Just at that time Henry at Duncombe was thinking very much of his sister. He could not tell why, but she was appearing to him constantly; he saw her three nights in his dreams. In one dream she was in danger, running for her life along a sea road, high above the sea. Once she was shouting to him in a storm and could not make him hear because of the straining and creaking of the trees. During his morning work in the little library he saw her, laughing at him on the lawn beyond the window—Millie as she was years ago, on that day, for instance, when she came back from Paris and astonished them all by her gaiety and was herself astonished by the news of Katherine's unexpected engagement. He could see her now in the old green drawing-room, laughing at them all and shouting into Great-Aunt Sarah's ear-trumpet. "Well, she's in some trouble," he said to himself, looking out at the sun-flecked lawn. "I'm sure she's in trouble."
He wrote to her and to his relief received a letter from her on that same day. She said very little: ". . . Only another week of this place, and I'm not sorry. These last days haven't been much fun. It's so noisy and every one behaves as though a moment's quiet would be the end of the world. Oh, Henry darling, do come up to London soon after I get back, even if it's only for a day. I'm sure your old tyrant will let you off. Iacheto see you and Peter again. I want you near me. I'm not a bit pleased with myself. I've turnednastylately—conceited and vain. You and Peter shall scold me thoroughly. Vi says mother is just the same. . . ."
Well, she was all right. He was glad. He could sink back once more into the strange, mysterious atmosphere of Duncombe, and call with his spirit Christina down to share themystery with him. He could creep closer to Christina here than real life would ever take him.
Strange and mysterious it was, and touchingly, poignantly beautiful. The wet days of early August had been succeeded by fine weather—English fine weather that was not certain from hour to hour, and gave therefore all the pleasure of unexpected joy.
"Why! there's the sun!" they would all cry, and the towers and the little square pond, and the Cupid, and the hedges cut into peacocks and towers and sailing-ships, would all be caught up into a sky so relentlessly blue that it surely never again would be broken; in a moment, white bolster clouds came slipping up; the oak and the mulberry tree, whose shadows had been black velvet patterns on the shrill green of the grass, seemed to spread out their arms beneath the threatening sky as though to protect their friends from the coming storm. But the storm was not there—only a few heavy drops and then the grey horizon changed to purple, the cloud broke like tearing paper, and in a few moments the shadows were on the lawn again and the water of the square pond was like bright-blue glass.
In such English weather the square English house was its loveliest. The Georgian wing with its old red brick, its square stout windows, was material, comfortable, homely, speaking of thick-set Jacobean squires and tankards of ale, dogs and horses, and long pipes of heavy tobacco. The little Elizabethan wing, where were the chapel and the empty rooms, touched Henry as though it were alive and were speaking to him. This old part of the house had in its rear two rooms that were still older, a barn used now as a garage with an attic above it that was Saxon.
The house was unique for its size in England—so small and yet displaying so perfectly the three periods of its growth. It gained also from its setting because the hills rose behind the garden and the little wood like grey formless presences against the sky, and on the ridge below the house the village, with cottages of vast age and cottagers who seemed to have found the secret of eternal life, slumbered through the seasons, carrying on the tradition of their fathers and listening but dimly to the changes that were coming upon the world beyond them. Thevillage had done well in the War as the cross in front of the Post Office testified, but the War had changed its life amazingly little.
Some of its sons had gone over the ridge of hill, had seen strange sights and heard strange sounds—some of them had not returned. . . . Prices were higher—it was harder now to live than it had been but not much harder. Already the new generation was growing up. One or two, Tom Giles the Butcher, Merriweather, a farmer, talked noisily and said that soon the country would be in the hands of the people. Well, was it not already in the hands of the people? Anyway, they'd rather be in the hands of Sir Charles than of Giles.
How were they to know that Giles' friends would be better men than Sir Charles? Worse most likely. . . .
Into all this Henry sank. Among the few books in the library he found several dealing with the history of the house, of the Duncombes, of the district. Just as he had conjured up the Edinburgh of Scott and Ballantyne, so now his head was soon full of all the Duncombes of the past—Giles Duncombe of Henry VIII.'s time, who had helped his fat monarch to persecute the monasteries and had been given the lands of Saltingham Abbey near by as a reward; Charles Duncombe, the admiral who had helped to chase the Armada; Denis Duncombe, killed at Naseby; Giles Duncombe, the Second, exquisite of Charles II.'s Court killed in a duel; Guy Duncombe, his son, who had fled to France with James II.; Giles the Third of Queen Anne's Court, poet and dramatist; then the two brothers, Charles and Godfrey, who had joined the '45, Charles to suffer on the scaffold, Godfrey to flee into perpetual exile; then Charles again, friend of Johnson and Goldsmith, writer of a bad novel calledThe Forsaken Beauty, and a worse play which even Garrick's acting could not save from being damned; then a seaman again, Triolus Duncombe, who had fought with Nelson at Trafalgar, and lost an arm there; then Ponsonby Duncombe, the historian, who had known Macaulay and written for theQuarterly, and had drunk tea with George Lewes and his horse-faced genius; then Sir Charles's father, who had been simply a comfortable country squire—one of Trollope's men straight fromOrley FarmandThe Claverings, who had liked his elder son, Ralph (killed tiger-shooting in India), and his younger son Tom both betterthan the quiet, studious Charles, whom he had never understood. All these men and their women too seemed to Henry still to live in the house and haunt the gardens, to laugh above the stream and walk below the trees. So quiet was the place and so still that standing by the pond under the star-lit sky he could swear that he heard their voices. . . .
