This same afternoon Thyme, wheeling a bicycle and carrying a light valise, was slipping into a back street out of the Old Square. Putting her burden down at the pavement's edge, she blew a whistle. A hansom-cab appeared, and a man in ragged clothes, who seemed to spring out of the pavement, took hold of her valise. His lean, unshaven face was full of wolfish misery.
“Get off with you!” the cabman said.
“Let him do it!” murmured Thyme.
The cab-runner hoisted up the trunk, then waited motionless beside the cab.
Thyme handed him two coppers. He looked at them in silence, and went away.
'Poor man,' she thought; 'that's one of the things we've got to do away with!'
The cab now proceeded in the direction of the Park, Thyme following on her bicycle, and trying to stare about her calmly.
'This,' she thought, 'is the end of the old life. I won't be romantic, and imagine I'm doing anything special; I must take it all as a matter of course.' She thought of Mr. Purcey's face—'that person!'—if he could have seen her at this moment turning her back on comfort. 'The moment I get there,' she mused, 'I shall let mother know; she can come out to-morrow, and see for herself. I can't have hysterics about my disappearance, and all that. They must get used to the idea that I mean to be in touch with things. I can't be stopped by what anybody thinks!'
An approaching motor-car brought a startled frown across her brow. Was it 'that person'? But though it was not Mr. Purcey and his A.i. Damyer, it was somebody so like him as made no difference. Thyme uttered a little laugh.
In the Park a cool light danced and glittered on the trees and water, and the same cool, dancing glitter seemed lighting the girl's eyes.
The cabman, unseen, took an admiring look at her. 'Nice little bit, this!' it said.
'Grandfather bathes here,' thought Thyme. 'Poor darling! I pity everyone that's old.'
The cab passed on under the shade of trees out into the road.
'I wonder if we have only one self in us,' thought Thyme. 'I sometimes feel that I have two—Uncle Hilary would understand what I mean. The pavements are beginning to smell horrid already, and it's only June to-morrow. Will mother feel my going very much? How glorious if one didn't feel!'
The cab turned into a narrow street of little shops.
'It must be dreadful to have to serve in a small shop. What millions of people there are in the world! Can anything be of any use? Martin says what matters is to do one's job; but what is one's job?'
The cab emerged into a broad, quiet square.
'But I'm not going to think of anything,' thought Thyme; 'that's fatal. Suppose father stops my allowance; I should have to earn my living as a typist, or something of that sort; but he won't, when he sees I mean it. Besides, mother wouldn't let him.'
The cab entered the Euston Road, and again the cabman's broad face was turned towards Thyme with an inquiring stare.
'What a hateful road!' Thyme thought. 'What dull, ugly, common-looking faces all the people seem to have in London! as if they didn't care for anything but just to get through their day somehow. I've only seen two really pretty faces!'
The cab stopped before a small tobacconist's on the south side of the road.
'Have I got to live here?' thought Thyme.
Through the open door a narrow passage led to a narrow staircase covered with oilcloth. She raised her bicycle and wheeled it in. A Jewish-looking youth emerging from the shop accosted her.
“Your gentleman friend says you are to stay in your rooms, please, until he comes.”
His warm red-brown eyes dwelt on her lovingly. “Shall I take your luggage up, miss?”
“Thank you; I can manage.”
“It's the first floor,” said the young man.
The little rooms which Thyme entered were stuffy, clean, and neat. Putting her trunk down in her bedroom, which looked out on a bare yard, she went into the sitting-room and threw the window up. Down below the cabman and tobacconist were engaged in conversation. Thyme caught the expression on their faces—a sort of leering curiosity.
'How disgusting and horrible men are!' she thought, moodily staring at the traffic. All seemed so grim, so inextricable, and vast, out there in the grey heat and hurry, as though some monstrous devil were sporting with a monstrous ant-heap. The reek of petrol and of dung rose to her nostrils. It was so terribly big and hopeless; it was so ugly! 'I shall never do anything,' thought Thyme-'never—never! Why doesn't Martin come?'
She went into her bedroom and opened her valise. With the scent of lavender that came from it, there sprang up a vision of her white bedroom at home, and the trees of the green garden and the blackbirds on the grass.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs brought her back into the sitting-room. Martin was standing in the doorway.
Thyme ran towards him, but stopped abruptly. “I've come, you see. What made you choose this place?”
“I'm next door but two; and there's a girl here—one of us. She'll show you the ropes.”
“Is she a lady?”
