"No, no, no, you're not!" cried Millie. "You're going to live. Peter and I will see to it. We're going to make you live."
Clare frowned.
"Don't be sentimental, my dear. Face facts. It would be extremely tiresome for you if I lived. You may not be in love with Peter but you like him very much, and there'll be nothing more awkward for you than having a sick woman lying round here——"
Millie broke in:
"There you're wrong! you're wrong indeed! I'd love to make you well. It isn't sentiment. It's truth. How have I dared to tell you about my silly little affair when you've suffered as you have! How selfish I am and egoistic—give me a chance to help you and I'll show you what I can do."
Clare shook her head again. "Well, then," she said, "if I can't put you off that way I'll put you off another. You'd bore me in a week, you and Peter. I've been with bad peopleso long that I find good ones very tiresome. Mother was bad. That's a terrible thing to say about your mother, isn't it?—but it's true. And I've got a bad strain from her. You're a nice girl and beautiful to look at, but you're too English for me. I should feel as though you were District Visiting when you came to see me. Just as I feel about Peter when he drops his voice and walks so heavily on tip-toe and looks at me with such anxious eyes. No, my dear, I've told you all this because I want you to make it up to Peter when I've gone. You're ideally suited to one another. When I look at him I feel as though I'd been torturing one of those white mice we used to keep at school. I'm not for you and you're not for me. My game's finished. I'll give you my blessing and depart."
Millie flushed and answered slowly: "How do you know I'm so good? How do you know I know nothing about life? Perhaps Ihavedeceived myself over this love affair. It was my first: I gave him all I could. Perhaps you're right. If I'd loved him more I'd have given him everything. . . . But I don't know. Is it being a District Visitor to respect yourself and him? Is the body more important than anything else? I don't call myself good. . . . I don't call myself bad. It's only the different values we put on things."
Clare looked at her curiously. "Perhaps you're right," she said. "Physical love when that's all there is, is terribly disappointing—an awful sell. I could have been a friend of yours if I'd been younger. There! Get up a moment—stand over there. I want to look at you!"
Millie got up, crossed the room and stood, her arms at her side, her eyes gravely watching.
Clare sat up, leaning on her elbow. "Yes, you're lovely. Men will be crazy about you—you'd better marry Peter quickly. And you're fine too. There's spirit in you. Move your arm. So! Now turn your head. . . . Ah, that's good! That'sgood! . . ."
She suddenly turned, buried her face in the cushions and burst into tears. Millie ran across to her and put her arms round her. Clare lay for a moment, her body shaken with sobs. Then she pushed her away.
"No, no. I don't want petting. It's only—what it all might have been. You're so young: it's all before you. It's over for me—over, over!"
She gave her one more long look.
"Now go," she said, "go quickly—or I'll want to poison you. Leave me alone——"
Millie took her hat and coat and went out into the rain.
That night Clare died.
Peter slept always now in the sitting-room with the door open lest she should need anything. He was tired that night, exhausted with struggles of conscience, battles of the flesh, forebodings of the future; he slept heavily without dreams. When at seven in the morning he came to see whether she were awake, he found her, staring ironically in front of her, dead.
Heart-failure the doctor afterwards said. He had told Peter days before that veronal and other things were old friends of hers. To-day no sign of them. Nevertheless . . . had she assisted herself a little along the inevitable road? Before he left on the evening before she had talked to him. He was often afterwards to see her, sitting up on the sofa, her yellow hair piled untidily on her head, her face like the mask of a tired child, her eyes angry as always.
"Well, Peter," she had said, "so you're in love with that girl?"
He admitted it at once, standing stolidly in front of her, looking at her with that pity in his eyes that irritated her so desperately.
"Yes, I love her," he said, "but she doesn't love me. When you're better we'll go away and live somewhere else. Paris if you like. We'll make a better thing of it, Clare, than we did the first time."
