’m surely entitled to be
with my own friends sometimes. I don’t ask Benji to be devoted to me.”

She’s strangely given to expressions like that: “I didn’t ask
for”--whatever circumstance or obligation it might be that was irksome
to her. “Not traditions--precedents!” The watchword of the school was
strangely to be traced in her attitude, still in her childish years,
towards a hundred commonplaces of the daily life. She was always
curiously older than her years. She seemed to have a natural bent
away from traditionally childish things and towards attractions not
associated with childhood. She did excellently well at the school. She
was, her reports said, uncommonly quick and vivid at her lessons.
She was always in a form above her years. Her friends, while she was
smallish, were always the elder girls, and the elder girls gave her
welcome place among them. “Perhaps a shade precocious,” wrote the lady
principal in one of the laconic, penetrating sentences with which, above
her signature, each girl’s report was terminated: and, in a later term,
“Has ‘Forward!’ for her banner, but should remember ‘not too fast’.”

“Gripes! I know what she’s referring to,” said Doda, seeing it, and
laughed, obviously flattered.

“Your expressions, Doda!”

“Huggo uses it.”

“They’re wretched even in Huggo. But Huggo’s a boy. You’re a girl.”

“Well, mother, I didn’t ask to be a girl.”

“Doda, that’s merely silly.”

“A lot of us say it, that’s all I know.”

“Then, darling, a lot of you are silly.”

“Oh, I shall be glad when next week I go to the Fergussons. It is dull.”

Look, there she is. She’s sixteen. She’s beautiful. She’s pretty as
a picture, and she knows she is. She’s grown out of the rather early
fullness of figure that had been hers. She’s slim and tall and straight
and supple and slender as a willow wand. If she had her hair up and her
skirts lengthened (skirts then were only starting on their diminution
to the knees), she’d pass for twenty anywhere, and a twenty singularly
attractive, curiously self-possessed, strikingly suggestive in her pale
and beautiful countenance, and in an alternating sleepiness and glinting
in her eyes; strikingly suggestive of, well, strikingly suggestive
according to the predilictions and the principles of the beholder.

This was in 1917. She was beginning rather to hate school now. She
wanted to be out and doing some war work of some kind. Oh, those
sickening scarves and things they were eternally knitting, that wasn’t
war work. It was fun at first. They were fed to death with doing them
now. She didn’t much want to go into a hospital or into any of these
women’s corps. They were a jolly sight too cooped up in those things
from what she’d heard. She wanted to go into one of the Government
offices and do clerical work. Several of the school Old Girls who had
been there with her were doing that and it was the most ripping rag. Of
course you had to work, and of course it was jolly good patriotic work,
but you had a topping time in many ways. That was what she wanted to do.
Oh, mother, do let her chuck school now and get to it! Not till she was
seventeen? Well, it was sickening. Well, it was only another term, thank
goodness.

It was in the holidays--in her brief days at home of the holidays--in
which these wishes were expressed, that Rosalie found Doda was
corresponding with officers at the front.

Doda was appallingly untidy in her habits. She was out one evening to a
party--she managed to get a considerable number of parties into her dull
days at home. Rosalie, come in from Field’s, peeped into her bedroom to
find her. She had not known that Doda was going out. The bedroom cried
aloud that Doda had gone out. Drawers were open and articles of dress
hanging out of them. One drawer, no doubt stubborn in its yieldings, was
bodily out in the middle of the room. Clothes were on the floor.
Clothes strewed the bed. Powder was all over the mirror. It was as if a
whirlwind had passed through the room.

“Powder!” murmured Rosalie.

The state of the room dismayed her. The intense orderliness of her own
character forbade her ringing for a maid. She simply could not look at
untidiness like that without tidying it. She started to tidy. Doda’s box
was open. Its contents looked as if a dog had burrowed in it, throwing
up the things as he worked down. If anything was to go in, everything
must first come out. Rosalie lifted out an initial clearance.

There lay scattered beneath it quite half a dozen photographs of
officers in khaki.

There were all inscribed. “To the school kid.” “Wishing you were here.”
 “With kisses.” “Till we meet.” And with slangy nicknames of the writers.
There lay with them a number of letters, all in their envelopes. There
lay also a sheet of paper covered in Doda’s bold handwriting. It began
“Wonderful Old Thing.”

Rosalie had not touched these evidences of an unknown interest in Doda’s
life. She stooped, staring upon them, the lifted bundle of clothes in
her hand. The stare that took in “Wonderful Old Thing” took in also the
first few lines. They were not nice. But she oughtn’t to read it. One
didn’t do that kind of thing. She replaced the bundle and closed the
box. Then she tidied the room and wiped the mirror.

Early next morning, immediately on coming out of her bath, she went in
to Doda. She opened the door softly and she distinctly saw the lids of
Doda’s eyes flash up and close again.

“Doda!”

Doda pretended to be asleep. Rosalie had sat up for Doda the previous
night but had said nothing to her either of her discovery or of going
to an invitation without having told her. Doda wasn’t pretending to be
asleep because she feared trouble. She was pretending to be asleep just
because she had no wish for an early talk with her mother.

There was a little pang at the heart of Rosalie.

But it was just that the child wasn’t demonstrative of her affections.
None of them were. Even Benji not really what you would call
demonstrative. How beautiful the child was! Her Doda! How little she
ever saw of her!

She called her again.

Doda opened her eyes. “Hullo, mother.”

Just that. No more. They were different, the children.

She sat down on Doda’s bed and began to talk to her. Tidiness! “Doda,
your room as you left it last night when you went out was simply
terrible. How can you?”

“Oh, I can’t be tidy,” said Doda. “I simply can’t. It’s no good trying.”