Martin raised his shoulders. “She is what is called a lady,” he said; “but she's the right sort, all the same. Nothing will stop her.”
At this proclamation of supreme virtue, the look on Thyme's face was very queer. 'You don't trust me,' it seemed to say, 'and you trust that girl. You put me here for her to watch over me!...'
“I 'want to send this telegram,” she said
Martin read the telegram. “You oughtn't to have funked telling your mother what you meant to do.”
Thyme crimsoned. “I'm not cold-blooded, like you.”
“This is a big matter,” said Martin. “I told you that you had no business to come at all if you couldn't look it squarely in the face.”
“If you want me to stay you had better be more decent to me, Martin.”
“It must be your own affair,” said Martin.
Thyme stood at the window, biting her lips to keep the tears back from her eyes. A very pleasant voice behind her said: “I do think it's so splendid of you to come!”
A girl in grey was standing there—thin, delicate, rather plain, with a nose ever so little to one side, lips faintly smiling, and large, shining, greenish eyes.
“I am Mary Daunt. I live above you. Have you had some tea?”
In the gentle question of this girl with the faintly smiling lips and shining eyes Thyme fancied that she detected mockery.
“Yes, thanks. I want to be shown what my work's to be, at once, please.”
The grey girl looked at Martin.
“Oh! Won't to-morrow do for all that sort of thing? I'm sure you must be tired. Mr. Stone, do make her rest!”
Martin's glance seemed to say: 'Please leave your femininities!'
“If you mean business, your work will be the same as hers,” he said; “you're not qualified. All you can do will be visiting, noting the state of the houses and the condition of the children.”
The girl in grey said gently: “You see, we only deal with sanitation and the children. It seems hard on the grown people and the old to leave them out; but there's sure to be so much less money than we want, so that it must all go towards the future.”
There was a silence. The girl with the shining eyes added softly: “1950!”
“1950!” repeated Martin. It seemed to be some formula of faith.
“I must send this telegram!” muttered Thyme.
Martin took it from her and went out.
Left alone in the little room, the two girls did not at first speak. The girl in grey was watching Thyme half timidly, as if she could not tell what to make of this young creature who looked so charming, and kept shooting such distrustful glances.
“I think it's so awfully sweet of you to come,” she said at last. “I know what a good time you have at home; your cousin's often told me. Don't you think he's splendid?”
To that question Thyme made no answer.
“Isn't this work horrid,” she said—“prying into people's houses?”
The grey girl smiled. “It is rather awful sometimes. I've been at it six months now. You get used to it. I've had all the worst things said to me by now, I should think.”
Thyme shuddered.
“You see,” said the grey girl's faintly smiling lips, “you soon get the feeling of having to go through with it. We all realise it's got to be done, of course. Your cousin's one of the best of us; nothing seems to put him out. He has such a nice sort of scornful kindness. I'd rather work with him than anyone.”
She looked past her new associate into that world outside, where the sky seemed all wires and yellow heat-dust. She did not notice Thyme appraising her from head to foot, with a stare hostile and jealous, but pathetic, too, as though confessing that this girl was her superior.
“I'm sure I can't do that work!” she said suddenly.
The grey girl smiled. “Oh, I thought that at first.” Then, with an admiring look: “But I do think it's rather a shame for you, you're so pretty. Perhaps they'd put you on to tabulation work, though that's awfully dull. We'll ask your cousin.”
“No; I'll do the whole or nothing.”
“Well,” said the grey girl, “I've got one house left to-day. Would you like to come and see the sort of thing?”
She took a small notebook from a side pocket in her skirt.
“I can't get on without a pocket. You must have something that you can't leave behind. I left four little bags and two dozen handkerchiefs in five weeks before I came back to pockets. It's rather a horrid house, I'm afraid!”
“I shall be all right,” said Thyme shortly.
In the shop doorway the young tobacconist was taking the evening air. He greeted them with his polite but constitutionally leering smile.
“Good-evening, mith,” he said; “nithe evening!”
“He's rather an awful little man,” the grey girl said when they had achieved the crossing of the street; “but he's got quite a nice sense of humour.”
“Ah!” said Thyme.
They had turned into a by-street, and stopped before a house which had obviously seen better days. Its windows were cracked, its doors unpainted, and down in the basement could be seen a pile of rags, an evil-looking man seated by it, and a blazing fire. Thyme felt a little gulping sensation. There was a putrid scent as of burning refuse. She looked at her companion. The grey girl was consulting her notebook, with a faint smile on her lips. And in Thyme's heart rose a feeling almost of hatred for this girl, who was so business-like in the presence of such sights and scents.
