"S wimmin' don't 'elp none in that river, bless you!" said the Philosopher. "No man ain't never saved 'oo tries divin' stunts in that current."
"Well, you listen," said the Optimist. "I looked 'ard and I seed that the sampan was full o' fruit, and on top o' the fruit, perky as Charley's Aunt, was that little yeller lungi seated. 'Course I answered the wave o' 'er 'and, when the sampan gits near the wharf she pointed at the fruit and then to me. She'd collected it from all over the shop for me to 'ave on my journey."
"You never giv us none," said the Pessimist.
"You'll hear why," replied the speaker. "No one could 'a exactly told wot 'appened after that, but there was a barge comin' down stream, between the jetty and the sampan, and a steam-launch comin' up opposite. The barge got in the way of me view fust and then everyone 'eard a shout and the barge let out over its far end with ropes, and then the sampan swept past 'er with a chunk missin' and a speck of yeller 'angin' on, while the fruit was floatin' about on top of the water."
"Gawd!" remarked the Pessimist. "Did they git 'er?"
The narrator paused. "Some men in a boat comin' up-stream lugged 'er in," he said. "The man wot was rowin' the sampan 'ad gone down, and so, o' course, they knew they needn't expect 'im up again inside a week, and then it would be some miles along the river. But they got the little gal ashore and took 'er to the 'ospital. 'Er 'air was 'angin' down and 'er little face was the colour of the inside of a banana, and 'er silk lungi all tore and stained green."
"What did you do?" asked the Philosopher.
"What a man could. I went round to the 'ospital and they wouldn't let me up, but I 'eard as 'ow 'er ribs was stove in. Through 'er lung they stuck and that was 'ow they couldn't save 'er."
"Didn't you see 'er again at all?"
"Next afternoon I turned up to inquire, and a Burmese nurse said the gal 'ad been askin' to see me as she knowed she was dying. They took me up. There was screens all round the bed because she couldn't get better, jes' like an English 'ospital. And O Gawd, some 'o them wimmin in the ward as I passed, didn't they look 'arf ill! 'Wot's this ward?' I asked the nurse, and an English matron wot 'ad come to take my name and address said they were mostly police cases. She didn't seem to like my face none, but she showed me to me little friend. I Gawd-damned the 'ole blasted lot o' them when I see 'er, an' jes' knelt down and put me 'ands on 'er little 'ands and sez: 'See 'ere Ladybird, 'ow you goin' to wear that Boschy tooth necklace if you don't get well?' She opened 'er eyes wide as saucers for a minute, and then she sees me and smiles a baby twisted smile. She gasps a bit and I put me ear down close so's she wouldn't feel it any effort to speak a piece. 'No buljao,' she whispers, so faint I couldn't 'ardly 'ear. 'Never on your life!' sez I, and I meant it. Then I brings out the fags to show 'er where I keeps 'em in an inner pocket. She looks at 'em and, 'Soomoke,' she sez. I thought at fust she wanted me to smoke one then and there, and I'd 'ave done it if Gawd Almighty 'ad pointed out as it was against the rules. But then 'er tiny fingers nipped mine an' I kep' still. 'Don't you be afeared,' I said, 'I ain't goin' to leave you yet,' thinkin' I'd put my tongue out at the matron if she tried to shift me. With that she kinds of seems to settle. 'Soomoke 'ome,' she gasps; and I answers, 'I'll smoke the bleedin' caseful, beginning the fust day I sets foot in Blighty, and I'll blow back the smoke to the East so's all smoke you see think it's my lot comin' to tell you as I ain't nearly bulgaoed, nor goin' to'."
The Optimist stopped and coughed violently. Then he got up and fussing with the window-strap let the pane down with a bang. The rain had ceased, and breaths of English Spring blew in across the wet fields.
"These 'ere do irritate the throat after a while," said the Philosopher sympathetically.
"And wot happened next?" asked the Pessimist, who had no fine perceptions.
The man at the window turned on him with eyes still glistening from the effects of his cough.
"Wot 'appened next?" he repeated scornfully. "Oh, 'er and me did a barn dance down the ward, of course!"
The Philosopher handed him back his matches and the photograph which he was re-studying.
"It's got to come to all on us," he said thoughtfully. "And I bet, matey, it come easier to that lil girl there than if she'd 'ad to face it later without a pal at 'er side."
"That's so," assented the Optimist cheerfully, but he tucked the tin case of cigarettes away with reverent fingers. "What troubles me," he said confidentially, "is these 'ere pictures. I can't 'ardly take 'em 'ome to my missus and explain—particularly the poser where me arm's aholdin' of 'er waist. Under the banana tree. We got 'em took by a Eurasian mugger wot I'd met."
"Don't you show 'em," warned the Pessimist.
"It ain't a question o' showin," said his friend. "You don't know my missus. She's a-meetin' me at Waterloo and if she don't turn out me pockets in the station she'll do it in the bus."
"My 'ole Umbrella is meetin' me too," said the Pessimist, "and she'll find me all ready to tell 'er that 'ere is the fust petticoat I've brushed agin' for a twelve-month. So don't you go suggestin' nothin' different, in a pally way, if you do 'appen to be near."
"Let's 'ope your pockets'll bear you out if I do," said the Optimist.
The Philosopher shifted his position and leant forward. "You take my tip, 'ole love," he said impressively to the Optimist. "Jes' you wipe out that lil yaller gal. She's in safer 'ands than yours now and you can't git at 'er with cigarette smoke, nor nothin' else. You tear them photographs right now and put them out of the winder. It ain't no good explainin' 'em to a woman—least of all to one wiv marriage lines. I know, 'cos once I tried it on. My old missus is one of them earnest Christians wot do a lot more forgivin' than forgettin', and 'er forgivin' of me 'as been more'n I can bear for the last five years. Now, whenever we 'as words, I git the wust of it straight off, owin' to the 'andle I giv' 'er agin' me. You all of you poke fun at me for bein' quiet-like, but if you'd seed my missus, or 'eard 'er, you'd know where I got the 'abit of 'oldin' me tongue. I go on tip-toe now when there's a gal around 'oo suits me."
The Optimist gazed at him admiringly.
"You're deep," he announced with conviction.
"Nothin' in me pockets or in me kit," wound up the Philosopher, "is nothin' on me conscience or on me wife's, and no bustin' of the 'appy 'ome. You wipe that lil Frangipani off the slate and forgit the stink o' them flowers."
The Optimist shuffled the photographs thoughtfully.
"Seems 'ard," he said, running his fingers round the rims. "Still—'ere goes!"
He tore them up slowly and the fragments were whirled away into space by the draught outside.
One small piece floated back to his feet.
"This 'ere is the tail of 'er lungi," he said, picking it up.
And then, since there is nothing conceivable in God's world so sentimental as the British soldier, he slipped it into the cigarette-case where it could tell no tales.