Nevertheless the living engaged his attention sufficiently. Besides Millie and Christina and Peter there were with him in the house, in actual concrete form, Sir Charles and his sister. Lady Bell-Hall had now apparently accepted Henry as an inevitable nuisance with whom God, for some mysterious reason known only to Himself, had determined still further to try her spirit. She was immensely busy here, having a thousand preoccupations connected with the house and the village that kept her happy and free from many of her London alarms. Henry admired her deeply as he watched her trotting about in an old floppy garden-hat, ministering to, scolding, listening to, admonishing the village as though it was one large, tiresome, but very lovable family. With the servants in the house it was the same thing. She knew the very smallest of their troubles, and although she often irritated and fussed them, they were not alone in the world as they would have been had Mrs. Giles, the butcher's wife, been their mistress.
It happened then that Henry for his daily companionship depended entirely upon Sir Charles. A strange companionship it was, because the affection between them grew stronger with every hour that passed, and yet there were no confidences nor intimacies—very little talk at all. At the back of Henry's mind there was always the incident in the cab. He fancied that on several occasions since that he had seen that glance of almost agonizing suffering pass, flash in the eyes, cross the brow; once or twice Duncombe had abruptly risen and with steps that faltered a little left the room. Henry fancied also that Lady Bell-Hall during the last few days had begun to watch her brother anxiously. Sometimes she looked at Henry as though she would question him, but she said nothing.
Then, quite suddenly, the blow fell. On a day of splendid heat, the sky an unbroken blue, the fountain falling sleepily behind them, bees humming among the beds near by, Duncombe and Henry were sitting on easy chairs under the oak. Henry was reading, Duncombe sitting staring at the bright grass and the house that swam in a haze of heat against the blue sky.
"Henry," Duncombe said, "I want to talk to you for a moment."
Henry put down his book.
"I want first to tell you how very grateful I am for the companionship that you have given me during these last months and for your friendship."
Henry stammered and blushed. "I've been wanting—" he said, "been wanting myself a long time to say something to you. I suppose that day when I had done the letters so badly and you—you still kept me on was the most important thing that ever happened to me. No one before has ever believed I could do anything or seen what it was I could do—I always lacked self-confidence and you gave it me. The War had destroyed the little I'd had before, and if you hadn't come I don't know——"
He broke off, feeling, as he always did, that he could say none of the things that he really meant to say, and being angry with himself for his own stupidity.
"I'm very glad," Duncombe said, "if I've done that. I think you have a fine future before you if you do the things you're really suited for—which you will do, of course. But I'm going to trust you still further. I know I can depend on your discretion——"
"If there's anything in the world——" Henry began eagerly.
"It's nothing very difficult," Duncombe said, still smiling; "I am in all probability going to have a serious operation. It's not quite settled—I shall know after a further examination. But it is almost certain. . . .
"There are definite chances that I shall not live through it—the chances of my surviving or not are about equal, I believe. I'll tell you frankly that if I were to think only of myself, death is infinitely preferable to the pain that I have suffered during the last six months. It was when the pain became serious that I determined to hurry up those family papers that you are now working on. I had an idea that I might not have much time left and I wanted to find somebody who could carrythem on. . . . Well, I have found somebody," he said, turning towards Henry and smiling his slightly cynical smile. "In my Will I have left you a certain sum that will support you at any rate for the next three years, and directions that the book is to be left entirely in your hands. . . . I know that you will do your best for it."
Henry's words choked in his throat. He saw the bright grass and the red dazzled house through a mist of tears. He wanted, at that moment above all, to be practical, a hard, common-sense man of the world—but of course as usual he had no power to be what he wanted.
"Yes . . . my best . . ." he stammered.
"Then, what I mean is this," Duncombe continued. "If you do that you will still have some relations with my family, with my brother and sister, I mean." He paused, then continued looking in front of him as though for the moment he had forgotten Henry. "When I first knew that my illness was serious I felt that I could not leave all this. I had no other feeling for the time but that, that I must stay here and see this place safely through these difficult days . . ." He paused again, then looked straight across to Henry.