The door was opened by a young red-faced woman, who looked as if she had been asleep.
The grey girl screwed up her shining eyes. “Oh, do you mind if we come in a minute?” she said. “It would be so good of you. We're making a report.”
“There's nothing to report here,” the young woman answered. But the grey girl had slipped as gently past as though she had been the very spirit of adventure.
“Of course, I see that, but just as a matter of form, you know.”
“I've parted with most of my things,” the young woman said defensively, “since my husband died. It's a hard life.”
“Yes, yes, but not worse than mine—always poking my nose into other people's houses.”
The young woman was silent, evidently surprised.
“The landlord ought to keep you in better repair,” said the grey girl. “He owns next door, too, doesn't he?”
The young woman nodded. “He's a bad landlord. All down the street 'ere it's the same. Can't get nothing done.”
The grey girl had gone over to a dirty bassinette where a half-naked child sprawled. An ugly little girl with fat red cheeks was sitting on a stool beside it, close to an open locker wherein could be seen a number of old meat bones.'
“Your chickabiddies?” said the grey girl. “Aren't they sweet?”
The young woman's face became illumined by a smile.
“They're healthy,” she said.
“That's more than can be said for all the children in the house, I expect,” murmured the grey girl.
The young woman replied emphatically, as though voicing an old grievance: “The three on the first floor's not so bad, but I don't let 'em 'ave anything to do with that lot at the top.”
Thyme saw her new friend's hand hover over the child's head like some pale dove. In answer to that gesture, the mother nodded. “Just that; you've got to clean 'em every time they go near them children at the top.”
The grey girl looked at Thyme. 'That's where we've got to go, evidently,' she seemed to say.
“A dirty lot!” muttered the young woman.
“It's very hard on you.”
“It is. I'm workin' at the laundry all day when I can get it. I can't look after the children—they get everywhere.”
“Very hard,” murmured the grey girl. “I'll make a note of that.”
Together with the little book, in which she was writing furiously, she had pulled out her handkerchief, and the sight of this handkerchief reposing on the floor gave Thyme a queer satisfaction, such as comes when one remarks in superior people the absence of a virtue existing in oneself.
“Well, we mustn't keep you, Mrs.—Mrs.—?”
“Cleary.”
“Cleary. How old's this little one? Four? And the other? Two? They are ducks. Good-bye!”
In the corridor outside the grey girl whispered: “I do like the way we all pride ourselves on being better than someone else. I think it's so hopeful and jolly. Shall we go up and see the abyss at the top?”
A young girl's mind is like a wood in Spring—now a rising mist of bluebells and flakes of dappled sunlight; now a world of still, wan, tender saplings, weeping they know not why. Through the curling twigs of boughs just green, its wings fly towards the stars; but the next moment they have drooped to mope beneath the damp bushes. It is ever yearning for and trembling at the future; in its secret places all the countless shapes of things that are to be are taking stealthy counsel of how to grow up without letting their gown of mystery fall. They rustle, whisper, shriek suddenly, and as suddenly fall into a delicious silence. From the first hazel-bush to the last may-tree it is an unending meeting-place of young solemn things eager to find out what they are, eager to rush forth to greet the kisses of the wind and sun, and for ever trembling back and hiding their faces. The spirit of that wood seems to lie with her ear close to the ground, a pale petal of a hand curved like a shell behind it, listening for the whisper of her own life. There she lies, white and supple, with dewy, wistful eyes, sighing: 'What is my meaning? Ah, I am everything! Is there in all the world a thing so wonderful as I?... Oh, I am nothing—my wings are heavy; I faint, I die!'
When Thyme, attended by the grey girl, emerged from the abyss at the top, her cheeks were flushed and her hands clenched. She said nothing. The grey girl, too, was silent, with a look such as a spirit divested of its body by long bathing in the river of reality might bend on one who has just come to dip her head. Thyme's quick eyes saw that look, and her colour deepened. She saw, too, the glance of the Jewish youth when Martin joined them in the doorway.
'Two girls now,' he seemed to say. 'He goes it, this young man!'
Supper was laid in her new friend's room—pressed beef, potato salad, stewed prunes, and ginger ale. Martin and the grey girl talked. Thyme ate in silence, but though her eyes seemed fastened on her plate, she saw every glance that passed between them, heard every word they said. Those glances were not remarkable, nor were those words particularly important, but they were spoken in tones that seemed important to Thyme. 'He never talks to me like that,' she thought.