The Philosopher rose to shut the window for there was a nip in the air. He looked back up the line and down on the footboards where a couple of shreds still clung.
"That the best place forthem," he said with conviction, drawing up the glass. Then he muttered a profound truth.
"Honesty may be the best policy," he said, "but it ain't the one wot keeps a weddin'-ring from wearin' loose."
Fortified by which assurance, Cyprian had seen the three Galahads alight on Waterloo platform, ten minutes later, each to imprint a chaste salute on the nearest portion of waiting wife, which presented itself at the carriage door with a string bag, a shabby umbrella and dewy eyes.
And as, now, in recalling the whole scene which had deeply impressed him at the time, he compared the insignia of the string bag with that of the white frangipani flower, the cynicism of the Greek Philosopher crossed his mind, who summed up the whole conditions of life, since male and female created He them, in the words:
Greek
Hla Byu's outlook was too Eastern to be contemplated by any woman of the West. Very much the dog's point of view.
There is endless talk about the faithfulness of dogs, but does not experience teach that it really consists of faithfulness to a master rather than to one master? The dog who loses one master, to be kindly adopted by another, suffers from the change only until he has grown accustomed to the new touch upon his head. His heart beats as happily in a little while to the new tread along the garden walk. He is still faithful in his allegiance—to the hand that feeds him. When the old master returns he will remember, till then he will philosophize.
The Burmese woman who is sold to the white man has this advantage over his dog. The Unexpected does not occur. She knows that she will, possibly, change masters more than once in her life. She may prefer one to another, but, in most cases, the change is accepted philosophically and is followed by few heart-burnings and useless regrets. So that the man be just to her and kind, so that he clothe her and approve of her housekeeping, she is content. Her lighthearted affection goes to the children, who are bone of her bone, and of whom she need not stand in awe.
If the man has any notion of fair play, when the time comes for him to leave her, he will provide for the children; if he deny all responsibility, there are still the missions, who look upon such things with solemn and sentimental eyes, and are, consequently, helpful.
Cyprian learnt during the next two years to understand this enduring passivity of the Buddha's children. Not that they followed blindly the precepts of the Great Teacher: they had simply adapted them to the changing times and needs of the Race.
Little Hla Byu was a regular attendant on festival occasions at the Aracan Pagoda in Mandalay. She knelt before the big gold Buddha, solid from many coatings of precious metal, when the flickering candles dripped grease, and the scent of the incense-sticks penetrated through the scent of perspiring humanity.
There, she prayed for her son. She did not consciously connect him with the foreign father who might, any day, desert her for a woman of his own race, and legitimately deny all that linked him to his former life. She prayed quaintly, mechanically, regarding the proceeding in the light of a charm, and with no very clear idea as to who should hear the prayer. The priests should know. But the priests, indeed, if they knew anything up at their bare stone monastery, should have taught that the Master could not hear the cry of human suffering or desire, even if he would, since he had obtained the final Silence, "where beyond these voices there is peace." But, to Hla Byu, spirits there must be—Someone, Anyone. Prayer could do no harm, anyway, and might certainly do good. Contemplation was not for the Burman-in-the-street, but any follower of the Buddha can hold a wooden rosary and repeat two thousand times in a dull monotone, some such golden truth as that "Honesty is the best policy," before leaving the lighted Pagoda and going back to the bazaar to cheat his brother.
At least, her creed gave some outlet to those emotions which the practical things of life cannot satisfy.
She was richer than Cyprian, who had none. The simple honesty of her beautified their relationship. Nature, surely, must have meant just this simplicity between the sexes in ministering to each other's needs. He knew that Ferlie would have been struck with the hypocrisy of Society-life in the big towns of Burma.
There the white women-folk knew of such as little Hla Byu but pretended ignorance. No aspiring mother would encourage her daughter to join hands with an ex-public-school boy at the beginning of his career and flit away into the jungles to share the making of his future. That was Hla Byu's part. But, later, when the same future was assured, when the public-school boy had become submerged in the fever-eaten official with a bank-book and, possibly, a passion-ravaged past, then it was the turn of some clear-eyed débutante to receive with thankfulness God's gift of a good man's love—and his motor-car.
* * * * * *
Cyprian's face, bent over the official note-paper upon which he had been idly sketching while listening to the klop-klop of the postman's mule mounting the hill, was less lean now and far less strained. The great bitterness curving the corners of his mouth was contradicted by the level calm with which his eyes looked out across to the horizon despite their awareness that the Lot had fallen unto him in a rugged ground.
A slight stir in the vicinity of the waste-paper basket caused him to turn his head, and, with an oddly detached air, he surveyed for some moments the explorations therein of a naked baby.
Its creamy amber skin shone like satin in the sunlight, relieved by its stiff cap of black hair. And the eyes riveted suddenly upon Cyprian's were widely set apart and, most incongruously, most tellingly, blue.
The man, unexpectedly, with a brusque movement of his head, shook down the eye-glasses he used to correct his astigmatic vision when concentrating for long upon close writing, and the small inquiring face receded, mercifully blurred.
But its marked and precocious intelligence remained branded upon his mentality as if somebody had pasted an imperfectly-developed photograph there.
"One is responsible," and he turned the word over in his mind, stupidly probing its meaning.
Hla Byu picked up the restless bundle as she flitted into the shaded gloom of the sitting-room, out of the white glare blocked by the verandah chicks.
Cyprian absently received his letters from her hands.
"The school is in Maymyo," he said inconsequently. "It will be best for him to go where there will be others like him."
The puzzled wonderment of her expression merged into amusement. She had learnt something of this man during the last two years. Something, also, of latent powers in herself which he would have paid much, in after life, to have left unstirred. She gave a tiny exclamatory chirp of laughter.
"At fourteen months, Thakin? That would, indeed, be somewhat early, even for him."
With relief he recalled that the time for such decisions was not yet. One might drift a little longer....
But Fate disproved that. Among the official letters lay one in a strange handwriting. He turned it over incuriously, but there was a seal on the back which quickened his interest. He could not recollect where he had seen it before. The first words of the letter startled him.
"Dear Ferlie's Cyprian,"—Stiffening, he turned the sheet over to read the signature, "B. Trefusis." Then he remembered. A tea-shop.... Ferlie buried in ice-cream and, to the right of her, a vivacious shingled head ... the same seal on a thin white wrinkled finger, curved over a plate of honey-coloured scones. He spread the letter out upon the blotting-paper and, resting his drawn forehead on sheltering palms, read it slowly through.
"If you were ever a friend of Ferlie's, try and come to her. Once, I should have said, if you were ever a friend of Ferlie's try and leave her. I never considered you a successful substitute for the uncle she did not possess, but the very difference in age between you, which I deplored, I now rejoice in. Perhaps, she will confide in you; perhaps, you will be able to help where the few that are near and dear to her are excluded from helping.