"Very magnanimous," she answered him. "But don't be too sure that she doesn't love you. Or she will when she's recovered from this present little affair. You must marry her, Peter—and if you do you'll make a success of it. She's the honestest woman I've met yet and you're the honestest man I know. You'll suit one another. . . . Mind you, I don't mean that as a compliment. People as honest as you two are tiresome forordinary folks to live with. I found you tiresome twenty years ago, Peter, I find you tiresome still."
He suddenly came down and knelt beside her sofa putting his arm round her. "Clare, please, please don't talk like that. My life's with you now. I daresay you find me dull. I am dull I know. But I'm old enough to understand now that you must have your freedom. All that I care about is for you to get well; then you shall do as you like. I won't tie you in any way; only be there if you want a friend."
She suddenly put up her hand and stroked his cheek, then as suddenly withdrew her hand and tucked it under her.
"Poor Peter," she said. "It was bad luck my coming back like that just when she'd broken with her young man. Never mind. I'll see what I can do. I did you a bad turn once—it would be nice and Christian of me to do you a good turn now. We ought never to have married of course—but youwouldmarry me, you know."
She looked at him curiously, as though she were seeing him for the first time.
"What do you think about life, Peter? What does it mean to you, all this fuss and agitation?"
"Mean?" he repeated. "Oh, I don't know."
"Yes, you do," she answered him. "I know exactly what you think. You think it's for us all to get better in. To learn from experience, a kind of boarding-school before the next world."
"Well, I suppose I do think it's something of that sort," he answered. "It hasn't any meaning for me otherwise. It feels like a fight and a fight about something real."
"And what about the people who get worse instead of better? It's rather hard luck on them. It isn't their fault half the time."
"We don't see the thing as it really is, I expect," he answered her, "nor people as they really are."
She moved restlessly.
"Now we're getting preachy. I expect you get preachy rather easily just as you used to. All I know is that I'm tired—tired to death. Do you remember how frightened I used to be twenty years ago? Well, I'm not frightened any longer. There'snothing left to be frightened of. Nothing could be worse than what I've had already. But I'm tired—damnably, damnably tired. And now I think I'll just turn over and go to sleep if you'll leave me for a bit."
He kissed her and left her, and at some moment between then and the morning she left him.
At the very moment that Millie was knocking on Peter's door Henry was sitting, a large bump on his forehead, looking at a dirty piece of paper. Only yesterday he had fought Baxter in Piccadilly Circus; now Baxter and everything and every one about him was as far from his consciousness as Heaven was from 1920 London. The Real had departed—the coloured life of the imagination had taken its place. . . . The appeal for which all his life he had been waiting had come—it was contained in that same dirty piece of paper.
The piece of paper was of the blue-grey kind, torn in haste from a washing bill; the cheap envelope that had contained it lay at Henry's feet.
On the piece of paper in a childish hand was scrawled this ill-spelt message: "Please come as quikley as you can or it will be to late."
Mr. King's factotum, a long, thin young man with carroty hair, had brought the envelope five minutes before. The St. James' church clock had just struck five; it was raining hard, the water running from the eaves above Henry's attic window across and down with a curious little gurgling chuckle that was all his life afterwards to be connected with this evening.
There was no signature to the paper; he had never seen Christina's handwriting before; it might be a blind or a decoy or simply a practical joke. Nevertheless, he did not for a moment hesitate as to what he would do. He had already that afternoon decided in the empty melancholy of the deserted Hill Street library that he must that same evening make another attack on Peter Street. He was determined that this time he would discover once and for all the truth about Christina even though he had to wring Mrs. Tenssen's skinny neck to secure it.
He had returned to Panton Street fired with this resolve; five minutes later the note had been delivered to him.
He washed his face, put on a clean collar, placed the note carefully in his pocket-book and started out on the great adventure of his life. The rain was driving so lustily down Peter Street that no one was about. He moved like a man in a dream, driven by some fantastic force of his imagination as though he were still sitting in Panton Street and this were a new chapter that he was writing in his romance—or as though his body were in Panton Street and it was his soul that sallied forth. And yet the details about Mrs. Tenssen were real enough—he could still hear her crunching the sardine-bones, and Peter Street was real enough, and the rain as it trickled inside his collar, and the bump on his forehead.