When supper was over they went out into the streets to walk, but at the door the grey girl gave Thyme's arm a squeeze, her cheek a swift kiss, and turned back up the stairs.
“Aren't you coming?” shouted Martin.
Her voice was heard answering from above: “No, not tonight.”
With the back of her hand Thyme rubbed off the kiss. The two cousins walked out amongst the traffic.
The evening was very warm and close; no breeze fanned the reeking town. Speaking little, they wandered among endless darkening streets, whence to return to the light and traffic of the Euston Road seemed like coming back to Heaven. At last, close again to her new home, Thyme said: “Why should one bother? It's all a horrible great machine, trying to blot us out; people are like insects when you put your thumb on them and smear them on a book. I hate—I loathe it!”
“They might as well be healthy insects while they last,” answered Martin.
Thyme faced round at him. “I shan't sleep tonight, Martin; get out my bicycle for me.”
Martin scrutinised her by the light of the street lamp. “All right,” he said; “I'll come too.”
There are, say moralists, roads that lead to Hell, but it was on a road that leads to Hampstead that the two young cyclists set forth towards eleven o'clock. The difference between the character of the two destinations was soon apparent, for whereas man taken in bulk had perhaps made Hell, Hampstead had obviously been made by the upper classes. There were trees and gardens, and instead of dark canals of sky banked by the roofs of houses and hazed with the yellow scum of London lights, the heavens spread out in a wide trembling pool. From that rampart of the town, the Spaniard's Road, two plains lay exposed to left and right; the scent of may-tree blossom had stolen up the hill; the rising moon clung to a fir-tree bough. Over the country the far stars presided, and sleep's dark wings were spread above the fields—silent, scarce breathing, lay the body of the land. But to the south, where the town, that restless head, was lying, the stars seemed to have fallen and were sown in the thousand furrows of its great grey marsh, and from the dark miasma of those streets there travelled up a rustle, a whisper, the far allurement of some deathless dancer, dragging men to watch the swirl of her black, spangled drapery, the gleam of her writhing limbs. Like the song of the sea in a shell was the murmur of that witch of motion, clasping to her the souls of men, drawing them down into a soul whom none had ever known to rest.
Above the two young cousins, scudding along that ridge between the country and the town, three thin white clouds trailed slowly towards the west-like tired seabirds drifting exhausted far out from land on a sea blue to blackness with unfathomable depth.
For an hour those two rode silently into the country.
“Have we come far enough?” Martin said at last.
Thyme shook her head. A long, steep hill beyond a little sleeping village had brought them to a standstill. Across the shadowy fields a pale sheet of water gleamed out in moonlight. Thyme turned down towards it.
“I'm hot,” she said; “I want to bathe my face. Stay here. Don't come with me.”
She left her bicycle, and, passing through a gate, vanished among the trees.
Martin stayed leaning against the gate. The village clock struck one. The distant call of a hunting owl, “Qu-wheek, qu-wheek!” sounded through the grave stillness of this last night of May. The moon at her curve's summit floated at peace on the blue surface of the sky, a great closed water-lily. And Martin saw through the trees scimitar-shaped reeds clustering black along the pool's shore. All about him the may-flowers were alight. It was such a night as makes dreams real and turns reality to dreams.
'All moonlit nonsense!' thought the young man, for the night had disturbed his heart.
But Thyme did not come back. He called to her, and in the death-like silence following his shouts he could hear his own heart beat. He passed in through the gate. She was nowhere to be seen. Why was she playing him this trick?
He turned up from the water among the trees, where the incense of the may-flowers hung heavy in the air.
'Never look for a thing!' he thought, and stopped to listen. It was so breathless that the leaves of a low bough against his cheek did not stir while he stood there. Presently he heard faint sounds, and stole towards them. Under a beech-tree he almost stumbled over Thyme, lying with her face pressed to the ground. The young doctor's heart gave a sickening leap; he quickly knelt down beside her. The girl's body, pressed close to the dry beech-mat, was being shaken by long sobs. From head to foot it quivered; her hat had been torn off, and the fragrance of her hair mingled with the fragrance of the night. In Martin's heart something seemed to turn over and over, as when a boy he had watched a rabbit caught in a snare. He touched her. She sat up, and, dashing her hand across her eyes, cried: “Go away! Oh, go away!”