"For all I know, you may have forgotten that there ever was a Ferlie. This may find you with another woman at your side. You may have ties—children; then, for their sakes, come and hold out your hand in friendship to a child you once knew. I am not satisfied with the little I gleaned about her marriage. I am not satisfied with the accounts I heard of you then. The only thing I am satisfied about is that Ferlie needs you and would tell you what she will not tell me. Perhaps, you may have the key to the whole situation; perhaps, you know nothing. At any rate, if you were ever a friend of Ferlie's come and learn."
After all, the ties which held him were slenderer than cobwebs; surprising the ease with which he snapped them.
Hla Byu did not question. She merely accepted. But her slanting brows creased painfully.
"Will the Thakin let me come back to him?"
Through the rising tumult of his mind he detected the note of alarm.
"There is nothing to fear," he told her. "I will arrange for regular money to be supplied to you. The child shall be provided for all during his life."
The momentary relief in her face struck a feeling of shame to Cyprian's soul. There were men, he knew, who would consider him quixotic. He blinked away the thought. Custom could not lessen the dominion of the Daimon in this matter. Responsible. For all that he had made of life. For the weakness which had originally driven him from his acknowledged sphere. For the narrowness which had spurned Ferlie's confidence in its rightful setting; for the indecision which had kept him from following his truest instincts to love and to declare his love; for the apathetic purposelessness through which he had accepted Burma's bribe of Hla Byu, and the child with the questioning blue eyes.
"What will happen no one can foretell," he said. "Serve another Thakin, or wait; in either case you can always appeal to me for your needs."
Seemingly satisfied, she nodded and then turned from him to hide something on her lashes which made rainbows of the sunshine. She had always been a little afraid of him, although he never got drunk, nor beat her, nor threw things about the house as she knew, from her friends, so many foreign masters did. He was always silent, work-absorbed, apart from her—it was like living with the marble Buddha on the river-bank, who eternally contemplated, in the regulation attitude, the water traffic slipping by on its very mortal affairs, from town to town. She clutched the baby to her in a spasm of passionate regret—although, of course, there remained nothing to regret since their future was assured.
"It has been peace here, Thakin?" she said, on a timid note of interrogation.
He laid a gentle hand upon the yielding shoulder; her tiny bones felt soft like a kitten's bones.
"It is never peace for long, child," he answered.
* * * * * *
He had wired the date of his arrival to Miss Trefusis; the compromise of a reply to the letter he had not felt capable of answering. But he was not prepared to see the severely stately figure of that decisive lady waiting at the docks.
She greeted him as if they had parted yesterday.
"People remain vivid to me," she said in explanation, leading him to the closed limousine. "We are motoring to my place near town, and your heavy luggage can go by train. You are coming to stay with me until you've had time to choose your roost. On the way down in the car I can elucidate. Meanwhile, a brief catechism will clear the air. Married?"
Cyprian shook his head.
"I am glad," said the old lady. "Your having no responsibilities will simplify matters. Was leave due to you?"
"I took 'Urgent Private Affairs'."
"Good. They should more than occupy your attention. Get in."
Her hand directed him towards the car.
Cyprian obeyed, hypnotized. Once they were seated she swung sideways to look him full in the face.
"Do you know why I have risked this? For love of Ferlie. You might have consigned me to the devil, had you developed into an official of high standing, very much married, with a brace of inarticulate, spectacled children. Instinct told me that you were alone in spirit, even if among your fellow-men; overworking, and living at the bottom of a mine, not of rubies, but of buried hopes. Was I right?"
He nodded, blinking nervously at his hands. Her voice had lost its hard-edged clarity.
"When I saw you two, one afternoon at the Zoo—you remember?—I thought that the link, strengthening between you as the years went on, was wholly unnatural. You were Ferlie's sun, though neither of you realized it. And she stood to you for refreshment and comfort and utter peace. Again—Was I right?"
He stirred uneasily.
"Can you not spare me this?"
"No," said Aunt Brillianna emphatically. "I can spare you nothing if Ferlie is to be spared a little. Listen."
She lowered her tone and, above the humming of the car, her voice ran on earnestly. Pain was again wrenching at his nerves and the sentences sounded blurred and disconnected....
"And no one knows the real truth. They are not, officially, separated, but she lives alone at Black Towers with John, her little boy...."
A companion of lesser perception might have faltered discouraged before his immobility. This one had the good sense to keep her eyes upon the shifting hedges.
"She tells us nothing, and lives like a nun, cloistered in her pathetic youth behind the walls of that crumbling old tomb. Mainwaring fills the town house with his friends, and there are queer stories afloat about him. He has never shown any interest in the child—looks upon its arrival as a duty mutually performed. There has been no public quarrel; no cruelty that we know of, and the rumours, however unsavoury, do not provide the evidence for divorce proceedings. In any case, Ferlie has joined the Church of Rome. Gave no explanation why; merely announced it as an accomplished fact. I saw a marble statue once, called 'Endurance.' It was in a private show, by an unknown man. A nude figure with hands extended to push back some invisible advancing foe. I bought it. There is terror in the face, lest the unknown power should crush completely; but there is also cold resistance and the strength of despair. I will show you the thing. You, who remember Ferlie as so poignantly alive...."
The speaker broke off for a moment.
"... But I must come to the incident which prompted my letter to you. I had gone unexpectedly to Black Towers, and only John greeted me in that mausoleum of a hall. He is a Ferlie product all right, but only just four. And ... one never knows.... The servants told me that Lady Greville-Mainwaring was at home but could not be disturbed. I asked if she were ill. They denied that and, politely resistant to further inquiries, supplied me with papers, afternoon tea, and, being well acquainted with my erratic habits, asked if I would stay the night. I said 'yes,' and turned my whole attention to John in the hope of discovering what his mother was doing.
"'No one could ever go up between five and six,' he informed me. 'But go up where, John?' I asked. With some difficulty I extracted the fact that Ferlie was in the West Tower. I knew there were unused rooms in the towers. I asked him what his mother did there between five and six, and he said she shut the door and 'just was quiet,' adding proudly that he took her up messages if it was important.
"I hated the sound of these proceedings which he evidently regarded as normal. 'This is important, John,' I said. 'We won't tell anybody else, but you take me up to Mother.' He demurred at first—thought the occasion did not justify that weary journey—but, at last, I persuaded him. The steps were high and dark and narrow. We might have been perambulating in Dante's Purgatory as we circled round and round. We stopped outside the door of a circular room. So strict were her orders that she had ceased to expect intrusion, and only a curtain hid her from us. I stood for some while behind it, listening to the silence. John, queer intense little soul that he is, sat down on the top step nursing his legs, for he was never very strong and I suppose they ached from the climb. And suddenly perched up at that height in the dark, relieved only by the spears of ghost-coloured light shooting through the slit windows behind us on the stair, I lost my nerve and felt that, dishonourable or not, I must know what Ferlie was doing. If she had turned into a witch in that setting I was not prepared to be surprised."