Nevertheless in dreams too details were real.
As though he had done all this before (having as it were rehearsed it somewhere), he did not this time go to the little door but went rather to the yard that had seen his first attack. He stumbled in the dusk over boxes, planks of wood and pieces of iron, hoops and wheels and bars.
Once he almost fell and the noise that he made seemed to his anxious ears terrific, but suddenly he stumbled against the little wooden stair, set his foot thereon and started to climb. Soon he felt the trap-door, pushed it up with his hand and climbed into the passage. Once more he was in the gallery, and once more he had looked through into the courtyard beyond, now striped and misted with the driving rain.
No human being was to be seen or heard. He moved indeed as in a dream. He was now by the long window, curtained as before. This time no voices came from the other side; there was no sound in all the world but the rain.
Again, as in dreams, he knew what would happen: that he would push at the window, find it on this occasion fastened, push again with his elbow, then with both hands shove against the glass. All this he did, the doors of the window sprang apart and it was only with the greatest difficulty that he saved himself from falling on to his knees as he had done on the earlier occasion.
He parted the curtains and walked into the room. He founda group staring towards the window. At the table, her hands folded in front of her, sat Christina, wearing the hat with the crimson feather as she had done the first time he had seen her. On a chair sat Mrs. Tenssen, dressed for a journey; she had obviously been bending over a large bag that she was trying to close when the noise that Henry made at the window diverted her.
Near the door, his face puckered with alarm, a soft grey hat on his head and very elegant brown gloves on his hands, was old Mr. Leishman.
Henry, without looking at the two of them, went up to Christina and said:
"I came at once."
Mrs. Tenssen, her face a dusty chalk-colour with anger, jumped up and moved forward as though she were going to attack Henry with her nails. Leishman murmured something; with great difficulty she restrained herself, paused where she was and then in her favourite attitude, standing, her hands on her hips, cried:
"Then it is jail for you after all, young man. In two minutes we'll have the police here and we'll see what you have to say then to a charge of house-breaking."
"See, Henry," said Christina, speaking quickly, "this is why I have sent for you. My uncle has come to London at last and is to be here to-morrow morning to see us. My mother says I am to go with her now into the country to some house of his," nodding with her head towards Leishman, "and I refuse and——"
"Yes," screamed Mrs. Tenssen, "but you'll be in that cab in the next ten minutes or I'll make it the worse for you and that swollen-faced schoolboy there." There followed then such a torrent of the basest abuse and insult that suddenly Henry was at her, catching her around the throat and crying: "You say that of her! You dare to say that of her! You dare to say that of her!"
This was the third physical encounter of Henry's during the months of this most eventful year: it was certainly the most confused of the three. He felt Mrs. Tenssen's finger-nails in his face and was then aware that she had escaped from him,had snatched the pin from her hat and was about to charge him with it. He turned, caught Christina by the arm, moved as though he would go to the window, then as both Mrs. Tenssen and Leishman rushed in that direction pushed Christina through, the door, crying: "Quick! Down the stairs! I'll follow you!"
As soon as he saw that she was through he stood with his back to the door facing them. Again the dream-sensation was upon him. He had the impression that when just now he had attacked Mrs. Tenssen his hands had gone through her as though she had been air.
He could hear Leishman quavering: "Let them go. . . . This will be bad for us. . . . I didn't want . . . I don't like . . ."
Mrs. Tenssen said nothing, then she had rushed across at him, had one hand on his shoulder and with the other was jabbing at him with the hatpin, crying: "Give me my daughter! Give me my daughter! Give me my daughter!"
With one hand he held off her arm, then with a sudden wrench, he was free of her, pushing her back with a sharp jerk, was through the door and down the stairs.
Christina was waiting for him; he caught her hand and together they ran through the rain-driven street.
Down Peter Street they ran and down Shaftesbury Avenue, across the Circus and did not stop until they were inside Panton Street door. The storm had emptied the street but, maybe, there are those alive who can tell how once two figures flew through the London air, borne on the very wings of the wind. . . . In such a vision do the miracles of this world and the next have their birth!