He put his arm round her and waited. Five minutes passed. The air was trembling with a sort of pale vibration, for the moonlight had found a hole in the dark foliage and flooded on to the ground beside them, whitening the black beech-husks. Some tiny bird, disturbed by these unwonted visitors, began chirruping and fluttering, but was soon still again. To Martin, so strangely close to this young creature in the night, there came a sense of utter disturbance.
'Poor little thing!' he thought; 'be careful of her, comfort her!' Hardness seemed so broken out of her, and the night so wonderful! And there came into the young man's heart a throb of the knowledge—very rare with him, for he was not, like Hilary, a philosophising person—that she was as real as himself—suffering, hoping, feeling, not his hopes and feelings, but her own. His fingers kept pressing her shoulder through her thin blouse. And the touch of those fingers was worth more than any words, as this night, all moonlit dreams, was worth more than a thousand nights of sane reality.
Thyme twisted herself away from him at last. “I can't,” she sobbed. “I'm not what you thought me—I'm not made for it!”
A scornful little smile curled Martin's lip. So that was it! But the smile soon died away. One did not hit what was already down!
Thyme's voice wailed through the silence. “I thought I could—but I want beautiful things. I can't bear it all so grey and horrible. I'm not like that girl. I'm-an-amateur!”
'If I kissed her—-' Martin thought.
She sank down again, burying her face in the dark beech-mat. The moonlight had passed on. Her voice came faint and stiffed, as out of the tomb of faith. “I'm no good. I never shall be. I'm as bad as mother!”
But to Martin there was only the scent of her hair.
“No,” murmured Thyme's voice, “I'm only fit for miserable Art.... I'm only fit for—nothing!”
They were so close together on the dark beech mat that their bodies touched, and a longing to clasp her in his arms came over him.
“I'm a selfish beast!” moaned the smothered voice. “I don't really care for all these people—I only care because they're ugly for me to see!”
Martin reached his hand out to her hair. If she had shrunk away he would have seized her, but as though by instinct she let it rest there. And at her sudden stillness, strange and touching, Martin's quick passion left him. He slipped his arm round her and raised her up, as if she had been a child, and for a long time sat listening with a queer twisted smile to the moanings of her lost illusions.
The dawn found them still sitting there against the bole of the beech-tree. Her lips were parted; the tears had dried on her sleeping face, pillowed against his shoulder, while he still watched her sideways with the ghost of that twisted smile.
And beyond the grey water, like some tired wanton, the moon in an orange hood was stealing down to her rest between the trees.
Cecilia received the mystic document containing these words “Am quite all right. Address, 598, Euston Road, three doors off Martin. Letter follows explaining. Thyme,” she had not even realised her little daughter's departure. She went up to Thyme's room at once, and opening all the drawers and cupboards, stared into them one by one. The many things she saw there allayed the first pangs of her disquiet.
'She has only taken one little trunk,' she thought, 'and left all her evening frocks.'
This act of independence alarmed rather than surprised her, such had been her sense of the unrest in the domestic atmosphere during the last month. Since the evening when she had found Thyme in foods of tears because of the Hughs' baby, her maternal eyes had not failed to notice something new in the child's demeanour—a moodiness, an air almost of conspiracy, together with an emphatic increase of youthful sarcasm: Fearful of probing deep, she had sought no confidence, nor had she divulged her doubts to Stephen.
Amongst the blouses a sheet of blue ruled paper, which had evidently escaped from a notebook, caught her eye. Sentences were scrawled on it in pencil. Cecilia read: “That poor little dead thing was so grey and pinched, and I seemed to realise all of a sudden how awful it is for them. I must—I must—I will do something!”
Cecilia dropped the sheet of paper; her hand was trembling. There was no mystery in that departure now, and Stephen's words came into her mind: “It's all very well up to a certain point, and nobody sympathises with them more than I do; but after that it becomes destructive of all comfort, and that does no good to anyone.”
The sound sense of those words had made her feel queer when they were spoken; they were even more sensible than she had thought. Did her little daughter, so young and pretty, seriously mean to plunge into the rescue work of dismal slums, to cut herself adrift from sweet sounds and scents and colours, from music and art, from dancing, flowers, and all that made life beautiful? The secret forces of fastidiousness, an inborn dread of the fanatical, and all her real ignorance of what such a life was like, rose in Cecilia with a force which made her feel quite sick. Better that she herself should do this thing than that her own child should be deprived of air and light and all the just environment of her youth and beauty. 'She must come back—she must listen to me!' she thought. 'We will begin together; we will start a nice little creche of our own, or—perhaps Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace could find us some regular work on one of her committees.'