"I have not forgotten what happened in London in the library the other day. You will probably imagine from that that my brother is a very evil person. He is not, only impulsive, short-sighted and not very clever at controlling his feelings. He has an affection for me but none at all for this place, and as soon as he inherits it he will sell it.
"It is that knowledge that is hardest now for me to bear. Tom is reckless with money, reckless with his affections, reckless with everything, but he is not a mean man. He came into the library that day to get some papers that he knew he should not have rather as a schoolboy might go to the cupboard and try to steal jam, but you will find when you meet him again that he bears no sort of malice and will indeed have forgotten the whole thing. My sister too—of course she is rather foolish and can't adapt herself to the new times, but she is a very good woman, utterly unselfish, and would die for Tom and myself without a moment's hesitation. If I go, be a help to her, Henry. She doesn't know you now at all, but she will later on, and you canshow her that things are not so bad—that life doesn't change, that people are as they always were—certainly no worse, a little better perhaps. To her, the world seems to be suddenly filled with ravening wolves—— Poor Meg!"
His voice died away. . . . Again he was looking at the house and the sparkling lawn.
"To lose this . . . to let it go—— After all these years."
There was a long silence. Only the doves cooing from the gay-tiled roof seemed to be the voice, crooning and satisfied of the summer afternoon.
"And that," said Duncombe, suddenly waking from his reverie, "is another idea that I have had. I feel as though you are going to be of importance in your new generation and that you will have influence. Even though I shall lose this place I shall be able to continue it in a way, perhaps, if I can make you feel that the past is not dead, that itmustgo on with its beauty and pathos influencing, interpenetrating the present. You young ones will have the world to do with as you please. Our time is done. But don't think that you can begin the world again as though nothing had ever happened before. There is all that loveliness, that beauty, longing to be used. The lessons that you are to learn are the very same lessons that generation after generation has learnt before you. Take the past which is beseeching you not to desert it and let it mingle with the present. Don't let modern cleverness make you contemptuous of all that has gone before you. They were as clever as you in their own generation. This beauty, this history, this love that has sunk into these walls and strengthened these trees, carry these on with you as your companions. . . . I love it so . . . and I have to leave it. To know that it will go to strangers . . ."
Henry said: "I'll never forget this place. It will influence all my life."
"Well, then," Duncombe shook his head almost impatiently, "I've done enough preaching . . . nonsense perhaps. It seems to me now important. Soon, if the pain returns, only that will matter."
They sat for a long time in silence. The shadows of the trees spread like water across the lawn. The corners of the garden were purple shaded.
"God! Is there a God, do you think, Henry?"
"Yes," he answered. "I think there is One, but of what kind He is I don't know."
"There must be. . . . There must be. . . . To go out like this when one's heart and soul are at their strongest. And He is loving, I can't but fancy. He smiles, perhaps, at the importance that we give to death and to pain. So short a time it must seem to Him that we are here. . . . But if He isn't. . . . If there is nothing more—— What a cruel, cold game for Something to play with us——"
Henry knew then that Duncombe was sure he would not survive the operation. An aching longing to do something for him held him, but a power greater than either of them had caught him and he could only sit and stare at the colours as they came flocking into the garden with the evening sky, at the white line that was suddenly drawn above the garden wall, at two stars that were thrown like tossed diamonds into the branches of the mulberry.
"Yes—I know God exists," something that was not Henry's body whispered.
"God must exist to explain all the love that there is in the world," he said.
"And all the hatred too," Duncombe answered, looking upward at the two stars. "Why do we hate one another? Why all this temper and scorn, sport and cruelty? Men want to do right—almost every man and woman alive. And the rules are so simple—fidelity, unselfishness, loving, kindliness, humility—but we can't manage them except in little spurts. . . . But then why should they be there at all? All the old questions!" He broke off. "Come, let us go in. It's cold." He got up and took Henry's arm. They walked slowly across the lawn together.
"Henry," he said, "remember to expect nothing very wonderful of men. Remember that they don't change, but that they are all in the same box together—so love them. Love them whenever you can, not dishonestly, because you think it a pretty thing to do, but honestly, because you can't help yourself. Don't condemn. Don't be impatient because of their weaknesses. That has been the failure of my life. I have been sobadly disappointed again and again that I retired into myself, would not let them touch me—and so I lost them. But you are different—you are idealistic. Don't lose that whatever foolish things you may be dragged into. It seems to me so simple now that the end of everything has come and it is too late—love of man, love of God even if He does not exist, love of work—humility because the time is so short and we are all so weak."