Up the stairs, through the door, the key turned, the attic warm and safe about them, and at last Henry, breathless, his coat torn, his back to the door:
"Now nobody shall take you! . . . Nobody in all the world!"
The miracle had been achieved. She was sitting upon his bed, her hands in her lap, looking with curiosity about her. She was very calm and quiet, as she always was, but she suddenly turned and smiled at him as though she would say: "I do like you for having brought me here."
His happiness almost choked him, but he was determined to be severely practical. He found out from her the name of her uncle and the hotel at which he was staying. He wrote a few lines saying that Miss Christina Tenssen was here in his room, that it was urgently necessary that she should be fetched by her uncle as soon as possible for reasons that he, Henry, would explain later. He got Christina herself to write a line at the bottom of the page.
"You see if we went on to your uncle's hotel now at once he might not be in and we would not be able to go up to his room. It is much better that we should stay here. Your mother may come on here, but they shall only take you from this room over my dead body." He laughed. "That's a phrase," he said, "that comes naturally to me because I'm a romantic novelist. Nevertheless, this time it's true. All the most absurd things become true at such a time as this. If you knew what nights and days I've dreamt of you being just like this, sitting alone with me like this. . . . Oh, Gimini! I'm happy. . . ." He pressed the bell that here rang and there did not. For the first time in history (but was not to-day a fairy tale?) the carroty-haired factotum arrived with marvellous promptitude, quite breathless with unwonted exertion. Henry gave him the note. He looked for an instant at Christina, then stumbled away.
"If your uncle is in he should be here in half an hour. If he is out, of course, it will be longer. At least I have half anhour. For half an hour you are my guest in my own palace, and for anything in the world that you require I have only to clap my hands and it shall be brought to you!"
"I don't want anything," she said; "only to sit here and be quiet and talk to you." She took off her hat and it reposed with its scarlet feather on Henry's rickety table.
She looked about her, smiling at everything. "I like it all—everything. That picture—those books. It is so like you—even the carpet!"
"Won't you lie down on the bed?" he said. "And I'll sit here, quite close, where I can see you. And I'll take your hand if you don't mind. I suppose we shan't meet for a long time again, and then we shall be so old that it will all be quite different. I shall never have a moment like this again, and I want to make the very most of it and then remember every instant so long as I live!"
She lay down as he had asked her and her hand was in his.
"You don't know what it is," she said, "to be away from that place at last. All this last fortnight my mother has been hesitating what she was to do. She has been trying to persuade Leishman to take me away himself, but there has been some trouble about money. There has been some other man too. All she has wanted lately is to get the money; she has wanted, I know, to leave the country—she has been cursing this town every minute—but she was always bargaining for me and could not get quite what she wanted. Then suddenly only this morning she had a letter from my uncle to say that he had arrived. She is more afraid of him than of any one in the world. She and the old man have been quarrelling all the morning, but at last they came to some decision. We were to leave for somewhere by the six o'clock train. She had hardly for a moment her eyes off me, but I had just a minute when I could give that note to Rose, the girl who comes in in the morning to work for us. I was frightened that you might not be here, away from London, but it was all I could do. . . . I was happy when I saw you come."
"This is the top moment of my life," said Henry, "and for ever afterwards I'm going to judge life by this. Just for half an hour you are mine and I am yours, and I can imagine tomyself that I have only to say the word and I can carry you off to some island where no one can touch you and where we shall be always together."
"Perhaps that's true," she said, suddenly looking at him. "I have never liked any one as I like you. My father and my uncles were quite different. If you took me away who knows what would come?"
He shook his head, smiling at her. "No, my dear. You're grateful just now and you feel kind but you're not in love with me and you never, never will be. I'm not the man you'll be in love with. He'll be some one fine, not ugly and clumsy and untidy like me. I can see him—one of your own people, very handsome and strong and brave. I'm not brave and I'm certainly not handsome. I lose my temper and then do things on the spur of the moment—generally ludicrous things—but I'm not really brave. But I believe in life now. I know what it can do and what it can bring, and no one can take that away from me now."