Then suddenly she conceived a thought which made her blood run positively cold. What if it were a matter of heredity? What if Thyme had inherited her grandfather's single-mindedness? Martin was giving proof of it. Things, she knew, often skipped a generation and then set in again. Surely, surely, it could not have done that! With longing, yet with dread, she waited for the sound of Stephen's latchkey. It came at its appointed time.
Even in her agitation Cecilia did not forget to spare him, all she could. She began by giving him a kiss, and then said casually: “Thyme has got a whim into her head.”
“What whim?”
“It's rather what you might expect,” faltered Cecilia, “from her going about so much with Martin.”
Stephen's face assumed at once an air of dry derision; there was no love lost between him and his young nephew-in-law.
“The Sanitist?” he said; “ah! Well?”
“She has gone off to do work-some place in the Euston Road. I've had a telegram. Oh, and I found this, Stephen.”
She held out to him half-heartedly the two bits of paper, one pinkish-brown, the other blue. Stephen saw that she was trembling. He took them from her, read them, and looked at her again. He had a real affection for his wife, and the tradition of consideration for other people's feelings was bred in him, so that at this moment, so vitally disturbing, the first thing he did was to put his hand on her shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze. But there was also in Stephen a certain primitive virility, pickled, it is true, at Cambridge, and in the Law Courts dried, but still preserving something of its possessive and assertive quality, and the second thing he did was to say, “No, I'm damned!”
In that little sentence lay the whole psychology of his attitude towards this situation and all the difference between two classes of the population. Mr. Purcey would undoubtedly have said: “Well, I'm damned!” Stephen, by saying “No, I'm damned!” betrayed that before he could be damned he had been obliged to wrestle and contend with something, and Cecilia, who was always wrestling too, knew this something to be that queer new thing, a Social Conscience, the dim bogey stalking pale about the houses of those who, through the accidents of leisure or of culture, had once left the door open to the suspicion: Is it possible that there is a class of people besides my own, or am I dreaming? Happy the millions, poor or rich, not yet condemned to watch the wistful visiting or hear the husky mutter of that ghost, happy in their homes, blessed by a less disquieting god. Such were Cecilia's inner feelings.
Even now she did not quite plumb the depths of Stephen's; she felt his struggle with the ghost; she felt and admired his victory. What she did not, could not, perhaps, realise, was the precise nature of the outrage inflicted on him by Thyme's action. With her—being a woman—the matter was more practical; she did not grasp, had never grasped, the architectural nature of Stephen's mind—how really hurt he was by what did not seem to him in due and proper order.
He spoke: “Why on earth, if she felt like that, couldn't she have gone to work in the ordinary way? She could have put herself in connection with some proper charitable society—I should never have objected to that. It's all that young Sanitary idiot!”
“I believe,” Cecilia faltered, “that Martin's is a society. It's a kind of medical Socialism, or something of that sort. He has tremendous faith in it.”
Stephen's lip curled.
“He may have as much faith as he likes,” he said, with the restraint that was one of his best qualities, “so long as he doesn't infect my daughter with it.”
Cecilia said suddenly: “Oh! what are we to do, Stephen? Shall I go over there to-night?”
As one may see a shadow pass down on a cornfield, so came the cloud on Stephen's face. It was as though he had not realised till then the full extent of what this meant. For a minute he was silent. “Better wait for her letter,” he said at last. “He's her cousin, after all, and Mrs. Grundy's dead—in the Euston Road, at all events.”
So, trying to spare each other all they could of anxiety, and careful to abstain from any hint of trouble before the servants, they dined and went to bed.
At that hour between the night and morning, when man's vitality is lowest, and the tremors of his spirit, like birds of ill omen, fly round and round him, beating their long plumes against his cheeks, Stephen woke.
It was very still. A bar of pearly-grey dawn showed between the filmy curtains, which stirred with a regular, faint movement, like the puffing of a sleeper's lips. The tide of the wind, woven in Mr. Stone's fancy of the souls of men, was at low ebb. Feebly it fanned the houses and hovels where the myriad forms of men lay sleeping, unconscious of its breath; so faint life's pulse, that men and shadows seemed for that brief moment mingled in the town's sleep. Over the million varied roofs, over the hundred million little different shapes of men and things, the wind's quiet, visiting wand had stilled all into the wonder state of nothingness, when life is passing into death, death into new life, and self is at its feeblest.