Miss Trefusis stopped to wipe from her face the dampness which had gathered there. She gave a little gasp and moistened her lips.
"Cyprian. I stood and peeped through the curtain folds at a room soaked in gold light. I thought I was demented until I realized that the rays of the western sun must touch this turret last of any room in the house, and then they struck through a round aperture glazed with orange glass. When no longer dazzled by the discovery I found Ferlie. The place was unfurnished save for a cushioned oak chair in which she was sitting, motionless as if she had been dead for years. On the palm of one opened hand lay a spherical object which retained at one spot a pin-point of reflected light like a minute star. On this it seemed to me Ferlie's eyes were fixed, and, even when throwing discretion to the winds, I went in to her she neither spoke nor stirred.
"I stooped low to her face and realized that she could not be aware of my presence. She was in some sort of a trance. Terrified, my first idea was to rush for help. Mercifully, I thought better of it. I did not know what kind of help was needed. I could only guess that Ferlie was self-hypnotized. But with what object? And had the thing been accidental, or deliberate. Not daring to pick up what she held in her hand I saw it was a small golden apple.
"I went back to John and asked him where the nearest doctor lived. We were some while whispering while I dug for information, and during that delay I heard Ferlie give a long sigh. Back I sped to her side. The apple had rolled into her lap and her body relaxed as I hovered round like a distracted hen. Then, to my joy, I perceived that she was realizing me. She did not seem astonished, and lifting her head spoke as if hardly out of a dream.
"'Nearly,' she said. 'Very nearly. But there is always some Presence standing between him and myself—and it is not God.'
"I was tactful and apologetic, putting the blame of my intrusion on to John and pretending I saw nothing out of the way in finding her in the turret.
"But, later, by deduction and confidences half-won, I arrived at some sort of explanation. Ferlie had been dipping deep into the ultra-ancient and ultra-modern volumes of every species of literature which stock the Black Towers library.
"'Do you believe that mankind have lost the power of communicating with one another by thought-transference?' she asked me. 'If they ever had it,' I said, determined not to encourage her.
"But her face checked my inclination to snub.
"'Christ had it,' she said. 'He healedfrom a distance, and promised that all He did we might do. No one seems to have taken that promise seriously enough to test it—unless perhaps the Christian Scientists.'
"'I'd prefer to rely upon the twopenny post, myself,' I insisted. She shook her head and said, 'That would not be right in my case, Aunt B. I may only struggle to attain the fulfilment of the promise.'
"'With whom do you want to communicate by this unnatural method,' I asked. But she would not tell me. Only by accident I stumbled upon that item.
"Late that same night I heard through my open window a faint sound of somebody crying. It was one of those desperately still star-saturated nights. I was up in an instant and along the corridor without waiting for a candle. Ferlie's room was next to John's. Through his open door I watched her, but this time I did not rush in to put to flight any stray ministering angel who might be in the offing. Cyprian, it is a terrible thing to come, unawares, upon a soul in Gethsemane. What has lain between you two in the past I do not know; what may lie between you in the future I dare not think. But I at my eavesdropping post grew colder and colder. If Ferlie continued much longer to carry this secret burden I was certain she would go out of her mind. And I am convinced that whatever the stereotyped and doubtless to your mind worthy, principles to which you have succumbed in this matter, no man can count himself wholly irresponsible whose name is thus centred in a woman's prayers."
The great car swept forward, increasing speed along a clear stretch of road. Between the occupants for some moments there reigned an unbroken silence.
Then Cyprian spoke, still without moving; his rigidity outlined against the transparent pane.
"How far are we from Black Towers?"
"We pass within thirty miles of it."
"Then...." Their eyes met.
Aunt B.'s head jerked suddenly forward.
"I thought you'd understand." ...
The Autumn twilight was thickening with milky opal reflections when they rolled through the heavy iron gates of the park. Gigantic trees shadowed the curving drive; every now and then sending a swirl of jewel-coloured leaves to join their brothers carpeting the soft turf.
They passed one copper beech, tinted like the understrands of Ferlie's hair. But, though the grounds were obviously well cared-for, nothing could relieve a brooding sense of desolation, due to the over-luxuriant vegetation which darkened the surroundings of an already dark, if beautiful, house.
Well-merited the name, Cyprian thought, as the solid old turret towers rose at last, picked out in inky silhouette against the flaming aftermath of sunset cloud.
Upon the flight of black marble steps a child was standing; a miniature bull's-eye lamp in his hands. He had evidently been trying to light it with the aid of a box of matches which would not strike.
A footman came down the stairs as the car drew up, and his expression of surprise gave way to placid recognition of its lady-occupant.
"Her ladyship said she was expecting you, Madam, but did not think that you would be arriving till Wednesday."
"I have brought a friend of hers with me," Miss Trefusis told him. "Where is she?"
The man did not answer; he had turned back to speak to his colleagues, now gathering about the limousine.
Jardine, the old butler, with the forceful impassive face, informed them that her ladyship should be told. He left them before the hall fire and glided away.
"I always regard him as a sort of Keeper of the Keys," whispered Miss Trefusis, hysterical with fatigue and achievement.
Cyprian took out his watch as if suddenly reminded of something, but he did not look at the time; only at the securing ring of a small gold key dangling from the watch-chain.
"He has been in the Family so many years," went on Aunt Brillianna, "that Ferlie says he believes himself a kind of Influence on the Greville-Mainwaring destinies."
The child, whose lamp one of the footmen had lighted now, passed through the hall, carrying it carefully. She called to him.
"Come here, John. Don't you know me to-day? Where is your mother?"
He was advancing towards her but checked himself at the inquiry.
"She said not to take no one up the stairs," he informed them with emphasis. "She are having a key made for the door."
He spoke clearly and with only a slight slurring of the S's which could not be described as a lisp but which gave a more human childishness to his unnatural gravity.
Scarcely concealing the effort it cost, Cyprian raised his head and looked at him. Yes. That hair, also, would have flaunted a rebellious crop of sunny waves had they been allowed to grow. He was too white and frail-looking for prettiness but it was with his mother's wide steady gaze that he returned Cyprian's survey which shifted first.
"Nonsense!" said Aunt B. on a low quaver of amusement, "you can't afford to be jealous of Ferlie's son."
Cyprian replied with a vexed laugh,
"Don't read me so clearly out loud. There are some things a man wishes to hide from himself."
She rose, holding out her hand to John.
"Take us to the foot of the stairs, laddie. I do not want you to go up. We may hear Mother coming down."
John hesitated, but, finally, led the way, vouchsafing one piece of news as he pushed back a nail-studded door.
"I have got a tricycle."
It gave Aunt B. her opening. At the foot of the stairs she turned and gestured to Cyprian, standing behind her.
"The key is not yet made to lock you out," she reminded him in an undertone. And aloud to John, "Show me the tricycle."
