CHAPTER XIII

“We shook hands last time we met, Lord Yorkshire,” he said. “Will you not let me shake hands with you again?”

That done, that effort made, the rest was easier, for all that was generous and sympathetic in Frank responded.

“Thank you,” he said, simply. “And I am not exaggerating, Mr. Challoner, when I tell you that I know nothing in the world that could have happened to me which could give me so much pleasure as this.”

Mr. Challoner still retained his hand.

“Do you know, you are a very good fellow?” he said. “You are very generous to me. So has Helen been. I cannot tell you what she has been to me all this winter. And I thank you very much for letting her be with me, for not urging her otherwise. You have made it all as easy for her as you can. You have been very unselfish, both of you. And I have been making it very difficult for her.”

Frank was a good deal moved. There was a very noble and a pathetic sincerity about this.

“I think you wrong yourself,” he said. “I am sure you wrong yourself. We have all tried to—well, to do our best. And we all three of us know that.”

But Mr. Challoner had more to say.

“I ask your forgiveness,” he said, simply, and his voice trembled a little.

“Ah, don’t do that,” said Frank.

They stood there together a moment longer, under the flecked sunlight filtering through the trees, suddenly brought close again, just as they had been in that dreadful hour when Helen’s weakness made them forget all else. But now the reconciliation went far deeper than it had gone before. Then they had joined hands in ministering to the physical suffering of one they both loved, but now they joined hands over an appreciation not of weakness but of strength. The bond between them was no longer a thing that could easily break. Poles apart as they still were, that golden thread could scarcely be snapped.

“I met Helen just now,” said Mr. Challoner at length. “She told me she had seen you, dear girl. She told me also the news from my son. Are you busy? Will you walk with me a little way?”

Frank turned at once, and they went on down the steep path towards the rectory.

“Have you seen Martin lately?” asked his father.

“Yes; I see him constantly in London.”

“Then can you tell me about him?Whatis he? That is the thing I puzzle and pray over. He joined the Roman Church, as you know, at Christmas. I don’t think anything ever pained me more. But I should be very glad to know if he is in earnest about it. Or does he take it as he takes everything else? Do you understand it?”

“Yes, I think I do,” said Frank, and paused a moment. “It is this. Martin demands beauty in all that is real to him. That is the ruling instinct in his nature. And, in matters of religion, the Roman Church seemed to him to supply that more than the church he left.”

“And it was for that he threw it over?” said Mr. Challoner. “And without regret or struggle even?”

“He regretted very sincerely the pain it would give you,” said Frank.

Mr. Challoner waved this aside.

“That does not matter,” he said. “But otherwise without a regret?”

Frank let his silence unmistakably answer that before he went on.

“I know you will excuse me,” he said, “but I don’t think you quite realise what Martin is or how the artistic instincts dominate him. Till he fell in love, I don’t think he ever had any very poignant emotion apart from them.”

Mr. Challoner’s face got even more grave.

“Simply, then,” he said, “he puts them above the love of God. I do not understand how a Christian can do that. And I do not want to understand it,” he added.

They had reached the rectory, and Mr. Challoner paused on the terrace walk.

“Is he a good boy?” he asked, suddenly.

“Morally? Yes, I am sure of it.”

“How do you know that?” asked his father.

“Because I know his opinion about immorality. He feels very strongly that it must blunt the artistic sense.”

Mr. Challoner winced as if in sudden pain.

“Ah,” he cried, “is that all? Dear God, is that all?”

“The result in the way of conduct is identical,” said Frank, quietly.

“Yes, yes; but are we not taught that works without faith are dead? Ah, I beg your pardon; indeed I do, my dear fellow. I spoke without thinking. I was thinking only of my poor Martin. Pray, forgive me. And is he happy, do you think?”

“Yes, quite extraordinarily happy. He has fallen in love, too, with the same white ardour that he brings to everything which appeals to him.”

Mr. Challoner considered this a moment, and then faced Frank.

“I want your opinion, Lord Yorkshire,” he said. “Do you think that any good purpose would be served by my seeing Martin? I ask you for your candid opinion—whatever it is or implies.”

“I think it depends entirely on yourself,” said Frank.

“You mean,—ah, pray tell me quite straight out. I shall be very grateful.”

Frank looked at him with real pity. What he was going to say seemed very cruel, but it seemed true.

“I mean this, Mr. Challoner,” he said, “that if you are quite certain that the sight of Martin, or the possible issues into which talk may lead you, will not again embitter you against him, you had far better see him. Why not? There is all to be gained. But if your reconciliation cannot be complete, if there is a chance of your getting angry with him, and—frightening him—you had better not. You asked me to tell you straight.”

“You think he is afraid of me? Has he told you?”

“I cannot help knowing it. If he has told me, you must take my word for it that he has not told me in any disloyal way. And if I have hurt you, I am very sorry.”

“No, I thank you for telling me,” said Mr. Challoner. “I think you are right. I am afraid it is better I should not see him yet.”

He smiled rather sadly.

“I am afraid I have a great deal to learn yet,” he said. “I must take myself in hand. But I dream about him, Lord Yorkshire, so often. And always almost in my dreams I say things to him that frighten him. Sometimes, it is true, we are great friends. Those are beautiful nights, and I thank God for them. I so long to see his dear face again.”

“Those beautiful nights must find fulfilment in many beautiful days,” said Frank.

“Yes; I hope that it is still possible. He was such a bright little fellow when he was small. Always quick, always laughing. I had many plans for him. I think all my life I have been rather too ready to push other people into places I think suitable.”

They had come to the far end of the terrace again, when from inside the vicarage the gong sounded for lunch. Frank’s back was towards the house, but the vicar, looking up, saw Helen, still hatless, coming towards them across the lawn. And all the happiness of the morning, when she saw these two together, all the spirit of spring, quivered and concentrated itself into one rose-coloured point of joy. That was the bestmoment to her in all the days of spring that were yet to come.

“You will stay to lunch, Lord Yorkshire?” said he.

“Thanks, so much; but I am afraid I ought to get back to Chartries. I said I would be back.”

Mr. Challoner waited till Helen was close to them.

“Perhaps if Helen adds her voice to mine,” he said.