And Stephen's self, feeling the magnetic currents of that ebb-tide drawing it down into murmurous slumber, out beyond the sand-bars of individuality and class, threw up its little hands and began to cry for help. The purple sea of self-forgetfulness, under the dim, impersonal sky, seemed to him so cold and terrible. It had no limit that he could see, no rules but such as hung too far away, written in the hieroglyphics of paling stars. He could feel no order in the lift and lap of the wan waters round his limbs. Where would those waters carry him? To what depth of still green silence? Was his own little daughter to go down into this sea that knew no creed but that of self-forgetfulness, that respected neither class nor person—this sea where a few wandering streaks seemed all the evidence of the precious differences between mankind? God forbid it!
And, turning on his elbow, he looked at her who had given him this daughter. In the mystery of his wife's sleeping face—the face of her most near and dear to him—he tried hard not to see a likeness to Mr. Stone. He fell back somewhat comforted with the thought: 'That old chap has his one idea—his Universal Brotherhood. He's absolutely absorbed in it. I don't see it in Cis's face a bit. Quite the contrary.'
But suddenly a flash of clear, hard cynicism amounting to inspiration utterly disturbed him: The old chap, indeed, was so wrapped up in himself and his precious book as to be quite unconscious that anyone else was alive. Could one be everybody's brother if one were blind to their existence? But this freak of Thyme's was an actual try to be everybody's sister. For that, he supposed, one must forget oneself. Why, it was really even a worse case than that of Mr. Stone! And to Stephen there was something awful in this thought.
The first small bird of morning, close to the open window, uttered a feeble chirrup. Into Stephen's mind there leaped without reason recollection of the morning after his first term at school, when, awakened by the birds, he had started up and fished out from under his pillow his catapult and the box of shot he had brought home and taken to sleep with him. He seemed to see again those leaden shot with their bluish sheen, and to feel them, round, and soft, and heavy, rolling about his palm. He seemed to hear Hilary's surprised voice saying: “Hallo, Stevie! you awake?”
No one had ever had a better brother than old Hilary. His only fault was that he had always been too kind. It was his kindness that had done for him, and made his married life a failure. He had never asserted himself enough with that woman, his wife. Stephen turned over on his other side. 'All this confounded business,' he thought, 'comes from over-sympathising. That's what's the matter with Thyme, too.' Long he lay thus, while the light grew stronger, listening to Cecilia's gentle breathing, disturbed to his very marrow by these thoughts.
The first post brought no letter from Thyme, and the announcement soon after, that Mr. Hilary had come to breakfast, was received by both Stephen and Cecilia with a welcome such as the anxious give to anything which shows promise of distracting them.
Stephen made haste down. Hilary, with a very grave and harassed face, was in the dining-room. It was he, however, who, after one look at Stephen, said:
“What's the matter, Stevie?”
Stephen took up the Standard. In spite of his self-control, his hand shook a little.
“It's a ridiculous business,” he said. “That precious young Sanitist has so worked his confounded theories into Thyme that she has gone off to the Euston Road to put them into practice, of all things!”
At the half-concerned amusement on Hilary's face his quick and rather narrow eyes glinted.
“It's not exactly for you to laugh, Hilary,” he said. “It's all of a piece with your cursed sentimentality about those Hughs, and that girl. I knew it would end in a mess.”
Hilary answered this unjust and unexpected outburst by a look, and Stephen, with the strange feeling of inferiority which would come to him in Hilary's presence against his better judgment, lowered his own glance.
“My dear boy,” said Hilary, “if any bit of my character has crept into Thyme, I'm truly sorry.”
Stephen took his brother's hand and gave it a good grip; and, Cecilia coming in, they all sat down.
Cecilia at once noted what Stephen in his preoccupation had not—that Hilary had come to tell them something. But she did not like to ask him what it was, though she knew that in the presence of their trouble Hilary was too delicate to obtrude his own. She did not like, either, to talk of her trouble in the presence of his. They all talked, therefore, of indifferent things—what music they had heard, what plays they had seen—eating but little, and drinking tea. In the middle of a remark about the opera, Stephen, looking up, saw Martin himself standing in the doorway. The young Sanitist looked pale, dusty, and dishevelled. He advanced towards Cecilia, and said with his usual cool determination:
“I've brought her back, Aunt Cis.”
At that moment, fraught with such relief, such pure joy, such desire to say a thousand things, Cecilia could only murmur: “Oh, Martin!”
Stephen, who had jumped up, asked: “Where is she?”
“Gone to her room.”
“Then perhaps,” said Stephen, regaining at once his dry composure, “you will give us some explanation of this folly.”
“She's no use to us at present.”