Was it not yet made? Cyprian asked himself; or, rather, would the lock be too rusty for it to turn, after such long disuse?
Up and always up. And Ferlie climbed thus, daily, the ascent of her lonely Purgatory for the little hour when she might unmask her suffering, and face the truth that her soul was exceeding heavy.
It was a long time to Cyprian before he stood outside that door. It had a heavy looped iron handle like that which turns the latch of a church.
He paused but heard no sound within.
His hand grasping the ring was steady; the oaken panels swung back easily under that strong pressure.
She was leaning against the Gothic window, and the lingering touch of long sun-fingers rested upon her head in comforting caress.
He spoke her name in a whisper. Her head turned slowly but she did not move. So often had he come to her at this time and, so often, faded back into the gloaming.
His shoulders relaxed as dawned the explanation for her dumb acceptance of his presence. He crossed the threshold with outstretched hands.
"My dear ... Oh, my dear..."
She crumpled up in his arms, not unconscious, but sick with shock.
The last red ray withdrew from the turret, leaving them in the gloom of a grave from which resurrection seemed very far away.
* * * * * *
The presence of Aunt B. made all the difference to the situation. She effaced herself and entertained John, but lent a more commonplace air to his visit than would have seemed possible, in the circumstances.
The erratic arrivals and departures of Lady Greville-Mainwaring's elderly aunt had ceased to be a matter for comment in the servants' hall. Jardine palpably respected her uncompromising utterances; John met her as an equal, and Cyprian and Ferlie, at peace in one another's companionship along the garden walks, passionately blessed her in their hearts. She had done wisely in warning Cyprian that Ferlie's appearance must startle him. She wore the look of some Inquisition victim whom the torturer's power had reduced to that exhaustion which ceases to feel. Instead of the limp body, incapable of further suffering, Ferlie betrayed a like condition of soul.
"Was this change of religion any use?" Cyprian asked her.
Her eyes might swiftly have become sightless as she replied, "There was no 'change.' It had to be that or Father's way of thinking. And I could not trust my small strength with Father's self-sufficient philosophy. This represented one more cage, but a necessary one, if I was to obtain enough self-discipline to enable me to live. You know I am not being dramatic. Sometimes I thought of that way out, only it did not seem quite fair to John, until he should be old enough to understand about heredity and choose for himself."
"You—you don't make yourself exactly clear."
"No. Well, never mind! ... Peter, by chance, knocked up against a clever Jesuit. I do admire that much-criticized sect, Cyprian. Their hard logic; their cold positivity of thought. This one thrilled one's sense of humour first by a speech made to a Church of England padre, which, beginning on a note of toleration crashed to conclusion on a chord of glorious bigotry. 'After all,' he assured his vacillating companion, 'We both serve the same Master; you in your way, I in His.'
"Later, this man was discussing the conversion of a well-known statesman with Peter. 'He was too intellectual,' said the Jesuit, 'to be satisfied longer with less than all the Truth his brain could assimilate.' That speech impressed Peter as, doubtless, it was meant to do, with his tendency to brain-worship. He, also, began to be sure that the World's Thinkers, among whom he would like to be numbered some time, must, universally, find the Whole Truth here.
"And you know, Cyprian, heisclever. They did not make the mistake of approaching him on the sentimental, or even the romantically beautiful side, of the religion. He is certainly a more valuable ally to the Catholic Church than undoctrinal I."
"The thing has not yet interfered with Peter's instinctive love of liberty," Cyprian pointed out. "Whereas, you and I are, surely, threatened by its precepts."
He went no further. Not yet had he broached to her that which he understood to be passing in Aunt Brillianna's mind; more tentatively in his own. But Ferlie smiled with wistful understanding.
"There is no public cause for a divorce, that I know of," she said quietly, "And, apart from Catholicity, isn't divorce rather impossible as a solution for Us?"
She was placing her finger upon something which formed the basis of their mutual pride. They did not give to take back again, whatever the type of altar to which they had dedicated the gift.
The mockery of her marriage-service struck him afresh.... "That theirs may be the love which knows no ending, Whom Thou for evermore doth join in one...."
"Dear," and his voice was vibrant with pain, "How could you ever have imagined that any public vows could unite you to him, who were already part of..."
Habit of mind checked him; Ferlie was braver.
"Of you," she finished steadily.
They walked the whole length of the lawn before she added,
"You did not realize that, Cyprian, while there was time. If you had realized it I should not have been free. There was no time to give you time to weigh your love. When you held back my light seemed clear."
"And I had no light," he said shortly.
"You haven't told me whether you now share these modern views about divorce," she reminded him. "Even the Church you nominally belong to is divided in its opinions on the subject. Its members talk very fluently, and go on their way, self-convinced. Like Peter, who, at nineteen, could talk himself into that sort of convinced state about anything."
"There are exceptional circumstances..." Cyprian began, but she stopped him then.
"And now you are going to do it! No, Cyprian. You must be either 'for' or 'against,' with principle at the back of you. Don't you see that everybody's exceptional circumstances would always be his own? That is how the Individual now dethrones God in favour of himself."
"Ferlie, you forget you have not yet told me your circumstances. And I have a right to know."
He watched her clouded face and waited. Twice she seemed about to speak but the constrained reticence of the past two years still fettered her tongue.
"I have never told anyone," she said huskily. "I don't know how much I ought to tell. I only believe that it may be a divorcing matter, according to Law; if I had not put myself under Catholic discipline."
He placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down on to a moss-upholstered bench near which, perched on a pillar, mocked a laughing stone faun.
"You must tell me," he said. And took his place beside her, covering her hand with his own.
Presently, with an obvious effort, she asked,
"You will not have forgotten Muriel Vane?"
His fingers contracted and she paused to reflect that if Cyprian had not remained so true in the abstract to his First Vision he would hardly have been Cyprian; and her god.
But she could not long mis-read the expression of raw disgust on his face as she lifted hers. It puzzled her.
"Nothing would hurt now, Cyprian—if you knew. She is—not quite normal now. Not since a long time has she——"
"I know all that." His tone was cruelly hard. "For a long while I would not allow myself to believe those rumours.... And once I thought to put her before you! It is that I shall never forget." Even so does a man resent his mistakes on their object instead of on himself.
"Cyprian, don't. Haven't the years taught you compassion?"
He shrugged that view away.
"What compassion is possible, or even right and decent?"
"You may feel inclined to shun a leper but, surely, you would desire to help him, too?"
She surprised him.
"What makes you think of it that way?"
"Experience," said Ferlie, so low that he hardly caught the word.
She braced herself for explanation.