By the door he stopped, dropping his voice. "Be patient with my sister to-night. I am going to tell her about my affair. It will distress her very much. Assure her that it is unimportant, will soon be right. Poor Meg!"
He pressed Henry's arm and went forward alone into the dark house.
But how tiresome it is! That very same evening Henry, filled with noble thoughts and a longing for self-sacrifice, was as deeply and as childishly irritated by the events of the evening and by Lady Bell-Hall as he had ever been. In the first place, when he was dressing and had just found a clean handkerchief and was ready to go downstairs, the button-hole of his white shirt burst under his collar and he was forced to undress again and was ten minutes late downstairs.
He saw at once that Duncombe had told his sister the news. Henry had been prepared to show a great tenderness, a fine nobility, a touching fatherliness to the poor frightened lady. But Lady Bell-Hall was not frightened, she was merely querulous, with a drop of moisture at the end of her nose and a cross look down the table at Henry as though he were to-night just more than she could bear. It was also hard that on this night of all nights there should be that minced beef that Henry always found it difficult to encounter. It was not so much that the mince was cooked badly, and what was worse, meanly and baldly, but that it stood as a kind of symbol for all that was mistaken in Lady Bell-Hall's housekeeping.
She was a bad housekeeper, and thoroughly complacent over her incompetence, and it was this incompetence that irritated Henry. Somehow to-night there should have been a gracious offering of the very best the place could afford, with some silence, some resignation, some gentle evidence of affection. Butit was not so. Duncombe was his old cynical self, with no sign whatever of the afternoon's mood.
Only for a moment after dinner in the little grey drawing-room, when Duncombe had left them alone and Henry was seated reading Couperas and Lady Bell-Hall opposite to him was knitting her interminable stockings, was there a flash of something. She looked up suddenly and across at him.
"I learn from my brother that he has told you?" she said, blinking her eyes that were always watering at him.
"Yes," said Henry.
"He tells me that it is nothing serious," her voice quavered.
"No, no," Henry half started up, his book dropping on to the floor. "Indeed, Lady Bell-Hall, it isn't. He hopes it will be all right in a week or two."
"Yes, yes," she answered, rather testily, as though she resented his fancying that he knew more about her brother's case than she herself did. "But operations are always dangerous."
"I had an operation once——" began Henry, then seeing that her eyes were busy with her knitting again he stopped. Nevertheless her little pink cheeks were shaking and her little obstinate chin trembled. He could see that she was doing all that she could to keep herself from tears. He could fancy herself saying: "Well, I'm not going to let that tiresome young man see me cry." But touched as he was impetuously whenever he saw any one in distress, he began again—"Why, when I had an operation once——"
"Thank you," she said to her knitting, "I don't think we'll talk about it if you don't mind."
He picked up his book again.
Next morning Henry asked for leave to go up to London for two days. He had been possessed, driven, tormented during the last week by thoughts of Christina, and in some mysterious way his talk with Duncombe in the garden had accentuated his longing. All that he wanted was to see her, to assure himself that she was not, as she always seemed to him when he was away from her, a figure in a dream, something imagined by him, more lovely, more perfect than anything he could read of or conceive, and yet belonging to the world of poetry, of his own imagined fictions, of intangible and evasive desires.
It was always this impulse that drove him back to her, the impulse to make sure that she was of flesh and blood even though, as he was now beginning to realize, that same form and body were never destined to be his.
He had other reasons for going. Books in the library of the London house had to be consulted, and Millie would now be in Cromwell Road again. Duncombe at once gave him permission.
Going up in the train, staring out of the window, Henry tried to bring his thoughts into some sort of definite order. He was always trying to do this, plunging his hands into a tangle, breaking through here, pulling others straight, trying to find a pattern that would give it all a real symmetry. The day suited his thoughts. The beautiful afternoon of yesterday had been perhaps the last smile of a none too generous summer. To-day autumn was in the air, mists curled up from the fields, clouds hung low against a pale watery blue, leaves were turning red once again, slowly falling through the mist with little gestures of dismay. What he wanted, he felt, thinking of Christina, of Duncombe, of Millie, of his work, of his mother, lying without motion in that sombre house, of his own muddle of generosities and selfishness and tempers and gratitudes, was not so much to find a purpose in it all (that was perhaps too ambitious), but simply to separate one side of life from the other.
He saw them continually crossing, these two sides, not only in his own life, but in every other. One was the side of daily life, of his work for Duncombe, of money and business and Mr. King's bills, and stomach-ache and having a good night's sleep, and what the Allies were going to do about Vienna, and whether the Bolsheviks would attack Poland next spring or no. Millie and Peter both belonged to this world and the Three Graces, and the trouble that he had to keep his clothes tidy, and whether any one yet had invented sock-suspenders that didn't fall down in a public place and yet didn't give you varicose veins—and if not why not.