"I believe," she said, looking at him, "that you're going to do fine things—write great books or lead men to do great deeds. I shall be so proud when I hear men speaking your name and praising you. I shall say to myself: 'That's my friend whom they're speaking of. I knew him before they did and I knew what he would do.'"
"I think," said Henry, "that I always knew that this moment would come. When I was a boy in the country and was always being scolded for something I did wrong or stupidly I used to dream of this. I thought it would come in the War but it didn't. And then when I was in London I would stop sometimes in the street and expect the heavens to open and some miracle to happen. And now the miraclehashappened because I love you and you are my friend, and you are here in my shabby room and no one can ever prevent us thinking of one another till we die."
"I shall always think of you," she answered, "and how good you have been to me. I long for home and Kjöbenhaven and Langlinir and Jutland and the sand-dunes, but I shall miss you—now I know how I shall miss you. Henry, come back withme—if only for a little while. Come and stay with my uncle, and see our life and what kind of people we are."
His hand shook as it held hers. He stayed looking at her, their eyes lost in one another. It seemed to him an eternity while he waited. Then he shook his head.
"No. . . . It may be cowardice. . . . I don't know. But I don't want to spoil this. It's perfect as it is. I want you always to think about me as you do now. You wouldn't perhaps when you knew me better. You don't see me as I really am, not all the way round. For once I know where to stop, how to keep it perfect. Christina darling, I love you, love you, love you! I'll never love any one like this again. Let me put my arms around you and hold you just once before you go."
He knelt on the floor beside the bed and put his arms around her. Her cheek was against his. She put up her hand and stroked his hair.
They stayed there in silence and without moving, their hearts beating together.
There was a knock on the door.
"Give me something," he said. "Something of yours before you go. The scarlet feather!"
She tore it from her hat and gave it to him. Then he went to the door and opened it.
It was the morning of November 11, 1920, the anniversary of the Armistice, the day of the burial of the Unknown Warrior.
Millie, who was to watch the procession with Henry, was having breakfast with Victoria in her bedroom. Last night Victoria had given a dinner-party to celebrate her engagement, and she had insisted that Millie should sleep there—"the party would be late, a little dancing afterwards, and no one is so important for the success of the whole affair as you are, my Millie."
Victoria, sitting up in her four-poster in a lace cap and purple kimono, was very fine indeed. She felt fine; she held an imaginary reception, feeling, she told Millie, exactly like Teresia Tallien, whose life she had just been reading, so she said to Millie.
"Not at all the person to feel like," said Millie, "just before you're married."
"If you're virtuous," said Victoria, "and are never likely to be anything else to the end of your days it is rather a luxury to imagine yourself grand, beautiful and wicked."
"You have got on rather badly with Tallien," said Millie, "and you wouldn't have liked Barras any better."
"Well, I needn't worry about it," said Victoria, "because I've got Mereward, who is quite another sort of man." She drank her tea, and then reflectively added: "Do you realize, Millie, darling, that you've stuck to me a whole eight months, and that we're more 'stuck' so to speak than we were at the beginning?"
"Is that very marvellous?" asked Millie.
"Marvellous! Why, of course it is! You don't realize howmany I had before you came. The longest any one stayed was a fortnight."
"I've very nearly departed on one or two occasions," said Millie.
"Yes, I know you have." Victoria settled herself luxuriously. "Just give me that paper, darling, before you go and some of the letters. Pick out the nicest ones. You've seen me dear, at a most turbulent point of my existence, but I'm safe in harbour now, and even if it seems a little dull I daresay I shall be able to scrape up a quarrel or two with Mereward before long." Millie gave her the papers; she caught her hand. "You've been happier these last few weeks, dear, haven't you? I'd hate to think that you're still worrying. . . . That—that man. . . ." She paused.
"Oh, you needn't be afraid to speak of him." Millie sat down on the edge of the bed. "I don't know whether I'm happier exactly, but I'm quiet again—and that seems to be almost all I care about now. It's curious though how life arranges things for you. I don't think that I should ever have come out of that miserable loneliness if I hadn't met some one—a woman—whose case was far worse than mine. There's always some one deeper down, I expect, however deep one gets. She took me out of myself. I seem somehow suddenly to have grown up. Do you know, Victoria, when I look back to that first day that I came here I see myself as such a child that I wonder I went out alone."