"You once met a woman called Ruth Levine." She went on without heeding his start of acquiescence. "She has been very good to Muriel Vane. Muriel's people separated; then her mother died. Her father took to drugs, or something; they were a queer family, degenerating, like—like so many. And Muriel developed into—what people said. Ruth thought she had foreseen it and might have done something to prevent it happening. I should have imagined that impossible; often it is caused by heredity insanity. Anyhow, she saved Muriel from the usual kind of 'Home.' It is always the woman, Ruth says, who is judged; men so affected can often live undetected or screened from public criticism.... Ruth knew Clifford before I married him and when I concluded that, for John's sake—if only for that—there must be a complete break between Clifford and myself, she came to ask me to get divorced, as she had cared for him first. She was quite matter-of-fact about it. I told her that I could not dream of using the evidence she offered to supply. I told her that Clifford and I had privately arranged to live apart but that I was a Catholic and it was not in my power to unsay vows once spoken. I told her that I did not think she understood why Clifford ought to be in other hands than those of women. She looked at me as if I were crazy and went away.... I—I don't know any more, Cyprian."
Ferlie's voice had almost vanished. Suddenly her head went down upon her knees and her body shook with dry sobbing.
Cyprian, with half-closed eyes which did not wish to see, was wondering whether he had understood.
She had conjured up dark visions the like of which had rarely crossed his horizon. He was inclined, like many self-sheltered individuals, to blink at the most sinister of Life's shadows, as if by so doing he could blink them out of existence as easily as out of his thoughts.
His inarticulate prayer: "Et ne nos indue as in tentationem!" A wise one with reference to the safety of his individual soul but hardly conducive of expansive sympathy to others.
The horror he experienced in hearing this child, a score of years younger than himself, approaching for commonplace—as indeed they might be elsewhere in the world, for all he cared—issues which, until now, he had always succeeded in pushing far from his own sphere of action, hindered him from pressing her further.
* * * * * *
He might never have realized the immensities at stake for her, but that Chance interfered to drive his newly-acquired knowledge home.
At that moment Jardine was seen to be coming across the lawn, a silver salver in his hand.
Cyprian aroused Ferlie in time. When the old butler stood before them, with the telegram, she was presentably calm.
"Mrs. Minchin sent me out with it, your ladyship; it was addressed to her. His lordship wishes her to inform you that he is arriving to-night and would like one of the cars to meet the 8.15." Mrs. Minchin was the housekeeper.
Ferlie took the yellow envelope from the tray and, as she did so, Cyprian wondered whether it were only in his imagination that a look passed between mistress and man, electric with mutual warning.
Just the flash of an eyelid, and Jardine was pursuing his majestic course over the grass, his back-view impervious to criticism and comment. Not until the last glimpse of his black coat-tails had disappeared behind the yew-bushes did Ferlie rise to her feet and face Cyprian beside the laughing faun. Again that illusory sightlessness filmed her dilated pupils. She looked through him and beyond into a blank pall of darkness.
"Cyprian," the voice was dead like her face, "Take me away."
He fancied the half-human leering thing of stone stirred in evil exultation. The twisted weather-beaten features made an unholy contrast to those others of still soft flesh on a level with them.
"I have nothing more to say to you than that," she said, when he did not answer. "I will tell you nothing more. Whether you go with us or not, John and I leave here to-night—in time. You could not trust me five years ago; can you trust me now?"
"It was not you five years ago; it was my own creed that I could not trust."
"But now it is different, Cyprian. You have out-lived one stage of self-mistrust now."
Did man ever arrive beyond the reach of that urging Power in a world peopled with mortal flesh, he wondered.
Strange that, in forcing a decision upon himself concerning Ferlie's future, Cyprian forgot the very existence of Hla Byu and his son. It was not his intention to conceal from Ferlie the temporary loss of will-power which had changed the tenour of his life during the last two years. But the Burmese girl, received in a moment of sick physical weakness and retained in pure apathy of soul, had existed so mistily for the real Cyprian that, the practical arrangements for her safe-keeping concluded, she simply slipped out of the picture. When he did remember her she had become so superfluous among the host of living memories he and Ferlie were storing up that he could not bring himself to recall her, even by speech.
"I know too thoroughly by what means the latent forces of the body can accomplish the spirit's murder"—she was speaking again and he recollected himself—"But you and I have nothing to do with such perishable links. Nor do we require witnesses to ratify a spiritual marriage for which we should not have been prepared without these last enforced years of disciplined control."
She stopped, confronted with his unyielding silence, and, all at once, grew limp and human by that other inhuman watcher in stone. Her shoulders relaxed, bowed and aged beneath their invisible burden.
"I am not playing the part of Eve. It is all right. I promised that you should never need to ask me, a second time, to leave you. I understand. I am going now, alone."
He drew towards her then.
"You are going with me. I am giving you no choice. Do you understand? This decision is mine, not yours. You are going where I shall take you and under whatsoever conditions I lay down, now, and during your whole future. The responsibility is mine; you have got to put your trust in me."
Was it credible that the ripple of breeze through the swaying stalks of a bed of tall Madonna lilies drowned a satyr-laugh of derision?
Standing shoulder to shoulder they made no attempt to touch one another's hands.
So might the Little Saint of Assisi have mythically wedded Poverty, while Chastity and Obedience supported her on either hand.
Said Ferlie, "I have nothing to give you that you have not already. Everything of yours has been guarded safely behind a locked door. And, Cyprian, you have the key."
* * * * * *
To Miss Trefusis he outlined his scheme and found her a little dubious.
"But, my dear man, this is the twentieth century. Why not meet this fly-by-night lord and arrange matters with modern sanity over a whisky and soda?"
"You are the only modern one of us three," he reminded her, amusedly recognizing that her unusually broad views, contact with which he had once feared for Ferlie, were responsible for their present re-union. "Ferlie tells me that she has no evidence for a divorce, nor can she seek it, in consideration of the Church she has joined."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Aunt B., exasperated that any Church should continue to consider joined what she had been at such infinite pains to put asunder. "Surely you, Cyprian, are old enough to smile at sects and Churches! Ferlie would not be true to type if, at her age, a cardinal did not seem too picturesque to be a liar. And, believe me, the Pope was the only safe substitute for you."
"You, surely, are not advocating collusion?" asked Cyprian, tickled, in spite of himself, at this feminine Juggernaut, the wheels of whose common-sense responded to no brake till she had guided them triumphantly past her goal.
"I don't believe there is 'no cause,'" she snapped: "If he is a gentleman he will make one, since he has obviously admitted her right to leave him. It can't affect the child's inheritance. An atom of patience, and the whole affair might be straightened out with a minimum of scandal."
"There is no necessity for even a perfectly respectable scandal," Cyprian assured her. "Ferlie is coming out to Burma with me, to live there as my sister. After a time, the man can get his marriage annulled if he wishes, on the ground of desertion; but that is unlikely to affect us."
Miss Trefusis searched his face with an expression of mingled admiration and incredulity on her own.
"Yes, I am afraid you mean what I think you mean," she said. "You are more of a child than she is, and I'd like to shake you. I'd almost rather you eloped healthily—without a new wedding-ring."