The other world could lightly be termed the world of the Imagination, and yet it was so much more, somuchmore than that. Christina belonged to it absolutely, and so did her horrible mother and the horrible old man Mr. Leishman. So did his silly story at Chapter XV., so did the old Duncombe letters,so did the place Duncombe, so did Piccadilly Circus in certain moods, and the whole of London on certain days. So did many dreams that he had (and he did not want Mr. Freud, thank you, to explain them away for him), so did all his thoughts of Garth-in-Roselands and Glebeshire, so did the books of Galleon and Hans Andersen, and the author ofLord Jim, and la Motte, Fouqué, and nearly all poetry; so did the voice of a Danish singer whom he had heard one chance evening at a Queen's Hall Concert, and several second-hand bookshops that he knew, and many, many other things, moments, emotions that thronged the world. You could say that he was simply gathering his emotions together and packing them away and calling them in the mass this separate world. But it was not so. There were many emotions, many people whom he loved, many desires, ambitions, possessions that did not belong to this world. And Millie, for instance, complete and vital though she was, with plenty of imagination, did not know that this world existed. Could he only find a clue to it how happy he would be! One moment would be enough. If for one single instant the heavens would open and he could see and could say then: "By this moment of vision I will live for ever! I know now that this other world exists and is external, and that one day I shall enter into it completely." He fancied—indeed he liked to fancy—that his adventure with Christina would, before it closed, offer him this vision. Meanwhile his state was that of a man shut into a room with the blinds down, the doors locked, but hearing beyond the wall sounds that came again and again to assure him that he would not always be in that room—and shadows moved behind the blind.
Meanwhile on both worlds one must keep one's hand. One must be practical and efficient and sensible—oh yes (one's dreams must not interfere. But one's dreams, nevertheless, were the important thing).
"Would you mind," the voice broke through like a stone smashing a pane of glass. "But your boot is——"
He looked up to find a nervous gentleman with pince-nez and a white slip to his waistcoat glaring at him. His boot was resting on the opposite seat and a considerable portion of the gentleman's trouser-leg.
He was terribly sorry, dreadfully embarrassed, blushing, distressed. He buried himself in Couperas, and soon forgot his own dreams in pursuing the adventures of the large and melancholy familiar to whose dismal fate Couperas was introducing him. And behind, in the back of his head, something was saying to him for the two-millionth time, "I must not be such an ass! I must not be such an ass!"
He arrived in London at midday, and the first thing that he did was to telephone to Millie. She would be back in her rooms by five that afternoon. His impulse to rush to Christina he restrained, sitting in the Hill Street library trying to fasten his mind to the monotonous voice of Mr. Spencer, who was so well up in facts and so methodical in his brain that Henry always wanted to stick pins into his trousers and make him jump.
When he reached Millie's lodgings she had not yet returned, but Mary Cass was there just going off to eat some horrible meal in an A.B.C. shop preparatory to a chemistry lecture.
"How's Millie?" he asked.
She looked him over as she always did before speaking to him.
"Oh! She's all right!" she said.
"Really all right?" he asked her. "I haven't thought her letters sounded very happy."
"Well, I don't think she is very happy, if you ask me," Mary answered, slowly pulling on her gloves. "I don't like her young man. I can't think what she chose him for."
"What's he like?" asked Henry.
"Just a dressed-up puppy!" Mary tossed her head. "But, maybe, I'm not fair to him. When two girls have lived together and like one another one of them isn't in all probability going to be very devoted to the man who carries the other one off."
"No, I suppose not," Henry nodded his head with deep profundity.
"And then I despise men," Mary added, tossing her head. "You're a poor lot—all except your friend Westcott. I likehim."
"I didn't know you knew him," said Henry.
"Oh yes, he's been here several times. Now if it werehewho was going to carry Millie off! You know he's deeply in love with her!"
"He! Peter?" Henry cried horrified.
"Yes, of course. Do you mean to say you didn't see it?"
"But he can't—he's married already!"
"Mr. Westcott married?' Mary Cass repeated after him.
"Yes, didn't you know? . . . But Millie knows."
"Married? But when?"
"Oh, years ago, when he was very young. She ran away with a friend of his and he's never heard of her since. She must have been awful!" Henry drew a deep breath of disgust.
"Poor man!" Mary sighed. "Everything's crooked in this beastly world. Nobody gets what he wants."
"Perhaps it's best he shouldn't."
Mary turned upon him. "Henry, there are times when I positively loathe you. You're nearly the most detestable young prig in London—you would be if you weren't—if you weren't——"
"If I weren't——?" said Henry, blushing. Of all things he hated most to be called a prig.