He turned quickly and saw her. And there was no need of words, but once more the three stood together, hands clasped. This time the vicar did not go back alone to his empty room.

Martinwas seated alone with Stella in the drawing-room of her mother’s house, eating muffins, thoughtfully but rather rapidly, while she poured out tea.

“Fancy,” he said, “it is only a week ago since—since the party at Lady Sunningdale’s, since I knew.”

“Knew what?” asked Stella, quite unnecessarily.

“Ah, I only know one thing now. I think I have forgotten everything else.”

“Say it then,” said she.

“That I love you? Are you not tired of hearing me say that yet?”

She smiled, brought him his tea, and sat on the arm of his chair.

“I can’t believe that a woman can ever be tired of hearing that, if the right man says it. Oh, Martin, how lucky it was you, and that it was I!”

Martin put his teacup down, having drunk with amazing speed.

“Why, who else could it have been?” he said; “how could it have been otherwise?”

“No, I suppose not. Yet you didn’t know, as you call it, for a long time. Supposing you had gone on not knowing?”

He leaned back in his chair looking at her, his black eyes shining in the firelight.

“And when I did know, I frightened you,” he said.

“Yes, a little. But I loved it. You see, I had never seen you really in earnest before, except when you were playing. You always put everything you had or were into that.”

“I know. That is what Karl Rusoff told me. He told me to experience all I could, because it would all go to make me play. He calls it spiritual alchemy, like when you put a plant in the earth and water it, the earth and the water are somehow turned into the blossom of that plant while another plant would turn them into a different flower. In fact, darling, you are going to come out of the ends of my fingers, whereas if I were a great Greek scholar you would become iambics.”

He looked at her and his smile deepened into gravity.

“Oh, Stella, Stella,” he said, “did the world ever hold anything like you?”

She leaned back till her face was close to his and put her arm round his neck.

“Yes, yes; do that with me!” she said, “absorb me, let me become part of you. Indeed, I want no other existence at all. Do you know the Persian legend, how the lover knocked at the door of his beloved, and the beloved said, ‘Who is that?’ and he replied, ‘It is I.’ And the one inside said, ‘There is not room for two.’ Then he went away again, and came back after a year, and knocked again. And again from inside the voice said, ‘Who is that?’ But this time he said, ‘It is thou.’ So the door was opened and he went in.”

“That is beautiful,” said Martin. “But, my word, fancy being able to become music. And suppose one happened to become a song by Gounod. Only that isn’t music,” he added.

Stella felt somehow suddenly chilled.

“Promise me I shan’t become a song by Gounod,” she said.

Martin looked at her in silence a moment. She had risen rather abruptly from her position and was again sitting upright on the arm of his chair.

“And what do I become?” he asked. “What do you make of me? It is thou, remember.”

Something that for the last three days had hung mist-like in Stella’s mind suddenly congealed, crystallised, became definite.

“I don’t want you to become anything,” she said. “But I want you to Be. I want you to be entirely yourself. I want you to get below your own surface, to dive into yourself, to find pearls. And then to let me wear them.”

“You mean I am shallow?”

“No, dear, I mean nothing of the kind. But, oh, Martin, don’t misunderstand me. All you have got from life, all you have gained, all you are you treat as fuel—you have said it—to burn in the furnace of your one passion—music.”

Martin admitted this with a reservation.

“That was true,” he said, “till just a week ago.”

Stella rose from her place; sitting close to him, like that, she could not say what she meant to say. Personal magnetism, her love for that beautiful face, prevented her. So she went to the hearth-rug, under pretence of poking the fire, and stood there with her back to it, facing him. Then she spoke more quickly, with a certain vibration in her voice.

“And this last week,” she said, “a new and wonderful piece of music was discovered by you. Yes, Iput myself as high as that. But am I more than that? Am I really?”

Martin’s forehead wrinkled slightly. Had it not been Stella who asked him this he would have said the question was unreasonable. But before he could reply she went on.

“Ah, dearest,” she said. “I asked you just now to absorb me, to make me you. But I will not flow out of your finger-tips. Oh, I know you only said that in jest, but in jest sometimes one strikes very near to truth. Have you thought what you are to me, and what, if I am anything, I must be to you. Something absolutely indispensable, your life, no less. Now, supposing chords and harmonies were dumb to you forever, what would be left of you? Tell me that.”

Martin’s expression grew puzzled. It was as if she asked him some preposterous riddle without answer. How could he compare the two?

“How can I tell?” he said. “I suppose I should somehow and sometime adjust myself to it, though I haven’t the slightest idea how. I can’t imagine life, consciousness, without them.”

“And if I went out of your life?” she asked, unwisely, but longing for some convincing answer.

In reply Martin got up and went close to her.

“You have often called me a fool,” he said, “and you have often called me a child. I am both when you ask me things like that. But this foolish child speaks to you, so listen. He does not know what it all means, but he loves you. He knows no other word except that. Is that not enough? If not, what is?”

Then once again the mastery of man overcame her. She wanted him so much, more than any answer toher questions. The subtleties into which she had tried to draw him he brushed aside; her woman’s brain, her woman’s desire to hear him say that she was all, had spun them deftly enough, but he blundered through them somehow, like a bumblebee through a spider’s web, and came booming out on the other side. Theoretically, anyhow, if he had been a woman, they must have caught him, he must have struggled with them, felt their entanglement. As it was, she had failed. Probably he labelled her fine spinnings “silly” in his own mind. But he proceeded through them—still frowning a little.

“You ask me impossible riddles,” he said. “You might as well ask me whether you would sooner tie your mother to the stake and burn her or me. My darling, there is no sense in such things. Surely one can be simple about love, just because it is so big. I know I love you, that is enough for me. I told you that I know nothing else. That is sober truth. But I cannot weigh things in balances. And, what is more, I won’t. Now kiss me; no, properly.”

It must therefore be inferred that he got his way in this matter, for when, two minutes later, Lady Sunningdale made her untimely appearance, the two were again seated, Stella this time in the chair and Martin on the arm.