“Darling, you ought to try. It’s so odd. I’m so fearfully tidy. It’s
almost a vice with me. One would have thought you’d have had it too.”

Doda said indifferently, “I don’t see why.” She said, “Oh, I am sleepy.
It’s a matter of teaching when you’re a kid, that sort of thing. You’re
tidy, but you never taught me to be tidy.”

Rosalie said some more of encouragement to tidiness. She then said, “And
there’s another thing, Doda. I think you ought not to have rushed off
like that to the Trevors last night without telling me.”

“Mother, you knew where I was. I told the maids.”

“You should have consulted me, Doda.”

The child assumed the Huggo look. “Mother, how could I? They only asked
me on the telephone at tea-time. How could I have consulted you?”

“In the same way as you were invited. On the telephone.”

“Well, I never thought about it. Why should I if I had? I knew you’d
have agreed. You wouldn’t have stopped me, would you? It’s dull enough,
goodness knows.”

“Doda, what I’ve come in to talk about is this. When I was tidying your
room last night--”

Doda sat up. “Did you tidy my room?”

“I couldn’t possibly leave a room like that. Well, I went to tidy your
box--”

“I’ll get up,” said Doda. She jumped very quickly out of bed and put on
a wrapper and her slippers. “Yes, well?”

“Are you writing to men at the front, Doda?”

“Every girl is. It’s a thing to do. It helps them.”

“Are they friends of yours, dear? Personal friends.”

“They’re brothers of girls I’ve stayed with.”

“All?”

“Practically all. There’re not more than two or three. Lonely soldiers,
they’re called. They used to advertise. It helps them. There’s no harm
in it, is there?”

“I haven’t suggested there is, Doda.”

“I can see you’re going to, though. If you ask me--” She stopped.

“I don’t think I like the idea, quite. I never did when I heard of it
being done. Why should they send you their photographs?”

“But what’s the harm? Why shouldn’t they?”

“Darling, it’s I am asking you. I’m your mother.”

“Well, if you ask me--” Doda walked over to the window. She stood there
a moment looking out. She suddenly turned. “If you ask me, I don’t
think it’s right to--Of course if you think it right to--if you’ve been
reading my letters--”

“Doda, I haven’t. I just saw them there. But I’d like to read them,
Doda. May I?”

“They’re private letters. I don’t see how you can expect me to show you
private letters.”

Rosalie went over to Doda and stood by her and stroked her hair. “Doda,
I think we’ll look at it like this. Let me read the letters and we’ll
talk about them and see if it’s nice to go on writing to the men, in
each individual case. That certainly you shall do, continue writing,
if it all seems nice to us, together, Doda. If you won’t show them to
me--well, let us say if you’d rather not show them to me--then I’ll ask
you just to burn them and we’ll forget it.”

Doda stepped violently away from the hand that stroked her hair. “No. I
won’t show them.”

“Then it’s to burn them, Doda.”

Doda looked slowly around the room. Her face was not nice. She said
sullenly, “There’s no fire here.”

“Bring them down with you to the breakfast-room. Your father will have
gone. We’ll see Benji’s not there.”

She went to Doda and kissed her on the forehead. Doda shut her eyes. Her
hand on Doda’s shoulder could feel Doda quivering. She went to the door
and at the door said, “And the photographs, dear. I should bring them
too.”

She had long finished breakfast when at last Doda came down. The tall,
slim, beautiful and pale creature appeared in the doorway. She walked
towards the fire, her head held high, her brown hair in a thick tail to
her waist. She had a packet in her hands. As she began to stoop over the
fire she suddenly uprighted herself and turned upon her mother. She said
violently, “Perhaps you’d like to count them?”

Rosalie said very softly, “Doda!”

Doda bent to the flames and pressed the packet down upon them. She stood
watching them mount about it. A half-burnt photograph slid onto the
hearth. She gave a sound that was a catching at her breath and swiftly
stooped and snatched the burning fragment up and cast it on its fellows.
The leaping flames died down. She turned violently towards Rosalie,
seated at the table watching her, her heart sick. That tall, slim,
beautiful creature whose face had been pale and was habitually pale was
in her face crimson, her slight young bosom heaving, her eyes, so often
sleepy, flashing, her young hands clenched. “I call it a shame!” Her
voice was high and raw. “I call it a shame! I call it wicked! I call it
abominable! I call it an--an outrage!”

Rosalie said, “Doda! Doda, I haven’t reproached you. I haven’t reproved
you. If they had been letters you could have shown me, yes, then a
shame--”

The child called out, “I’m nearly seventeen! I call it an outrage!”

Rosalie got up and went to her. “Darling, they couldn’t be shown.
They’re just burnt. They’re forgotten.” She put out inviting arms. “My
poor Doda!”

That child, almost touched by her arms, brushed herself from the arms.
“Why should I have things like this done to me by you?”

“Doda, I am your mother. You have a duty--”

“Well, I won’t have a duty! Why should I have a duty? I didn’t ask to
be born, did I? You chose for me to be born, didn’t you? I didn’t choose
it. I’ll never forget this. Never, never, never!”

Tears rushed into her eyes and leapt from her eyes. She gave an
impassioned gesture. She rushed from the room.

Strike on!