Victoria nodded her head.
"Yes, you are older. You've grown into a woman in these months; we've all noticed it."
Millie got up. She stretched out her arms, laughing. "Oh! life's wonderful! How any one can be bored I can't think. The things that go on and the people and these wonderful times! Bunny hasn't killed any of that for me. He's increased it, I think. I see now what things other people have to stand. That woman, Victoria, that I spoke of just now, her life! Why, I'm only at the beginning—at the beginning of myself, at the beginning of the world, at the beginning of everything! What a time to be alive in!"
Victoria sighed. "When you talk like that, dear, and looklike that it makes me wish I wasn't going to marry Mereward. It's like closing a door. But the enchantment is over for me. Money can't bring it back nor love—not when the youth's gone. Hold on to it, Millie—your youth, my dear. Some people keep it for ever. I think you will."
Millie came and flung her arms round Victoria.
"You've been a dear to me, you have. Don't think I didn't notice how good and quiet you were when all that trouble with Bunny was going on. . . . I love you and wish you the happiest married life any woman could ever have."
A tear trickled down Victoria's fat cheek. "Stay with me, Millie, until you're married. Don't leave us. We shall need your youth and loveliness to lighten us all up. Promise."
And Millie promised.
In the hall she met Ellen.
"Ellen, come with my brother and me to see the procession."
Ellen regarded her darkly.
"No, thank you," she said.
Then as she was turning away, "Have you forgiven me?"
"Forgiven you?"
"Yes, for what I did. Finding out about Mr. Baxter."
"There was nothing to forgive," said Millie. "You did what you thought was right."
"Right!" answered Ellen. "Always people like you are thinking of what is right. I did what I wanted to because I wanted to." She came close to Millie. "I'm glad though I saved you. You've been kind to me after your own lights. It isn't your fault that you don't understand me. I only want you to promise me one thing. If you're ever grateful to me for what I did be kind to the next misshapen creature you come across. Be tolerant. There's more in the world than your healthy mind will ever realize." She went slowly up the stairs and out of the girl's sight.
Millie soon forgot her; meeting Henry at Panton Street, pointing out to him that he must wear to-day a black tie, discussing the best place for the procession, all these things were more important than Ellen.
Just before they left the room she looked at him. "Henry," she said, "what's happened to you?"
"Happened?" he asked.
"Yes. You're looking as though you'd just received a thousand pounds from a noble publisher for your first book—both solemn and sanctified."
"I'll tell you all about it one day," he said. He told her something then, of the rescue, the staying of Christina in his room, the arrival of the uncle.
He spoke of it all lightly. "He was a nice fellow," he said, "like a pirate. He said the mother wouldn't trouble us again and she hasn't. He carried Christina off to his hotel. He asked me to dinner then, but I didn't go . . . yes, and they left for Denmark two days later. . . . No, I didn't see them off. I didn't see them again."
Millie looked in her brother's eyes and asked no more questions. But Henry had grown in stature; he was hobbledehoy no longer. More than ever they needed one another now, and more than ever they were independent of all the world.
They found a place in the crowd just inside the Admiralty Arch. It was a lovely autumn day, the sunlight soft and mellow, the grey patterns of the Arch rising gently into the blue, the people stretched like long black shadows beneath the walls.
When the procession came there was reverence and true pathos. For a moment the complexities, turmoils, selfishnesses, struggles that the War had brought in its train were drawn into one simple issue, one straightforward emotion. Men might say that that emotion was sentimental, but nothing so sincerely felt by so many millions of simple people could be called by that name. The coffin passed with the admirals and the generals; there was a pause and then the crowd broke into the released space, voices were raised, there was laughter and shouting, every one pushing here and there, multitudes trying to escape from the uneasy emotion that had for a moment caught them, multitudes too remembering some one lost for a moment but loved for ever, typified by that coffin, that tin hat, that little wailing tune.