“But famishing,” she said. “Yes, tea, please, dear Stella. Martin, you monster, I haven’t seen you for days. Why I haven’t taken to drink I don’t know, over all the dreadful things that have been happening. Would you believe it,—Sahara had two puppies; but she couldn’t bear them, so she ate one and starved the other. Well, it’s all over, but nobody in the house hashad a wink of sleep for the last week. And so you are going to give a concert at last, Martin. I shan’t come. I hate my private property being made public.”

“But charity,” said Martin.

“My dear, I know perfectly well what charity and St. James’s Hall means. It means guinea tickets. Charity should begin at home, not at St. James’s Hall. However, I daresay you will appropriate all the proceeds. So near the Circus, too. Really, Piccadilly Circus is too fascinating. I should like to have a house in the very centre of it, with a glass gallery all round, and really see life. Yes, one more piece of muffin,—not for myself, but for Suez Canal. Suez Canal is so lonely, poor darling, without Sahara; but there is muffinquand même. Naughty! I’m sure the servants feed him. And so everybody is to be married in May. Fancy the Bear coming round like that—even Bears will turn—about Helen and Frank. Apparently, they are quite inseparable,—the Bear and Frank I mean, and tie each other’s bootlaces, and are converting each other to Christianity and Atheism respectively. Bears and buns! Frank is a bun, and the Bear has decided it is worth climbing up a pole to get him. I think it is a mistake to have said that. Besides, it is absolutely untrue. The Bear wouldn’t climb a yard to marry Helen to the Czar. How terrible Russia must be, with everything ending in ‘owsky’! I tried to flirt with the Bear myself, and had no success of any kind whatever. Dear Suez! No Sahara. The world is a desert without Sahara. But mayn’t I tempt you with a small piece of bun with sugar on the top? How depressing marriages are!”

Lady Sunningdale sighed heavily.

“What is the matter?” asked Stella, sympathetically.

“I don’t know. Dearest, that Louis XVI. clock is too beautiful. I wish I were a millionaire. Yes. I think I am depressed because everything is going exactly as I planned it. There is nothing so tiresome as success. You two children sitting there, Frank and Helen, all my own ideas, and all going precisely as I wished. You are my idea, too, Martin, a figment of my brain. I invented you. And you are going precisely as I wished. Every one says nobody ever played the least like you. But the Bear is still in a rage with you, is he not? That is so English. English people are always in a rage about something, the state of the weather, or France, or their children. I never get in a rage. I have no time for that sort of thing. Stella dearest, I think it will have to be you to go down to Chartries next, and induce the Bear to be propitiated. Heavens, how dreadful it must be to have a very strong sense of duty! It must be like toast-crumbs in your bed, after you have breakfasted there, when one can’t lie comfortable for five minutes together.”

“No, I am the next,” said Martin. “I shall be staying with my uncle at Easter, and shall try to see my father then. I daresay it will do no good.”

“Do you really care?” asked Lady Sunningdale. “I really don’t see why you should. He is unreasonable. I shouldn’t worry.”

Stella turned to Martin with a certain air of expectancy.

“Yes, I do care,” he said; “I care horribly. I care every day. I hate being on bad terms with any one. I hate anger and resentment,” he added, with a littlequiet air of dignity, for he had not wholly liked Lady Sunningdale’s remarks.

“That was one of Nature’s most extraordinary conjuring tricks,” she said. “People talk of heredity; but put all the fathers of England in a row, and ask any one to pick out Martin’s. The better they know either of you, by so much the more will they pick out Mr. Challoner last of all!”

Martin got up.

“Ah, don’t let’s talk about it,” he said; “it is not agreeable. I wish I could laugh about it like you, but I can’t.”

Then, with a quick intuition, he turned to Stella.

“One can’t do any good by talking about it, can one?” he asked.

Something still jarred on the girl, due partly to their talk before Lady Sunningdale came in.

“You have admirable common sense,” she said.

Lady Sunningdale caught on to this with her usual quickness. She knew for certain from Stella’s tone that something had gone just a shade wrong between them.

“And you find it rather trying, do you not, dearest Stella?” she said. “Of course, Martin is the most trying person in the world; and if it wasn’t for his ten fingers he would be absolutely intolerable. He is a boy of about twelve, with dreadful streaks of common sense worthy of a man of fifty who has left all his illusions behind him. Yes, monster, that is you!”

Martin raised his eyebrows, his excellent temper slightly ruffled for the moment.

“Indeed, I didn’t recognise it,” he said.

“Dear Martin, don’t be pompous. You didn’t recognise it because it wasn’t flattering. They say wewomen are vain, but compared to men—— Some women are vain of their appearance, it is true, and usually without sufficient cause, but all men are vain of every attribute that God has or has not endowed them with. Remember that, Stella, and if you want to lead a quiet life, lay on flattery with a spade. They are insatiable. Personally I don’t flatter Sunningdale, because I don’t in the least want a quiet life. Tranquility is so frightfully aging and makes one like an oyster.”

Martin had recovered his serenity.

“When I am dead,” he remarked, “you will be sorry for what you have said. But why this sudden attack on me?”

“When you are dead you will see how right I was. But the attack—well, chiefly because you haven’t provoked it. That is so tiresome of you. You could see I wanted to quarrel, and you wouldn’t say anything I could lay hold of. If I want to sit down, politeness ordains that you should give me a chair. If you see I want to quarrel, politeness ordains that you should give me a pretext. It is the worst possible manners not to. My nerves are all on edge. When that is the case, the only thing to do is to quiet them by being rude to other people. Dearest Stella, you look too lovely this afternoon. Why you want to throw yourself away on Martin I can’t think!”

“But you said just now it was your idea,” said Stella.

“I know it was, and a very foolish one. I never imagined you would take it seriously. Besides, you know perfectly well that whenever a thing happens that pleases me, I always say it is my own idea. My darling, did I tread on you. How foolish of you to liethere. And when you are all happily settled for, what am I to do next?”

The clock struck and Martin looked up.

“Gracious, I am late,” he said. “Karl was to give me a lesson at six. You must say good-bye to me next, Lady Sunningdale.”

Stella got up, too.

“I’ll see you safely out of the house,” she said, and left the room with him. Then, having closed the door, she paused, taking hold of the lappel of his coat.

“Martin, you’re not vexed with me?” she asked.