Look at her. There she is. She’s only eighteen but she’s woman now.
Grown-up. “Out,” as one would have said in the old and stupid days, but
out much wider than the freest budding woman then. It’s 1919. They’ve
caught, the rising generation, the flag of liberty that the war flamed
across the world; license, the curmudgeons call it; liberty, the young
set free. It’s 1919. She’s been a year war-working in one of the huge
barracks run up all over London for the multitudes of women clerks the
Government departments needed and, the war over, not too quickly can
give up. She loves it. She’s made a host of friends. Her friends are all
the girls of wealthy parents, like herself, or of parents of position if
not of means; and all, like her, are far from with complaint against the
war that’s given them this priceless avenue away from home. She loves
it. Of course she doesn’t love the actual work. Who would? What she
loves is the constant titillation of it. The titillation of getting down
there of a morning and of the greetings and the meetings and the rapt
resumptions of the past day’s fun; the titillation of watching the clock
for lunch and of those lunches, here to-day, to-morrow there, and of the
rush to get back not too late. The titillation of watching the clock
for tea, and of tea, and then, most sharpest titillation of them all,
watching the clock for--time!; for--off!; for--out!; away! That is
the charm of it in detail. The charm in general, as once expressed to
Rosalie by one of Doda’s friends brought in to tea one Sunday is, “You
see, it gets you through the day.”

That’s it. The night’s all right. There’s nearly always something doing
for the night. It’s just the day would be so hopeless were there not
this lively way of “getting through the day.” That’s it, for Doda.

Until she found her feet--not in her office, but at home at first
emergence from her school--until she found her feet she often used to be
kept uncommonly late at office. In a very short while she found her
feet and that excuse no longer was put forward. Every girl of Doda’s
association was on her feet in 1919; and for Doda very much easier, at
that, than for the generality, to establish her position in the house.
By 1920, when she was nineteen, she was conducting her life as she
pleased, as nineteen manifestly should. In 1921, when she was twenty,
the war work was over and she was “getting through the day” much as she
lived the night. It was pretty easy to get through the day in 1921. That
which the curmudgeons called license, and liberty the free, was in 1921
held by charter and by right prescriptive.

Look at her. There she is. She’s lovelier yet, if that which was
her budding loveliness could bear a lovelier hue. She’s always out
somewhere, or she’s always off somewhere, or she’s always coming in from
somewhere. Her eyes, in presentation more pronounced, have always got
that sleepy look or got that glinting look. She never talks much at
home. She seems to keep her talking for her friends and she never
brings her friends home. She’s on good terms with Rosalie. That’s the
expression for it. She was to have been a woman treasury into which was
to be poured by Rosalie all her woman love. She was to have been a woman
with her mother in the house of Harry and of Huggo. But that’s all done.
She’s not a daughter to her mother. She never asked to be born to her
mother, as once she told her mother, and though that never now again is
said it is the basis of her stand. She owes no obligations. They just
meet. They get on very pleasantly. She’s on good terms with Rosalie.

It is odd--or else it isn’t odd but only natural--that in all the
pictures seen by Rosalie there scarcely is a picture that ever shows
the children all together. They hardly ever, within the compass of
her pictures, were together. As in their schoolhood, so much more in
adolescence, they never showed a least desire for one another’s company.
They had their friends, each one, and much preferred their friends.
You’d not, it’s true, say that of Benji; but Benji in fraternal wish had
to take what was offered him and there was nothing offered him by Doda;
by Huggo less than nothing.

Benji!

Look, here’s the Benji one; the good, the quiet, gentle one; the one
that never gave a thought of trouble, Benji.

Her Benji! The one that came after disfavour, after remorse; that came
with tears, with thank God, charged-with-meaning tears. The littlest
one. The one that was so tiny wee beside the big and sturdy others. Her
last one! Her Benji!

Look, there he is. Always so quiet, gentle, good. Always, though
snubbed, so passionately fond of Doda. Look, there he is. He’s at
Milchester, in his spectacles, the darling! He’s always in his books. He
isn’t good at games. He does so well at school. Oh, isn’t Harry proud of
him and fond of him! Oh, doesn’t Harry often sigh and wish he could
have gone to Tidborough to win those prizes and those honours there. But
Tidborough’s closed to Harry, Harry says. Look, there goes Benji! It’s
1919. He’s sixteen. It’s Speech Day at Milchester. He’s in the Sixth.
He’s won all those prizes. She’s holding two and Harry’s holding three,
and there he goes to take the Heriot Gold Medal. All the great hall is
simply cheering Benji! The Head is saying that he’s the youngest boy
that’s ever won the Heriot. Look, there’s the Bishop handing it, and
shaking Benji by the hand, and patting Benji on the back, and saying
something to him. You can’t possibly hear what it is, every one is
cheering so. Look, here he comes with the medal, in his spectacles, the
darling! She can scarcely see, her eyes are brimming so. Harry’s quite
shameless. Harry’s got tears standing on his cheeks and he’s set down
the prizes and is stretching both his hands out to the boy. Feel, that’s
his hand--her Benji’s hand--snuggled a moment in hers, and then he turns
to his father and is eagerly whispering to his father, his spectacles
rubbing his father’s head, the darling! He’s more demonstrative to his
father than he is to her. She feels it rather sometimes. He’s awfully
sweet to her, but, you can’t help noticing it, it’s more his gracious
manner than the outpouring she’d give anything to have. It’s funny how
he always seems the tiniest atom strange with her as if he didn’t
know her very well or hadn’t known her very long. It sometimes pains a
little. He’s different with his father. He loves being with his father.
And doesn’t Harry love having the boy with him! Harry idolises the boy.
Of course Huggo is Harry’s eldest, and whatever Huggo’s disappointments,
these men--at least these perfect Harry type of men--have for their
eldest boy within their hearts a place no other child can quite exactly
fill. There’s some especial yearning that the eldest seems to call.
There’s some incorporation of the father’s self, there’s some reflection
that he sees, there’s some communion that he seems to find, that makes
“My eldest son” a thing apart. But, with that reservation, and that’s
ingrained in men, it’s Benji that’s the world to Harry. He’s going to
Ox-ford. He’s going to have the Bar career that Huggo wouldn’t take. But
Harry thinks there’s some especial wonders going to come to Benji. He
says the boy’s a dreamer. He says the boy’s a thinker. “Benji’s got
something rare about him, Rosalie,” he says. “That boy’s got a mark on
him that genius has. You wait and see, old lady. It’s Benji’s going to
make the old name shine!” Strike on!