"I am so sorry to disappoint you," Cyprian said.
She laid a hand on his arm which he immediately imprisoned in his.
"Excelsior, then! Go and freeze to death upon your mountain top, both of you. I have interfered enough in bringing your bodily forms together. I dare not dig inquisitive fingers into your souls."
It was arranged that her chauffeur should return with them to the coast so as to render negligible the chance of delay if any suspicion were aroused.
"But there is no earthly reason why Clifford should want to argue it out with me," said Ferlie.
* * * * * *
At the last moment she gave way to a curious attack of nerves, and again Cyprian suspected that the incident was due to some secret reminder conveyed to her by Jardine.
From the step of the limousine, into which the sleeping John had been carried, she let go Cyprian's arm and darted back up the steps.
"Aunt B.! You will go home yourself to-night, won't you? Take the Daimler!"
"Hurry, child! It is twenty minutes to eight. Yes. I am all ready to start, and you can trust me to take care of myself."
"Come, Ferlie, don't waste any more time."
She ignored even that quiet voice, looking uncertainly at Jardine who dropped his eyes with an almost imperceptible movement of his head.
"You will see my aunt comfortably off, Jardine?"
"Ferlie, don't be foolish! Since when have I needed dry-nursing? Make her get in, Cyprian. There, darling! There. Shut the door. That's right, Cyprian. Write to me, both of you. What is she shaking about? I won't let Clifford eat me in any case. Good-bye. Look after her, Cyprian. Good-bye! Good-bye!"
They were whirled out of her sight.
* * * * * *
Whereupon, the temptation of Eve descended upon Aunt B.
She had never met this husband of Ferlie's and, on reconsidering that fact, it seemed that Ferlie herself had always intervened in the past to prevent a meeting. There was really no need for her to hurry home to-night; she might even serve the fugitives best by staying to produce some plausible reason for Ferlie's sudden "journey to town."
Jardine, to her amazement, was respectfully inhospitable in his opposition to this proposed change of plan. He made it unmistakably clear that he wished to be rid of her. And the more insistently he conveyed that impression, the more obstinately did Miss Trefusis desire to see the owner of Black Towers.
To settle the matter out of hand she went to her room, unpacked a dinner dress of silver-grey velvet, and came downstairs wearing it and an assured air which discouraged argument.
Said Jardine to her in the hall where he was hovering like a distressed bat among the chain-mailed ancestors.
"It is to be expected that his lordship will dine in his own apartments, Madam. I have not put off the dinner hour to suit his late arrival."
Therefore, at 8.15 precisely, Aunt B. found herself frustrated thus far, at the end of the long table.
Half-way through the meal came the sounds of arrival: the footman's hurrying steps and a man's voice in the hall.
She strained her ears, but silence soon followed the retreating feet and then Jardine came in to ask if she would have coffee on the terrace.
"Too chilly," was her cross verdict, and he agreed that the little drawing-room and a fire would be more comfortable.
Even after she had drunk the coffee and was immersed in the newspaper, she remained aware of the old servant's flitting presence. He appeared to be finding matters to occupy him in the small drawing-room and only after she had twice looked up inquiringly over the printed page did he make reluctantly for the door.
She sat on when the paper, restlessly devoured, had slipped from her knees to the floor. Soft radiance glowed about her through orange silk shades, etherealizing the dignified feminine figure with its close-fitting crown of silvery hair. The features, in repose not unlike Ferlie's, were attractively gentle. She leant back in the dark tapestried chair and thought of the lovers, of the long trail which lay before them, of the spiritual courage supporting their rare decision. Could a man and a woman live under such conditions, loving as these two loved?
And something told her that it was just because they so loved that the improbable became possible.
If they failed that Utopian ideal in the end— She broke off her reflections with a sigh.
"Who is to judge?" she asked aloud of the flames on the open hearth. "Who is to judge These, or Any?"
A man on the terrace, rolling a cigarette with uncertain fingers, heard the quiet question and paused in his occupation. His eyes glittered oddly over the flickering match, just struck, and the face, as he lifted it starwards, was not unlike the face of the deriding faun, aged by the battering years into a very surely alive satyr.
* * * * * *
Cold, suffocating darkness in the hall, and the comforting impassive bulk of old Jardine.
Later, a square of corpse-coloured light, and the black marble steps making a row of ebony mirrors for the waning moon. Beyond them, the blurred lines of Ferlie's Daimler, heralding escape to the dainty simplicity of the lavender-scented garden and rooms sweet with the pot-pourri of clean sane memories.
Finding her voice, she turned fiercely upon the man supporting her trembling descent.
"And you knew—and remained silent, while she was facing That!"
His slow gesture was controlled but unyielding.
"For forty years, Madam, I have served the Greville-Mainwarings. As their like dies out so does my like die out which has learnt the lesson of silence."
He closed the door of the car upon her, adding with cold dignity,
"Her ladyship chose to become a Greville-Mainwaring."
"Do you know what I think, Cyprian?" asked John, lost in admiration for the ingenuity which had lined the channel leading from his sand-castle with practically watertight slates and stones, "I think you've got a Brain."
"So that's what your mother tells Miss Trefusis of you," deduced Cyprian. "By the way, I have an uneasy suspicion that she intended you to address me as 'Uncle.'"
"What for?"
"As a mark of well-deserved respect, I fancy, and in token of my thinning locks."
"You don't look like 'uncle.'"
"Oh, I don't know. Considering I had reached a man's estate when your mother was not much higher than you——"
"Did Mother call you 'Uncle' then?"
"Just you ask her if not why not," advised Cyprian.
John mused awhile.
"Anyhow, I won't," he decided.
"Won't ask her?"
"Will call you by your real name."
"That's what she said," Cyprian admitted. "But, as man to man, John, I must warn you that she will probably have the last word in the matter, even if it is an inconsistent one. I have known her longer than you have."
"But I have known her most," returned John in some agitation. "She wasmymother first."
Cyprian took warning.
"God bless you, yes. She would be the first to admit it. Go your rebel way, then, and get the better of the woman.Ishan't interfere. I have my own troubles."
The conversation took place on a sunny portion of the Brittany coast where Ferlie had, for some weeks, been trustfully waiting for John and Cyprian to decide that they liked one another. Neither of them possessing gaily expansive natures the discovery took time.
A neutrality pact had been sealed earlier on this particular afternoon when Cyprian, armed with an offering of peppermint rock, having fallen unawares into the well of sea-water outside John's castle, had aroused in himself a throng of dimly ecstatic recollections and intimations of the Immortality of Childhood, as the poet simply puts it, and so flung himself whole-heartedly into the business of constructing an aqueduct, a smouldering ambition of his childhood, ever frustrated by the inopportune interference of the old and wise....
"You," said John presently, touched by his conscientious absorption, "may have the 'nother stick of peppermint rock when you've done."