“No; why? I thought you were vexed with me.”

“No, dear. I was vexed with myself, I think, and so I was horrid to you. But, my dearest, give me all you can of yourself. I want so much, just because it is you!”

Martin’s eyes kindled and glowed.

“It is all yours,” he said. “You know that. I wish there was more of it. And there is more since—since a week ago.”

“Then I am content,” she said, “and that means a great deal. I think I was rather jealous of pianos generally. And you forgive me? Yes?”

Lady Sunningdale, though often irrelevant from sheer irrelevancy, was also sometimes irrelevant on purpose, using preposterous conversation, as Bismarck used truth, as a valuable instrument to secure definite ends. Just now, for instance, her attack on Martin had purpose at its back, for she had seen quite distinctly that something had gone wrong between him and Stella, and had made the diversion in order to prevent the topic of friction, whatever it was, being subjected to further rubbing. Providence had lentaid to her benevolent scheme, sending Martin off to his music-lesson and leaving Stella alone with her. In fact, her request to be told what she should do next needed no answer at all, for she knew quite well that what she would do next was to get Stella to confide in her and tell her all that had happened. She was a great believer in talking things out; the important point, however, was not that the principals should talk things out, which was, indeed, worse than useless, but that they should severally talk it out with somebody else. She wondered, and indeed rather hoped, that Martin might simultaneously talk it out with Karl, for, as she had had occasion to observe before, Martin’s music-lesson consisted chiefly of discussion on character.

Stella returned in a moment, and Lady Sunningdale was irrelevant no longer. She only took a preliminary circuit or two in the manner of a homing pigeon before it takes the straight, unswerving line.

“Martin is simply absorbed in the thought of his concert,” she said. “And he is going to play justallthe things that make me laugh and cry. Personally, I shall go with five handkerchiefs and a copy of some English comic paper. The handkerchiefs are for the tears I shall shed, and the comic paper is to check my laughter when he plays the Paganini Variations. Dear Stella, how very wise of you to marry a genius. You will never be dull. But it is rather bold, too. Oh, please take Suez Canal out of the grate; he is trying to commit suicide, I think, because Sahara is not here. Yes. Geniuses are so unexpected and violent. It must be like marrying somebody who keeps several full-sized flashes of lightning about him, and also a large lump of damp clay. You never know whichyou will put your hand on, and they are both so dreadfully disconcerting.”

Stella picked Suez Canal out of the grate. Apparently he was putting ashes on his head as a sign of mourning, and she dusted him carefully before replying.

“I am disconcerted,” she said.

Lady Sunningdale never pressed for a confidence. “To show that you want a thing,” she once said, “usually means that you are grudgingly given half of it. But if you firmly turn your back on it, it is hurled at you.” She turned her back now, using irrelevance again.

“It is nearly three years since I was disconcerted,” she said, “and the terrible thing is that I quite forget what disconcerted me. I think it must have been Sunningdale. Do you know he spoke in the House of Lords the other day on one side, and then voted on the other. His reason was that he felt his own remarks to be so feeble that he was sure there was more to be said on the other side. But I believe he merely forgot. Yes. That marble fireplace is so good. Surely it must be Adams’s.”

This was completely efficacious.

“Shall I bore you, if I talk to you?” asked Stella.

“No, dearest Stella. I love being talked to. What is it?”

“It is Martin,” said she.

The back view had done its part. Lady Sunningdale turned completely round again.

“Dearest Stella,” she said, “pray put out the electric light. It is rather strong in my eyes. Yes, Martin now!”

Stella felt as she turned out the light that this was exactly what she wished. In the dim flickering firelight her thoughts, drawn to the surface, became articulate more easily.

“He is just what you say,” she said. “You touch him, and never know whether it is going to be lightning or clay. The lightning does not disconcert me. But, dear Lady Sunningdale, the clay does!”

Lady Sunningdale was really immensely interested. She had her own methods of getting the girl to rummage in the dark corners of her mind and bring out all that was there, and she pursued them now.

“Clay is not really disconcerting,” she said; “it is only the possibility of clay when you expect lightning. My own darling Sunningdale is entirely clay. Of course there is clay in Martin; there is in everybody. How have you managed to come across it? Because he has singularly little.”

“Music is his lightning,” said Stella.

“Do you mean that the rest is clay?” asked Lady Sunningdale.

There was a pause, and Stella turned out an extremely dark corner in her mind, something really quite below the stairs.

“What if I am?” she asked.

“Then, dearest Stella, you have only yourself to thank. He did not think you clay anyhow a week ago. Else, why should he have asked you to marry him? Or do you mean that Martin has changed since then?”

Again Stella paused.

“I must say it more simply,” she said. “Look at it in this way. What if Martinismusic? if everything else to him is secondary to that?”

“Then he would have asked the complete works of Chopin to marry him,” remarked Lady Sunningdale. “But, as far as I know, he didn’t. It occurs to me that he asked you. And I know, I can feel it, that he is devoted to you, really in love with you. Only don’t, for Heaven’s sake, let your mind dwell for a moment on the relative positions that you and music hold to him.”

“I have done worse than that,” said Stella. “I have asked him what relative positions we hold. I did so to-day.”

“My dear, how insane! What did he say?”

“He told me not to talk nonsense. But is it nonsense?”

Lady Sunningdale drew a little nearer to the fire. All her kindliness, all her good nature, and what was perhaps even more important, all her tact and finesse, was enlisted on behalf of these two. She recognised to herself that there was here in all probability only one of those tiny misunderstandings which must occur between a man and a woman who are now for the first time really learning each other. At the same time it seemed to her quite important, if possible, to thoroughly dust, clean out, and disinfect this dark little mental corner in Stella, for it might easily contain the germ of a misunderstanding that would be by no means trivial.

“Yes, it is nonsense,” she said, decidedly. “It is poisonous, suicidal nonsense. You are exactly like the Bear. You don’t seem to grasp any more than the Bear does what music means to Martin. It means, in one word, ‘God.’ It is his religion,—and, good gracious, supposing he was a bishop and you weregoing to marry him, you would not, I hope, be jealous of his religion. And in music Martin is a very big bishop, indeed! But in other respects—you forget this too—he is simply a child. I can’t imagine what Martin will be like when he is middle-aged. It is impossible to think of him as middle-aged. Martin and middle age are not compatible terms. True, Karl says he has been having a good many birthdays lately. I, too, think he has, but he has, so to speak, made saints’ days of them all, and dedicated them to his religion. All but one, that is to say.”