It is odd, sad, significant, that there is scarcely a picture that shows
together those three children, or even two of them. It’s 1921 now and
drawing very close to Finis; but always the old detachment, the seeming
want of mutual love, appears to hold the three apart. Doda is sometimes
glimpsed, no more, with Benji, always putting off or chilling off her
brother for her friends; sometimes she’s seen with Huggo, meeting him
and he her, more like an acquaintance of their sets than like fruit
of the same parents; familiar, apparently, with one another’s lives:
referring to places of amusement by both frequented, as had been done,
in instance, on that night of Huggo’s announcement of his marriage when
with a note that rung sinister he had bantered Doda and she had turned
and run upstairs. But no more than that. The children seem to have no
mutual love. They’re different.

It’s 1921. Huggo was scarcely ever seen now. He had married in haste and
had in haste repented. He also had played a trick, involving a sum of
money, on his father. His wife, as it appeared, had been met at some
dancing club and the brief courtship had continued anywhere but at her
home. Of her home Huggo knew only what she told him; and what she
told him was only what she could invent. She was then, at their first
meeting, in the uniform of a war service corps to which she belonged.
She said her father was a clergyman.

“A clergyman’s daughter!” cried Huggo bitterly, acquainting Rosalie
only three months after his marriage of his marriage’s failure. “A
clergyman’s daughter! That’s what they all say--those! Wasn’t I a fool
to be caught out by that! Oh, wasn’t I a fool! If you want to know what
she really was, she was a teashop waitress, in the city somewhere. If
you want to know what her reverend father in the country was, is, he
doesn’t live in the country; he lives in Holloway, and he doesn’t live
in a rectory in Holloway, he lives in a baker’s shop. That’s what he is,
a baker! That’s what I’ve done for myself, married a waitress! Yes, and
then you, you and father, when she comes whining here and complains I
ill-treat her and keep her without money, you two take her part and send
her back to me with your championship and get me here to pijaw me about
my duty to my pretty young wife! Well, now you know, now you know, and
you can tell father what my pretty young wife is--how she deceived me.
Deceived me! Now you know.”

Rosalie said, “Huggo, you deceived her.”

Huggo had been leaving and now very violently went. “That’s your tone,
is it? I might have known! That’s all you can say, is it? To see me ruin
my life and then reproach me! Ruin my life! It’s not I that’s ruined
my life. It’s you. There, now I’ve told you! I can see things now. What
sort of a chance have I ever had? What sort of a home have I ever had?
Have I ever had a mother? When I was a kid did I ever have a mother like
other kids have? I can see things now. A mother! I can’t ever remember a
time when I wasn’t in the charge of some servant or governess or other.
You said this afternoon before father that I didn’t love you. Did
you ever teach me to love you? By God, I can’t remember it. By God, I
can’t.”

Strike on!

Also that trick, touching a sum of money, upon his father. When he first
made known his marriage, and it was obvious he must have his way and be
set up to start in life, he had also, as he had said, the chance of a
lucrative business. It was the kind of thing he liked. It was the kind
of thing he was keen on. It was a motor-car business. There was a little
syndicate that was putting a new car on the market. They’d got works,
just outside London somewhere. They’d got show-rooms in the West End.
And they’d got an absolutely first-class article. That chap Telfer was
one of the directors; a first-class chap called Turner was another;
they’d let him in for eight thousand pounds and he’d be absolutely set
up for life and be pulling in an immense fortune in no time. You will,
won’t you, father?

Of course Harry forgave the boy, his eldest son. The marriage was done,
what was the use of being unkind or stupid about it? Of course Rosalie
welcomed the wife, Lucy, the prettiest creature, a tiny shade common,
perhaps, but a sweet little soul with always about her a pathetic air of
being afraid of something (of when it should come out precisely what she
was, as the event proved). Of course Harry paid over the eight thousand
pounds. Huggo took, “to start with,” as he said, a tiny furnished flat
in Bayswater. Rosalie installed him and his bride therein and left him,
on their first night there, ever so gay, so confident, so happy. Her
Huggo!

In two months it all came out. Lawyers are notoriously lax in making
their own wills. Harry, who could master a case quicker than any man at
the Bar, and could see to the soul and beyond it of a hostile witness a
minute after getting on his feet to cross-examine, was fooled blind by
the syndicate that was going to put the absolutely first-class article
on the market. Whether it was that there never had been a business, and
that Harry’s inspection of works, visits to show-rooms, and examination
of books, was all part of an elaborate swindle carried out with the aid
of some one who possessed these accessories; or whether it was that the
whole thing was bought up cheap merely to sell at a profit, was never
clearly known to Harry and to Rosalie. Harry was too grieved to pursue
the shock. “I’ll take not a step further in the matter, Rosalie,” Harry
said. “I can’t bear to find the boy out deeper. It’s done. There’s no
sense in being stupid or unkind about it.”

What happened was that the car enterprise never was an enterprise at all
except an enterprise to get eight thousand pounds into the possession
of the syndicate. Nothing ever was properly announced by Huggo. It just
“came out.” It “came out” that the syndicate was not established in the
West End show-rooms but in three rather dingy offices in the city. It
“came out” that the syndicate was not running a motor-car business but
a business cryptically described as “Agents.” Huggo said disaster had
overtaken the car enterprise and that the syndicate, rescuing what
remained of the smash, had pluckily set up on another line. He thought
he could scrape along. It was a knockout of course, but he thought he
could scrape along.