Millie's hand was through Henry's arm. "Wait a moment," she said. "There'll be the pause at eleven o'clock. Let's stay here and listen for it."
They stood on the curb while the crowd, noisy, cheerful,exaggerated, swirled back and forwards around them. Suddenly eleven o'clock boomed from Big Ben. Before the strokes were completed there was utter silence; as though a sign had flashed from the sky, the waters of the world were frozen into ice. The omnibuses in Trafalgar Square stayed where they were; every man stood his hat in his hand. The women held their children with a warning clasp. The pigeons around the Arch rose fluttering and crying into the air, the only sound in all the world. The two minutes seemed eternal. Tears came into Millie's eyes, hesitated, then rolled down her cheeks. For that instant it seemed that the solution of the earth's trouble must be so simple. All men drawn together like this by some common impulse that they all could understand, that they would all obey, that would force them to forget their individual selfishnesses, but would leave them, in their love for one another, individuals as they had never been before. "Oh! it can come! Itmustcome!" Millie's heart whispered. "God grant that I may live until that day."
The moment was over; the world went on again, but there were many there who would remember.
They were to lunch with Peter in Marylebone. Millie had some commission to execute for Victoria and told Henry that she would meet him in Peter's room.
When she was gone he felt for a moment lost. He had been in truth dreaming ever since that last sight of Christina. He had no impulse to follow her—he knew that in that he had been wise—but he was busy enthroning her so that she would always remain with every detail of every incident connected with her until he died.
In this perhaps he was sentimental; nevertheless clearer-sighted than you would suppose. He knew that he had all his life before him, that many would come into it and would go out again, that there would be passions and desires satisfied and unsatisfied. But he also knew that nothing again would have in it quite the unselfish devotion that his passion for Christina had had. The first love is not the only love, but it is often the only love into which self does not enter.
His feet led him to Peter Street. The barrows were there with their apples and oranges and old clothes and boots and shoes and gimcrack china. The old woman with the teary eye was there, the policeman good-humouredly watching. It was all as it had been on that first afternoon now so long, long, long ago!
Henry looked at the yard, at the little blistered door, at the balcony. No sign of life in any of them.
The Peter Street romance had just begun, but it had passed away from Peter Street.
He walked to Marylebone in a dream, and when he was there he had to pull himself together to listen with sympathy toPeter's excitement about this new monthly paper of which Peter was to be editor, the paper that was to transform the world.
He left Peter and Millie talking at the table, went to the window and looked out. As he saw the people passing up and down below them of a sudden he loved them all.
The events of the last month came crowding to him—everything that had happened: the first sight of Christina in the Circus, the first visit to Duncombe, the Hill Street library and his love for it, his interviews with Mrs. Tenssen, the day when he had given Christina luncheon in the little Spanish restaurant, Duncombe and the garden and Lady Bell-Hall, his struggles with his novel, his recovery of the old Edinburgh life, Sir Walter and his smile, the row with Tom Duncombe, the meals and the theatres and the talks with Peter. Millie's trouble and Peter's wife, his fight with Baxter, Duncombe's last talk with him and his death, the last time with Christina, to-day's Unknown Warrior—yes, and smaller things than these: sunsets and sunrises, people passing in the street, the wind in the Duncombe orchard, books new and old, his little room in Panton Street, the vista of Piccadilly Circus on a sunlit afternoon, all London and beyond it, England whom he loved so passionately, and beyond her the world to its furthest and darkest fastnesses. What a time to be alive, what a time to be young in, the enchantment, the miraculous enchantment of life!
"I am he attesting sympathy (shall I make my list of things in the house and ship the house that supports them?).
"I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
"My gait is no fault-finder's or rejector's gait, I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
"This minute that comes to me over the past decillions.
"There is no better than it and now. What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such a wonder.
"The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel."
He turned round to speak to Peter, then saw that he had his hand on Millie's shoulder, she seated at the table, looking up and smiling at him.
Millie and Peter? Why not? Only that would be needed to complete his happiness, his wonderful, miraculous happiness.