“And that one?” asked Stella.

“He had a birthday when he fell in love with you. That is yours; he has given you that. My dear, he adores you. When you come into the room his face is lit. Only, for Heaven’s sake, don’t worry him and question him about his soul and his depth and the exact way in which he loves you. If you insist, he will try to answer you, and his answers will be dreadfully disappointing to you, because he doesn’t know anything about it. To question him is like—it is like looking at light through a prism or a spectroscope, splitting it up into rays, when instead you might be sitting in the sun. Dear me, how very precise and definite I am becoming. I mean exactly that—I hope I am not going to be ill.”

Stella laughed.

“Dear Lady Sunningdale, I hope not,” she said. “In any case, tell me some more first.”

“My dear, I can’t talk sense to order. You must collect the extremely valuable grains of gold in my conversation for yourself out of the extraordinary mass of quite valueless material.”

“But he is disconcerting,” began Stella again.

“Ah, yes, but so quite certainly are you to him. Heaven, how dull it would be if other people never disconcerted one. But I don’t think Martin, though I am sure he must often find you disconcerting, would ever say so.”

Stella flushed slightly.

“Is that a reproof?” she asked, gently.

“It certainly is, if it occurs to you that it may be, so pray, pray, don’t deserve it again. Where is Suez? Oh, there. And don’t allow yourself, ever allow yourself to think ‘What a pity there is an occasional lump of clay.’ For, indeed, there is so much lightning. If there wasn’t a little clay, I really think Martin would explode, go off in spontaneous combustion. My dear, hours and hours of every day pass for Martin at a pressure of which stupid people like you and I have no conception. He recuperates by restful intervals, by being a mere boy with huge animal spirits. You may thank your stars he does not recuperate by being vicious or sulky. Most geniuses are morose and very few are quite sane. Martin is quite sane, and even the Bear, who takes the gloomiest possible view of him, couldn’t call him morose. Go down on your knees, my dear, and be thankful.”

Stella was silent a moment. Then another corner was turned out.

“And there is no doubt about his genius?” she asked, at length.

“But what is the matter with you?” asked Lady Sunningdale. “You will ask me next if I am quite sure he hasn’t got false teeth. Dearest Stella, do drop this exacting, questioning attitude once and for all. Iknow almost everybody has an occasional attack of it, but I am sure you will pardon me, it is just that which makes people odious. It turns them sour. For Heaven’s sake, don’t turn sour. Suez Canal is in the grate again. Oh, naughty! Thank you, dearest. Yes, sour. Take things on broad, indulgent lines. He loves you. That, on the whole, you believe to be a true statement of the case. Well, then, surely that is good enough. Don’t say, ‘Does his love measure six feet in height, or is it only five foot eleven and three quarters.’ In fact, open the windows.”

Stella took this very attentively and very gravely.

“Dear Lady Sunningdale,” she said, “I am very grateful. I think you have done me good. I had a little attack of indigestion in my mind. Do you know, I never thought that you——“

“You never thought that I could think,” said she, “and I’m sure I don’t wonder. But I can think when I choose. Just now the object of my thought is to stop you thinking. Leave psychological questions alone when you are dealing with Martin. Just open your mouth, shut your eyes, and see what Martin will give you, as we used to say when children. You are a most fortunate girl. Heavens, fancy having Martin in love with one!”

There was the ring of absolute sincerity about this, so true and distinct that Stella wondered. She wondered still more when, on looking at the other’s face, she saw that Lady Sunningdale’s eyes were full of tears, which she openly mopped up with a square two inches of lace.

“Yes, real tears,” she said; “tears of extreme middle age, my dear. What are they made of?Water, I suppose, with just a little jealousy and a little youth still left in them, and adoration for genius and love of beauty. In fact, they are the most complicated tears I ever heard of; one or two like that from each eye and then it is over. Dearest Stella, you are such a fool. One is always a fool till one is middle-aged, and then one is young no longer. That is the tragedy of growing old. It is almost impossible to be mature and young simultaneously. You are a fool because you don’t know what a priceless, perfect gift has been given you,—Martin’s love. I envy you intolerably; I gnash my teeth with rage. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want him in the least to fall in love with me; and, to reassure you, I may say that even to my amorous eye there does not appear to be the very slightest chance of it. But I gnash my teeth because I am not young like you, so that he might fall in love with me, and at the same time wise like myself, so that I should know what to do with him.”

“Ah, tell me that; do tell me how to manage, how to behave,” said Stella.

“I can’t. That is just it. There is another tragedy in this mismanaged world, that nobody can teach any one else anything that is worth knowing. You can’t teach me how to look young; I can’t teach you how to be wise, how to appreciate, how not to worry. But Martin’s mind is like a cut diamond: it absorbs whatever light—blue, green, red—is thrown into it, and turns it by its own magic into inapproachable colour. That colour is seen in his music. Oh, I have watched you often this last week. You worry him and puzzle him, and I’m sure I don’t wonder, if you ask him therelative places of music and you in his mind. Do you not see how stupid that is? Answer me.”

Stella smiled.

“Oh, don’t rub it in,” she said. “Yes, it is idiotic.”

“My dear, you are so gentle that I feel a brute!”

“Please be a brute, then, just five minutes more,” said Stella.

“Very good. Do not take up this absurd position and say, ‘I am your goddess, what incense have you got to burn before me this morning? Ah, that is the second-quality incense! I thought so. Howcouldyou?’ Be much bigger than that. Suez! Recollect who it is who has paid you this incomparable compliment of saying he wishes to see your face opposite him at breakfast for the rest of his life, every day, every day. Go to Karl Rusoff and ask him where he places Martin, if you do not believe me about his genius. And when he has told you, hire the Albert Hall, fill it with people, and tell them what Karl says. Then wait a couple of years, hire the Albert Hall again, and repeat again what Karl told you. And every single person in the hall will say, ‘Why, of course. We knew that.’”