“But what I can’t make out, old man,” said Harry, when Huggo had
stumbled through an entirely non-explanatory explanation of the
syndicate’s business in its new capacity as agents, “What I can’t
make out, old man, is why you should trade under another name. Why,
‘So-and-So, and So-and-So, and So-and-So, Agents’--I can’t ever remember
the names? Why not ‘Telfer, Occleve and Turner’?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, father--I want you to know everything
without any concealment--”

“I know you do, old man. I know you do.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, that’s just a bit of useful swank. The names
we’re trading under are swagger names and we think it sounds better.”

“Occleve sounds pretty good to me, Huggo. We’ve been a good long way on
Occleve, the Occleves.”

“Well, that’s what they think, father, and of course, as I’ve told you,
they know infinitely more about business than I do. They’ll explain the
whole thing to you any time you like. It’s all absolutely above-board,
father.”

“My dearest old boy, don’t talk like that. Of course it is. We’re only
so grieved, your mother and I, that you should have had such a setback
so early. But remember, old man, the great thing is not to let your wife
suffer. No pinching or screwing for her, Huggo. Always your wife first,
Huggo. We’ll give you at the rate of three hundred a year just until
all’s going swimmingly, and that’s to keep Lucy merry and bright, see?”

It was shortly after that it all came out that the thing was a ramp, the
motor-car business never in existence; shortly after that it came out
Huggo was neglecting his wife; shortly after that the high words to
Rosalie, telling her how his wife had deceived him; shortly after that
that the syndicate, amazingly prosperous, moved into offices better
situated and handsomely appointed; shortly after that it came out that
the business of the syndicate was in some way connected with company
promotion.

Harry, seen among these developments, was not the man he used to be.
He was at the crest of his career at the Bar, working enormously and
earning richly, but the old bright, cheery way had gone from Harry.
There was permanently upon his face, and there was intensified, the
beaten look that Rosalie first had seen on that night, in the war, when
there had been the Huggo drinking business and when for the first and
only time he had spoken passionately to Rosalie. When he now was at
home he used to sit for long periods doing nothing, just thinking. When
sometimes, home earlier than he, Rosalie saw him coming up the street
towards the gamboge door she noticed, terribly, the bowed shoulders,
the weary gait, the set, careworn face. She used to run down then to the
famous gamboge door and open it and greet him and his face used to light
up in the old way, but it was not the same face, and the effect of its
radiation therefore not the same. It was not that the face was older. It
was that its aspect was changed.

He used to look up from that chair where he sat just thinking, when
Doda, butterflied for the evening, butterflied across the room, and used
to say, “Out again, Doda?” He then would relapse back into his thoughts.
He had a habit of getting up suddenly and rather strangely wandering
about from room to room of all the principal rooms of the house, just
standing at the door of each, and looking in (they were all empty of
inhabitants), and then coming back and sitting again in the chair and
just sit, thinking.

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

She said more than once when he returned from such a tour, “Dear Harry,
looking for anything?”

He’d say rather heavily, “No; no, dear. Just having a look around.”

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

But he used to be enormously brightened up when Benji came home. Benji
was just at Oxford then, eighteen. He was a different man when Benji was
at home. He used to say, “Rosalie, that boy’s going to make a name for
himself in the world. My heart’s wrapped round that boy, Rosalie. Ay,
me! I wish he’d been our eldest, Rosalie.”

That was because he couldn’t tear away the wrappings of his heart from
about his eldest. Men can’t.

It used to pain the heart of Rosalie.

Of course, with everything now known, Huggo was forgiven. Huggo was
prosperous now, almost aggressively prosperous. He kept a car. The
syndicate, whatever it actually did, was obviously doing enormously
well. What was the good of being stupid and unkind to the boy now that,
at last, he had found his feet? But Huggo scarcely ever came to the
house. He had virtually left Lucy. Lucy lived on in the originally-taken
furnished flat in Bayswater. Huggo had rooms somewhere, no one quite
knew where, and lived there. Rosalie used to get Lucy to the house
sometimes, but Lucy was never at her ease on these visits, and Doda, who
sympathized entirely with Huggo in the matter, very much disliked her
and would not meet her. Lucy was in bad health and she was going to have
a baby. Her health and her condition made her look much more common than
she used to look.

Then the baby was born; a little girl. Poor, grateful Lucy called it
Rosalie. She told Rosalie that Huggo said he didn’t care what the baby
was called. He was very angry about the baby. “He was worse than usual
when he was here last week,” said Lucy. “I think he’s got something on
his mind. I think he’s worrying about something. Oh, he was sharp.”

Lucy was very ill with the birth of her baby. She didn’t seem able to
pick up again from her confinement. She kept her bed. Then, suddenly,
she developed pneumonia. The maternity nurse, paid by Rosalie, was still
in attendance. Rosalie sent in another nurse, and on that same night,
going straight to the sick bed from Field’s, and then coming home very
late, told Harry, who was waiting up for her, that the worst was feared
for Lucy. She then said, “Harry, if anything happens, I think we’ll have
that baby here. It will practically be a case of adopting the child.”

Harry agreed.

“I’d get in a nurse for her, the new little Rosalie.” She sighed.

“Yes, yes,” said Harry.

She said after a little, “Harry, the nurseries in use again!”

He sat there as he was always sitting, thinking.

She went over to him. “Dear, won’t you like the nurseries to be in use
again?”

He said slowly, “I will, very much, Rosalie. It’s lonely, these empty
rooms. I will very much--in some ways.”

Rosalie knew what Harry meant. She touched his hand. “Dear, I think it
can be made different.”

Harry knew what Rosalie meant. He pressed the hand that touched his own.
“That’s all right, Rosalie. That’s all right, dearest.”