"If it's to save your life I will accept it but I feel it only honest to confess that I am not allowed to eat sweets between meals."
"Neither am I when Mother comes out with us.... I want Mother."
"So do I want her. But I am man enough to put the aqueduct before the yearnings of my softer nature."
"Well, but you don't want to be sick."
Cyprian dropped the spade to look at him.
"What on earth are we going to do about it?" he asked at length. John showed him.
"And now," said Cyprian bitterly, "as, prompted by a kind and noble heart, I bought you the beastly stuff, I suppose she'll blame me!"
"I won't tell," John assured him faintly. And didn't.
* * * * * *
Almost immediately after this incident sealing his position in John's world, Cyprian received news of his Company's affiliation to a branch of mines in another district, and of his own transfer to a station more or less populated.
It meant a fresher beginning for himself and Ferlie in Burma than if he had remained under the eye of old acquaintances. He would be now, practically, in a managing position with much sedentary office-work in head-quarters and only a limited amount of inspecting.
But Ferlie and he would find it difficult to isolate themselves from their neighbours, even if Cyprian's reputation as a recluse preceded him and Ferlie's advertised one as a widow.
Fortunate for her now that the Burma Season had never materialized before her father's enforced retirement; for, though Burma is not the size of a London suburb, news there travels in more persistent circles.
As things were, the few remaining officials who had known her father well enough to remember he had a daughter would hardly connect the knowledge with the advent of "Mrs. Clifford" to keep house for a brother, up-country, who was not a Member of the Services. Cyprian felt that the change might result in a more normal and wholesome life for Ferlie, at her age, than he could originally have offered her, and she owned to rejoicing in the prospect of medical aid should John get ill.
The first time she saw their bungalow of dark crimson wood, with its shingled roof and white painted verandah, the porch trembled beneath the red tubes of blossoming kuskwalis, the subtle velvet scent of which mingled with the thick creamy sweetness pouring from the waxen stars of two leafless frangipani trees in the garden.
"Cyprian, how beautiful!" as the loose crowns showered over her with every gust of breeze. "I wonder why there is something sorrowful in the message their scent holds for me."
But he remembered that the lilies sentinelling the church for Ferlie's wedding had been numerous enough to saturate the air with a similar sickly-sweet fragrance.
Since they were seeking forgetfulness in these surroundings he said nothing.
The radiance of their life together during the next few months was an amazement to his unintrospective soul.
He had sometimes wondered on what foundation rested Ferlie's invincible faith that, in this purely spiritual companionship, they would not be tempted beyond their strength to trample the Code.
He did not know that, since John's birth and her husband's development in a direction which made normal married life with him impossible, Ferlie, with her passion for complete understanding unclouded by merciful ignorance, had delved into strange formidably-backed volumes in her efforts to tear out by the roots the tragedy which had shattered her innocence. She had shrunk at first towards asceticism as an answer to the racking question "What shall we do to be saved?"—from Self; a mankind weak and bewildered but sub-conscious, nevertheless, of an attainable state of grace synonymous with Immortality.
But, with Cyprian dwelling still in her heart, and refusing to be ejected even during this complete reaction, she had been forced to seek a more modified code than that of the professed nun.
Quite by chance, she discovered it in Chrysostom's outcry against the anti-pagan, but, as he considered it, also the anti-Christian, custom, which had become known among some of his contemporary ascetics; who lived at the side of virgins in uplifting and intimate companionship, the chastity of which was never called in question. More than one Father of the Church, cast in sterner mould, had felt it his duty to reprove and deplore this method of cheating the devil. Among them, and the fact had caused Ferlie some amusement, leavened with a queer aching, there was Cyprian's own namesake insistent on the "weakness" of her sex and the "wanton" tendencies of youth.
But it was significant that even Chrysostom acknowledged that in such seemingly unnatural friendships there was room for a love deeper and more lasting than any found in the fulfilment of legitimate bodily passion.
Upon such an admission Ferlie had built her temple to Love, and in the lonely turret at Black Towers learnt something of the power of concentrated thought.
Of her studies Cyprian remained unaware.
Sex-psychology had never obsessed him as it has so many modern minds. He knew that Tolstoy, for whom he retained a very real admiration, had developed into a married ascetic, but had been inclined to smile at the humour presented in the situation of a man, married and with his own quiver quite literally full, advocating a higher life, rooted in celibacy, to his fellows.
The apple eaten, where the merit of flinging away the core and informing the world that the fruit was sour?
But for that abnormally sensitive streak in him, which forced him to respond to the suggestion of an idealistic love as naturally as the sunflower to the sun, Cyprian might have degenerated into the egotistical scholar, thick-visioned as to the needs of Humanity, and justly derided by ribald undergraduates as "the product of a long line of maiden aunts."
This, supposing Muriel Vane had not wounded him in time and sent him fleeing into the desert to hide his hurt.
The same streak, unsatisfied and hungry, had enabled him to close his eyes, temporarily, to the tenets of the rigid creed natural to this type, when Hla Byu smiled up at him in the pitiless sunlight; the same streak, legacy perhaps of some long-dead Tristrannic ancestor—hardening at the sight of Ferlie's suffering, had inspired the courage preparing him to set at defiance every other normally narrow instinct of his senses which shrank from the abnormal, and had led him to accept a position at her side, for which, once, more bitterly than the severe Cyprian of bygone centuries, he would have condemned a fellow-man.
The fact remained that he and Ferlie, and Ferlie's son by the rival he had every reason to consider better dead, had entered into a kingdom so glad with light and deep with peace; its ways so rich with psychological exploration; its gates so strengthened with spiritual discipline, that they became nearly oblivious to the world of non-mystics, who would neither have understood these strangers in their midst, nor have desired to understand.
And the eye of the materialist is critical and his tongue, unsheathed, a two-edged sword.
* * * * * *
The first intimation either of them had that other mortal inhabitants of the earth were interested in them, as fellow-pilgrims to the goal of pensioned and idle security, occurred after a period of nearly six months, when Sterne's good-looking little widowed sister might reasonably be expected to have started advertising her weeds in the exchange and barter column of thePioneer.
"Weeds? My dear fellow, she's never worn 'em. Flits about 'clothed in white'—what-do-you-call-it 'mystic, wonderful,' and flaunts a promising scarlet head."
"Scarlet, did you say? You're colour-blind. I've only seen her from the road, myself, but she'd rank as a 'Beaut' with that hair if she had a face like a mince-pie."
"Fancy old Diogenes possessing a sister like that! I was with him at G. and he never mentioned her."
"Must be a 'half.' She's twenty years younger at least. What's the name?"
"She's a Mrs. Clifford."
This conversation took place in a long low building, flanked by a hard tennis court and dignified by the title, "Club." The speakers were congregated at a kind of counter commonly known as the "Bar." Cyprian did not frequent it and Ferlie was still postponing her public appearance.