"If you weren't such an incredible infant and didn't tumble over your boots so often——"
She was gone and he was alone to consider her news. Peter in love with Millie! How had he been so blind? Of course he could see it now, could remember a thousand things! Poor Peter! Henry felt old and protective and all-wise, then remembering the other things that Mary Cass had said blushed again.
"Am I really a prig?" he thought. "But I don't mean to be. But perhaps prigs never do mean to be. What is a prig, anyway? Isn't it some one who thinks himself better than other people? Well, I certainly don't think myself better——"
These beautiful thoughts were interrupted by Millie and, with her, Mr. Baxter.
It may be said at once to save further time and trouble that the two young men detested one another at sight. It was natural and inevitable that they should. Henry with his untidy hair, his badly shaven chin, his clumsy clothes and his crookedly-balancing pince-nez would of course seem to Bunny Baxtera terrible fellow to appear in public with. It would shock him deeply, too, that so lovely a creature as Millie could possibly have so plain a relation. It would also be at once apparent to him that here was some one from whom he could hope for nothing socially, whether borrowing of money, introductions to fashionable clubs, or the name of a new tailor who allowed, indeed invited, unlimited credit. It was quite clear that Henry was a gate to none of these things. On Henry's side it was natural that he should at once be prejudiced against any one who was "dressed up." He admitted to himself that Baxter looked a gentleman, but his hair, his clothes, his shoes, had all of them that easy perfection that would never, never, did he live for a million years, be granted to Henry.
Henry disliked his fresh complexion, his moustache, the contemptuous curl of his upper lip. He decided at once that here was an enemy.
It would not in any case have been a very happy meeting, but difficulties were made yet more difficult by the fact, sufficiently obvious to the eyes of an already critical brother, that the two of them had been "having words" as they came along. Millie's cheeks were flushed and her eyes angry, and that she looked adorable when she was thus did not help substantially the meeting.
Millie went into the inner room and the two men sat stiffly opposite one another and carried on a hostile conversation.
"Beastly weather," Mr. Baxter volunteered.
"Oh, do you think so?" Henry smiled, as though in wonder at the extreme stupidity of his companion. "I should have said it had been rather fine lately."
Silence.
"Up in London for long?" asked Baxter.
"Only two days, I think. Just came up to see that Millie was all right."
"You won't have to bother any more now that she's got me to look after her," said Baxter, sucking the gold knob of his cane.
"As a matter of fact," said Henry, "she's pretty good at looking after herself."
Silence.
"You're secretary to some old Johnny, aren't you?" asked Baxter.
"I'm helping a man edit some family papers," said Henry with dignity.
"Same thing, isn't it?" said Baxter. "I should hate it."
"I expect you would," said Henry, with emphatic meaning behind every word.
Silence.
"Know Cladgate?" asked Baxter.
"No," said Henry.
"Beastly place. Wouldn't have been there if it weren't for your sister. Good dancing, though. Do you dance?"
"No, I don't," said Henry.
"You're wise on the whole. Awful bore having to talk to girls you don't know. One simply doesn't talk, if you know what I mean."
"Oh, I know," said Henry.
Silence.
Millie came in. Henry got up.
"Think I'll be off now, Millie," he said. "Got a lot to do. Will you creep away from your Cromwell Road to-morrow and have lunch with me?"
"All right," she said, with a readiness that showed that this was in some way a challenge to Mr. Baxter.
"I'll fetch you—one-fifteen."
With a stiff nod to Baxter, he was gone.
"By Jove, how your brother does hate me," that young gentleman remarked. Then with a sudden change of mood that was one of his most charming gifts, he threw himself at her feet.
"I'm a beast, Millie; I'm everything I shouldn't be, but Idolove you so! I do! I do! . . . The only decent thing in my worthless life, perhaps, but it's true."
And, for a wonder, it was.
On that particular afternoon he was very nearly frank and honest with her about many things. His love for her was always to remain the best and truest thing that he had ever known; but when he looked down into that tangle of his history and thence up into her clear, steadfast gaze his courage flagged—he could only reiterate again and again the one honest factthat he knew—that he did indeed love her with all the best that was in him. She knew that it was the perception of that that had first won her, and in all the doubts of him that were now beginning to perplex her heart,thatdoubt never assailed her. Hedidlove her and was trying his best to be honest with her. That it was a poor best she was soon to know.
But to-day, tired and filled to the brim with ten hours' querulousness in the Cromwell Road household, she succumbed once more to a longing for love and comfort and reassurance. Once again she had told herself that this time she would force him to clarity and truth—once again she failed. He was sitting at her feet: she was stroking his hair; soon they were locked in one another's arms.