“Indeed!”
“None.”
“Then,” said Stephen, “kindly understand that we have no use for you in future, or any of your sort.”
Martin looked round the table, resting his eyes on each in turn.
“You're right,” he said. “Good-bye!”
Hilary and Cecilia had risen, too. There was silence. Stephen crossed to the door.
“You seem to me,” he said suddenly, in his driest voice, “with your new manners and ideas, quite a pernicious youth.”
Cecilia stretched her hands out towards Martin, and there was a faint tinkling as of chains.
“You must know, dear,” she said, “how anxious we've all been. Of course, your uncle doesn't mean that.”
The same scornful tenderness with which he was wont to look at Thyme passed into Martin's face.
“All right, Aunt Cis,” he said; “if Stephen doesn't mean it, he ought to. To mean things is what matters.” He stooped and kissed her forehead. “Give that to Thyme for me,” he said. “I shan't see her for a bit.”
“You'll never see her, sir,” said Stephen dryly, “if I can help it! The liquor of your Sanitism is too bright and effervescent.”
Martin's smile broadened. “For old bottles,” he said, and with another slow look round went out.
Stephen's mouth assumed its driest twist. “Bumptious young devil!” he said. “If that is the new young man, defend us!”
Over the cool dining-room, with its faint scent of pinks, of melon, and of ham, came silence. Suddenly Cecilia glided from the room. Her light footsteps were heard hurrying, now that she was not visible, up to Thyme.
Hilary, too, had moved towards the door. In spite of his preoccupation, Stephen could not help noticing how very worn his brother looked.
“You look quite seedy, old boy,” he said. “Will you have some brandy?”
Hilary shook his head.
“Now that you've got Thyme back,” he said, “I'd better let you know my news. I'm going abroad to-morrow. I don't know whether I shall come back again to live with B.”
Stephen gave a low whistle; then, pressing Hilary's arm, he said: “Anything you decide, old man, I'll always back you in, but—”
“I'm going alone.”
In his relief Stephen violated the laws of reticence.
“Thank Heaven for that! I was afraid you were beginning to lose your head about that girl.”
“I'm not quite fool enough,” said Hilary, “to imagine that such a liaison would be anything but misery in the long-run. If I took the child I should have to stick to her; but I'm not proud of leaving her in the lurch, Stevie.”
The tone of his voice was so bitter that Stephen seized his hand.
“My dear old man, you're too kind. Why, she's no hold on you—not the smallest in the world!”
“Except the hold of this devotion I've roused in her, God knows how, and her destitution.”
“You let these people haunt you,” said Stephen. “It's quite a mistake—it really is.”
“I had forgotten to mention that I am not an iceberg,” muttered Hilary.
Stephen looked into his face without speaking, then with the utmost earnestness he said:
“However much you may be attracted, it's simply unthinkable for a man like you to go outside his class.”
“Class! Yes!” muttered Hilary: “Good-bye!”
And with a long grip of his brother's hand he went away.
Stephen turned to the window. For all the care and contrivance bestowed on the view, far away to the left the back courts of an alley could be seen; and as though some gadfly had planted in him its small poisonous sting, he moved back from the sight at once. 'Confusion!' he thought. 'Are we never to get rid of these infernal people?'
His eyes lighted on the melon. A single slice lay by itself on a blue-green dish. Leaning over a plate, with a desperation quite unlike himself, he took an enormous bite. Again and again he bit the slice, then almost threw it from him, and dipped his fingers in a bowl.
'Thank God!' he thought, 'that's over! What an escape!'
Whether he meant Hilary's escape or Thyme's was doubtful, but there came on him a longing to rush up to his little daughter's room, and hug her. He suppressed it, and sat down at the bureau; he was suddenly experiencing a sensation such as he had sometimes felt on a perfect day, or after physical danger, of too much benefit, of something that he would like to return thanks for, yet knew not how. His hand stole to the inner pocket of his black coat. It stole out again; there was a cheque-book in it. Before his mind's eye, starting up one after the other, he saw the names of the societies he supported, or meant sometime, if he could afford it, to support. He reached his hand out for a pen. The still, small noise of the nib travelling across the cheques mingled with the buzzing of a single fly.
These sounds Cecilia heard, when, from the open door, she saw the thin back of her husband's neck, with its softly graduated hair, bent forward above the bureau. She stole over to him, and pressed herself against his arm.
Stephen, staying the progress of his pen, looked up at her. Their eyes met, and, bending down, Cecilia put her cheek to his.