Stella was silent a moment.

“Then, must I burn incense before him?” she asked. “The very best incense. I should love to do that!”

Lady Sunningdale restrained a movement of impatience.

“My dear, you are the one person in the world who must not burn incense,” she said. “An incense-burning wife is like dram-drinking to a man. You are to be his wife. That means a good deal. But you are to be his comrade. That means much more. He andHelen! Why he did not get Helen to come and live with him, and—well, not marry at all, I don’t know. Perhaps Frank would object. Men are all so selfish.”

“Do you mean he has chosen badly?” asked Stella.

“No, dear; and it is silly to say that. What I meant was that I wonder why he wanted to marry at all, why a nature like that has need of anybody else. If I was like Martin, I should never see a soul, but contemplate my own wonderfulness. However, he did want somebody else. And he chose you, you fortunate girl.”

“I ought to be very happy, then?” she asked.

“Ah, I don’t say that. Perhaps you will be divinely, ecstatically discontented. Happiness is rather a bovine quality, I always think. It implies not wanting. Any one with imagination must always want. Yes. Dear me, I came here to say something, and I forget what—I have said a good deal, but not it. Dearest Stella, do you forgive me? At least, for my own creature comfort, I want you to forgive me; but essentially I don’t care, as I know I am right.”

“No, I don’t forgive you,” said the girl, “but I thank you.”

Lady Sunningdale struggled to her feet out of her very low chair.

“That is sweet of you. Yes, Suez, my darling, we are going home to din-din and Sahara. Ah, I remember. I want you and your mother to join us at Cannes for a fortnight at Easter. Sunningdale’s villa is really quite comfortable, and you can look at the Mediterranean and meditate. Ask her to send me a line about it, but come yourself in any case. The Southern sun always melts my brains, and liquid wisdomflows from my lips in practically unlimited quantities. Why don’t we all live at Cannes, among the palms and that sort of thing. If you can’t come, I shall ask Martin; but I don’t mean to have you together. You will be quite enough together afterwards. Dear me, how screaming Martin will be as the master of a house! Good-bye, darling Stella. Yes, pray, turn up the lights, otherwise I shall crash my way through priceless furniture and tread on Suez Canal.”

Karl Rusoffhad experienced a good deal of inward anxiety, which he was very careful to keep entirely to himself, for several days before Martin’s concert, for the thought of it, as the day got near, had agitated and excited the latter to the point of making him lose his sleep and his appetite. Though Karl knew quite well that an artist does his best, as a rule, under the spell of excitement, more, that any notable achievement can hardly be compassed without it, yet in the present case Martin himself was naturally so highly strung and his excitement had become acute so many hours before he was to make his appearance that his master could not help silently wondering whether he could stand the strain of it till the day came. At other times again Karl, knowing Martin’s serene, splendid health, found consolation in telling himself that the tighter and more tense his nerves got the more wonderful would his playing be. Even during the last week or two he had made such an enormous advance in his general grasp that Karl knew that he himself would be bitterly disappointed if this extraordinary youth did not on his very first appearance legitimately and justifiably take musical London by storm. At the same time he knew that he himself would give a very deep sigh of relief when Martin had got through, say, the first three minutes of his recital. That safely past, he was sure that the mere feel of thefamiliar notes would occupy him to the exclusion of all agitation.

Only a quarter of an hour before he was to come on to the platform Karl was with him in the artist’s room, trying to occupy his mind in talk, but watching him with ever-increasing nervousness, as he walked up and down like a caged animal between door and window. Once Martin took out a cigarette, bit the end off as if it were a cigar, and threw it away. Then he asked a question, paid not the slightest attention to the answer, and finally sat down on the edge of the table. His face was flushed, his eyes very bright; had not it been that Karl knew how excited he was, he would have thought he was ill.

“I shall break down,” he said. “Look at my hands; look how they tremble. I can’t keep them still. I could no more play a series of octaves than I could fly. It would be like the ‘Tremolo’ stop on Chartries organ.”

“My dear boy, I have told you that that does not matter in the slightest degree,” said Karl. “The moment you touch the notes that will cease absolutely. Why, even now my hands always tremble before I begin!”

Martin apparently was not listening.

“And I have not the remotest notion how the ‘Études Symphoniques’ begin,” he said.

Karl tried to laugh, but he was not very successful. As a matter of fact he was quite as nervous as Martin.

“That’s a great pity,” he said, “as you open with it. I don’t know either.”

But Martin did not smile.

“What will you do if I break down?” he said; “if I can’t begin? It is more than possible.”

“I shall hiss; I shall boo; I shall demand the return of my money,” said he.

But Martin still remained perfectly grave.

“Ah, don’t,” he said; “the others may boo if they like, and I shan’t mind—much. But I couldn’t stand it if you did.”

“Did you drink a good, stiff glass of whiskey-and-soda for lunch, as I told you to?” demanded Karl.

“I tried to, but I should have been dead drunk if I had gone on. So what will you do if I break down?” he asked again. “You told me, but I have forgotten.”

Karl rose from his chair.

“I shall break my heart, Martin,” he said.

Then he spoke to him quickly, peremptorily, seeing he was really on the verge of hysterics.

“We’ve had quite enough of this nonsense, my dear boy,” he said. “If you give me any more of it, I shall lose my temper with you. You are not going to break down, I forbid you, and you are to do as I tell you. You are going to play your very best,—better than you have ever played before. Now I must get to my place. Give them five minutes law before you appear, and as soon as I see the top of your black head coming up the stairs I shall have all the doors closed till the end of the Études. We’ll have no interruptions; they are frightfully distracting. You know where I shall be sitting, don’t you? Bow twice, right and left, walk straight to the piano, and begin instantly, without playing any fluffy arpeggios. It is going to be a great day for you. And for me.”

Martin looked despairingly round.

“Don’t leave me, don’t leave me,” he said. “Can’t you sit by me?”

“And hold your hand? Ah, this is altogether childish!”

For the first time the shadow of a smile crossed Martin’s face.

“I know it is,” he said. “I can just, just see that. I think I had better try to be a little man for a change.”

The hall was crammed to overflowing, as if some pianist of world-wide fame was to make his appearance, and not a young man who had never performed in public before. Several causes had contributed to this, the first and most important being that Mr. Martin Challoner was actually a pupil of Karl Rusoff’s, who for years had never consented to teach. Furthermore, Karl Rusoff had the very highest opinion of him,—exaggeratedly high perhaps, since he was his pupil,—and had not only allowed, but wished him to give a concert. Surely, then, he would run no risks; Martin Challoner must have some merit. In addition, no English pianist of more than mediocre powers had appeared for years, and patriotism called. Finally, for the last fortnight Lady Sunningdale had worn her coachman to a shadow and her horses to skin and bones, so incessantly and unintermittently had she driven about, first of all to the houses of her intimates, then of her ordinary friends, and lastly of the merest acquaintances, practically insisting that they should all appear. Karl Rusoff had done what he could to discourage this, but his efforts were totally void of effect, for Lady Sunningdale had told him that it was her “duty” to do her best for Martin. She seldom usedthe word “duty,” but when she did, it might be defined as anything she was irrevocably determined to do, from which no argument could move her.

So for the first time Martin found himself in that unspeakable position of being alone on the shore of a sea of faces, the owners of which had paid money in anticipation of the pleasure he had undertaken to provide for them. Opposite him, a few yards off only, but looking misty and unreal, was the Steinway Grand, and he found himself wondering what on earth it was for. When he remembered, he felt towards it as a condemned man may feel when he sees the execution shed, at a few minutes before eight. Then he bowed in answer to a very fair reception, and walked straight to the piano. He glanced at his programme, and saw he had to begin with Schumann’s “Études Symphoniques.” He sat down, waited a moment for silence, and began.

He played one bar only and then stopped. He had not the very faintest idea of how it went on, and in a sort of mild despair—he felt as if his powers of feeling were packed in cotton wool—looked down to where Karl was sitting in the third row. Those great grey eyes were fixed on him with an expression of supreme appeal; he could see the master’s hands clutching convulsively at the back of the seat in front of him. And at that sight, at the sight of the agony Karl was in, Martin was able for one moment to forget himself and all the bewildering crowd of faces. So, fighting against the paralysis that was on him, no longer for his own sake, but for Karl’s, he again turned to the piano.

But still he could think of nothing, nothing; hecould not even remember the first bar that he had played just now, and he bit his lip with his teeth till the blood came, saying to himself, “It will break his heart; it will break his heart.” The numb, dulled sense was gone, in that half-minute he endured an agony of years.

Then, quite suddenly, like the passage of the sun from behind some black cloud, all came back to him, and he sat still a moment longer, in sheer happiness. At the concentrated thought of what Karl was suffering, his nervousness, his paralysis of mind went entirely from him, and with complete certainty, with the assured knowledge, too, that he was going to play his very best, he began again.

At the end of the slow Thema he paused, looked up at Karl and smiled nearly to laughing-point at him, pushed back the plume of hair that drooped over his forehead, and—played. And at that smile and at the gesture that was frequent with him, Karl gave one immense sigh of relief that Martin could hear. But now it meant nothing to him: he was busy.

Martin’s face, during those few horrible moments, had grown absolutely colourless, so that Karl had thought, and almost wished—for so the public shame would be lessened and people would be compassionate—that he was going to faint. For when for the second time Martin had turned to the piano and still could not begin, he believed for that moment that the boy could not pull himself together; that unless he fainted he would simply have to walk off the platform again. But now the colour came back, slowly at first, then, with sudden flushes, the dead apathy of his face changed, and began to live again. Soon his mouthparted slightly, as if wondering at the magic of the music which blossomed like roses underneath his flying fingers. Once or twice between the variations he brushed back his hair again; once he looked up at Karl, with the brilliant glance his master knew and loved, asking with his eyes, “Will that do? Will that do foryou?” before he went on interpreting to the breathless crowd the noble joy which must have filled the composer as he wrote. Full of artistic triumph as Karl’s life had been, never before had it mounted and soared so high as now, when not he, but his pupil, held the hall enchained.

And in that moment his own ambitions, which he had so splendidly realised for so long, dropped dead. He and Martin, he knew now, were master and pupil no longer; it was the master’s turn—and with what solemn joy he did it—to sit and learn, to hear—and he longed for a myriad ears—what was possible, for even Martin had never played like that before. Even admiration was dead; there was no room for anything except listening. Admiration, wonder, delight, laughter of joy might come when the last note had sounded, but at present to listen was enough.

Martin held the last chord long. Then he took both hands off, as if the keys were hot, and rose, facing the hall. For him, too, just then, personal ambition was dead; he had played, as David played before Saul, in order to drive from his master’s face the demon of agony that he had seen there. And he looked not at Stella, not at Lady Sunningdale, not at Frank and Helen, nor did his eyes wander over the crowded rows, but straight at Karl, while the hall grew louder and louder, till the air was thick with sound, still askinghim, “Did I play it well?” And when Karl nodded to him, he was content, and bowed in front of him and to right and left, thinking “How kind they all are!” He caught Stella’s eye and smiled, Frank’s, Helen’s, Lady Sunningdale’s. Then he sat down at the piano again.

But it was quite impossible to begin, and for his own amusement (for now, it must be confessed, he was enjoying himself quite enormously), he struck an octave rather sharply and heard not the faintest vibration from the strings above the uproar. So he rose again, bowed again, and still bowed, and bowed still, till he felt like a Chinese mandarin, and knew everybody must think so, too. Then he sat down and waited till the phlegmatic English public had said “thank you” enough.

A ten minutes’ interval had been put down on the programme, and tea was waiting for him in the room below. But he forgot all about it, and went straight through. The recital was carefully chosen not to be too long, and in the ordinary course of events the audience would have been streaming out into the street again after an hour and a half. But they refused to stream; Martin gave oneencore, and after a pause a second, but he was still wildly recalled. Once before in the summer he and Helen had sent “London” mad about them; this afternoon he did it alone. And, at last, in a despair that was wholly delightful, as the hush fell on the house again, when he sat down for the fourth time, he played “God save the King” solemnly through, and his audience laughed and departed.

Lady Sunningdale found that she had burst her left-handglove and lost her right-foot shoe when she came to take stock of what had happened, as Martin finally retired after “God save the King.” Karl was sitting next her.

“Don’t speak to me, anybody,” she said, “because there is nothing whatever to say. That is Martin. I knew it all along. Yes, a shoe, so tiresome, I don’t know how it happens. Thank you, Monsieur Rusoff. Stella dear, we start from Victoria to-morrow morning, not Charing Cross. What did I tell you when we talked last? Do you not see? That is Martin. If any one speaks to me, I shall slap him in the face and burst into floods of tears. I should like to see that darling for one moment, just to tell him that he has not been altogether a failure. Which is the way? I suppose he is drinking porter now, is he not? or is it only singers who do that? Eight o’clock, Stella. Quarter to eight, Frank, because you are always late. Dearest Helen, how is the Bear? Yet Martin has only got eight fingers and two thumbs like the rest of us. And was it not too thrilling at the beginning? I knew exactly how he felt. It was pure toss-up for just one moment whether he would be able to play at all or send us empty away like the “Magnificat.” Through this door, isn’t it?”

Karl Rusoff showed her the way through the short passage into the room where two hours ago he had sat with Martin on the verge of hysterics. But now a great shout of boyish laughter hailed them, and Martin went up to Karl, both hands outstretched.

“Ah, it was you who pulled me through,” he said. “I couldn’t have begun otherwise. But it hurt you so dreadfully. I—I felt it hurt you. And shallI ever play like that again? I never played like it before!”

Karl looked at him a moment without speaking. Then he raised the boy’s hands to his lips and kissed them.

“I mean that,” he said. “Ah, Martin, how I mean that!”

Martin stood quite still. Had such a thing ever suggested itself as possible to him he would have felt ready to sink into the earth with sheer embarrassment. But now, when the unimagined, the impossible had happened, he felt no embarrassment at all.

“You did it all,” he said, simply. “Thank you a hundred thousand times.”

Then the pendulum swung back again, and he was a boy himself, and boyishly delighted with success.

“Oh, I enjoyed it all so,” he said. “After that first terrible minute, I just revelled in it. Can’t I give another concert this evening?”

Here Lady Sunningdale broke in,—

“You not only can, but you must, after dinner,” she said. “Martin, you played really nicely to-day. I am going to begin to practise to-morrow morning. Scales. No, not to-morrow morning, because I shall be otherwise engaged on the English Channel. Why can’t they run a large steam-roller over the sea between Dover and Calais? Nobody can tell me. However, I’m told it is rather healthy than otherwise. My dear, red velvet sofas, tin basins, Stella, and I. Also Suez Canal. Sahara is not yet in a fit state. It is too terrible. Eight o’clock to-night, Martin. And I shall never forgive you for this afternoon. You gave me the worst five minutes I ever had.”

“I tried to make up for it,” said he.

Lady Sunningdale turned quickly back in the doorway.

“I adored you,” she said. “And next time I shall wear large eights. Perhaps they will not burst quite so soon.”

Martin turned a thirsty eye on Karl when she had gone.

“And can I have my whiskey-and-soda now?” he asked. “I want it frightfully.”

Then quite suddenly his face changed, as if a lamp had been put out. He looked tired, worn out.

“And I have such a headache,” he said. “I think I have had it two days, but was too excited to think about it. It went away altogether when I was playing. But it has come back in force!”

Karl rang the bell.

“Yes; you want a good rest,” he said; “you are tired without knowing it; you have been living on your nerves the last day or two. But anything worth doing is worth being tired over. Dear boy, I hope your headache is not really bad. Anyhow, you have done the thing worth doing. Don’t go out to-night. Go back home, and go to bed early.”

Martin shook his head, smiling.

“Ah, I won’t give up an hour of to-day for fifty headaches,” he said. “Besides, Stella and Lady Sunningdale leave to-morrow. My father was not at the concert, I suppose?”

“No; not that I know of.”

“I sent him a ticket, although I thought he would not come. He does not even approve of my wasting my time at the piano,” he added, with an irritability towhich this horrible stabbing pain in his head contributed.

He drank his whiskey-and-soda with feverish thirst.

“And I had better have left that unsaid,” he remarked. “Now I shall go home, I think, and sleep off my headache before dinner. But I must just look at the platform once more.”

He ran up the steps, and looked round the empty hall. The lights were being extinguished, and gangway carpets being rolled up. The Steinway Grand still stood there, and he felt somehow as if he were saying good-bye to it.

“Well, that is done,” he said to himself.

Lady Sunningdale and Stella left London for the Riviera next morning, and later in the day Martin went down to his uncle’s at Chartries, and Helen back home to the vicarage. The reaction from the excitement of the last few days had left him, naturally enough, rather indolent and tired, and also, naturally enough, rather irritable and disposed—not to put too fine a point on it—to be cross. He found the railway carriage insufferably hot, and pulled down a window; that, however, made it draughty, and he changed his seat, and sat with his back to the engine. This was no good, because for some unexplained reason it made him feel ill, and changing back once more, he fell into a heavy sleep that lasted till they got to their station. Even then the stopping of the train did not arouse him, and Helen had to shake and poke him into consciousness, for which kind office she got growled at.

But he had come to Chartries with the definite objectof seeing his father, and while Helen’s luggage was being put into the pony-cart from the vicarage the two talked this over.

“It’s no use putting it off,” he said, “so will you tell father that unless I hear from him to stop me, I will come over to-morrow afternoon to see him. And I hope,” he added, with his usual candour, “that my temper will be a little improved by then. Lord, how cross I feel! And this time yesterday I was in the middle of it all.”

Helen looked at him a moment rather anxiously.

“You’re all right, aren’t you, Martin?” she said; “not ill?”

“Ill? No. But I’m all on edge and I’ve got two headaches. It’s rather cold waiting here. I think I’ll walk on and let the carriage catch me up. Good-bye, Helen; see you to-morrow.”

Martin woke next morning, after long, heavy sleep, with the same sense of lassitude and tiredness which had oppressed him all the day before and the same headache lying like a hot metallic lump inside his head, pressing the back of his eyes. The man who called him had brought him a couple of letters and a note from his father, which had been sent over from the vicarage. He opened this first.

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