At half-past one next day Millie and Henry were sitting opposite one another at a little table in a Knightsbridge restaurant. This might easily have been an occasion for one of their old familiar squabbles—there was material sufficient—but it was a mark of the true depths of their affection that the one immediately recognised when the other was in real and earnest trouble—so soon as that was recognised any question of quarrelling—and they enjoyed immensely that healthy exercise—was put away. Henry made that recognition now, and complicated though his own affairs were and very far from immediate happiness, he had no thought but for Millie.
She, as was her way, at once challenged him:
"Of course you didn't like him," she said.
"No, I didn't," he answered. "But you didn't expect me to, did you?"
"I wanted you to. . . . No, I don't know. You will like him when you know him better. You're always funny when any one from outside dares to try and break into the family. Remember how you behaved over Philip."
"Ah, Philip! I was younger then. Besides there isn't any family to break into now. . . ." He leant forward and touched her hand. "There isn't anything I want except for you to be happy, really there isn't. Of course for myself I'd rather you stayed as you are for a long time to come—it's better company for me, but that's against nature. I made up my mind to be brave when the moment came, but I'd imagined some one——"
"Yes, I know," broke in Millie, "that's what one's friends always insist on, that they should do the choosing. But it's me that's got to do the living." She laughed. "What a terrible sentence, but you know what I mean. . . . How do you know I'm not happy?" she suddenly ended.
"Oh, of course any one can see. Your letters haven't been happy, your looks aren't happy, you weren't happy with him yesterday——"
"I was—the last part," she said, thinking. "Of course we'd quarrelled just before we came in. We're always quarrelling, I'm sure I don't know why. I'm not a person to quarrel much, now am I?"
"We've quarrelled a good bit in our time," said Henry reflectively.
"Yes, but that was different. This is so serious. Every time Bunny and I quarrel I feel as though everything were over for ever and ever. Oh! there's no doubt of it, being engaged's a very difficult thing."
"Well, then, there it is," said Henry. "You love him and he loves you. There's nothing more to be said. But therearesome questions I'd like to ask. What are his people? What's his profession? When are you going to be married? What are you going to live on when you are married?"
"Oh, that's all right," she answered hurriedly. "I'm to meet his mother in a day or two, and very soon he's going into a motor-works out at Hackney somewhere. There aren't many relations, I'm glad to say, on either side."
"Thanks," said Henry. "But haven't you seen his mother yet?"
"No, she's been in Scotland."
"Where does he come from?"
"Oh, they've got a place down in Devonshire somewhere."
She looked at him. He looked at her. Her look was loving and tender, and said: "I know everything's wrong in this. You know that I know this, but it's my fight and I'm going to make it come right." His look was as loving as hers, and said: "I know that you know that I know that this is going all wrong and I'm doing my best to keep my eye on it, but I'm not going to force you to give him away. Only when the smash comes I'll be with you."
All that he actually said was: "Have another éclair?"
She answered, "No thanks. . . ." Looking at him across the table, she ended, as though this were her final comment on a long unspoken conversation between them.
"Yes, Henry, I know—but there are two ways of falling in love, one worshipping so that you're on your knees, the other protecting so that your arm goes round—Iknowhe's not perfect—I know it better every day—but he wants some one like me. He says he does, and I know it's true. You'd have liked me," she said almost fiercely, turning upon him, "to have married some one like Peter."
"Yes, I would. I'd have loved you to marry Peter—if he hadn't been married already."
They went out into the street, which was shining with long lines of colour after a sudden scatter of rain.
She kissed him, ran and caught an omnibus, waved to him from the steps, and was gone.
He went off to Peter Street.
He was once more in the pink-lit, heavily-curtained room with its smell of patchouli and stale bread-crumbs, and once again he was at the opposite end of the table from Mrs. Tenssen trying to engage her in pleasant conversation.
He realized at once to-day that their relationship had taken a further step towards hostility. She was showing him a new manifestation. When he came in she was seated dressed to go out, hurriedly eating a strange-looking meal that was here paper-bags and there sardines. She was eating this hurriedly and with a certain greed, plumping her thumb on to crumbs that had escaped to the table and then licking her fingers. Her appearance also to-day was strange: she was dressed entirely in heavy and rather shabby black, and her face was so thickly powdered and her lips so violently rouged that she seemed to be wearing a mask. Out of this mask her eyes flashed vindictively, greedily and violently, as though she wished with all her heart to curse God and the universe but had no time because she was hungry and food would not wait. Another thing to-day Henry noticed: on other occasions when he had come in she had taken the trouble to force an exaggerated gentility, a refinement and elegance that was none the less false for wearing a show of geniality. To-day there was no effort at manners: instead she gave one glance at Henry and then lifted up her saucer and drank from it with long thirsty gurgles. He alwaysfelt when he saw her the same uncanny fear of her, as though she had some power over him by which with a few muttered words and a baleful glance she could turn him into a rat or a toad and then squash him under her large flat foot.Shewas of the world of magic, of unreality if you like to believe only in what you see with your eyes. She was real enough to eat sardines, though, and crunch their little bones with her teeth and then wipe her oily fingers on one of the paper-bags, after which she drank the rest of her tea, and then, sitting back in her chair, surveyed Henry, sucking at her teeth as she did so.