Rosalie was down early next morning. She desired an early breakfast and
to go on to see Lucy before Field’s. It might be necessary to stay the
day with Lucy. There was also Huggo. What was Huggo doing? Overnight
Rosalie had seen Doda, come in late from an evening with a very intimate
friend of hers always known, through some private joke of Doda’s, as
“the foreign friend.” The foreign friend, not in the least foreign but
English, was a young married woman living apart from her husband. Doda
had brought her to the house once. She was very pretty and a cheery
soul. She would have been called fast when Rosalie was a girl. In 1921
she would almost, in the manner she presented to Rosalie, have been
called slow. Doda and she were greatly attached.

Doda, overnight, going straight upstairs to bed, had said, “Have you
seen Huggo to-day? He’s in a scrape of some sort.”

“Oh, Doda, what kind of a scrape?”

“He didn’t tell me. I ran into him quite by chance coming away from a
theatre with the foreign friend. We both thought he was rather badly
rattled.”

“Was he going on to Lucy? Did he know Lucy was very ill indeed?”

Doda said, “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. Is she?” and indifferently
passed upstairs.

Rosalie at her early breakfast was thinking what news the day would
give of Lucy and of Huggo. She was suddenly, by Huggo in person, brought
intelligence of both. She heard the door bell ring and in a minute Huggo
surprisingly broke into the room. He had kept his hat on. He looked
white, drawn and very agitated. He shut the door behind him. “Lucy’s
dead.”

Tears sprang into the eyes of Rosalie, “Oh, my poor Huggo!”

He made a gesture. “Oh, that’s no good! Look here, mother, will you look
after things over there for me? That’s all I’ve come in to say. Will you
see to everything and will you take the kid? I can’t stop.”

He made to go.

“Huggo, of course I will. But you’ll be there? Are you going there now?”

“I’m not. I’m going away.”

“Going away?”

His hand was on the door. “Yes, going away. Look here, there’s another
thing. If any one comes here for me will you say you haven’t seen me?
It’s important. It’s vital.”

“Huggo, what is the matter?”

“You’ll jolly soon know. You may as well know now. Then you’ll realise.
If you want to know--the police are after me.”

He was gone.




CHAPTER V


In the Book of Job it all happened, to Job, in the apparent compass
of one piece of time not broken by diurnal intervals, not mitigated by
recuperative cessations between blow and blow. It seemed to Rosalie that
it was like that it happened also to her. There seemed no interval. It
seemed to her wrath on wrath, visitation upon visitation, judgment upon
judgment.

It seemed to her that she was no sooner come down out of the Old
Bailey--her hand touching at things for support, her vision vertiginous,
causing the solid ground to be in motion, her ears resonant, crying
through her brain the words she saw in Huggo’s look as they removed him;
it seemed to her she was no sooner out from there than she was at the
telephone and summoned by the foreign friend and was there with Doda and
was in process of “Oh, Doda!”--“Oh, mother!”; it seemed to her she was
no sooner out from that than she was with that burly messenger, going
with him, returning from him. There were days and nights walled up in
weeks and months between these things, but that is how they seemed to
Rosalie.

The syndicate was laid by the heels, one here, one there, Huggo in
France, very shortly after the warning that had put Huggo in flight.
The syndicate went through the police court where was unfolded a story
sensational with surprising sums of money, captivating with ingenuity of
fraud covered up by fraud to help new fraud again. The syndicate stood
in the dock at the Old Bailey. Those two of the syndicate described by
the prosecution and by the judge as the principals were sentenced to
three years’ penal servitude. “You,” said the judge, addressing with
a new note in his voice the third prisoner, “You, Occleve, stand in a
different--”

Rosalie began to pray.

Harry would not attend the trial. He had done all that could be done,
and of his position there was very much that he was able to do, and had
attended the police court during the initial proceedings. He would not
go to the Old Bailey. He would not go out. He would not read the papers.
He used to sit about the house. “My son a felon.... My boy a felon. My
son.... My eldest son....”

Rosalie was given a seat in the floor of the court on the first days of
the hearing. On the day when the verdict was to be given and sentence
passed she could not bear that. An usher, much pitying, obtained her a
place in the gallery. She looked down immediately upon her Huggo. Her
hands, upon the ledge before her, were all the time clasped. Her eyes
alternately were in her hands and on her Huggo. Her heart moved between
her Huggo and her God.

“You, Occleve, stand in a different position. . . .”

She began to pray. All of her being, all of her soul, all of her life,
with a spiritual and a physical intensity transcending all that her body
and her mind had ever known, was in apotheosis of supplication. “O God
the Father! O God the Father! O God the Father!”

Her Huggo! Those words that only in snatches she heard were being
addressed to her Huggo.

“... Your counsel has most eloquently pleaded for you.... You bear an
honoured name.... You bear a name held in these precincts in honour, in
esteem, in love, in admiration.... You have had a good home, a great and
a noble father, a distinguished and devoted mother....”

That suppliant crouched lower in her supplication.

“... You have been the dupe, you have been the tool, you have been
in large part, as your counsel has pleaded, and as I believe, the
unsuspecting agent.... Nevertheless, the least sentence I can pass on
you--”

“O God the Father, the Father!”

“... is six months’ imprisonment.”

That boy, whose head had been hung and eyes downcast, lifted his head
and raised his eyes and gave one look into the eyes of that suppliant
for him that sat above him. There was recalled by that suppliant a look
that had passed from the place of accusation to the place of assembly in
the place called the Sanhedrin.

Her Huggo!

They took him away.

Doda didn’t stop going out. She seemed to go out more. The pain within
that house, brought there by Huggo, seemed to make that house more than
before unbearable to Doda. She often spent the night, or the week end
away, staying with the foreign friend, she generally said. She would
have nothing whatever to do with the baby now installed in the house.
She never would go near it. Once she passed it in the hall in its
perambulator. She stopped and stooped over the face of lovely innocence
that lay there and gazed upon it with an extraordinary intensity. She
drew back with a sharp catch at her breath and sharply stepped away and
turned and ran very quickly upstairs. After that when she chanced to
pass the child, she turned aside and would not look upon the child. She
began not to look well, Rosalie thought. There often was upon her
lovely face a pinched and drawn expression, disfiguring it. On the rare
occasions when she was in to dinner she sat strangely moody. There only
was a moodiness about that table then; but the moodiness of Doda was
noticeable to Rosalie. She ate hardly at all. She sometimes would get up
suddenly before a meal was ended and go away, generally to her own room.
Very many times Rosalie would seek anxiously to question her, but apart
from the independence which commonly she maintained towards Rosalie,
Doda seemed very much to resent solicitude upon her health. “What should
be the matter? I look perfectly well, don’t I?”

“Doda, you don’t. I’ve noticed it a long time.”

“Well, I am perfectly well. If I wasn’t I’d say so.”

Strike on!

Rosalie was called up on the telephone by the foreign friend. It was the
evening, about ten o’clock. Doda was away for a week at Brighton with
the foreign friend. She was due back to-morrow. Harry was out with
Benji. Benji was nineteen then and was home on vacation from Oxford.
Harry never could bear Benji out of his sight when Benji was home. In
the affliction that had come upon them, he seemed to cling to Benji.
Rosalie had persuaded him that evening to go with Benji to a concert.
Harry said the idea of anything like that was detestable to him,
but Rosalie had pleaded with him. Just a little chamber concert was
different. It would do him so much good to have an evening away and to
hear a little music and Benji would love it. Harry allowed himself to be
persuaded and went off arm-in-arm with Benji. He always put his arm in
Benji’s when he walked with Benji.

Rosalie was waiting for them when the telephone bell rang and she was
spoken to by the foreign friend.

It then happened like this.

The voice of the foreign friend was very alarmingly urgent. “Would she
come and see Doda at once, at once, at once?”

The voice struck a chill to the heart of Rosalie. “But where are you?
You’re at Brighton, aren’t you? Are you speaking from Brighton?”

“No, no. At my flat. At my flat.”

“But what is it? What is it? Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

“It’s an--it’s an--.” The voice stammered and hesitated.

“Oh, speak! Oh, speak.”

She could hear the voice gulping.

“Oh, please do speak!”

“Doda isn’t very well. Doda’s very ill. It’s an--it’s an accident.”

“I’ll come. I’ll come.”

“Is Mr. Occleve there?”

“He isn’t. He’s out.”

“Can you get him?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I can’t think. Oh, tell me. Tell me.”

“Will you leave a message for him to come at once?”

“At once. At once.”

She wrote a message for Harry and she picked up a wrap and she ran out
hatless to find a cab.

She found a cab and went to Doda.

This all happened as quickly as bewilderingly. It was not like a
dream, and it was not like a nightmare. It was like a kind of trance to
Rosalie.

The foreign friend was not seen at the flat. She was in some other room
and did not appear. She said afterwards, and proved, that she had been
away the previous night, leaving Doda at the flat, and had returned
to find her--as she was found; and had immediately called the nearest
doctor and then Doda’s mother.

It was the doctor that opened the door to Rosalie. He was a Scotchman; a
big and rugged man, all lines and whiskers and with a rugged accent.

He said, “You’rre her mother, arren’t ye? Where’s her father?”

“He’s coming. Where is my child?”

The doctor jerked his head towards a wall. “She’s yon.”

“Tell me, please.”

He pushed a chair towards her but she shook her head. “Please tell me.”

“Ye’ll want your courage.” He again indicated the chair. She again shook
her head. “It’ll try ye. She’s dying.”

The lips of Rosalie formed the words: “Tell me.” There was no sound in
her.

The doctor said, “I cannot tell ye. It is for your husband to hear.”

The heart of Rosalie stood still. She put both her hands upon her heart
and she said to the doctor, “Tell me. I am strong.”

The doctor looked upon Rosalie intently and he said: (he was perhaps
dexterously giving her time that she might weld herself) he said, “Ye’ll
need be strong. Ye look sensible. Ye’ll need be sensible.” He said,
“There’s been before me here another--There’s been a creature here
before me. There’s been blackguarrd work here. There’s been--that poor
child there...” He told her.

She moaned: “O God, be merciful!”

That child, as that night went, was in delirium. She seemed to lie upon
a bed. She lay, in fact, upon the altar of her gods, of self, of what
is vain, of liberty undisciplined, of restless itch for pleasure, and of
the gods of Rosalie, a piteous sacrifice to them. You that have tears to
shed prepare to shed them now. Or if you have no tears, but for emotion
only sneers, do stop and put the thing away. It is intolerable to think
to have beside that bed, beside that child, beside that Rosalie, your
sneers. It’s not for you, and you do but exacerbate the frightful pain
there’s been in feeling it with them.

Rosalie was all night with that child. Harry was there upon the other
side upon his knees and never raised his head. Benji was there that
loved his sister so. Across the unblinded window strove a moon that
fought with mass on mass of fierce, submerging clouds as it might be a
soul that rose through infinite calamity to God. That child was in much
torment. That child was in delirium and often cried aloud. That child
burned with a fever, incredible, at touch of her poor flesh, to think
that human flesh such flame could hold and not incinerate. That child in
her delirium moaned often names and sometimes cried them out. Nicknames
that in the sexless jargon of her day and of her kind might have been
names of women and might be names of men. Darkie, Topsy, Skipper,
Kitten, Bluey, Tip, Bill, Kid. Names, sometimes, more familiar. Once
Huggo; once father; once loud and very piteously, “Benji, Benji, Benji,
Benji, Benji!”

She never once said mother.

She calmed and a long space was mute. The moon, its duress passed, stood
high, serene, alone. The doctor breathed, “She’s passing.” That child
raised her lids and her eyes looked out upon her watchers.

Rosalie cried, “Oh, Doda!”

That child sighed. “Oh, mother!”

There was no note of love. There was of tenderness no note. There only
was in that child’s sigh a deathly weariness. “Oh, mother!” That child
passed out.

They came home in the very early morning. Rosalie was in her working
room. She had some things to do. She wrote to Mr. Field a letter of her
resignation from Field’s Bank. She only wrote two lines. They ended,
“This is Final. I have done.”

She sealed that letter and she moved about the room unlaying and as she
unlaid, destroying, all evidences, all treasures, all landmarks, all
that in any way referred to or touched upon her working life. There were
cherished letters, there were treasured papers. She destroyed them
all. From one bundle, not touched for years, dust-covered and
time-discoloured, there came out a battered volume. She turned it over.
“Lombard Street.” She opened it and saw the eager underlinings and saw
the eager margin notes, and ghosts... (it’s written earlier in these
pages). She rent the book across its perished cover and pressed it on
the fire and on to the flames in the fire. “I have done.”

But she was not done with and she had the feeling that she was not done
with. She said to Harry, “This is not the children’s tragedy. This is
my tragedy. These were not the children’s faults. These were my
transgressions. Life is sacrifice. I never sacrificed. Sacrifice is
atonement. It now is not possible for me to atone.”

She was on her knees beside his chair. He stroked her hair.

There was an inquest. Harry went. She stayed at home and Benji stayed
with her to be with her. Benji was not to be consoled. His mood was very
dreadful. A report was printed in the evening paper before Harry came
home. Benji read it and told Rosalie a witness, a man, had been arrested
on the coroner’s warrant. Benji said, “I think I’ll go out now, mother,
for a little.”

Later in the afternoon when Rosalie was with Harry a maid came into the
room and looked at Harry and saw how sunk he was in his chair and so
went to Rosalie and whispered to her. Rosalie went out. There was a man
wished to see the master. Rosalie spoke to him. He was a large, burly
man with a strong face. He looked like, and was, a police officer in
plain clothes. Rosalie heard what he began to say and said she would go
with him. In the cab, the man told her about it. All his sentences began
with or contained “The young gentleman.”

“The young gentleman... the prisoner, when the young gentleman
came rushing in, happened to be in the charge-room writing out a
statement.... The young gentleman, before any one could stop him, rushed
at this prisoner and caught him by the throat and threw him and the
table over and banged the man’s head against the floor, fair trying to
kill him. They got the young gentleman off. They ought to have arrested
the young gentleman, and they did most earnestly wish they had of
arrested him, and blamed themselves properly that they didn’t arrest
him. But they felt cruelly sorry for the young gentleman and they got
him outside and let him go and no more said. Of course, as madam
knew, the police office wasn’t very far from Gower Street station, the
underground station with them steep stairs leading straight down from
the street to the platform, as madam might be aware.... The young
gentleman was seen by witnesses, whose names were took, to come rushing
down these stairs on to the platform as if some one was after him....
The young gentleman come rushing down and there was a train just coming
in, and whether he couldn’t stop or whether he.... There’s some say
one thing and some say the other.... Whichever way it was the young
gentleman....”

Rosalie did her errand with the man and then came back to Harry. She had
to tell Harry.

He was sitting in his chair. He had an open book on his knees. She saw,
as one notices these things, it was a Shakespeare. She stood up there at
the door before him and she said, “Harry--Benji!”

He saw it in her face.

He groaned.

He took the book off his knees and fumbled it, and with a groaning
mutter dropped it: “‘Unarm, Eros, the long day’s work is done.’”

She came to him and saw, as one sees things, above his head the picture
he had hung when raven was his hair and radiant his face, and had hit
his thumb, and jumped, and cried out, “Mice and Mumps!” and had laughed
and wrung his hands, and cried out, “Mice and Mumps!” and laughed again.
She came to him and saw him wilt and crumple in his chair, and could
have sworn she saw the iron of his head, that had been raven, go grey
anew and greyer yet. She came to him and she said, “Harry--Benji--an
accident--not an accident--on the railway--killed.”

His voice went, not exclamatorily, but in a thick mutter, as one agrope,
in sudden darkness, befogged, betrayed. “My God, my God, my God, my God,
my God!”

She fell on her knees; and on her arms and on his lap she buried then
her face.

He suddenly stooped to her, and caught his arms about her, and raised
her to him, and pressed his face to hers, and held her there; and his
cry was as once before, passionately holding her, his cry had been; then
from his heart to her heart, now from the abysses of his soul to her
soul’s depths, “Rosalie! Rosalie!”




POSTSCRIPT.


There was to have been some more of it; but there, they’re in each
other’s arms, and one has suffered so with them one cannot any more go
on. One’s suffered so! One has looked backward with her. The heart must
break but for a forward glimpse:--

They’re all right now. Huggo’s in Canada. He writes every week. They’re
all right now. That other Rosalie that they brought in is looking after
them. She’s looking after them, that elf, that sprite, that tricksy
scrap, that sunshine thing. She calls Harry father and Rosalie she
calls mother. She has all her meals with them. There’s no nurse.
It’s breakfast she loves best. She’s on the itch all breakfast. When
breakfast’s done she’s off her chair and hopping. She trumpets in
her tiny voice, “Lessons! Lessons!” She trumpets in her tiny voice,
“Lessons, lessons! On mother’s knee! On mother’s knee!”

THE END









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