"Well, what have you come for to-day?" she asked him.
"Oh, just to pay you a visit."
"Me! I like that. As though I didn't know what you're after. . . . She's in there. She'll be out in a minute. I'm off on some business of my own for an hour or two so you can conoodle as much as you damned well please."
Henry said nothing to that.
"Why didn't you make an offer for her?" Mrs. Tenssen suddenly asked.
"An offer?" Henry repeated.
"Yes. I'm sick of her. Been sick of her these many years. All I want is to get a little bit as a sort of wedding present, in return, you know, for all I've done for her, bringing her up as I have and feeding her and clothing her. . . . You're in love with her. You've got rich people. Make an offer."
"You're a bad woman," Henry said, springing to his feet, "to sell your own daughter as though she were. . . ."
"Selling, be blowed," replied Mrs. Tenssen calmly, pursuing a recalcitrant crumb with her finger. "She's my daughter. I had the pain of bearing her, the trouble of suckling her, the expense of clothing herandkeeping her respectable. She'd have been on the streets long ago if it hadn't been for me. I don't say I've always been all I should have been. I'm a sinful woman, and I'm glad of it—but you'll agree yourself she's a pure girl if ever there was one.DullI call it. However, for those who like it there it is."
Henry said nothing.
Mrs. Tenssen looked at him scornfully.
"You're in love with her, aren't you?" she asked.
"I'd rather not talk to you about what I feel," Henry answered.
"Of course you're in love with her," Mrs. Tenssen continued. "I don't suppose she cares a rap for you. She doesn't seem to take after men at all, and you're not, if you'll forgive my saying so, altogether a beauty. You're young yet. But she'd do anything to get away from me. Don't I know it and haven't I had to make my plans carefully to prevent it? So long as her blasted uncles keep out of this country for the next six months, with me she's got to stay, and she knows it. But time's getting short, and I've got to make my mind up. There are one or two other offers I'm considering, but I don't in the least object to hearing any suggestion you'd like to make."
"One suggestion I'd like to make," said Henry hotly, "is that I can get the police on your track for keeping a disorderly house. They'll take her away soon enough when they know what you've got in Victoria Street."
"Now then," said Mrs. Tenssen calmly, "that comes very near to libel. You be careful of libel, young man. It's got many a prettier fellow than you into trouble before now. Nobody's ever been able to prove a thing against me yet and it's not likely a chicken like you is going to begin now. Besides, supposing you could, a pretty thing it would be for Christina to be 'dragged into such an affair in the Courts.' No thank you. I can look after my girl better than that."
Mrs. Tenssen got up, went to a mirror to put her hat straight, and then turned round upon him. She stood, her arms akimbo, looking down upon him.
"I don't understand you virtuous people," she said, "upon my word I don't. You make such a lot of fine talk about your nobility and your high conduct and then you go and do things that no old drab in the street would lower herself to. Here are you, been sniffing round my daughter for months and haven't got the pluck to lift a finger to take her out of what you think her misery and make her happy. Oh, I loathe you good people, damn the lot of you. You can go to hell for all I care, so you bloody well can. . . . You'd better make the most of your Christina while you've got the chance. You won't be cominghere many more times." With that she was gone, banging the door behind her.
Christina came in, smiled at him without speaking, carried the dirty remnants of her mother's meal into the inner room, returned and sat down, a book in her hand, close to him.
He saw at once that she was happy to-night. The fright was not in her eyes. When she spoke there was only a slight hint of the Danish accent which, on days when she was disturbed, was very strong.
She looked so lovely to him sitting there in perfect tranquillity, the thin green book between her hands, that he got exultant draughts of pleasure simply from gazing at her. They both seemed to enjoy the silence; the room changed its atmosphere as if in submission, perhaps, to their youth and simplicity. The bells from the church near Shaftesbury Avenue were ringing, and the gaudy clock on the mantelpiece, usually so inquisitive in its malicious chatter, now tick-tocked along in amiable approval of them both.
"I'm very glad you've come—at last," she said. "It's a fortnight since the other time."
"Yes," he answered, flushing with pleasure that she should remember. "I've been in the country working. What are you reading?" he asked.
"Oh!" she cried, laughing. "Do hear me read and see whether I pronounce the words right and tell me what some of them mean. It's poetry. I was out with mother and I saw this book open in the window with his picture, and I liked his face so much that I went in and bought it. It's lovely, even though I don't understand a lot of it. Now tell me the truth. If I read it very badly, tell me: